Podcasts about Sicilian

In Round One, the team discuss the arrests of Prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson, the viral “sweating” photo, calls to remove Andrew from the line of succession and Donald Trump's tariff plans being struck down by the US Supreme Court.In Round Two, we hear about the Sheffield Co-op going viral for the symphonic hum of its freezer aisle and the Catford residents who installed (and then mourned) their own fake speed camera.In Round Three, the Missing Words Round, we discover which British football insult a Swedish politician used in parliament, why a Sicilian dog has been fined for fly-tipping and the Birmingham man who stunned scientists after his death…If you enjoy the podcast, please give us a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and make sure you subscribe there so you don't miss an episode!For updates on the show, make sure you're following Have I Got News for You on Instagram, TikTok and X (formerly known as twitter) and get in touch with us there using #HIGNFYpod or emailing podcasts@hattrick.com. Your host is Mike RaymentWith Queenie Miller Emerald Paston And Jack Harris, back next week!The Producer is Diggory WaiteThe Executive Producer is Claire BroughtonThe Music is by Big GeorgeIn the News This Week is a Hat Trick Podcast

Fluent Fiction - Spanish: When Curiosity Crosses the Line: A Thrilling Aquarium Tale Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/es/episode/2026-02-24-23-34-02-es Story Transcript:Es: Las aguas azules del acuario brillaban con luces suaves, reflejadas en los rostros alegres de los visitantes.En: The blue waters of the aquarium glowed with soft lights, reflected in the joyful faces of the visitors.Es: En el Aquario Arrecife de Coral, el invierno del hemisferio sur traía un aire fresco que contrastaba con la calidez siciliana de la gran pecera central.En: At the Aquario Arrecife de Coral, the winter of the southern hemisphere brought a fresh air that contrasted with the Sicilian warmth of the large central fish tank.Es: Limpias cada esquina, las paredes cristalinas mostraban un mundo vivo, rebosante de peces de colores y corales florecientes.En: Cleaned in every corner, the crystal-clear walls displayed a living world, brimming with colorful fish and blooming corals.Es: Todo estaba envuelto por el eco de los delfines, que rebotaba alegremente en el ambiente.En: Everything was enveloped by the echo of dolphins, which bounced joyfully around the environment.Es: En medio de la multitud, Luz, una mujer curiosa y aventurera, exploraba con emoción.En: Amidst the crowd, Luz, a curious and adventurous woman, explored with excitement.Es: Luz iba acompañada de sus amigos Marcos e Isabel, quienes compartían su fascinación por los animales marinos.En: Luz was accompanied by her friends Marcos and Isabel, who shared her fascination for marine animals.Es: Sin embargo, Luz quería más.En: However, Luz wanted more.Es: Quería impresionar, mostrar su carácter valiente y acercarse a las criaturas que admiraba.En: She wanted to impress, to show her brave character and get closer to the creatures she admired.Es: Mientras recorrían el pasillo del acuario, Luz vio a un hombre vestido con un uniforme azul.En: As they walked through the aquarium corridor, Luz saw a man dressed in a blue uniform.Es: Él hablaba con un grupo de turistas cerca del estanque de los delfines.En: He was talking to a group of tourists near the dolphin pond.Es: Luz, en su entusiasmo, asumió que era un entrenador de delfines.En: Luz, in her enthusiasm, assumed he was a dolphin trainer.Es: Quería que sus amigos la vieran como alguien audaz, capaz de una aventura única.En: She wanted her friends to see her as someone bold, capable of a unique adventure.Es: "Tengo una idea", susurró Luz emocionada.En: "I have an idea," Luz whispered excitedly.Es: "¡Esperen aquí!"En: "Wait here!"Es: Con determinación, Luz se acercó disimuladamente al acuaterrario.En: With determination, Luz discreetly approached the aquaterrarium.Es: El hombre del uniforme estaba de espaldas, ocupado explicando a los visitantes las maravillas del arrecife.En: The man in the uniform had his back turned, busy explaining to the visitors the wonders of the reef.Es: Luz vio eso como una oportunidad.En: Luz saw this as an opportunity.Es: Actuando con rapidez, subió la barandilla y comenzó a cruzar.En: Acting quickly, she climbed over the railing and began to cross.Es: Marcos e Isabel la miraban, entre preocupados y sorprendidos, viendo su figura eclipsada por la luz de neón del agua.En: Marcos and Isabel watched her, both worried and surprised, seeing her figure eclipsed by the neon light of the water.Es: Al otro lado, al borde del estanque, Luz sintió una mezcla de triunfo y nerviosismo.En: On the other side, at the edge of the pond, Luz felt a mix of triumph and nervousness.Es: Pero su momento de euforia fue interrumpido por un fuerte grito a sus espaldas.En: But her moment of euphoria was interrupted by a loud shout behind her.Es: "¡Alto!En: "Stop!Es: ¡No puedes estar ahí!En: You can't be there!"Es: ", exclamó el trabajador, con una mezcla de sorpresa y urgencia.En: exclaimed the worker, with a mix of surprise and urgency.Es: Luz se detuvo, su corazón latiendo fuerte.En: Luz stopped, her heart beating fast.Es: En ese instante, se dio cuenta de su error.En: At that moment, she realized her mistake.Es: Había malinterpretado la situación.En: She had misinterpreted the situation.Es: El hombre no era un entrenador de delfines, sino un encargado de mantenimiento.En: The man was not a dolphin trainer, but a maintenance manager.Es: El caos momentáneo atrajo la atención de los alrededores, provocando susurros y miradas curiosas.En: The momentary chaos attracted the attention of those around, provoking whispers and curious looks.Es: Sin embargo, en lugar de problemas, el trabajador rompió el silencio con una risa bondadosa.En: However, instead of trouble, the worker broke the silence with a kind laughter.Es: "Es la primera vez que veo algo así", comentó, sonriendo con amabilidad.En: "It's the first time I've seen something like this," he commented, smiling kindly.Es: "Vamos, te mostraré los delfines de cerca, pero de una forma segura."En: "Come on, I'll show you the dolphins up close, but in a safe way."Es: Continuó hablando con suavidad, mientras ayudaba a Luz a bajar con cuidado de la barandilla.En: He continued speaking softly while helping Luz carefully down from the railing.Es: Sus amigos, aun con cierta sorpresa, se unieron a ella, agradeciendo la buena disposición del personal.En: Her friends, still somewhat surprised, joined her, grateful for the staff's good disposition.Es: Para Luz, esta experiencia fue una lección.En: For Luz, this experience was a lesson.Es: Aprendió que la aventura no siempre significaba actuar impulsivamente.En: She learned that adventure didn't always mean acting impulsively.Es: Al final, gracias a su insistente amor por los delfines, los trabajadores del acuario ofrecieron a Luz, Marcos e Isabel un recorrido privado.En: In the end, thanks to her persistent love for dolphins, the aquarium staff offered Luz, Marcos, and Isabel a private tour.Es: La emoción por ver a los delfines jugando de cerca y aprender más sobre ellos llenó el aire entre risas y nuevas anécdotas.En: The excitement of seeing the dolphins play up close and learning more about them filled the air with laughter and new anecdotes.Es: A medida que el día llegaba a su fin, despedidos por la melodía alegre de los delfines, Luz entendió que, ser aventurera, también conllevaba ser prudente.En: As the day came to an end, farewelled by the cheerful melody of the dolphins, Luz understood that being adventurous also involved being prudent.Es: Con una sonrisa renovada, prometió vivir nuevas experiencias con un toque más consciente.En: With a renewed smile, she promised to live new experiences with a more conscious touch.Es: Así, aquel día en el Aquario Arrecife de Coral se convirtió en una historia para recordar, un recuerdo donde la curiosidad de Luz no solo inquietó, sino también unió con ternura a sus amigos y aquellos guardianes del mundo marino.En: Thus, that day at the Aquario Arrecife de Coral became a story to remember, a memory where Luz's curiosity not only stirred, but also tenderly united her with her friends and those guardians of the marine world. Vocabulary Words:the pebble: la piedrecitato glow: brillarthe coral reef: el arrecife de coralbrimming: rebosantecrystal-clear: cristalinasto bounce: rebotarthe crowd: la multitudthe maintenance manager: el encargado de mantenimientoto eclipse: eclipsarto assume: asumirthe railing: la barandillathe chaos: el caosto misinterpret: malinterpretarthe worker: el trabajadorthe neon light: la luz de neónthe opportunity: la oportunidadto impress: impresionarsurprised: sorprendidato shout: exclamarthe disposition: la disposiciónto whisper: susurrarto explore: explorarthe warmth: la calidezthe aquarium: el acuarioto envelop: envolversoftly: con suavidadto fill: llenarthe amazement: la maravillaprudent: prudentethe adventure: la aventura

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, continues his deep dive into organized crime history with prolific Mafia author Jeffrey Sussman. Sussman, the author of eight books on organized crime, joins Jenkins for a wide-ranging conversation that spans the rise, violence, prosecutions, and survival tactics of La Cosa Nostra in America. Drawing from works like Backbeat Gangsters and his latest release Mafia Hits, Misses Wars and Prosecutions, Sussman offers sharp insight into how the Mafia enforced silence, eliminated enemies, and adapted to government pressure. The discussion opens with omertà, the Mafia's infamous code of silence, and how mob warfare enforced loyalty through fear. Sussman recounts notorious hits and mob wars that shaped organized crime, then shifts to landmark prosecutions led by Thomas Dewey, whose relentless pursuit of Murder Incorporated dismantled the mob's most feared execution squad. Jenkins and Sussman examine the disastrous Appalachian Conference, where Vito Genovese overplayed his hand, drawing national attention to the Mafia and setting the stage for informants like Joe Valachi to break decades of secrecy. The episode also explores the Mafia's darkest execution methods, including lupara bianca—murders designed to leave no body and no evidence—along with chilling stories involving Mad Sam DeStefano. The assassination attempt on Joe Colombo, and its ties to Joey Gallo, highlight how ego and publicity often proved fatal in the mob world. The episode concludes with Sussman previewing his upcoming book on the Garment District, blending personal family history with organized crime's grip on American industry. Together, Jenkins and Sussman deliver a sweeping, chronological look at how the Mafia rose, fractured, and endured—leaving a permanent mark on American culture. Get his book Mafia Hits, Misses, Wars, and Prosecutions. ⏱️ Episode Chapters 00:00 – Introduction and Jeffrey Sussman's Mafia work 03:45 – Omertà and enforcing silence 07:30 – Mafia hits and internal wars 12:10 – Thomas Dewey and Murder Incorporated 18:40 – St. Valentine's Day Massacre 23:30 – Formation of the Five Families 28:50 – Italian and Jewish mob alliances 34:20 – Capone, Lansky, and Luciano 39:45 – Appalachian Conference fallout 45:10 – Vito Genovese and Joe Valachi 50:30 – Lupara blanca and body disposal 55:20 – Mad Sam DeStefano's brutality 59:40 – Joe Colombo assassination 1:05:30 – Betrayal and mob survival 1:10:50 – Sussman's upcoming Garment District book   [0:00] Hey, welcome, all you Wiretipers, back here in the studio of Gangland Wire, as you can see. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective and later sergeant. I have a guest today. He is a prolific author about the mob in the United States. We have several interviews in the archives with Jeffrey Sussman. Welcome, Jeffrey. Thank you, Gary. It’s a pleasure to be with you once again. All right. How many mob books you got? Eight or nine, I think. Eight or nine. I know you’ve covered Tinseltown, the L.A. Families, the crime in L.A., the Chicago. What are some of those? I did Las Vegas, which had a number of the Chicago outfit members in it. I did Big Apple Gangsters. Oh, yeah. My last one was Backbeat Gangsters about the rock music business. Oh, yeah. And then I did also one about boxing and the mob, how the mob controlled boxing. And then my new book is Mafia Hits, Misses Wars and Prosecutions. The update is February 19th. All right. Guys, when I release this, we’re doing this, actually, we’re doing this before Christmas. But when this comes out, while you’ll be able to go to the Amazon link that I’ll have in there, get that book, we’ll have, you’ll see a picture of it as we go along. So you’ll know what the cover looks like. It sounds really interesting, especially about the Mafia Misses. But I’m sure that’s interesting. [1:29] Well, the mob, that’s their way of enforcing their rules. The omerta, somebody talks, they’re going to rub you out, supposedly. And by mob, we’re talking about primarily La Cosa Nostra, Sicilian-based organized crime in the United States. Yeah. The five families particularly have brought this up front. The five families have really perfected this as an art, killing their rivals, killing people that threaten them in any way, killing people that they even had a contract on Tom Dewey, the prosecutor, I believe, at one time. That would be a bomb miss, wouldn’t it? Yeah, actually, what happened with that is Dutch Schultz wanted the commission to take out a contract on Tom Dewey, and they said, no, we can’t do that, because if we do that, it’ll bring down too much heat on us. And so the mob wound up killing Dutch Schultz because he was too much of a threat to them in some ways. But the irony was that if they had killed him, Lucky Luciano never would have been prosecuted. He was prosecuted by Thomas Dewey. Lucky Bookhalter never would have been prosecuted and gone to the electric chair, several others as well. So, by not killing Dewey, they set themselves up to be arrested and get either very long prison terms or go to the electric chair. [2:57] Yeah, Dewey sent, I think it was four members of Murder Incorporated to the electric chair and the head of it, the Lepke book halter. And then he arrested and got a conviction against Lucky Luciano for pimping and pandering, which should have been a fairly short sentence, just a couple of years. But he had him sentenced to 50 years in prison, which is amazing, the pimping. [3:20] So if they had killed Thomas Dewey, they probably would have been better off. But that’s 2020 hindsight. Yeah, hindsight’s always 2020. And a cost-benefit analysis, if you want to apply that, why the cost of killing Tom Dooley might have been much less than the actual benefit was. That’s right. Exactly. And they came to realize that, but it was too late for them. I think they always do a cost-benefit analysis in some manner. How much heat’s going to come down from this? Can we take the heat? Because I know in Kansas City, our mob boss, Nick Savella, was in the penitentiary. He was about to get out, and he sent word out, said I want all unfinished business taken care of by the time I get out. Because when I get out, I do not want all these headlines, because murder generates headlines. And so there was like three murders in rapid succession right after that. [4:13] So they worry about the press and hits, murders generate press. So let’s go back and talk about some particular ones. One of the most famous ones was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Do you cover that? [4:26] Yeah, I start with the assassination of Arnold Rothstein in 1928, and then I go right into the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. I go into the Castel Marari’s War, the birth of the five families. They had a famous meeting at the Franconia Hotel where the Jewish and Italian gangsters decided to form an alliance rather than fight one another. I went through the trial and conviction of Al Capone, the Bug and Meyer gang. Which evolved into Murder Incorporated, and then how Mayor LaGuardia went after the mob in New York and drove out Frank Costello, who had all the slot machines in New York, drove him down to Louisiana, where Frank Costello paid Huey Long a million dollars to let him operate slot machines all around New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana. And then there was William Dwyer, O’Dwyer, and Burton Turkus, who prosecuted the mob, other members of Murder Incorporated, and then how the federal government was using deportation to get rid of a lot of the mobsters, and how the mafia insinuated itself with entertainers and was controlling entertainers like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and others. [5:44] And then the Appalachian Conference, and what an embarrassment that was to Vito Genovese, who wanted to declare himself the boss of bosses. Instead, he became the schmuck of schmucks because the FBI invaded this. And there was a theory that this was really set up, Meyer Lansky, Carl Gambino, and Lucky Luciano, because they didn’t want Vito Genovese to become the boss of bosses because Vito Genovese was responsible for the attempted murder of Frank Costello, and they wanted to get rid of him. After they embarrassed him with Appalachian, And then they set him up for a drug buy. Which is ridiculous because you don’t have the head of a mafia family going out on the street and buying heroin from someone. But that’s what they got him for. And they sent him off to prison for 15 years where he died. But in the realm of unintended consequences, which we just heard some, he goes down to Atlanta and a guy named Joe Valacci is down there. And he thinks that Vito Genovese is given to the fisheye and maybe wants to have him killed. [6:52] If Vito Genovese is not in Atlanta, Joe Valacci does not turn and become the first big important witness against the mob in the United States that couple that with Appalachian. And embarrassment to the FBI and then this Joe Valacci coming out with all these stories explaining what all that meant, the organized crime in the United States, why we may not have the investigation that subsequently came out of all that. It’s crazy, huh? Yeah, exactly. In terms of unintended consequences, because if Vito Genovese hadn’t given the kiss of death, supposedly, to Joe Valacci, you never would have had Joe Valacci’s testimony about how the mob operates. He opened so many doors and told so many secrets. It was a real revelation to the world. [7:42] Now, what about these murders? And I understand they call them a lupara blanca, where the body is never found. Did you talk about any of those or look into that at all? [7:53] We’ve had them in Kansas City, where it’s obviously a mob murder. They even will send a message to the family. We had one where the guy disappeared. Nobody ever found his body. But somebody called the family and said, hey, go up on Gladstone Drive and check this trash can. And then they find the guy’s clothes and his driver’s license, everything in there. Now, did you go into any of those blanks? Yeah, there were a number of mob hits, especially during the murder ink era where they would dispose of the bodies and no one would ever find them. But they would leave clues around for members of the family just so they would know that their father or their son or their brother, whoever was no longer in this world. [8:39] Yeah, that was done quite a bit. And when the Westies, which was an Irish gang that operated on the west side of New York, they believed that if you never found the corpse, you could never convict them of murder. So they used to take their dead bodies out to an island in the East River and chop them into little pieces and then dump them in the river and no one would ever find them. And supposedly they did that with dozens and dozens of bodies. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, and it is. It’s hard to prosecute without the body. It’s been done, but it’s really hard to do. You’ve got to have a really lot of circumstantial evidence to approve a murder without a body. And when Albert Anastasia and Leffy Foucault, who were running Murder Incorporated, they believed two things. One, that if you didn’t find the body, it would be hard to prosecute. And if you couldn’t show a motive, that would be the other thing that would make it difficult. So there would be absolutely no connection between the person who killed the victim and the victim. There was no connection whatsoever. So it was almost as if it was a stranger. In fact, it was a stranger who would commit the murder and then disappear and make sure that the body also disappeared. So you’d have neither motive nor body. Interesting. Pretty stiff penalty for murder. So I understand why you take some extra. Exactly. [10:08] Yeah, that tried to disassociate yourself from any motive for the body. There’s a guy in Chicago named Mad Sam DeStefano. Oh, sure. Lone shark and particularly egregious person when it came to collecting and was responsible for some murders and tortures. And they claim that he would buddy up to the person he knew he wanted to have killed and give him a watch. So then when the police came back around, he’d say, he was my friend. I gave him a present. I gave him that watch. Look and see. Ask his wife. I gave him a watch. Yeah. And I think it was Anthony Spolatro who was charged by the outfit of getting rid of Sam DiStefano because he was a friend. He had been like a protege of Crazy Sam. And so Sam didn’t suspect him as the person who would come and kill him. Yeah, that’s common clue. They say, look out. When a friend comes around and it seems a little bit funny and they want her particularly nice to you and you know you’re in trouble, anyhow, look out. Because that’s the guy that’s going to get you. Exactly. At least set you up. Maybe they have somebody else come in and pull the trigger, somebody that’ll leave town or whatever, but your friend’s going to set you up, make you comfortable. [11:24] Yeah, I think that’s exactly how it happened. We talked a little bit about the Joe Colombo murder. Did you look at that? Yes. [11:31] Tell us about that, because I’m really interested in that. I’d kind of like to do a larger story, just focusing on that, what really happened there, because that’s a mystery. Did this Jerome Johnson, this black guy, do it? Why would he do it? Nobody ever came out and connected him directly to Joey Gallo, and that’s the claim. So talk about that one. What happened is Joe Colombo formed the Italian Anti-Defamation League because he thought Italians were being blamed for too many things. And Colombo was responsible for having the producers of the movie The Godfather never use the word mafia in the movie, never use La Cosa Nostra in the movie. And he was making a big splash for himself. And this was driving a lot of people in the mafia a little crazy. They’re getting nervous because he was getting so much attention for himself, and it’s not the kind of attention they wanted. And Gambino was particularly upset about this. And Joey Gallo had been in prison, and he had been involved in the war against Profaci earlier on. And when he got out of prison, he felt that the new head of the Profaci family, who was Joe Colombo, should honor him with the amount of time that he spent in prison. And Joe Colombo offered him $1,000. [12:57] And Gallo was incensed by that. He expected $100,000. [13:02] And so he started another war with Colombo. [13:09] This would be good for Carlo Gambino because then he could use Joey Gallo to get rid of someone and his hands wouldn’t appear to be anywhere near this. And when Joey Gallo was in prison, he befriended a lot of black gangsters who were drug dealers and showed them how to succeed in the drug dealing business. And his attitude was that the mafia was very prejudiced against black people, but he thought that was stupid. He thought that we should use black criminals the same way we use any other criminals. And so he befriended a lot of blacks when he was in prison. And no one really knows how exactly he came in contact with Jerome Johnson. But anyway, Jerome Johnson was given the mission of assassinating Joe Colombo at a demonstration where Joe Colombo would be speaking about the Italian American Anti-Defamation League, which had attracted a lot of entertainers. Frank Sinatra was on the board of it. They raised a lot of money. I spoke to some Italian friends of mine at the time, and they said that people from the Italian Anti-Defamation League went around to small Italian-run stores, pizza parlors, shoe repair stores, whatever, and had them closed down for that day so that these people should attend the rally. And the rally was being held, I believe, in Columbus Circle. [14:36] And Jerome Johnson was there, and he had a press pass. So he was permitted to get very close to Joe Colombo because it appeared that he was a reporter or a photographer for a newspaper. And as soon as he got close enough, he pumped a couple of bullets into Joe Colombo’s head. Immediately, three or four gangsters descended on Jerome Johnson and killed him immediately. [15:02] And those three or four people who killed him, they disappeared into the crowd. No one ever found them again. I know. I wish we’d had cell phone footage from that. No one wouldn’t have gotten away if everybody had their cell phones out that day when they would have seen everything that happened. [15:21] Exactly. Columbo existed in a vegetative state. I think it was for about seven years before he finally died. I didn’t realize it was that long. Wow. Yeah, but he was semi-conscious. He couldn’t communicate. He was paralyzed. But the The Colombo family believed that it was Joey Gallo who was responsible for this. Joey Gallo and his new wife had been having a dinner with friends at the Copacabana nightclub in New York. They were joined at their table by Don Rickles, who had been performing that night. Comedian David Steinberg, who had been the best man at Joey Gallo’s wedding to a second wife, was there. And he suggested to them that they left the Copacabana about three o’clock in the morning. And he suggested to them that they all go down to Little Italy, go to Chinatown, and we’ll have a late dinner there. So Rick Olson and Steinberg said, it’s too late for us. You go and enjoy yourself and we’ll see you another time. Joey Gallo, his bodyguard, a Greek guy, I can’t remember his name exactly. Peter Dacopoulos. That’s it. And his wife, and Decapolis’ girlfriend and Joey Gallo’s stepdaughter. They all drove downtown. They couldn’t find anything open in Chinatown, so they drove over to Little Italy, and they went into Umberto’s Clam House. [16:49] And it was very strange, because supposedly a gangster would never do this. Joe Colombo was sitting with his back to the door. [16:58] Usually, your back is to the wall, and you’re facing the door. Oh, Joey Gallo was sitting with his back to the door. Yeah, I meant Joey Gallo. Yeah. Go ahead. And there was kind of a lonely guy sitting at the bar having a drink, and no one paid any attention to him. He was a mob wannabe, and he recognized Joey Gallo, and he went to a mob social club that was a few blocks away that was a hangout for Colombo gangsters. And when he came in and told them that joey gallo was there and the one of the guys there called a capo from the colombo family and told him who they saw and so forth and apparently he instructed them to go and get rid of him and so they took the mob wannabe guy and they got in two cars and they drove down to or around the block whatever it was to umberto’s clam house they went in and they immediately started shooting. And Colombo flipped over the table. I’m sorry, Joey Gallo flipped over the table and had his wife and girlfriend in the step door to get behind the table. And he and Peter were firing back at these guys. [18:07] Peter got shot in the ass and complained about it for many months afterwards, and Joey Gallo ran out onto the street chasing them, and he got shot in the neck, and I think it hit his carotid artery, and he bled to death on the sidewalk. And the guys from the Columbo and the Columbo wannabe guy, they quickly drove up to an apartment on the Upper East Side where the Columbo capo was. And he told them to go to a safe house in Nyack, New York, where they went. And meanwhile, the mob wannabe guy who had fingered Columbo, he’s getting very nervous. He feels that his life isn’t worth too much. He’s in over his head. [18:51] Right. So he sneaks out in the middle of the night and takes a plane to California to live with his sister. And he tries to get into the witness protection program, but they don’t believe him. They don’t believe he has enough evidence to make it worthwhile. No one knows exactly what happened to him afterwards. And the guys who supposedly killed Gallo, nothing really happened to them either. There was a huge funeral for Joey Gallo in Brooklyn. And it was like one of those old mob funerals that you see in a movie with a hundred flower cars and people lining the streets. And I think it was Joey Gallo’s mother who threw herself into the grave on top of the coffin. Oh, really? And Joey Gallo’s. [19:38] He had two brothers, one of whom had died of cancer, and the other one wound up going into another mob family. That was part of the peace deal. I can’t remember if it was the Gambino family or the Genovese family. He went into one of those two families. I think it was Gambino family, that Albert Kidd Twist gallo, I think was his name. And I think it was the Gambino family. He just kept a low profile until he died of natural causes. I think he’s dead now. He never heard from him again, basically. Exactly. [20:06] Interesting. That’s a heck of a story. A lot more stories like that in there, too. I bet. What was your favorite story out of that, or the one that shocked you or you learned something? Maybe something that you learned that you didn’t know or cut through some myth. [20:20] Probably, I’m just looking at my notes here to see what really fascinated me the most. I think the evolution of the Bug and Meyer gang. This guy, Ralph Salerno, who was a fascinating guy who headed the New York Prime Strike Force, Mafia investigators He’s been dead for about I think 10 or 15 years But I spent about Two or three hours Interviewing him A long time ago Didn’t he write a book Didn’t he write a book Called The Crime Confederation Or something like that Yes he did Yeah And it’s excellent So he knew Meyer Lansky He had met Bugsy Siegel Back once In the early 1940s He knew Frank Costello He knew all of these people And it was fascinating To, to hear his stories. And he said that during the time of the Bug and Meyer gang, they were the most vicious gang in New York. And they had a complete menu for crimes that they would commit on your behalf. Burglaries, murders, throwing people out of windows, breaking arms and legs, killing by stabbing, killing by shooting, killing by knifing. And each one had a price. And he said they actually had it printed. It was like a menu and you could check off what you wanted. [21:40] Crazy. And then he said, as they got more and more involved in prohibition, they got out of this and it evolved into Murder Incorporated, which had about 400 members, primarily Jewish and Italian gangsters. And it was run by Albert Anastasia and Lepke Bookhalter. [22:05] And when Thomas Dewey came into power, he wanted very much to convict these guys, but, Murder Incorporated had this fascinating idea that every member of Murder Incorporated would receive a monthly retainer and then it paid a special price for committing murders. And the more ambitious the member was, the more murders he would commit. So there were a couple who were really very ambitious and did a lot of murders. And each one had a specialty. So there was this one guy named Abe Hidtwist Relis, who only killed people with an ice pick in the back of the neck. And then he would leave the body in a car, talking about getting rid of bodies, and he would burn the body and leave it in the car and let other people know who were the relatives that he had been done away with. And then there was a guy named Pittsburgh Phil, who was the most ambitious of them, who supposedly committed about 100 to 150 murders because he just loved getting money for each one that he committed. [23:15] Then there was a guy named Louis Capone, who’s no relation to Al. He worked with a partner named Mendy Weiss, and the two of them went out and killed people together. They thought it was a fun event for them. It was like a boy’s night out. Who we’re going to kill today. Weren’t they two of them that got the electric chair? Yes, they did. And there’s a picture of them on the train up to Singh on their way to the electric chair. And they’re laughing. This is nothing. This is just another fun time for us. And yeah, I think there were four of them who finally went to the electric chair. And then one member of this was a guy named Charlie the Bud Workman, who finally got indicted for the murder of Dutch Schultz. He was the one who carried out the murder of Dutch Schultz for the mob. And he got, I think he was 30 years in prison. But according to his son… [24:13] Who is a PGA golfer, who is well-known in PGA circles as a very good golf competitor, said that the mob took care of his family for the entire time that Workman was in prison because he never spoke about anybody else. He really observed the rules of a murder, and they appreciated him for that. So that whole episode was like a corporation murder, which is why they called it Murder, Inc., that would go out and kill people on orders only from the mafia. They only worked for the mafia. You couldn’t hire them if you weren’t a member of the mafia. And it had to go through a mafia boss for the instructions to come down to them. A soldier couldn’t tell them what to do. Even a capo couldn’t tell them. It had to go up to a boss, the boss had to approve it, and then assign someone to do it. And they all worked out of a candy store in Brooklyn called Midnight Roses because it was open 24 hours a day. And the phone would ring there from giving whoever it was instructions about who was to be killed, where they were to be killed, how they were to do it, and so forth and so on. [25:27] So what was also interesting is even though Bugsy Siegel had left the Bug and Meyer gang, he still loved participating in murder. He liked killing people. And his partner in these murders was a guy named Frankie Carbo, who became a big deal in boxing. He controlled most of the boxing in America up until at the time of Sonny Liston. And his partner in this was a man named Blinky Palermo. [25:59] And according to Ralph Natale, who for a while had been the boss of the Philadelphia crime family, it was Frankie Carbo who was sent by the mob to kill Bugsy Siegel. Because if he was caught or Bugsy Siegel saw him around, he wouldn’t suspect that he was his killer because they were friends and they had operated as partners together. So this goes back to what we were talking about earlier. It’s your friend who comes closest to you and then arranges you to be assassinated. So I found that whole story just fascinating. Interesting. I’ll tell you what. And there’s those and a whole lot more stories in this, isn’t there, Jeff? Yes, there are. I think that the book covers pretty much the mob history, beginning with the founding of the five families, going all the way up through Sammy the Bulgurvano’s testimony against John Gotti and the commission trial, where they decapitated the heads of the five families. Not literally, folks. Not literally. Not literally. We didn’t literally decapitate. Rudy Giuliano, he tried to. He tried to. He tried to. Metaphorically, he decapitated the heads of the five families. Exactly. [27:15] You know, what was interesting, though, is in the 1930s, you had Thomas Dewey. In the 1960s, you had Robert Kennedy, who went after the mob. And then later on, you had Rudy Giuliani going after the mob. And the mob always managed to reorganize itself and figure out a new way of existing. They were very opportunistic and they always managed to find a way to keep going, even if it was very low key, which is what it is now, where they operate in the shadows and they don’t have any John Gottis or Al Capone’s out there getting a lot of attention for themselves. They’re still out there doing things. Yeah. Yeah. They finally learned something about that getting publicity. And most recently, they put together a whole scheme, and this goes way back, of cheating people. Big whales, I call them whales, of rich men that like to gamble and brush up against kind of the dark side and cheat them at cards. They’ve been doing that for years. They just do it under goes to clear black to the Friars Club scam in Los Angeles where Ronnie Roselli and some others had a spotter, would see who had what cards in what’s hands, then would tell another player. And so now there’s just more electronic, but the same game just upgraded to electronics. [28:30] That’s right. What someone I spoke to interviewed said, he said they’re very involved in electronic gambling poker machines and that kind of thing. And a lot of offshore gambling and offshore money laundering. And to some extent, even drug dealing now. And they’re still very involved in New York in the construction business. Oh, really? Yeah. Union business. They’re still in it, huh? And I know in Kansas City, there’s a couple of examples where they put money into a buy here, pay here car dealership into a title loan place because there’s a huge rate of interest on those things. And there’s a lot of scams that go down out of those places, especially the old crap cars and put them together and sell them to poor people for they’ve got $500 in the car and they sell it to them for $2,000. They charge them a 25% interest and then go repo it when the car breaks down, turn around and patch it up and sell it again. So there’s always schemes going on out there to mob will put their money into. Oh, it’s incredible. I knew of one scheme where they would They would sell trucks to people and give them a special route. And so on that route, they could make enough money to pay off the loan on the truck. But then they would take away the route from them. They couldn’t pay off the truck. So they would repossess the truck and sell it to someone else and do it all over again. [29:50] Oh, I know. They got to tell you that. And Joey Messino and the Bananos, they organized the tow main wagons, the lunch truck, the snack wagons. Right, exactly. Organize them. And then they start extorting money, formed an association. And then to get to good spots, then you had to kick money to them. And just to be part of the organization, that was kicking money to them. There’s always something. They always manage to find a place where they can make money. And it’s like whack-a-mole. You can stop them here, you can stop them there, and then they pop up in three other places. [30:24] Really all right jeffrey susman i’m so happy to talk to you again i haven’t talked to you for a while and i hope everything else is everything’s going okay for you in new york city yep i’m working on a new book uh what are you working on now oh my god you are so prolific i look on your amazon page just when i was getting ready to do this trying to think of some of those other titles Oh, my God. I’m working on a book about the Garment Center. Ah, interesting. Only because my family was involved in that business, and they had to deal with the mob in various ways, with trucking companies, unions, and so forth. And since I knew that, and I had a lot of information, a lot of contacts, I thought I would tackle that next. I remember when I had my marketing PR business back in the 1970s. [31:16] I had a client who was in the fitness business, and I had a cousin of my mother’s who was a very famous dress designer at the time, and he had a big showroom on 7th Avenue, which is in the garment center. I went to see him because I wanted to see if I could get a deal for my client to manufacture exercise clothes and brand it with her name. I made a date to have lunch with this cousin of mine, and he said, come up to my showroom. we’ll meet for lunch, And so I got to the showroom, and I called out his name when I walked in. It was empty. And this guy comes running out of the back, and he just has a shirt on, and he has a shoulder holster, .38 caliber gun in it. And he says to me, who the F are you? I said, I’m so-and-so’s cousin. I’m here to have lunch with him. He disappeared into the back. And a couple of minutes later my mother’s cousin comes out and i said who was that what was that about he says i don’t want to talk about it now i’ll tell you all for lunch so we go down to a restaurant around the corner and i asked him again and he says he said he couldn’t have his dresses delivered to any department store unless he made a deal with yeah i forgot if it was the gambinos or the lucasies that he had to take this guy on as a partner otherwise the trucks wouldn’t deliver his garments. And there was nothing he could do about it. It was either that or go out of business. [32:45] I’ll tell you what, they’re voracious. They’re greedy and voracious and don’t care. Just give me those, show me the money. That’s all it is. It’s all about money and any way to get it. And then there’s always a threat of murder behind it. If you don’t cooperate, think of the worst thing that can happen to you. And that’s what’ll happen. Yeah. I’ve had guys over the years tell I’m like, oh, you ought to throw in with one of those ex-mobsters that’s doing podcasts and try to do something with them. I say, I ain’t doing business with them. They play by their rules. I play by society’s rules. And I don’t have time to mess with that. Yeah. And that was a smart thing to do. Because also, when I had this fitness client, I met someone who was… I didn’t know what was connected to the mob, but a mutual friend, this guy said that he wanted to set up fitness centers all around the country for my clients. So I mentioned this to a mutual friend and he said, whatever you don’t go into business with this guy, I said, regret it for the rest of your life. So I advised my client not to do it. [33:49] Yeah. Cause initially before we knew that it sounded like a great opportunity. And then when you investigate, it’s not such a great opportunity. Yeah, really. Speaking of that, we tell stories for hours. I just heard a story. We had a relocated mobster, a guy that testified against Gigante, came here to Kansas City. And he was, of course, under witness protection and he’s got an assumed name. And he befriends a guy that has a fitness center. He has a franchise of Gold’s Gym or something. And he has a fitness center. And he talks this guy into taking him on, investing a little money in it, taking him on as his partner. Within the next couple of years, this mobster, he’s got two of his kids working there and neither one of them are really doing anything, but they’re drawing a salary and the money’s trickling out. And the guy, the local guy, he just walks away from it because this guy’s planned by the mob’s rules. So he just ended up walking away from it, did something else. So it’s do not go into business with these guys. No, never. Never. [34:48] Jeffrey Suspett, it’s a pleasure to have you back on the show. Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be with you again, Gary. It’s always a pleasure. Thank you very much.

Fluent Fiction - Italian: Unveiling Etna's Mysteries: The Archaeologist's Daring Discovery Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/it/episode/2026-02-23-23-34-02-it Story Transcript:It: Il vento freddo si levava dalle pendici innevate dell'Etna, trasportando con sé il mistero di una terra antica.En: The cold wind rose from the snowy slopes of Etna, carrying with it the mystery of an ancient land.It: Giuliana, un'archeologa avventuriera dai capelli scuri e gli occhi brillanti, si fermò un momento per contemplare il vulcano, il gigante che custodiva vecchi segreti.En: Giuliana, an adventurous archaeologist with dark hair and bright eyes, paused for a moment to contemplate the volcano, the giant that guarded old secrets.It: Il suo cuore era infiammato dal desiderio di scoprire la verità dietro la scomparsa di un antico manufatto dal museo locale.En: Her heart was ablaze with the desire to discover the truth behind the disappearance of an ancient artifact from the local museum.It: Accanto a lei, Lorenzo, una guida locale con una conoscenza profonda della montagna, prese un lungo respiro.En: Next to her, Lorenzo, a local guide with deep knowledge of the mountain, took a long breath.It: L'aria era fredda, pungente, ma non riuscì a scacciare il sorriso dal suo volto.En: The air was cold, biting, but it couldn't wipe the smile off his face.It: Lui sapeva qualcosa che Giuliana non poteva immaginare, qualcosa che non aveva ancora rivelato a nessuno.En: He knew something Giuliana couldn't imagine, something he hadn't yet revealed to anyone.It: “Ami la montagna?En: "Do you love the mountain?"It: ”, chiese Giuliana, cercando di rompere il silenzio.En: asked Giuliana, trying to break the silence.It: “È parte di me”, rispose Lorenzo.En: "It's part of me," replied Lorenzo.It: Matteo, il giornalista scettico che seguiva il caso per il suo giornale, li osservava da una distanza sospettosa.En: Matteo, the skeptical journalist covering the case for his newspaper, watched them from a suspicious distance.It: Era difficile per lui fidarsi di quella guida che sembrava sapere più del dovuto.En: It was difficult for him to trust that guide who seemed to know more than he should.It: Eppure, Giuliana aveva deciso di fidarsi di Lorenzo, di seguirlo fino al cuore dell'Etna.En: Yet, Giuliana had decided to trust Lorenzo, to follow him into the heart of Etna.It: L'ascesa era ardua.En: The ascent was arduous.It: La neve rendeva i sentieri scivolosi, e la montagna mostrava la sua natura selvaggia a ogni passo.En: The snow made the paths slippery, and the mountain showed its wild nature at every step.It: Mentre si avvicinavano alla vetta, l'aria cominciò a vibrarsi di un rumore profondo.En: As they approached the summit, the air began to vibrate with a deep rumble.It: L'Etna si stava risvegliando.En: Etna was awakening.It: “Dobbiamo muoverci”, disse Lorenzo in un tono improvvisamente serio.En: "We need to move," said Lorenzo in a suddenly serious tone.It: Prese la mano di Giuliana e la guidò verso una grotta nascosta tra le rocce.En: He took Giuliana's hand and led her toward a hidden cave among the rocks.It: Matteo li seguì, ancora dubbioso, ma colto dall'urgenza del momento.En: Matteo followed them, still doubtful, but caught by the urgency of the moment.It: Dentro la grotta, alla luce tremolante di una torcia, Giuliana vide l'impossibile: il manufatto perduto giaceva lì, insieme a segni e simboli che indicavano qualcosa di più grande, una cospirazione che coinvolgeva il vulcano e la sua storia.En: Inside the cave, in the flickering light of a torch, Giuliana saw the impossible: the lost artifact lay there, along with signs and symbols indicating something greater, a conspiracy involving the volcano and its history.It: “Cosa significa tutto questo?En: "What does all this mean?"It: ” chiese Giuliana con la voce piena di meraviglia.En: asked Giuliana, her voice full of wonder.It: “Non tutto è come sembra”, rispose Lorenzo.En: "Not everything is as it seems," replied Lorenzo.It: “Alcuni segreti devono restare nascosti, ma altri devono essere rivelati.En: "Some secrets must remain hidden, but others must be revealed."It: ”Il rombo dell'Etna si fece più forte, ma Giuliana non poteva fermarsi.En: The roar of Etna grew louder, but Giuliana could not stop.It: Con l'aiuto di Matteo, documentò la scoperta e insieme riuscirono a portare il manufatto al sicuro.En: With Matteo's help, she documented the discovery, and together they managed to bring the artifact to safety.It: Poco dopo, con la notizia finalmente divulgata al pubblico, Giuliana fu acclamata come eroina.En: Shortly after, with the news finally revealed to the public, Giuliana was hailed as a heroine.It: La verità era stata rivelata, e con essa, un nuovo capitolo di storia siciliana fu aperto.En: The truth had been revealed, and with it, a new chapter of Sicilian history was opened.It: Giuliana, grazie a Matteo, imparò che fidarsi degli altri era una parte fondamentale della scoperta.En: Giuliana, thanks to Matteo, learned that trusting others was a fundamental part of discovery.It: Mentre il sole tramontava dietro l'Etna, il vulcano sembrava addormentarsi di nuovo, lasciando dietro di sé un paesaggio tranquillo sotto il cielo invernale.En: As the sun set behind Etna, the volcano seemed to fall asleep again, leaving behind a tranquil landscape under the winter sky.It: Giuliana guardò Lorenzo e Matteo.En: Giuliana looked at Lorenzo and Matteo.It: La loro avventura l'aveva cambiata, e la Sicilia non sarebbe mai più stata la stessa ai suoi occhi.En: Their adventure had changed her, and Sicily would never be the same in her eyes. Vocabulary Words:the slope: la pendicethe mystery: il misterothe archaeologist: l'archeologato contemplate: contemplarethe giant: il gigantethe artifact: il manufattothe guide: la guidabiting: pungenteto reveal: rivelareto trust: fidarsithe ascent: l'ascesaslippery: scivolosithe summit: la vettato vibrate: vibrarsithe rumble: il rumoreto awaken: risvegliarsiserious: seriothe cave: la grottato hide: nascondereflickering: tremolantethe torch: la torciathe sign: il segnothe symbol: il simbolothe conspiracy: la cospirazioneto document: documentareto hail: acclamarethe heroine: l'eroinathe chapter: il capitolothe twilight: il tramontotranquil: tranquillo

This week we are discussing the Italian romantic classic Cinema Paradiso, including the power of cinema, nostalgia as a prison, whether or not this is a romance, and between whom, the differences between the theatrical and director's cuts, naughty kids, and more! I Love This You Should Too is hosted by Samantha and Indy Randhawa   Cinema Paradiso is a 1988 coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. Set in a small Sicilian town, the film centres on the friendship between a young boy and an aging projectionist who works at the titular movie theatre. The Italian-French co-production stars Philippe Noiret, Jacques Perrin, Antonella Attili, Pupella Maggio and Salvatore Cascio. The film score was composed by Ennio Morricone and his son, Andrea, marking the beginning of a collaboration between Tornatore and Morricone that lasted until Morricone's death in 2020. Credited with revitalizing Italy's film industry, Cinema Paradiso has been cited as one of the greatest films of all time, and a world cinema classic. The ending is considered among the greatest endings in film history. It was a commercial success, and won several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film[4] and the Cannes Film Festival's Grand Prix. It was nominated for 11 BAFTA Awards and won five; including Best Actor for Philippe Noiret, Best Supporting Actor for Salvatore Cascio, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Foreign Language Film, a record for a foreign language feature until it was broken by All Quiet on the Western Front in 2023.

Welcome back to another episode of the Retro Dodo Podcast. You're listening to episode 106, and Seb's back with Brandon to unpack all of the latest news since our last episode. You're going to need to sit down for this one, because it's a biggy!We talk about the M64 and our first look as one of two brands in the world and the first in the UK to get early access to this console. Brandon's been putting it through its paces, and we give our thoughts on how it will go up against the Analogue 3D. There's more Pokémon and handheld news than we can shake a stick at, along with the oddly-named Super Pocket Knob 5000 handheld which is turning a few heads for all the wrong reasons. All of this and more to come, from two men of Italian and Sicilian descent who are slowly balding but hanging onto their youth for dear life. Let's jump into the podcast!

Send a textIn today's episode, I'm chatting with Lindsay Marie Morris, a novelist and journalist based in Los Angeles whose work is deeply rooted in her Sicilian-American heritage. Lindsay's debut novel, The Last Letter from Sicily, was inspired by her grandmother's story and explores love, resilience, and long-held family secrets during World War II. Her second novel, Beneath the Sicilian Stars, returns to this era, following a family divided between California and Sicily as the war forces them to confront questions of loyalty, belonging, and sacrifice.Episode Highlights:The often-overlooked history of Sicilians and Italian Americans during World War II, including the impact of the Alien Enemy Act and the internment of Italian Americans, history rarely taught in American schools.How family stories are often passed down in fragments, and the role fiction can play in uncovering the fuller, more complicated truth.Exploring Sicilian culture through food, including why arancini are shaped differently depending on where you are on the island.A Sicily-focused book flight, plus additional reading recommendations on Italian and Italian-American history.How Lindsay connects with readers through her newsletter, sharing behind-the-scenes insights, upcoming events, and travel notes from the road.Connect with Lindsay:WebsiteFacebookInstagramShow NotesSome links are affiliate links, which are no extra cost to you but do help to support the show.Books and authors mentioned in the episode:Una Storia Segreta by Lawrence DiStasiLaura Ingalls Wilder booksNeopolitan Quartet by Elena FerranteEternal by Lisa ScottolineRenata Tebaldi: The Voice of an Angel by Carlamaria CasanovaBook FlightThe Peoples of Sicily by Louis Mendola & Jacqueline AlioThe Leopard by Giovanni Di LampedusaSicily on My Mind by Joseph Cione✨ Find Your Next Great Read! We just hit 175 episodes of Bookish Flights, and to celebrate, I created the Bookish Flights Roadmap — a guide to all 175 podcast episodes, sorted by genre to help you find your next great read faster.Explore it here → www.bookishflights.com/read/roadmapSupport the showBe sure to join the Bookish Flights community on social media. Happy listening! Instagram Facebook Website

Indy shares a few of his favourite Mexican novels, like; Pedro Paramo, Like Water For Chocolate, Hurricane Season, & more. Samantha takes the next step in her Outlander fandom as she begins to read Diana Gabaldon's novels, and we prepare for next week's feature; the Italian classic Cinema Paradiso!  I Love This You Should Too is hosted by Samantha and Indy Randhawa Cinema Paradiso is a 1988 coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. Set in a small Sicilian town, the film centres on the friendship between a young boy and an aging projectionist who works at the titular movie theatre. The Italian-French co-production stars Philippe Noiret, Jacques Perrin, Antonella Attili, Pupella Maggio and Salvatore Cascio. The film score was composed by Ennio Morricone and his son, Andrea, marking the beginning of a collaboration between Tornatore and Morricone that lasted until Morricone's death in 2020. Credited with revitalizing Italy's film industry, Cinema Paradiso has been cited as one of the greatest films of all time, and a world cinema classic.[3] The ending is considered among the greatest endings in film history. It was a commercial success, and won several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film[4] and the Cannes Film Festival's Grand Prix. It was nominated for 11 BAFTA Awards and won five; including Best Actor for Philippe Noiret, Best Supporting Actor for Salvatore Cascio, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Foreign Language Film, a record for a foreign language feature until it was broken by All Quiet on the Western Front in 2023.

Chris visits his former college professor and longtime friend, Carmelo Blandino, at his Naples, FL studio.Together, they dive into art philosophy, spirituality, and the nature of reality, reflecting on their shared time as student and teacher at Montreal's Dawson College.Their conversation traces the many layers of the psyche through stories of Montreal mural projects, early sketchbooks, collage and evolving mediums, reflecting on art as both personal healing and intentional beauty. Moving from questions of identity—“Who am I?”—to inner wisdom, mentorship, and the role of technology in modern life, they explore what it means to build a creative career with meaning, integrity, and depth.About the Artist: Born to Sicilian parents in Tübingen, Germany, and raised in the culturally vibrant city of Montreal, Quebec, Carmelo Blandino studied art and design at the city's local colleges and began a successful career as a freelance illustrator, collaborating with architects, designers, and advertising agencies. He is now an accomplished fine artist whose work continues to evolve, and has recently celebrated the launch of his new book.Website: carmeloblandio.comInstagram: @carmeloblandinoartThis episode is brought to you by YAK SNACKS Follow on IG: @yak.snacks

   What if your farm didn't have to "scale up" to be successful? What if it could stay small, seasonal, creative — and still feel deeply worth it? In this conversation, I sit down with a farmer who has intentionally chosen a different path: one rooted in values, flexibility, and creativity — and who's built a beautiful business around it. This episode is a quietly powerful case study. Claire and I talk about: Running a farm while not being a full-time farmer Letting creativity lead your product development Using one strong "gateway product" to anchor your marketing Why slow food, intentional processes, and values-based pricing actually work And how storytelling — not hustle — fuels her business growth If you've ever wondered whether there's another way to farm besides "bigger, faster, more," this conversation will feel like a deep exhale. Meet Our Guest: Claire Troemner Today's guest is Claire Troemner, who owns and operates Troemner Farm with her husband Matthew in Atlantic Mine, Michigan. Claire is a lifelong plant lover and cook who grows diversified vegetables, keeps a small flock of laying hens, and creates artisan value-added foods like sourdough bread, broths, jams, syrups, and Mediterranean harissa — all deeply influenced by her Sicilian roots. She also runs an interview series called The Dish, where she highlights local farmers, foodies, and chefs across Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Follow & Connect with Claire Farm Website: https://troemnerfarm.com Instagram & Facebook: @troemnerfarm The Dish Interview Series: Instagram & Facebook: @dishtheup Website: https://dishtheup.com Resources  Mentioned In This Episode: What email provider do I use? I recommend Kit.com (formerly ConvertKit.com) -- it is easy to use, powerful, and getting better every year. It also integrates with most e-commerce providers and tools. Use my affiliate link! Thank you to our Podcast Sponsors!  Local Line: Local Line is my farm's preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy-to-use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2026. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline Farm Marketing School: Marketing doesn't have to feel overwhelming! Farm Marketing School is my step-by-step system for building a profitable farm marketing plan. Inside, you'll get access to bite-sized marketing projects like:

Full Text of Readings The Saint of the day is Saint Agatha Saint Agatha's Story As in the case of Saint Agnes, another virgin-martyr of the early Church, almost nothing is historically certain about this saint except that she was martyred in Sicily during the persecution of Emperor Decius in 251. Legend has it that Agatha, like Agnes, was arrested as a Christian, tortured, and sent to a house of prostitution to be mistreated. She was preserved from being violated, and was later put to death. Saint Agatha is claimed as the patroness of both Palermo and Catania. The year after her death, the stilling of an eruption of Mt. Etna was attributed to her intercession. As a result, apparently, people continued to ask her prayers for protection against fire. Reflection The scientific modern mind winces at the thought of a volcano's might being contained by God because of the prayers of a Sicilian girl. Still less welcome, probably, is the notion of that saint being the patroness of such varied professions as those of foundry workers, nurses, miners and Alpine guides. Yet, in our historical precision, have we lost an essential human quality of wonder and poetry, and even our belief that we come to God by helping each other, both in action and prayer?Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins talks with author Linda Stasi about her historical novel, The Descendant, inspired by her own Italian-American family history. Stasi traces her ancestors' journey from Sicily to the Colorado mining camps, revealing the brutal realities faced by immigrant laborers in the American West. The conversation explores the violent labor struggles surrounding the Ludlow Massacre and the role of powerful figures like John D. Rockefeller, as well as the diverse immigrant communities that shaped Colorado's mining towns. Stasi challenges stereotypes about Italians in America, highlighting their roles as workers, ranchers, and community builders—not just mobsters. Jenkins and Stasi also discuss Prohibition-era bootlegging and the early roots of organized crime in places like Pueblo, weaving together documented history with deeply personal family stories of survival, violence, and resilience. Drawing on her background as a journalist, Stasi reflects on loss, perseverance, and the immigrant pursuit of the American dream, making The Descendants both a historical narrative and an emotional family legacy. Click here to find the Descendant. 0:04 Introduction to Linda Stasi 3:12 The Role of Women in History 7:05 Bootlegging and the Mafia’s Rise 9:31 Discovering Family Connections 14:59 Immigrant Struggles and Success 19:02 Childhood Stories of Resilience 24:04 Serendipity in New York 26:19 Linda’s Journey as a Journalist Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here.  [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, glad to be back here in studio, Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, and I have an interview for you. This is going to be a historical fiction author. This is going to be a historical fiction book by a writer whose family lived the life of, whose family, This is going to be a real issue. This book is going to, we’re going to talk about a book. We’re going to talk with an author about the book. We’re going to talk with the author, Linda Stasi. We’re going to talk with the author, Linda Stasi, about her book, The Descendants. Now, she wrote a historical fiction, but it’s based on her actual family’s history. [0:50] From Sicily to New York to California. The wild west of colorado now get that you never heard of many italians out west in colorado but she’s going to tell us a lot more about that and how they were actually ended up being part of the pueblo colorado mafia the corvino family and then got involved in bootlegging and and then later were involved in ranching and different things like that so it’s uh it’s a little different take on the mob in the United States that we usually get, but I like to do things that are a little bit different. So welcome, Linda Stasey. Historical fiction, how much of it is true? Is it from family stories? All the stories are true. I’ll ask you that here in a little bit. Okay, all the stories are true. All right. All the stories are true. [1:41] It’s based on not only stories that were told to me by my mother and her sisters and my uncles and so forth, But it’s also based on a lot of actual events that took place while they were living in Colorado. And it’s based on the fact that, you know, people don’t know this. We watch all these movies and we think everybody who settled the West talk like John Wayne. There were 30 different languages spoken right in the minds of Colorado. So my uncles rode the range and they were, drovers and they were Italian. I mean, they were first generation. They were born in Italy and they made their way with all these other guys who were speaking Greek and Mexican and you name it. It wasn’t a lot of people talking like, hey, how are you doing, partner? How are you doing, bard? Talking like I do. Right. [2:46] But it took a long time for you you can blame the movies for that and the dominant uh uh caucasian culture for that right and you know there was that what was the movie the the martin scorsese movie killers of the flower moon oh yeah all the uh native americans spoke like they were from like movie set in color and oklahoma so he was like what. [3:13] Yeah, well, it’s the movies, I guess. [3:25] Unlike any women that I would have thought would have been around at that time. They were rebellious, and they did what they wanted, and they had a terrible, mean father. And I also wanted to tell this story. That’s what I started out telling. But I ended up telling the story of the resilience of the immigrants who came to this country. For example, with the Italians and the Sicilians, there had been earthquakes and tsunamis and droughts. So Rockefeller sent these men that he called padrones to the poorest sections of Sicily, the most drought-affected section, looking for young bucks to come and work. And he promised them, he’d say, oh, the president of America wants to give you land, he wants to give you this. Well, they found themselves taken in the most horrific of conditions and brought to Ellis Island, where they were herded onto cattle cars and taken to the mines of Colorado, where they worked 20-hour days. They were paid in company script, so they couldn’t even buy anything. Their families followed them. They were told that their families were coming for free, and they were coming for free, but they weren’t. They had to pay for their passage, which could never be paid for because it was just company script. [4:55] And then in 1914, the United Mine Workers came in, and there were all these immigrants, Greeks and mostly Italians, and they struck, and Rockefeller fired everyone who struck. So the United Mine Workers set up a tent city in Ludlow. [5:14] And at night, Rockefeller would send his goons in who were—he actually paid the National Guard and a detective agency called Baldwin Feltz to come in. And they had a turret-mounted machine gun that they called the Death Squad Special, and they’d just start spraying. So the miners, the striking miners, built trenches under their tents for their women and children to hide. when the bullets started flying. And then at some point, Rockefeller said, you’re not being effective enough. They haven’t gone back to work. Do what you have to do. So these goons went in and they poured oil on top of the tents. And they set them on fire. [6:00] And they burnt dozens of women and children to death. They went in. The government claimed it was 21 people, but there was a female reporter who counted 60-something. and they were cutting the heads and the hands off of people, the children and women, so they couldn’t be identified. It all ended very badly and none of Rockefeller’s people or Rockefeller got in trouble. They went before Congress and Rockefeller basically said they had no right to strike. And that was that. So here are all these men and women now living wild in the mountains of Colorado, not speaking the language, not. Being literate, not able to read and write. [6:44] And living in shacks on mountains in the hurricane, I mean, in the blizzards and whatnot. And then it’s so odd. In 1916, Colorado declared prohibition, which was four years before the rest of the country. [7:00] So these guys said, well, we need to make booze. We need to make wine. What do you mean you can’t have booze and wine? So that’s how bootlegging started in Colorado. And that’s how the mafia began in the West. with these guys. [7:18] It’s kind of interesting. As I was looking down through your book, I did a story on the more modern mafia. This started during bootlegging times in Pueblo, and I noticed in your book, I refer to Pueblo, this was the Corvino brothers. So did you study that? Is that some of the background that you used to make, you know, use a story? You used real stories as well as, you know, the real stories from your family, real stories from history. Well, the Carlinos are my family. Oh, you’re related to the Carlinos. Well, what happened was I didn’t know that. And my cousin Karen came across this photo of the man who was her son. [7:59] Grandfather that she never met because he was killed in the longest gunfight in Colorado history when she was 10 days old. And he was Charlie Carlino. So she came across it and we met, we ended up meeting the family. Sam Carlino is my cousin and he owns like this big barbecue joint in san jose california and uh we’ve become very friendly so i i said i look i’m looking at this and i think wait a minute vito carlino is the father he has three sons and one daughter the youngest son charlie who was the the handsome man about town cowboy, they had a rival family called the dannas in bootlegging and charlie carlino and his bodyguard were riding across the baxter street bridge driving in one direction and the dannas were coming in the other direction and the dannas got out and and killed them and it’s exactly what I’m thinking to myself, Vito Corleone, three sons, Charlie gets killed on the bridge while the two cars are… I thought, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I mean. [9:26] It can’t be that coincidental, right? No. No, it can’t be. Even the bridge. Somebody was doing their research. [9:46] And had baby Charlotte, who was only 10 days old at the time. So all these stories are true, and it started other gunfights and so forth and so on. But I thought, holy shit. That’s my family. I had no idea. I mean, I knew my aunt was married to a guy whose name was Charlie Carlino, And I should show you the picture because he looks like the missing link from the village people. He’s got big fur chaps on and a cowboy hat. I mean, he’s got his holsters on and he’s got his long gun over his shoulder. It’s like, wow. Yeah, so that story is true. And my mom was a little girl when the Pueblo flood happened. And she always recalled the story to me about watching in horror as the cows and the horses and people were floating away, dead. [10:54] So now the name of your book is A Descendant, which is you, of course. And you kind of use the situations that you just described and the real life people in this book. So then how does this book progress and what other situation do you use? Well, I used many of the acts. I used the Ludlow massacre, the flood, the bootlegging, the prohibition. I also uncovered that the governor of Colorado said. [11:30] Assigned all these guys to become prohibition agents, but they were all KKK. Yeah. So they actually had license to kill the immigrants, just saying they had a still. They had a still. And they were wholesale killing people. So there’s that story. There’s the story of the congressional hearing of Rockefeller after that. And um the the book ends up with my mother um beating my father um who was not in colorado she met him at my aunt’s wedding and avoided him and avoided him and they finally got together and it ends up the book ends up at the start of world war ii and my father was drafted into the air Force, or the Army Air Corps, as it was called that time, and his was assigned to a bomber. He was a co-pilot or a bombardier or something, I forgot. And my grandfather on my father’s side said, well, wait a minute, where are you going to do this? And he said, well, we’re going to Italy. And he said, you’re going to bomb this? Your own country? And my father said, no, no, Bob, this is my country. [12:47] So the book comes full circle. Yeah, really. You know, I, uh, uh, sometimes I start my, I’ll do a program here for different groups or for the library once in a while. And I always like to start it with, you know, first of all, folks, remember, uh. [13:03] Italians came here after, you know, really horrible conditions in southern Italy and Sicily and they came here and they’re just looking for a little slice of American pie the American that’s all they want is a some of the American dream and you know they were taking advantage of they had they were they were darker they had a different language so they didn’t fit it they couldn’t like the Irish and the Germans were already here they had all the good jobs they had the businesses and so now the Italians they’re they’re kind of uh sucking high and tit as we used to say on the farm they’re they’re uh you know picking up the scraps as they can and form businesses. And so it sounds like, you know, and they also went into the, I know they went in the lead mines down here in South Missouri, because there’s a whole immigrant population, Sicilians in a small town called Frontenac. And it also sounds like they went out to the mines in Denver, Colorado. So it’s based on that diaspora, if you will, of people from Southern Italy. And they’re strapping, trying to get their piece of the American pie. Right. And I think that I also wanted very much to change the same old, same old narrative that we’ve all come to believe, that, you know, Italians came here, they went to New York, they killed everybody, they were ignorant slobs. And my family had a ranch! They were ranchers! They had herds of cattle! It’s like, that’s just been dismissed as though none of this existed because. [14:30] Yes, they were darker, because they had curly hair. [14:34] There’s a passage in my book that’s taken actually from the New York Times, where they say that Southern Italians are. [14:43] Greasy, kinky-haired criminals whose children should never be allowed in public schools with white children. Yeah. They used to print stuff like that. I’ve done some research in old newspapers, and not only about Italians, but a lot of other minorities, they print some [14:57] horrible, horrible, horrible things. Well, every minority goes through this, I guess. Everyone. I think so. Part of it’s a language problem. You hear people say, well, why don’t they learn our language? Well, what I say is, you know, ever try to learn a foreign language? It’s hard. It is really, really hard. I’ve tried. It is really hard. I got fired by my Spanish teacher. Exactly. You know how hard it is. I said, no, wait, I’m paying you. You can’t fire me. She said, you can’t learn. You just can’t learn. My grandkids love to say she got fired by her Spanish teacher. [15:36] But it’s such a barrier any kind of success you know not having the language is such a barrier to any kind of success into the you know american business community and that kind of a thing so it’s uh it’s tough for people and you got these people young guys who are bold and, they want they want to they end up having to feel like they have to take theirs they have to take it because ain’t nobody giving it up back in those days and so that sounds like your family they had to take however they took it they they had to take what they got how did that go down for them, start out with a small piece of land or and build up from there how did that go out well from what i understand um. [16:21] They first had a small plot, and then that they didn’t own. They just took it. And then as the bootlegging business got bigger, they started buying cattle and sheep. And they just started buying more and more land. But my grandfather was wanted because he killed some federal agent in the Ludlow Massacre. So he was wanted. So it was all in my grandmother’s name anyway. So she became, in my mind and in my book, she becomes the real head of the family. And my grandfather had a drinking problem, and she made the business successful and so forth. And then I do remember a story that my mother told me that—. [17:16] Al Capone came to the ranch at some point, and all the kids were like, who’s this man in the big car? There was other big cars. And then they moved to New York shortly after that, although they were allowed to keep the ranch with some of my aunts running it. I think there was a range war between the Dana family and the Carlinos and the Barberas, and they were told, get out of town, and they got out of town. And then they made a life in Brooklyn. And then my mom went back to Colorado and then came back to Brooklyn. [17:54] You think about how these immigrants, how in the hell, even the ones who come here now, how in the hell do you survive? I don’t know. Don’t speak the language. You don’t have the money. How do you survive? I don’t know. I truly don’t know. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t either. I couldn’t either. I don’t even want to go to another country where I don’t speak the language unless I can hire somebody to do stuff for me, you know, try to scuffle around and get a job, work off the books. You know, you got to work off the books, so to speak, and take the lowest, hardest jobs that they are, that there are. I don’t know. It’s crazy. I don’t really understand. Yeah. But, uh, so this, uh, it’s really interesting this, uh, the whole thing with the ranches and, and building up the ranches out there. I know we spoke, talk about Al Capone. Well, his brother, I think it was, it was not Ralph. There was another Capone brother. Which one? Well, another Capone brother who became, came a revenuer and I’ve seen some pictures of him and he looks like a cowboy with a hat and everything. He was in Nebraska or something. [19:02] It’s so funny. And I just, when I was growing up and I would tell people that my mom rode her donkey and then her horse to school, and they’d always say to me, but aren’t you Italian? [19:19] That’s Italian. Italian. Yeah, it’s interesting. Now, of course, your mom was, I noticed something in there about being in Los Animas in that area. Yes. Was there some family connection to that? And I say that because my wife’s grandfather lived there his whole life in Los Animas. Well, Los Animas County takes in Pueblo, I believe. Oh, okay. That’s the northern, that’s the far northern edge of Pueblo. The whole big area. I didn’t realize it was that close to Pueblo. I think my mom’s birth certificate actually says Los Animas County. Uh-huh. Something like that, yeah. Okay, all right. I didn’t realize Los Andemos was that close. I think. I might be wrong. Oh, it could be. It had those big counties out west, a great big county, so it would probably do. [20:10] So let’s see. Tell us a couple other stories out of that book that you remember. Well, there’s a story of my mother and her sister, Clara. Clara was a year what do they call Irish twins you know Italian twins she was like 14 months younger than my mom and um, When my mom had to start school, she was very close to my Aunt Clara, and they refused to go to school without each other. So my grandmother lied and said they were twins. And the teacher said, I don’t think they’re twins. This one’s much littler than the other, and I’m going to send the sheriff to that guinea father of yours and make sure. Well, unfortunately, the town hall burnt down with all the records that night. So they were never able to prove that Aunt Clara was a year younger. [21:14] Interesting. And also there’s a story of how they were in school when the flood hit. And my mother did have a pet wolf who was probably part wolf, part dog, but it was her pet named Blue. They got caught in the flood because they were bad and they had detention after school. And um had they left earlier they would have um so the dog came and dragged them was screaming and barking and making them leave and the teacher got scared because of the wolf and so they left and the wolf was taking them to higher and higher ground and had they stayed in that schoolhouse they would have been killed the teacher was killed everybody was washed away Wow. Yeah, those animals, they got more of a sense of what’s going on in nature than people do, that’s for sure. But she had always told me about her dog wolf named Blue. When they went back to New York City, did they fall in with any mob people back there? They go back to Red Hook. They had connections that were told, they were told, you know, you can, like Meyer Lansky and a couple of other people who would help them, um. [22:33] But my mom—so here’s an absolutely true story, and I think I have it as an epilogue in the book. So a few years ago, several years ago, my daughter had gotten a job in the summer during college as a slave on a movie set that was being filmed in Brooklyn. And she got the job because she, A, had a car, and B, she could speak Italian. And the actress was Italian. So every night she’d work till like 12 o’clock and I’d be panicked that she’d been kidnapped or something. So she’d drive her car home. But then every night she was coming home later and later and I said, what’s going on? She said, you know, I found this little restaurant and right now we’re in Red Hook where the, and it wasn’t called Red Hook. It was called, they have another fancy name for it now. [23:32] And she said and I just got to know the owner and he’s really nice and I told him that when I graduated from college if I had enough money could I rent one of the apartments upstairs and he said yes and she said we’ve got to take grandma there we’ve got to take grandma there she’ll love the place she’ll love the place and so my mother got sick and just came home from college, and she was laying in the bed with my mother, and she said, Grandma, you’re going to get better, and then we’re going to take you to this restaurant, [24:03] and I promise you, you’re going to love it. So my mother, thank God, did get better, and we took her to the restaurant. [24:12] The man comes over, and it’s a little tiny Italian restaurant, and the man comes over, and he says, Jessica, my favorite, let me make you my favorite Pennelli’s. And my mother said, do you make Pennelli’s? And he said, yes. She said, oh, when we first came to New York, the man who owned the restaurant made us Pennelli’s every day and would give it to us before we went to school. And he said, really, what was his name? And she said, Don, whatever. And he said, well, that’s my grandfather. She said, well, what do you mean? He said, well, this is, she said, where are we? And he said. [24:53] They called it Carroll Gardens. And he said, well, it’s Carroll Gardens. She said, well, I grew up in Red Hook. He said, well, it is Red Hook. She said, well, what’s the address here? And he said, 151 Carroll Street. And she said, my mother died in this building. [25:09] My daughter would have rented the apartment where her great-grandmother died. What’s the chances of that of the 50 million apartments in New York City? No, I don’t know. And the restaurant only seats like 30 people. So… My mother went and took a picture off the wall, and she said, this is my mother’s apartment. And there were like 30 people in the restaurants, a real rough and tumble place, and truck drivers and everything. And everybody started crying. The whole place is now crying. All these big long men are crying. Isn’t that some story? Full circle, man. That’s something. Yeah, that is. Especially in the city. It’s even more amazing in a city like New York City. I know. That huge. That frigging huge. That exact apartment. Oh, that is great. So that restaurant plays a big part in the book as well, in the family. Okay. All right. All right. Guys, the book is The Descendant, Yellowstone Meets the Godfather, huh? This is Linda Stasi. Did I pronounce that right, Stasi? Stacey, actually. This is Linda Stasi. And Linda, I didn’t really ask you about yourself. [26:17] Tell the guys a little bit about yourself before we stop here. Well, I am a journalist. I’ve been a columnist for New York Newsday, the New York Daily News, and the New York Post. I’ve written 10 books, three of which are novels. [26:34] And I’ve won several awards for journalism. And I teach a class for the Newswomen’s Club of New York to journalists on how to write novels, because it’s the totally opposite thing. It’s like teaching a dancer to sing, you know? It’s totally opposite. One of my mentors was Nelson DeMille, my dear late friend Nelson DeMille, and I called him up one night after I wrote my first novel, and I said, I think I made a terrible mistake. He said, what? I said, I think I gave the wrong name of the city or something. He said, oh, for God’s sakes, it’s fiction. You can write whatever you want. [27:17] But when you’re a journalist, if you make a mistake like that, you’re ruined. Yeah, exactly. So I have. We never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Go ahead. I’m sorry. I said I have a daughter and three grandsons. My daughter is the only female CEO of a games company. She was on the cover of Forbes. And my husband just died recently, and he was quite the character. He got a full-page obit in the New York Times. He’s such a typical, wonderful New York character. So I’m in this strange place right now where I’m mourning one thing and celebrating my book. On the other hand, it’s a very odd place to be. I can imagine. I can only imagine. Life goes on, as we say, back home. It just keeps going. All right. Linda Stacey, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Oh, thank you. I appreciate you talking to me. You’re so much an interesting guy. All right. Well, thank you.

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Step inside Old Gold, a square-slice Sicilian-style pizza shop quietly taking over Hollywood Blvd — without PR, hype, or a massive footprint. In just 1,000 square feet, they've built a cult following with crispy-edged slices, a throwback vibe, and smart business moves.In this episode, we talk with the owner about how Old Gold went from pandemic bread pop-ups to a neighborhood fixture, why not going “artisanal” was a deliberate move, and what it takes to thrive in LA with zero restaurant group backing.Go follow on youtube for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/@SlicePlatformOld Gold: https://oldgoldtomatopies.com/

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rWotD Episode 3190: Miossi family Welcome to random Wiki of the Day, your journey through Wikipedia's vast and varied content, one random article at a time.The random article for Tuesday, 27 January 2026, is Miossi family.The Miossi family is a noble family, commissioned in 1251 by Pope Innocent IV to administer the Kingdom of Sicily. They ruled with the Lombardo dynasty (Barons di San Chirico) as a resident Sicilian family. The alliance avoided conflict and oversaw economic expansion. The Lombardos continued their administration throughout most challenges to their rule. They defended the rights of labor and the poor against the tyranny of French and Spanish invasions.Between 1816 and 1848, the island of Sicily experienced three popular revolts against Bourbon rule, including the Miossis/Lombardos who led revolution of independence of 1848, when the island was fully independent of Bourbon control for 16 months.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:04 UTC on Tuesday, 27 January 2026.For the full current version of the article, see Miossi family on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Bluesky at @wikioftheday.com.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm long-form Patrick.

On this episode of the podcast, host Dr Pasquale Iannone reports from Leith Kino, a micro cinema initiative set up by a veritable supergroup of film professionals and enthusiasts. The initiative - which is hosted by bar, restaurant and event space Leith Depot on Edinburgh's Leith Walk - aims to provide a space for engagement with avant-garde, experimental, arthouse and trash film.Since September 2025, the Leith Kino team have hosted an eclectic series of events, with members taking it in turn to programme screenings. Pasquale went along to their screening of Kim's Video (2024), a documentary centring on a legendary New York video store run by an enigmatic Korean businessman who one day decides to donate his entire collection, not to a University or a museum, but to a small Sicilian town more than 4000 miles away. This is just the start of a stranger-than-fiction story which is crying out for the Hollywood treatment. Before the sold-out screening of Kim's Video, Pasquale sat down with members of the Leith Kino collective. You'll hear from Tom Johnson, Liam Schell, Morvern Cunningham, Camilla Baier, Soraya Mamiche, Josh Booker, Gosia Bugaj and Fraser Elliott. After the discussion, you'll also hear an extract from the evening's introduction to Kim's Video, provided by Emma Jamieson of Cinetopia, followed by the trailer for the film.If you'd like to keep up-to-date with Leith Kino's events, please see their Instagram or Substack accounts. Their February events include screenings of The Bride Wore Black (François Truffaut, 1968) and Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932).

  Dean joins me at 26 mins after the clips show Subscribe and Watch Interviews LIVE : On YOUTUBE.com/StandUpWithPete ON SubstackStandUpWithPete Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. This show is Ad free and fully supported by listeners like you! Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 750 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls Born in the Great State of New Jersey, Dean Obeidallah's comedy comes in large part from his unique background of being the son of a Palestinian father and a Sicilian mother. Dean, an award winning comedian who was at one time a practicing attorney, co-starred on Comedy Central's "The Axis of Evil" Comedy TV special. He is the co-creator of Comedy Central.com's critically acclaimed Internet series "The Watch List" featuring a cast of all Middle Eastern-American comedians performing stand up and sketch comedy. Dean has appeared twice on ABC's "The View," on the nationally syndicated TV series "Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen" and was one of five comedians profiled in the recent one hour TV Special entitled: "Stand Up: Muslim-American Comics Come of Age" which aired in the US on PBS and internationally on BBC World and Al Jazeera.   Dean co-directed and co-produced the award winning documentary "The Muslims Are Coming!" featuring a tour of American-Muslim comedians performing free comedy shows across the heartland of America in the hopes of using comedy to foster understanding and dispel misconceptions about Muslims. The film also features special guest interviews with various well known people including: "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart and Assif Mandvi, Russell Simmons, Soledad O'Brien and Ali Velshi, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, comedians Lewis Black, David Cross, Lizz Winstead and Colin Quinn as well as Congressman Keith Ellison, and many more. The film is now available on Netfilx, iTunes and Amazon.   Dean co-created the comedy show "Stand up for Peace" along with Jewish comic Scott Blakeman which they perform at colleges across the country in support of peace in the Middle East and as a way of fostering understanding between Arab, Muslim and Jewish-Americans.   He is writes for MSNBC, CNN and The Daily Beast as well as other publications.   Dean is also the co-creator and co-producer of the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival .He is also proud to serve as the Executive Director of The Amman Stand up Comedy Festival – the first stand up comedy festival ever held in the Middle East Dean is proud to have received the first annual "Bill Hicks Spirit Award" for "thought provoking comedy" (named after the late comedian Bill Hicks) from the NY Underground Comedy Festival and the Hicks' Family. Join us Thursday's at 8EST for our Weekly Happy Hour Hangout!  Subscribe to Piano Tuner Paul Paul Wesley on Substack Listen to Barry and Abigail Hummel Podcast Listen to Matty C Podcast and Substack Follow and Support Pete Coe Hire DJ Monzyk to build your website or help you with Marketing

Hey Friends Just thought I'd post my conversation from Friday night on SIRIUSXM. Dean will be my guest on Tuesday's show Born in the Great State of New Jersey, Dean Obeidallah's comedy comes in large part from his unique background of being the son of a Palestinian father and a Sicilian mother. Dean, an award winning comedian who was at one time a practicing attorney, co-starred on Comedy Central's "The Axis of Evil" Comedy TV special. He is the co-creator of Comedy Central.com's critically acclaimed Internet series "The Watch List" featuring a cast of all Middle Eastern-American comedians performing stand up and sketch comedy. Dean has appeared twice on ABC's "The View," on the nationally syndicated TV series "Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen" and was one of five comedians profiled in the recent one hour TV Special entitled: "Stand Up: Muslim-American Comics Come of Age" which aired in the US on PBS and internationally on BBC World and Al Jazeera.   Dean co-directed and co-produced the award winning documentary "The Muslims Are Coming!" featuring a tour of American-Muslim comedians performing free comedy shows across the heartland of America in the hopes of using comedy to foster understanding and dispel misconceptions about Muslims. The film also features special guest interviews with various well known people including: "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart and Assif Mandvi, Russell Simmons, Soledad O'Brien and Ali Velshi, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, comedians Lewis Black, David Cross, Lizz Winstead and Colin Quinn as well as Congressman Keith Ellison, and many more. The film is now available on Netfilx, iTunes and Amazon.   Dean co-created the comedy show "Stand up for Peace" along with Jewish comic Scott Blakeman which they perform at colleges across the country in support of peace in the Middle East and as a way of fostering understanding between Arab, Muslim and Jewish-Americans.   He is writes for MSNBC, CNN and The Daily Beast as well as other publications.   Dean is also the co-creator and co-producer of the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival .He is also proud to serve as the Executive Director of The Amman Stand up Comedy Festival – the first stand up comedy festival ever held in the Middle East Dean is proud to have received the first annual "Bill Hicks Spirit Award" for "thought provoking comedy" (named after the late comedian Bill Hicks) from the NY Underground Comedy Festival and the Hicks' Family. Join us Thursday's at 8EST for our Weekly Happy Hour Hangout!  Subscribe and Watch Interviews LIVE  Listen rate and review on Apple Podcasts Listen rate and review on Spotify Pete On Instagram Pete on Blue Sky Pete on Threads Pete on Tik Tok Pete on Twitter Pete Personal FB page Stand Up with Pete FB page     Gift a Subscription https://www.patreon.com/PeteDominick/gift Send Pete $ Directly on Venmo All things Jon Carroll  Buy Ava's Art    Subscribe to Piano Tuner Paul Paul Wesley on Substack Listen to Barry and Abigail Hummel Podcast Listen to Matty C Podcast and Substack Follow and Support Pete Coe Hire DJ Monzyk to build your website or help you with Marketing

Have you ever wondered what ever happened to the Mafia? Throughout the 20th century, they were recognized as one of the most notorious crime organizations in the world. Feared by many, the Mafia has been depicted as brutal thugs in sensationalized movies and TV series. Consequently, there have been stereotypes created about Italians and Sicilians that are negative and shed a bad light upon their ethnicity and culture. Furthermore, there are worldwide crime syndicates that have been in the shadows without as much notoriety. Tonight on Ground Zero, JP Bovenzi from The Paradigm Shift fills in for Clyde Lewis and talks with Chuck Ochelli from The Ochelli Effect as they separate fact from fiction and talk candidly about THE MAFIA - MYTHS AND REALITIES. Listen on groundzeroplus.com at 7pm, pacific time.

What if the very thing that makes you feel like you don't belong is actually your greatest creative gift?  In this moving conversation, I sit down with Amanda Pascali, a singer-songwriter, translator, and Fulbright Fellow who's turned the experience of never quite fitting in into her life's work. A Harrington Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, she researches Italian studies and ethnomusicology while revitalizing centuries-old Sicilian folk songs for modern audiences. Having built a community of hundreds of thousands online, she's proven that the space between cultures isn't empty—it's where authentic connection is born.  Amanda translates and reinterprets the work of Rosa Balistreri, one of Italy's first women to publicly denounce social inequality through music, bringing women's perspectives to stories that have long been filtered through a male gaze. Her latest album, Roses and Basil, transforms ancient lullabies and protest songs into something that speaks to anyone who's ever felt like the outsider looking in. What makes Amanda different—and why this conversation felt so essential—is that she's not here to tell you how to fit in. She's here to show you what becomes possible when you finally stop trying. She understands the exhaustion of pretending, the power of claiming your own space, and how the very thing that made you feel different can become your greatest source of strength. In this episode, you'll discover: How feeling like the "weird girl" became the foundation for authentic artistryWhy Amanda picked up a guitar at 12 and decided to create space for herself through musicThe story behind her Fulbright Fellowship translating Sicilian folk songs in a UNESCO-endangered languageHow she reinterprets centuries-old songs to center women's voices and experiencesHow to use ancient wisdom to speak to our most modern strugglesWhat it's like to balance online visibility with real-life authenticityWhy she believes music is how we say the things we can't say with spoken word This conversation reminds us that our greatest challenges often hold our greatest gifts. When you stop pretending to fit in and start trusting who you really are, you create: ✨ Ease in finally letting go of the exhausting performance of trying to belong—which frees up energy to honor what matters most to you, pursue work that aligns with your values, and show up authentically in every space you enter ✨ Joy in discovering community with others who also don't fit the mold—in finding your unique voice when traditional paths don't serve you—and in creating rituals that ground you and reconnect you to what's meaningful ✨ Impact by centering voices and...

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Mafia Genealogist Justin Cascio joins Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins to explore one of the most remarkable—and overlooked—figures of the Prohibition era: Pasqualina Albano Siniscalchi, the so-called Bootleg Queen of Springfield, Massachusetts. At the dawn of Prohibition in 1921, Pasqualina was a young widow living in Springfield's South End when she inherited her late husband's powerful bootlegging operation—one of the largest in western Massachusetts. Rather than step aside, she took control. Pasqualina ruled a crew of toughs and bootleggers, oversaw liquor distribution, and launched a relentless campaign of vengeance against rivals who challenged her authority. Newspapers dubbed her The Bootleg Queen, but her fight went far beyond rival gangs. She clashed with lawmakers, battled competing bootleggers, and even faced resistance from within her own family—all while operating in service of a secret society that would never fully accept her because she was a woman. Her story exposes the contradictions of organized crime: loyalty demanded without equality, power wielded without recognition. Cascio draws from years of meticulous research and family histories to bring Pasqualina's story to life, revealing her pivotal role in early Mafia expansion in New England and the hidden influence women could wield behind the scenes. His book, Pasqualina: The True Story of the Bootleg Queen of Springfield, challenges long-held assumptions about gender, power, and the Mafia during Prohibition. If you're interested in Prohibition-era crime, New England Mafia history, or the untold stories of women who shaped organized crime from the shadows, this episode is one you won't want to miss. Learn more about Justin and his work on Mafia Geneology by clicking this sentence. Get Justin’s book, Pasqualina: The Bootleg Queen of Springfield, Massachusetts Listen now on Gangland Wire — available on all major podcast platforms and YouTube. 0:02 Introduction to Mafia Genealogy 1:16 Pasqualina Albano’s Story 2:30 Family Reunion Revelations 4:56 The Impact of Prohibition 7:45 Prejudice and Organized Crime 10:50 Connecting the Genovese Family 12:34 Views from Sicily 13:50 Cultural Differences in Dress 16:37 Encounters with Modern Gangsters 18:36 Gina’s Documentary and Art 23:53 The Romance of the Gangster 27:24 The Nature of Risk 28:46 The Evolution of Organized Crime 33:16 Closing Thoughts and Future Plans Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I’ve got on tap here a repeat guest. He’s been on before. I had a little technical glitch this morning with the internet, and I had to scurry around and do something different. I totally forgot about what I was going to talk about with Justin, but I knew Justin’s been on there before. I knew he does mafia genealogy, and I knew he knows his stuff, and so he doesn’t really need a lot of help from me. So this is Justin Cascio from the website and some books, some mafia genealogies. Welcome, Justin. Thanks so much, Gary. Great to be here. Really. And you’re from the Springfield, Massachusetts area. And so that’s been some of your emphasis has been on that area. But you’ve done a lot of other mob genealogy, correct? Yes. On my website, on mafiagenealogy.com, I write about a whole lot of different places that the mafia has been in the United States. In fact, coming up, I’m going to be writing about Kansas City. But for the last 25 years or so, I’ve lived in New England. I live about 20 miles away from Springfield, Massachusetts, which if you’ve heard of Anthony Aralata or Bruno or the Shabelli brothers, then you know the Springfield crew of the Genovese crime family. [1:12] And I’ve been following them pretty closely since I’ve lived here. A few years ago, I got into the story of Pasqualina Albano, who was a bootlegger in Springfield during Prohibition. [1:25] That’s what my new book is about. Yeah. Oh, that’s a new book, right? I’m sorry. I didn’t pick up real quick there. And she’s done a documentary recently that hasn’t been seen by very many people. And they really, she was a woman. They do use the A at the end. Those of us that know about romance languages would know as probably a woman, but she’s a woman. And she was running a certain segment of bootlegging back during the 30s and late 20s, exactly when it was, which is really unusual. She must have been a powerful individual. I think that she was a very remarkable person, so I couldn’t find out enough about her. I really needed to understand how it was possible that somebody who the Mafia would never have accepted as a member allowed her to lead this crew for so long, even into the years when it was associated with Vito Genovese and that crime family. Yeah. Don’t you imagine it was, she must have been making money for them. [2:24] She was making money for her family, for sure. Got a few people probably pretty comfortable, yeah. [2:30] So that family, you went to a family reunion recently and learned quite a little bit. You want to tell your experiences about that? Yes. So, Pasqualea Albano, that bootlegger, has a nephew who is now 101 years old. His name is Mario Fiore. And when he turned 100, I was invited to his birthday party. And it was an enormous scene. It was tremendous. In fact, it’s a cliche, but the opening scene of The Godfather, if you imagine that wedding scene, it’s what it looks like. There’s a guy singing live on a PA system. There’s a pizza oven parked over here. There’s kids in the pool. There’s so many people, so much food, and this great big lawn and incredible view. Just an amazing scene to be at. And I met so many different people who were in Mario’s family. I met people who came over from Italy to come celebrate his birthday and talked with them as much as I could. I have no Italian, by the way. So we did the best we could. But I also talked to her American relative. She has all these grand nieces and nephews, and nieces and nephews who are still living, who were at this party and told me stories and drew little family trees for me. And what I was able to get a real good sense of is how the family feels about this legacy. Because not just Pasqualina, who was in organized crime, so many of her relatives were involved as well and continued to be up until the 80s, at least. [4:00] So the name, was it Albano? Was it got on in the modern times? The last name, was it still Albano? Was there another name? There are a few. Let’s see. I want some more modern names. There’s Mario Fiore. So he is one of her nephews. And then there’s Rex Cunningham Jr., who is one of her grandnephews. There’s the Sentinellos. So Jimmy Sentinello, who owns the Mardi Gras, or he did anyway. It’s a nude club, you know, a gentleman’s club, as they say. A gentleman’s club. We use that term loosely. Oh, boy, do we? Another old term that I picked up from the newspapers that I just love and like to bring back is sporting figure. Yeah, even sporting man. They don’t play sports. They’re not athletes. They’re sporting figures. I know. I heard that when I was a kid. Somebody was a sporting man. Yep. [4:57] This has been a family tradition. It’s something that has been passed down through the generations, and it’s something that I talk about in the book. But mostly what I’m focused on in the plot of the story is about Pasqualea’s time during Prohibition when this gang was turning into something bigger, turning into a part of this American mafia. Yeah. Interesting. And so tell us a little bit about how that developed. You had a Genovese family that moved in and she got hooked up with them. How did that develop? Yeah. More end of modern times. Early on, so 1920, beginning of Prohibition, Pasqualea Albana was newly married to this sporting figure, we’ll call him, Carlo Sinascocci. And I’m probably pronouncing that last name as wrong as well. He also came from a family of notable people who were involved in organized crime, getting into scrapes in Little Italy, New York City. There’s a whole separate side story about his cousins and all the things that they were getting into before Carlo even got on the scene. So by the time he arrived in New York City, he had a bit of a reputation preceding him because of these relatives of his. [6:06] And Pascalina was a young woman in Springfield. And the first question I even had writing about her is, how did she meet this guy? He was a Brooklyn saloon keeper. She was the daughter of a grocer in Springfield, three and a half hours away on the train. Like, why do they even know each other? And so trying to piece all that together, how that was reasonable for them to know one another and move in the same circles, and then for him to immediately, when he moved to Springfield, start picking up with vice because it was before Prohibition. So he was involved in gambling and police violence. And you could see some of the beginnings of the corruption already happening where he’s getting police protection before prohibition even begins. And then once it starts, he is the king of Water Street, which was the main drag of Little Italy. He was the guy you went to if you wanted to buy wholesale. [6:57] Justin, I have a question here. I was just discussing this with who’s half Italian, I guess, FBI agent that worked the mob here in Kansas City. We were talking about this, the prejudice that Italian people felt when they first got here, especially. And Bill’s about 90, and so he said his father told him. His father worked at a bank in New York, and he was told that with that last name, he had a different last name than Bill does. And with that last name, he said, you’re owning and go so high in the bank. And so talk a little bit about the prejudice that those early people felt. And that’s what drove people into the dark side, if you will, to make money. You had these bright guys that came over from Sicily looking for opportunity. And then us English and Irish Germans kept them out. [7:45] And so can you talk about that a little bit? Did they talk about any of that or have you looked into any of that? [7:52] I have. And it’s a theme that comes up again and again. Whenever I look at organized crime in any city, I’m seeing things like that ethnic succession of organized crime that you’re alluding to, how the Irish were controlling, say, the machine in Kansas City Hall or what have you. And they had that same kind of control over politics in other cities, too. And the way that they were getting a leg up and finally getting that first protection of their rackets was from outside of their ethnicity. It was Irish politicians protecting Italian criminals. And then eventually the Italians were getting naturalized where they were born here. And so then they move into politics themselves. [8:31] And that is one of the theories about how organized crime develops in American cities. It’s because you’re poor and ethnic and you’re closed out of other opportunities. And so the bright kids get channeled into organized crime where maybe in a better situation, they would have gone to college. Right. And then Prohibition came along, and there was such a huge amount of money that you can make in Prohibition. And it was illegal. That’s why you made money. But there was opportunity there for these young guys. Yes. And you really start to see a lot of new names in the papers after Prohibition begins. You have your established vice criminals who you’re already seeing in the newspapers through the 19-teens. Once Prohibition begins, now they have all these other guys getting into the game because there’s so much money there. And it’s such a big pie. Everybody feels like they can get a slice. [9:21] Yeah, interesting. Carry on. I’ve distracted you, Azai, but you were talking about Pasqualina and her husband. Of course, I’m not even going to try that. When you talk about discrimination against Italians, one of the things that makes my job really hard is trying to find news about a guy with a name like Carlos Siniscalchi. First of all, I’m probably saying it wrong. I think the Italian pronunciation is… So I’m getting all of the consonant clusters wrong, but I do it with my own name too. We’ve Americanized Cassio. That’s not the right name. How do you pronounce it? It’s Cassio. But we’re Cassio. That’s my grandfather said it. So how do I find Carlos Nescalci in the newspaper when every reporter mangles that name? And spells it differently. Yeah. Everybody spells it differently. How am I going to guess how all these different English speaking reporters were going to mess up Carlos’ name? And so I find it every which way. And sometimes I’ve just had to plain stumble over news about him and his relatives. It just happens by chance. I’m looking for general crime, and then I find him specifically. So yeah, it’s a little hard to find the Italians sometimes because their names are unfamiliar and they get written wrong in censuses and in the news. So we lose a little bit of their history that way. And that’s what you might call, I don’t know, a microaggression because they can’t get that name. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, yeah. You don’t care enough to spell it. I just, I know the thought process, I have to admit. I’ll just spell it anyway. I understand that thought process. [10:51] So you were asking earlier, I don’t know if you want me to continue this, but how the Genovese family were able to get involved in this thing going on in Springfield. Yeah, connected. Because of her second husband. Okay. Pascalina lost her first husband in 1921. He was killed by a fellow bootlegger. He takes over the gang. She conducts a war of vengeance against the guy who kills her husband and his whole family because they’re gangsters. And that takes years. She’s also pursuing her through the courts. And when that all finally gets settled a few years later, she has a quiet little second marriage to a guy that nobody had ever heard of called Antonio Miranda. [11:28] Now, Antonio Miranda is a small time gangster from Little Italy, New York City, and his brother is Mike Miranda, who is very close to Vito Genovese, and he became this conciliator eventually. So that old connections, going back to the days before the Castello-Moraisi War, when it was Lucky Luciano bootlegging with some of his pals, that’s the time frame in which she formed this alliance by marrying Tony Miranda. And that’s when it starts. That’s the relationship’s beginning between Genovese crime family having, before it was even the Genovese crime family, when it was the Luciano family. And so they’ve had that relationship with the Springfield crew ever since. A little bit like old world feudalism in a way, where one member of a royal family marries a member of another royal family. And I know in Kansas City, we’ve got our underboss, his sister, is married to our boss’s nephew. So, bring those two families together, the Lunas and the Savellas together, yes, very well, like noble families. Exactly. Interesting. Absolutely. [12:31] So that’s how they got together. I remembered that, but I’d forgotten it. So, you went to this reunion with people from Sicily there. So, tell us a little bit about that. How? [12:43] How do people in Sicily view the people in the United States? And they didn’t talk about the mafia. I’m sure there’s no doubt that they’re not going to really talk about that unless you got to find somebody that’s really lucky. But kind of care about the sociological impact and the old world and the new world, and the new world people that, you know, established here. Okay, so Pasqualea and his family are from outside of Naples, and they maintain really close ties to their family back in Italy. Like I am the third generation born in America. I don’t speak Italian. Neither does my father. Neither of us has ever been to Italy. We don’t have, we’re not Italians. We’re Americans. Okay. And the Italians will remind you of that if you forget. We’re not Italian. And like spaghetti and meatballs, not Italian. Chicken Parmesan, not Italian. These are things that we invented here out of a sense of, out of homesickness and a sudden influx of middle-class wealth. We were like, let’s have the spaghetti and the meatballs. I had separate courses anymore where the meatballs are, where they’re both a special treat and I’m going to take two treats with chicken and waffles. [13:50] So being around them, they’re formal. You know, I was meeting like Pasquena’s relatives from Mercado San Sivarino, where they’re from in Italy, they own a funeral home. They own the biggest funeral home business in the town, and they also own some other sort of associated businesses, like a florist and things like that. So I would expect a certain sort of decorum and conservatism of tone from somebody who works in the funeral business and from Italy. But they were also among the only people there in suits, because it was a summer day, we’re outside. Most of us were dressed a little less formally. Yeah. Old school, 1950s stuff. He does those old 1950s photographs, and everybody, every man’s wearing a suit. And there were women’s hat on. Also, that ongoing thing where people in Europe just dress better. Yeah, they dress more formal. I see a little bit in New York City. I noticed it when I moved up from the South. In the South, you go to a funeral and flip-flops, okay? It’s very casual because the weather absolutely demands it. I moved that back up North, and I’m like, wow, everybody’s just wearing the same black coat, aren’t we? And you go into New York. People are dressed a little better, even. You go to Europe, and it’s just another level is what I hear. People, they dress better. They’re not like us where we would roll out of bed and put on pajama pants and some crocs and go to the grocery store. They would never do something. Yes. [15:10] I was in a restaurant several years ago, and there’s a guy sitting at a table, and another young guy comes in. And the guy at the table says, dude, you wore your pajama bottoms in the restaurant. [15:22] People need to be sold. And I’ll have to admit, at the time, I hadn’t seen that before. And since then, I see it all the time now. I live in a college town. I see it a lot. Yeah. So i’ll carry on a little more about that reunion there uh okay so how to describe this so much of it was very surreal to me just being in this place like very fancy house the longest driveway i’ve ever seen like more than a mile i finally like when i parked my car because the track you know you can the parked cars are starting i parked and i get out of the car. And I’ve got this big present with me that I’m going to give to Mario. It’s unwieldy. And I’m like, oh man, this is going to be quite a schlep. And I’m wearing my good shoes and everything. And these two young fellas come up on a golf cart and bring me a ride. So I get in the golf cart and we get up to the house and my friend Gina was trying to point people out to me. Oh, he’s somebody that was in my documentary and you got to talk to this guy. And there was a lot of that. you’ve got to talk to this guy and you’ve got to talk to this woman and dragging me around to meet people. And one of the groups of people that I was, that I found myself standing in, [16:35] I’m talking to gangsters this time. Okay. This is not cousins who won a funeral home. These are gangsters. And I’m standing with them and they’re having the absolute filthiest conversation that I’ve heard since high school. [16:48] And, but the difference is boys in high school are just talking. These guys have done all the things they’re talking about. Wow. What a life is. The lives you would have led. Bye. I’m just trying to keep it. Are these American gangsters or are these? Americans. Okay, yeah. Current gangsters, they’re in the Springfield area with Anthony Arilada there. They’ve all hated him, probably. I’m sorry? I said Anthony Arilada when he’s there, and they all hated him. You probably didn’t bring his name up. Yeah, really. There are different factions in Springfield, it feels like to me, still. bill. And I haven’t got them all sorted. There are people who are still very loyal to the old regime and they have their figure, their person that they follow. And sometimes they can live with the rest of them and sometimes the rest of them are a bunch of lowlives and they want everybody to know about it. Yeah. [17:45] I’ve heard that conversation before. Interesting. Now, whose house was this? Somebody made it well in America. Yes. And I think it was one of his nephews. I don’t know exactly whose house it was. I was invited by Gina’s brother. He texted me and invited me to the party. And people just accepted me right in. The close family members who have seen Gina’s documentary, who have heard her talk about Pastelina and the research and meeting me, they think of me as the family a genealogist. And so I have a title in the family and belong there. Oh yeah, it’s here to document us. As you do, because we’re an important family. And so they didn’t really question my presence there at all. And you were able to ask questions from that standpoint too. That’s what was nice. Yeah. [18:37] And a lot of times it was just standing still and listening because there was so much going on, That was enough. Interesting. Now, her documentary, you’ve seen it, so tell us a little bit about it. Folks, it’s not out there streaming yet. She’s trying to get something going, I would assume. [18:58] Explain her just a little bit, too, in her book. Talk about her and her book and her documentary. Yeah. Okay. Gina’s a part of this big family that has got some wealth still and goes back to bootleggers in Prohibition and has gangsters in it, including her brother, Rex Cunningham Jr. So Cunningham is the name you don’t expect to hear in the mafia. Yeah, yeah. Done by Marietta Beckerwood. I don’t know if he was a member or associate, but at any rate, he was a known figure around here. Sportsbook and that kind of thing. Sportsbook, yeah. Yeah. She grew up with a little bit of wealth and privilege, but also feeling a little bit outsider because her family was half Irish. So among the Italians, it was a, you go to the wrong church, you go to the wrong school kind of vibe. And she grew up into more of a countercultural person. Her family is very conservative politically, religiously. I don’t know if you would expect that of a gangster family, but that’s what I’ve noticed is pretty common, actually. No, it’s pretty, that’s the way it is here. Yeah, real conservative, yeah. Yeah. You have to be socially for the whole thing to work. I can get into that, but And they keep going to the same church and school and everything, and you maintain these close ties with the neighborhood and local businesses and so forth. But she really was like, I’m going my own way. And so she became this free spirit as a young woman. And Gina’s, I don’t know how old she is. I want to say in her late 60s, around 70, about there. [20:23] That’s Gina Albano Cunningham. Cunningham. Oh, Gina. Okay, Gina Cunningham. See, I’m getting mixed up with the names. And Cunningham was… Ask Elena Albanos. Her sister married and became a Fiore. Okay. All right. That’s a little bit confusing. People have to go to your website to get this straightened out. Or maybe you have this, a picture, an image of this family tree on your website. In the book, you can find multiple family trees because I’m working with all these different branches. I’ll take a look if I can’t put an image in here for everybody to get this straight. But the modern woman that did the book and the movie, she’s in her 70s now. [21:04] Yeah. Yeah, and she’s a grandniece of Pasqualina, and her brother and her cousins were in organized crime in this room. Okay, all right, all right. Go ahead, go ahead. She’s absolutely immersed in this life, but she did not want any part of it, and so she left. And there are other people in her family that you can point to that did the same thing, like some of Pasqualina’s children just did not want to have anything to do with the family. Well, they left. They went and moved to another state. They stayed in another place. They didn’t come back. And she did the same thing, but she’s not cut ties. She keeps coming back and she has good relationships with her family members, even though she’s not aligned with them politically and so forth. [21:42] And she’s an artist. I’ve seen her work on a couple of different mediums. I don’t want to really try and explain what her art is, but she’s a feminist artist. And she’s also really been pointing the camera at her family quite a bit. And it seems like film might be a newer medium for her. She’s used to do more painting and sculpture and stuff kind of thing. How’d the family take that? A lot of these people, I’ve talked to some relatives here, and one of them come on to talk to me, but I said, your Uncle Vince, he said, yeah, I know. But then he never would get back to me all of a sudden. So a lot of pressure to not say anything about it. Oh, yeah. Sometimes I will get started talking to somebody and then it’ll reach a certain point where they’re like oh no we can’t don’t be recording this don’t put my yeah anything so yeah news to that but gina was like no this is going to be part of my, political art. I’m going to point the camera at my family. I’m going to expose, some of the hypocrisy that I see there, the things I disagree with. [22:41] It’s a short documentary, and I find it very powerful because it’s a family video. One of the first people she’s aiming the camera at is, I think, one of her nieces. Talking to this young woman who is leaning on her car, maybe in her late teens, early 20s, and this young woman is saying, oh, yeah, I would marry a gangster if I had the chance. And I’m just like, do you not know your family? Do you not know the heart? And later on in the video, you get to hear some of the really just like gut wrenching stories of what pain people in her family have brought upon themselves through their involvement in organized crime and all the things that it entails. And this young woman is, I don’t know, she’s acting because she doesn’t even know this other uncle or this other cousin that she’s got that can tell her these stories. Or is it, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter or something. And that to me was shocking. That’s the kind of thing that needs, that’s somebody who needs their mind changed. And I was like, I hope she watches this video she’s in and changes her mind about how she feels about that life and wanting to be a part of it. But that’s what mafia culture creates more of, is people who want to be a part of that. [23:53] There’s a certain romance to it that started out with Robin Hood, if you will. You get a romance of the gangster, the criminal that maybe is good to some people, good to support people, good to their family. And it continues on to this day to John Gotti. He’s the most recent iteration of Robin Hood and Jesse James here in the Midwest. People love Jesse James. When I grew up, everybody, every family had a story about how a couple of guys came by their house back in the 1800s and they gave them a place to stay and a meal. And they left them like a $20 gold piece, which was like $500 or something. And they said, it was Jesse James. I know it was. It’s the romance of the gangster continues. Yes. We all would love to imagine that we’re on the gangster side and that the gangster agrees. Yeah. As long as we don’t have to go to jail or pay that price. Because to me, I’ve got a friend today that he spent about 12 years and he would give all that gangster life back to get that 12 years back for these kids growing up. He’s turned over a new life today. I had lunch with him and his son not too long ago. And it’s just his son has told him, he said, every time I had to walk away from you in the penitentiary and come back home after our visit, he said, I was just crushed. It’s a huge price to pay for that. But there’s still that romance continues. [25:13] That terrible price, I think, is part of what feeds the romance. If there was no risk, there wouldn’t be that allure. Yeah, that’s true. You met that risk and overcame it and went on, came out on top. It’s what they always like to claim that came out on top of it. So I understand that thought process. I take a lot of risk in my life just from the other side. I said, live to fight another day. Yeah, there really are different kinds of risks that you can take. I was writing about a contract killer in Texas, and one of his targets was a guy who was a grain dealer. And I was like, that’s a really weird target for murder, right? Like, why would you kill a grain dealer from rural Texas? And it was because his old partner had an insurance policy out on him and decided to cash in on it. That was Charles Harrison, wasn’t it? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sad story. Charles Harrison. Yeah. It was like, these were two guys that took very different kinds of risks, right? You got Charles Harrelson, who kills people for money. That’s a certain kind of risk you’re definitely taking. And then there’s the guy who buys grain and then sells it. So he’s taking these risks for his community of farmers. [26:27] And I was like, that’s really wholesome. And that’s, I don’t know, I feel like it’s a really positive example of masculinity. That’s the kind of risk we’re supposed to take for the safety and well-being of our neighbors? Yeah. Even the farmers, they risk everything every year. Smaller farmer, I grew up in those families and a smaller farmer practically risk everything every year, being in on the weather. That’s why I didn’t stay on the farm. And the markets, you don’t know what the markets are going to do. It’s a gamble every year. That Charles Harrelson, that’s Woody Harrelson’s dad who killed the Judds, famous murder down in El Paso. And he had a business. He carried a card that said he was a hitman. It was his story. [27:10] Bold. He was a crazy bold dude. I did a whole three-part series on that whole Jimmy Chagra marijuana business [27:20] down there on the border. and his connection to it and the killing of Judge Wood. So it’s just a business in these guys. Hey, it’s not personal. It’s just business. Yikes. It’s crazy. But Justin, you got anything else you want to tell us about? Anything you’re working on? And remind guys your website and what you can find there. He has some really interesting stuff about the old early days in Chicago. I know that. I referred to some of that several years ago when I was doing something on Chicago. So give guys a little walk through on your website. It’s really interesting. Okay, so John Gotti is one name I don’t think you’re ever going to find on my website. Yeah, good. [27:59] I’m really addicted to origin stories. I like to find out how the Mafia was already present before that point when we say it started. Yeah, in the 20s. But gangsters don’t come out of nowhere. Gangs don’t come out of nowhere. They evolve. They grow. There are forces to create them. And so that’s what I’m interested in. I like to go around. And I spent a lot of my early career writing about one place and its effect on the United States, Corleone, where my family’s from in Sicily. And that was my first book, In Our Blood. And some of my first posts on mafia genealogy are in that thread. They’re about my family and the Corleonesi. But then I started to get into other [28:42] places and wanting to know about their stories and getting into other parts of Italy as well. So if you go to my website, you’re going to find stories like Charles Harrelson and the two guys that he killed before the judge, or in Chicago about the different little Italys that existed before Capone consolidated everything, or Kansas City I’m writing about, Nick Fatsuno and the Passantino brothers. I don’t even know if you know those guys, but I thought their further stories were amazing. [29:09] Passantino had a funeral home today, but the other names I don’t really know back then. I don’t know much about that or those early days. Did they seem to come from the same little town, the same general area? They didn’t, actually. A lot of them were Sicilian, and they come from Palermo province, but not all from the same town. Not from okay. Yeah. Yeah, I wasn’t able to put—there’s not a strong current there in Kansas City like I’ve found in other places where everybody is from one town. Yeah. [29:37] But not so much in Kansas City. A little more varied. Interesting. So that’s what you’ll find on my website. And then Pasqualina is my second book, and you can buy both of my books at Amazon. Got them behind me here, Airblood, Pasqualina. And Pasqualina is about that prohibition era, and if you like to understand where big-nosed Sam Koufari got his start, it’s in there. And the Shabelli brothers show up. It’s about those origins. I was talking to a friend of mine about this name, Skeeball or Skeebelly. Yes. Who had some relationship back in Springfield, and he just really knew Skeeball when he was young. [30:17] Yep, because it was the spelling of his name. I’m not even sure how they pronounced it. I think it’s Skeebelly. Skeebelly. That probably was. Yeah, Skeebelly. I know somebody named Skeebelly, so probably was. That’s like the name of the body shop here in Kansas City, and it’s P-A-C-E. But really it’s Pache. We’ve got to do it right. And that’s probably short for Pache. I don’t know. I wonder if the family pronounces it Pache or Pace. I think business-wise, but then the person who was talking was close to the family and they said, oh no, it’s Pache. So I thought, okay. [30:53] Interesting. The immigrant experience in this country is really always interesting. There’s always conflict and the interest is in the conflict. And as people try to make their way, and stopping with, oh God, it was an author, T.J. did the Westies. You guys know T.J. that did the Westies. And he said, yeah, he said, and he really was articulate about, as we’ve discussed this, that people come here want an opportunity, because they didn’t have any opportunity in the old country, whether it be Naples or southern Italy or Sicily. They came here, they really just wanted opportunity. And then the opportunity, you have to start fighting for opportunity. That’s the nature of the beast in this country. In any kind, any society, you’ve got to fight for opportunity when you’re an outsider and you come in. And so that was the early development. These people just wanting a little slice of this American pie that they’d heard so much about. The streets are paved with gold over here, but found out you’ve got to dig that old man. [31:52] Some people probably came over here thinking they were going to make an honest living and found themselves, by one step and another, involved in organized crime. And then there were other men who came here from Italy for whom the opportunity was to be a criminal here. Richer pickings. Yeah. And they started restaurants and had your typical immigrant, all the immigrant restaurants, all these Chinese, whatever kind of ethnic food is, they start out with an immigrant who then puts his kids and his cousins and his nephews and sisters and grandmas in the back room kitchen, start those restaurants. And people, us people that are already here like that food and they run them, they do a really good job at it. And so that’s a way to get started in grocery stores for their other fellow paisans. And those were the ways that they made it here, at least now, probably the same way in every city where there’s a large Italian population. Got to feed the other Italians. And so an Italian restaurant is natural. Yeah. And also owning your own business is just really smart for a lot of people. If you’re an organized crime, it’s a great way to hide what you’re doing. [32:59] And if you’re trying to get a naturalization status, especially now, being a business owner is really advantageous. Yeah, I bet. I was talking about that on getting a naturalization process that showed that you’re an entrepreneur and you believe in the system and you’re doing well. Yeah, interesting. [33:17] All right, Justin Cascio, and the website is Mafia Genealogy. He’s got a couple books on there in this documentary. I don’t know. Keep us up on that. Maybe if it comes out, I’ll make sure to get it out on something where people know that they can go out and see it. It sounds really interesting. Thanks, YOL. All right. Thanks, Justin. I’ll do that no more. Thank you, Justin. It’s really a pleasure to talk to you again. Always a pleasure being on your show. Thank you. Great. [33:44] Justin, see, I was going to ask you about something. What? Are you going through a publisher? You got a publisher? No, I’m self-published. You’re self-published? Okay. Yeah. See, I self-published several books, and I’m doing probably my last ones, a story of my life, kind of more of a memoir, my struggles and my moral dilemmas and all that during when I worked intelligence. And then I’ll explain all about the big civil mob war we had here during those years. And I don’t know. I started poking around. I thought, well, maybe I’ll try to get a regular publisher. But boy, it’s hard. You’ve got to get an agent. You can’t get attention of an agent because there’s hundreds and thousands of people out there writing books wanting to do all this. So thank God for Amazon. Yeah. I think if you already have your audience. Yeah. And you know who they are and you’re already talking to them. You don’t need to pay somebody else to do that for you. Yeah. Yeah. I’m paying an editor to go over to… That’s different. That’s no other strengths. But to get it sold out there. Out here making videos every day. The good thing about getting a publisher is you can get, and then you got a chance of getting it into Barnes & Noble and into libraries. [34:59] See, libraries. You might into libraries anyway. How’d you do that? How’d you figure that out? The local library has an interest in the book, so they bought it. Yeah, they did. But I’m talking about other libraries. Yeah, they can all buy the book the same way. Yeah, but how do they find the library buy books? [35:18] I think buy them from the publishers normally. And if your book is self-published and they want to carry that book, because, for instance, about local history, then they’ll buy it. Yeah. I’m thinking about how do they get it out in other New York or Chicago or some other city that will be looking for nonfiction books. Publishers. You have to do every step yourself instead of being massive. Yeah. And then like Barnes & Noble and places like that to get it in, that’s hard too. You can do that locally. Those places carry my books on the website. Who does? They’re buying it from Amazon. Oh, okay. Interesting. Oh, really? Yeah. Because that’s the only place you can get it. I think I sell a couple of my, I’ve seen some people from, I think it’s through at Brafta Digital, I think’s the name of it. That’s another thing that this thing went up on that Barnes & Noble did sell a few copies of it. As a matter of fact, now that you mention it. [36:21] But it’s interesting. It’s fun. How are you ever going to get a screenplay sold if you don’t get their attention? [36:30] That’s why most people I talk to, they’re trying to figure out how to get a movie made from their book. Gangsters ask me that question. They’re like, you figure I know the answer to how to get a movie made from YouTube? and I do not have that answer. Nobody knows that. It’s hard work. Yeah, I tell them nobody knows that, the answer. It’s God. A divine being that strikes you, whether it be the Apollo or the God of Abraham, or Jesus or some higher power reaches out and touches you and says, okay, I bless you, and now you’re going to have a movie made and Robert De Niro is going to play your part. Although anymore, they don’t want De Niro to play him because they hate him now, and they want somebody else. Oh, my God. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you, Justin. Likewise, Gary. Thanks so much. If I can do anything for you here in Kansas City, and as you’re going through your thing, if you’ve got any question or anything, I’ve got that one friend, that FBI agent, that he could maybe help you with if you’re looking for a connection or something. He knows quite a little bit. And somebody else was just talking about that, looking into that, those early days. But if you do have any questions or anything that you’re stumbled about here in Kansas City, be sure and give me a call, and I’ll see if I can’t steer you to somebody. I don’t know myself. I don’t really ever look at it. Okay. Okay. Stay safe. Thank you. You too.

The conversation covers the Sicilian American experience, childhood memories, cultural influences, language, culinary habits, and the themes explored in the book 'The Sicilian American Comedy'. It delves into the family background, growing up in Brooklyn, relocation, retirement, and the span of the book's narrative. The conversation delves into the rich cultural heritage of Sicilian families and the significant role of women in shaping the family dynamics. It explores the influence of Sicilian culture on family upbringing and the matriarchal nature of the family structure.TakeawaysSicilian American experienceCultural influences Sicilian culture and family dynamicsThe role of women in Sicilian cultureChapters00:00 The Sicilian American Comedy30:04 Sicilian Culture and Family Dynamics36:17 The Role of Women in Sicilian Culture

In “How a Humble Crab Dish Became the Soul of Tampa,” Gravy producer Nicole Hutcheson travels across Tampa to trace the story of a lesser-known local dish—crab chilau. Every city has a dish that says something true about the people who built it. In Tampa, that dish is crab chilau. Made with blue crabs and simmered in tomatoes, garlic, spices, and served over pasta, crab chilau is shaped by Sicilians, Cuban and Afro-Cuban families, and Tampa's Black community—each group adding a twist to make it their own. Hutcheson's journey travels from historic Ybor City to rapidly gentrifying corridors of the city, and even knee-deep into the marshy waters of Tampa Bay. Along the way, she meets the people carrying crab chilau forward today: Enzo Pardo, a Sicilian chef reimagining the dish through his own heritage; Jesus Puerto, a Tampa native who returned home after decades away to stake his claim; and Reggie Nelson, an enterprising businessman and chef building a name for himself while preserving a culinary legacy rooted in community. Listeners hear first-hand how crab chilau isn't a single recipe. Instead it's what happens when different cultures, customs, and lived experiences come together in the same pot and city. No one version is the same—some are spicier, some brown the sauce until it resembles a stew. Others keep it closer to a sofrito. Add-ins like ground beef, smoked sausage, and snow crab aren't deviations; they're evidence of a dish built to evolve and feed a crowd. Through personal encounters in kitchens, restaurants, and the outdoors, Hutcheson shares how crab chilau reflects the way Tampa's food culture itself was built: informally, collaboratively, and without a singular owner. From cooks freestyling the pot to meals designed to nourish entire neighborhoods, the dish tells a larger story about gathering, creativity, and culture. Crab chilau is a living record of how cultures meet and adapt. Listeners will walk away from this episode with a deeper sense of Tampa's identity and place in the American South. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jennifer Sontag discusses the bureaucratic challenges faced by the Italian government in modernizing its systems, particularly in relation to citizenship rights. She highlights the ongoing legal battles concerning the recognition of citizenship for descendants and the implications of EU law. The conversation also touches on recent victories in these legal challenges, indicating a potential shift in the recognition of citizenship rights in Italy. Jennifer Sontag, a serial entrepreneur, is the founder of ViaMonde, an agency that helps Italian Americans gain citizenship in Italy. Currently living in Terrasini, Sicily, Jennifer sets out to help her clients gain a new outlook on life in Italy. Jennifer grew up in a big Italian American family where her nonna and 9 sisters would spend their days preparing delicious meals to share with family. Mamma to 2 beautiful adults, and nonna to adorable Oliver. Jennifer has a passion for all things Sicilian and loves to enjoy good food and wine with friends. Get In Touch With Jennifer Sontag:ViaMonde | European Relocation & CitizenshipInstagram: Via Monde (@viamonde.eu) • Instagram photos and videosLinkedIn

In this episode, we delve into the intricate world of the Chicago Outfit’s informants, featuring insights from my late friend, Cam Robinson, and Paul Whitcomb, a well-respected expert on the mob. This special compilation draws from past interviews and shorts that once highlighted various informants who operated during the notorious 1980s era of organized crime in Chicago. Through a series of concise segments, we explore the lives of key players who chose to turn against the Outfit, revealing the complex motivations and consequences of their decisions. We kick things off by revisiting the tale of Paul “Peanuts” Pansko, an influential figure leading the Polish faction of the Outfit. Pansko's criminal activities, including a racetrack heist, not only placed him in dangerous territory but also set into motion a chain of events that would later link to the infamous Family Secrets trial. It's during this journey that we outline how interconnected the informants’ narratives are, showcasing how Pansko’s actions inadvertently unraveled parts of the organization.   The discussion shifts to more dramatic stories, including Mario Rainone. Rainone's infamous decision to cooperate with the authorities opened the door to significant revelations about Lenny Patrick, one of the highest-ranking Outfit members to switch sides. Rainone's tapes ultimately led to the dismantling of major sections of the Outfit’s operations, including political connections that had long shielded them from legal repercussions.   We also explore the tale of Ken “Tokyo Joe” Eto, a Japanese mobster who thrived within the Outfit’s ranks. His attempts at self-preservation after surviving an assassination effort highlighted the stark realities faced by those who navigated the perilous landscape of organized crime. As he eventually became a witness for the prosecution, Eto’s insights illuminated the internal workings of one of Chicago’s most feared organizations. The episode further examines dramatic betrayals and deadly encounters that shaped the Outfit’s legacy. From the chilling events surrounding the murders of the Spilotro brothers, orchestrated by their own associates for reasons steeped in loyalty and betrayal, to the grim fate that met informants like Al Toco and the impact of domestic discord on organized crime, each tale is a window into the bleak realities faced by both mobsters and informants alike. As we round out the episode, we reflect on the cultural dynamics surrounding informants, particularly how personal relationships and family ties heavily influenced their decisions to cooperate. It becomes clear through the interviews that while fear of retribution often compels loyalty, the specter of betrayal looms large within the mob. This multifaceted examination blends personal stories with historical context, providing a deeper understanding of the Chicago Outfit’s complexity and its operatives. Join us in this retrospective journey through the shadows of organized crime as we pay homage to those who bravely shared their stories, revealing the inner workings of a criminal empire that continues to fascinate and terrify in equal measure. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, guys, after listening to Bob Cooley, one of the more damaging sources and witness and informant to the Chicago Outfit outside of the Calabrese family, [0:13] Nick and his nephew, Frank Jr., I got the rest of the Chicago Outfit informants on tap here. No, not really. They’re not coming in. But I did do a story. I did a series of shorts a few years, or I don’t know, two or three years ago, maybe. [0:32] I interviewed my late friend, Cam Robinson, rest in peace, Cam. So you get to hear from him again. And Paul Whitcomb, who is a Chicago outfit expert, he’s been on this. They used to have some kind of a round table show up there. I don’t know if they still have it or not with the Seiferts. But anyhow, I got these guys to sit down with me and talk about all the different informants in Chicago during the, it was during the 80s. So this is just kind of a series of shorts that I put up before. They’re six or eight minutes long, I think, each one of them, that they talk about different informants. This kind of threw it together as another little bonus episode we’ve done. And I went to Chicago, if you notice, after Johnny Russo, which I apologize for in a way, I don’t know. I mean, the guy’s got some crazy-ass stories, doesn’t he? Who am I to say that he didn’t do it? But most people know that he didn’t do most of that stuff. Anyhow, so I threw up another Chicago right away about the guy that had the race wire that they killed, James Reagan. [1:38] Then i had this interview that i’d been doing during those last couple weeks with bob cooley who’s appeared uh out of nowhere and he’ll maybe see him on some other shows now he’s he’s wanting to do shows he tells me so after hearing bob cooley talk i thought well i’m doing do one more i want to just throw it up as an extra uh from some of my old chicago outfit stuff and that’ll finish me off on the Chicago outfit for a while. I hadn’t, I hadn’t been in Chicago, uh, doing shows about Chicago for quite a while. And, and I didn’t want to, uh, neglect you guys. You know, I get a lot of books written about New York and I’ve got all these authors that are wanting to do these books about New York. Uh, not so much about Chicago. So if you got anybody that, you know, wants to, got a book and wants to come on the show, uh, talking about the outfit, why steer them to me. So anyhow, just sit back and relax and enjoy. [2:37] My late, great friend, Cam Robinson. One more look at Cam, for those of you who remember him, and Paul Whitcomb. And we’re going to talk about famous snitches from Chicago. Thanks, guys. Well, let’s move along now to, this is kind of interesting, Paul Peanuts Panczko, who was the leader of the Polish branch of the outfield. Is that what you would call Peanuts Panczko, the leader of the Polish branch? If the Polish branch is the Panczko family, which you could easily say there were three brothers, then yeah, that wouldn’t be right. We haven’t really done a show on them. I don’t know a whole lot about them other than they were released at all. So we said non-Italian, Peckerwood, as we call them at Kansas City, professional criminals who did a lot of business with different outfit people. And he did a robbery of a racetrack. I think it’s the Balmoral Racetrack. It’s the name of it. James Duke Basile and then Panczko was in trouble for that and he convinced Basile to come in and they did some talking remember anything about that situation, you know in a lot of ways you. [3:50] Panczko could be considered one of the first dominoes that eventually led to the Family Secrets trial. Panczko, as you said, led to Dookie Bazile, who they had done robberies together. Bazile led them to Scarpelli, who was a much higher guy. I mean, there’s debate, but he was, because there was a making ceremony at this time, but Scarpelli was pretty highly ranked. I mean, he was a known killer, and he was up there. He was in the wild bunch. But Scarpelli then did tell them about a lot of the things that Frank Calabrese had done. [4:28] He wasn’t known as well as Scarpelli had brought him up to be. And a lot of those things dominoed into what would eventually lead to family secrets years later. [4:42] Scarpelli, I think, did not know so much about Nick, but he did know about Frank. And so a lot of that information sort of filled in the gaps. And even though Frank Calabrese Jr. Led them led them to Nick They A lot of seeds were planted And can be traced back to Pianus Pansico Um. [5:01] So it is kind of an interesting line. Basile, he wore a wire on Scarpelli and not even talking about a lot of these things. It’s not the FBI knew about that. They were in a car together. Right. If I remember right, he even talked about a mob graveyard. They went up there and they found two or three bodies. One of them was connected. It wasn’t anybody really important, but one of them was connected to Harry Aleman. So it was a pretty important wearing of a wire on Scarpelli, who then came at himself for a while. And that’s what led to the family secrets. He talked about Frank Calabrese. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah, that’s right. And some of those bodies in that graveyard were 10 years apart, which was interesting. I’ve got, it’s on the map that I created, but some of those bodies, there was years in between them. So it was something they were going back to and they believed that there were a lot of things there they did not find. Yeah, because they built a health care facility or something. They built some big building over where there would have been bodies. Right. Right. And the fascinating thing about this is Scarpelli, like, just like Cam said, this guy was a serious killer. He was a muscle builder. He was a terrifying guy. I mean, he had almost inhuman physical strength. Yeah. And when he flipped, he was completely debriefed by the FBI and the DOJ and then decided to try and change his mind. [6:27] But before he could do that He hung himself in the bathroom Of the Metropolitan Correctional Center With his hands behind his back And a bag over his head, Who was he in prison with? Who was he in MCC with, Paul? Was it anybody? He did happen to be in the MCC with the German at the time. He bound his hands behind his back and put a bag over his own head. He did. He did. And so the outfit continues to somehow persuade people to take their own lives rather than testify against them. [7:07] It’s a hell of a way to die by suicide it is by suicide at least they didn’t have arrows in his back, not as far as we know yeah it was terrible he cut his own head off I saw a cartoon once that the homicide guy liked to go ahead and maybe real suckle of suicide because then you could just walk away from it so there’s a dead body laying there with a bunch of arrows at his back and a homicide detective standing over him with a hand and pencil and says, hmm, suicide, huh? [7:44] Got the inside joke. It worked homicide. You see how those guys sometimes will try to make something into a suicide that probably is a homicide. On the other hand, we had one, we had a mob guy, he wasn’t really a mob associate, who had gone to Vegas. He lost a lot of money and they found his body in his car at the airport parking lot after coming back from Vegas and they found out later lost a lot of money and the car was parked up against the fence and he was shot in the head and there was no gun in the car you know found so just assume that somebody shot him in his head the car kept going and rolling up against the fence. [8:25] But this one detective, I remember Bob Pence is his name. He was dumb. And he started, he went back over and he dusted that car for prints again. And he got some more evidence out of it. And then he went back to the airport and he looked and started asking questions. And he found out later that somebody who had a pickup truck parked there had a week later, three or four days later, come back and got his truck. When he got home he found a pistol inside the bed of his truck and he called the airport or he called somebody turned it in Pinson found that pistol that was a pistol that that shot the guy so Pinson's theory was he was rolling along in his car he shot himself in the head and then he flipped that pistol out is with a reaction he flipped it out and went in the bed in that pickup and then it rolled on up against the fence and they ruled it a suicide wow damn that’s not that different than Scarpelli I mean the fbi to this day insists it was suicide yeah well, Oh, well, right. All right. Let’s move along to Mario. John, the arm. Rainone. [9:41] Is that correct, Cam? That yeah, that’s Rainone. Yeah. So tell us about that. I know we talked about this, you know, a little bit about this one. [9:50] This is kind of a funny one. He was he was sent to kill a building inspector. Raynaud was with the Grand Avenue crew and so he’s en route to kill this guy and this is one of those mob blunders and he sees a couple guys following him and it’s Rudy Fredo and Willie Messino and he recognizes him when he’s driving over there and it’s important to point out who these guys are, Cam, not to interrupt you Willie Messino, was the right hand man and bodyguard for Tony Accardo for 30 years I mean, he was serious, serious business. Rudy Frayto, you know, the chin, but Massino was serious news. If you saw Willie Massino, you knew he were in for trouble. Yeah, he wasn’t there as backup to do anything except clean up after Rainone, including Rainone. So Rainone saw the writing on the wall. He pulls up and he goes straight to the FBI. [10:54] And he informs, he talks to them and gives them his information. And later on, he sort of regrets doing so, denies that he ever did. Uh, there were, there were, uh, articles written about him. There’s a, there’s a Chicago Tribune writer, John Cass, and Ray Nolan had a back and forth with him writing letters. This is how these mob guys in Chicago operate, talking about, I’m, I ain’t no beefer. And, uh. Once he was out of prison in 2009, he was busted several more times. If you can believe it, he stayed in the criminal life. He was robbing a liquor store with another guy. And the guy he was robbing with, this is why I jump ahead a little bit, was a guy named Vincent Forliano. He claimed that he didn’t even know Fratto or Messino. These were guys he didn’t know, so he never would have informed against them. The guy he was robbing the liquor store with and he was committing other robberies with, Vincent Forliano, was Fredo’s son-in-law. [11:56] So he was committing robberies with a guy related to the guy, but he didn’t know who they were. And to say that somebody didn’t know, as Paul said, Willie Messino, is just ludicrous. Anybody in the criminal atmosphere, period, knew who Willie Messino was because you were probably paying money to it. to exist. And this is extremely important because Rainone, at the time this happened, Rainone cooperated long enough to record conversations with Lenny Patrick. That’s right. That’s right. And that set dominoes in place that would lead to the fall of the outfit. Even though he tried to take back his cooperation, to say he never cooperated, I’ve heard those tapes that were played in trials that I participated in, so I I know better. Uh, and that’s why they call him Mario flip flop Rainone because he, uh, would cooperate and uncooperate and then cooperate. But he is the one who got Lenny Patrick on the hook. Yeah. [13:00] Interesting, interesting. Let’s just continue on with this Lenny Patrick because we weren’t going to talk about him. That’s a good lead hand to talk about another, really one of the most important informants that year who testified. [13:13] Can you talk about the domino that led to the end? Rainone really, really flipped the domino that kicked over. Go ahead, Paul. Well, Lenny Patrick was the highest, and even to this day, remains the highest ranking member of the outfit to ever turn state’s evidence. The guy was a capo in all but name. He had been in charge of Rogers Park, the gambling. He was essentially the head of the Jewish arm of the mafia, kind of the Meyer Lansky figure of Chicago. And when the Lawndale neighborhood moved north to Rogers Park, he moved with them, and he had his own crew. He reported directly to Gus Alex, who was, of course, at the very top, and Sam Carlisi. And he was dealing with Marcello and Carlesi in a number of different outfit ventures, loan sharking. He personally had been staked by Carlesi with a quarter million in cash to put out on the street. And he was involved in extortions Bombings of theaters All these things directly at the command of Sam Carlisi Who was then the boss of bosses of the Chicago outfit So when Rainone got him on tape They set up what was the beginning of the end for the outfit And I think people need to understand who Gus Alex is also For people outside of Chicago Gus Alex was. [14:40] Basically, I guess you could call him the equivalent of maybe the consigliere in Chicago. When you look at Chicago, the triumvirate in the 70s, once a guy like Paul Ricca died and several major outfit leaders died in the early 70s. [14:58] Tony Accardo decided that the outfit would be led by himself, by Joy Iupa, and the political wing and all of the non-Italians and all of the grift and a lot of aspects would be led by Gus Alex. So he was essentially on the same level as Joey Iupa, and he was responsible for much more for things of greater import than Joey Iupa. I mean, controlling the political arm and all the payoffs and all of that is much, much more than the streets and the murders. So all the politics and all the anything that had to do was definitely fell under gus alex and he was part of a ruling triumvirate he was a non-italian part of a ruling triumvirate with iupa and uh acardo so he was the the leader top of the outfit and he had been for years going back to going back to the 30s and the 40s 40 he had come up under, the Murray the Camel Humphreys and had made those connections he was the most connected guy in the Chicago outfit, so for a guy like Lenny Patrick to be. [16:15] Rollover against is essentially the political leader, national political leader and political leader of Chicago. This was absolutely crippling to the outfit. That was he wiped out the entire political arm of the Chicago outfit. After Lenny Patrick brought down Gus Alex, this became a basically a street crime organization. It was that those political contacts. I mean, I think that’s a fair statement, right, Paul? Those political contacts and judges, I mean, that was all but eliminated with Gus Alex going away. You’re absolutely right, Cam. And he not only took out Gus Alex, but he took out the boss of the Italians, too. That’s right, yeah. Both of them at the same time. He wiped out the outfit, and you put it beautifully by saying it became a street crime organization. You think about the division of labor and it started with IUP and IUP and. [17:19] La Pietra, Jackie Cerone, they had all the gambling, a lot of the sports gambling, but they also had the skim from Las Vegas, and they ran all that stuff, while Gus Alex, along with Lenny Patrick, ran all that politics, and you can’t have a mob organization if you don’t have cover politically. That’s why even in Kansas City, we’re pretty clean here, but we still never had any real mob prosecutions. [17:47] And it certainly had very few, if any, little, if any mob prosecutions at Cook County. And you couldn’t even get convicted of a real crime, murder, assault, or something. It’s just a straight-out crime. You weren’t even trying to do a RICO, I think, on anybody. So it was, you know, they just operated with impunity. Well, you took out that whole gambling side. That was all the money coming in. And then shortly thereafter, you take out the political side, who then turns back and gets the new boss on the gambling side and loan sharking and all that. [18:23] I’ll tell you, by 1990, the outfit’s gone. It really is. It still exists to a degree, but Sam Carlisi was the last traditional old line boss of the outfit. you, that, in my opinion, that ever ruled. After that, it was never the same. Yeah, I think a guy like Gus Alex, you know, like you said, Gary, you had Aiuppa who was dealing with gambling, but I think that’s a lot of, there’s a lot of optics to that, you know, and you’ve got all these cities who have got characters who are not Italian, Gus Alex in Chicago, and, you know, as Paul said, Meyer Lansky, who was New York, and you had Mashie Rockman in Cleveland, and these characters not italians so they know when to step back and let and let the italians talk but that doesn’t mean that they’re not running things it’s just for the optics of city to city where the italians have to see that they’re dealing with italians they don’t walk in the room it doesn’t mean that behind the scenes they’re not pulling the levers they just because of of the uh uh criminal um. [19:34] The the criminal view of of non-italians in that world sort of sort of their own prejudices these guys don’t always walk in the room when they’re dealing with other cities gus alex is is sitting down with anybody in chicago but you go to kansas city you go to new york, you know meyer lansky would leave the room when they were when they were talking you know italian to Italian. And the same thing with Gus Alex or Mace Rockman or any of those other guys who are not Italian. It was just an optics city to city. It doesn’t mean that they weren’t pulling the levers. Is it Yehuda or Jehuda, Cam? Jehuda. I’ve always heard of Jehuda. Yeah, Jehuda. So he kind of dealed with the IRS that year. [20:23] He must have had some. The IRS was really strong working the mob in Chicago. I’ve noticed several references to IRS investigations. We did not have that in Kansas City, and the IRS did a little bit, but they were not as strong as they were up in Chicago. [20:38] Yeah, he met with an agent, Tom Moriarty, who’s been around and worked Chicago for a long time. He was a pretty well-known guy up here. But Bill Jehota worked under Ernest Rocco Infelice, who was a real powerhouse going back a long time. And out in Cicero, and his crew, a lot of these crews had their own little names, and they called the good shit Lollipop. He was a huge gambling enterprise, you know. And they bought a house up in Lake County, which is north of the city. It’s funny, this house they bought was actually the family that had lived in it. The son had murdered the family. It was a murder house before the outfit bought it. and uh they bought it used it as a as a gambling den and and after that moved out they used it for prostitution and they would park cars at a nearby motel that they ran and then then have a uh a, valet service that drove him to this this gambling house and there was also quite a few uh murders that uhJahoda witnessed i’m sure he took no part in it he just happened to be standing outside of the house when they when they these murders were committed there was a uh was it hal smith and um. [21:57] Oh i can’t remember the they killed somebody else in this home and they burnt these were guys who didn’t want to pay his tree tags, and they were gamblers who refused to give in. And he brought down this entire crew. I mean, Rocco and Felice was… There’s a famous picture of the day after the Spolatros were killed. And it was really the upper echelon of the up that you’ve got. You’ve got little Jimmy Marcello. You’ve got the boss, Sam Wings-Carlesi. You’ve got the street boss, Joe Ferriola. And you’ve got Rocco and Felice, who’s right there. These are the four top guys, basically, in the outfit as far as at this time, the Cicero crew had risen to the top. That was the powerhouse crew. And so he was involved in those discussions because he was such a powerhouse out there with Ferriola being the street boss. So he was, it really can’t be thatJahodatestimony that eventually brought down this crew was really, it really crippled that crew for a long time. Well, those people that went down in that trial have only in the last five years come out of prison. Yeah, we’ve actually had been talking to somebody. We’ve had the… [23:13] Opportunity to meet he brought down uh uh robert um to go beat um bellavia and another guy who doesn’t like to be mentioned who runs a pretty successful pizza pizza chain up in lake county and uh these guys went down for a long time the beat was down for 25 years and he just came out. [23:39] So and billJahoda have if you read his testimony it is kind of kind of odd that he was standing outside of the building and just looked in the window and they were committing a murder and he just he he places himself outside of the house witnessing a murder through the window which is convenient when you’re the one testifying against murderers it certainly is yeah. [24:03] So so that was he was involved in the gambling so that makes sense then the irs got him and millions of dollars millions of dollars a month they were bringing and he met uh, i don’t remember paul and you did he he contacted moriarty right or did moriarty reach out to him because he was under investigation i i thought Jahoda was was worried about himself so he reached out to them i can’t remember the details i think you’re right yeah i i think he was worried about his own his own safety gary and he reached out to moriarty and they met up at a hotel just outside the city on the uh up in the northwest and uh they talked about things i actually found the location and on the little map you can find where where they met each other but he they met each other in disgust and they would meet different locations and and jahuda wore a wire and some of those some of those wiretaps are they really make for that. [25:05] That those conversations come right out of the movie just i love what we’re doing out here and i love my job and and you actually where i’m going to make you trunk music i mean you really hear these things that that you see it right in the movies i mean you you can’t write the dialogue that these guys are actually using it’s it’s it’s you know it it comes straight out of a book i mean You’ve got, you’ve got, uh, this is the toughest dialogue you’ll ever hear. Interesting. How’d you buy it? Where’d you find that at? Is that, uh, it’s probably not the audio in probably anywhere. No book or something. Yeah. You can, if you look up, if you look up different, different, you know, you go on newspapers.com or you go in different, uh, I believe, uh, I’ve got, um, uh, mob textbook by, um, Howard Abedinsky. I’ve got a couple of copies of his, of his textbook, organized crime. And he’s got some clips of it. This guy who owns a pizza shop up north is talking about how he loves his job. He loves what he does. And it’s funny to hear he talk about smashing somebody and loving what you do. Really? I’ve heard a few conversations like that back at the station house. [26:25] I don’t care. It’s on both sides. Is that what you’re saying? When you live in that world. Those guys can go either direction. [26:37] Well, let’s talk about ex-Chicago cops. Speaking of cops, let’s talk about, Vince Rizza, his daughter actually appeared on that Chicago Mob Housewives, or they tried to do a show. And Frank Schweiss’ daughter was on it. And Pia Rizza, who has gotten some notoriety as a model or something, I can’t remember. And she really, she was tight. She would not talk about her dad at all. I read an interview of her. She would just talk about her dad at all. But he came in and he testified against Harry Aleman, of all people, and linked him to the murder of this bookie, Anthony Ritlinger. Remember that one? [27:22] Go ahead, Paul. No, that one I’m not very up on, Cam. I’m sorry. So, Ritlinger, I believe he didn’t want to pay his street tax, if I’m right, Gary. Yeah, you’re right. He had been warned. Rattlinger had been warned that he needs to pay, he needs to pay, and he was making a good deal of money. And Ratlinger was he was brought in just the normal course of action with the wild bunch because he was a wild bunch murder I’m a little rusty but here it comes so he was a wild bunch killing, he was brought in he was warned it was the typical Harry Ailerman and if I’m remembering correctly and people correct me if I’m not it was Butch Petruccelli they sat him down. [28:11] Usually it would be Butch and, um, uh, Borsellino who would do the talking, uh, Tony Borsellino, and they would do the talking. And then afterwards, Butch Petruccelli would just sit down and glare. So he was a pretty scary guy. And he had that, uh, uh, Malocchio, the, the evil eye, and he would just glare at people. And that would send the message and Rattlinger didn’t, didn’t listen. He was making too much money, he’s not going to pay any damn Degos, that kind of line. And so he, of course, fell victim to these guys. And I believe he may have been trunk music. I think I remember this one, Matt, but I can’t remember. Yeah, I got this one. He went to a restaurant. That’s right. That’s right. And he had already, his daughter lived with him. I’m not sure about the wife, but he had warned his family to take all kinds of extra cautious. He knew something was coming. And it was, you know, after reading that thing, it’s, It’s kind of like, well, we talked about Spilotro taking off their jewelry. Ken Eto did this similar kind of a thing and told his wife he may not be coming back. [29:22] I tell you, another guy that did the same thing was Sonny Black. That’s right. It came out about Joe Pistone, the Donnie Brasco story. He did the same thing. He went to a sit-down or a meeting, and he took off his jewelry, I believe left his billfold, when he went to the meeting. this. Ken Eto was the same way. Ken Eto, I think, thought he could talk his way out. I think all of them thought they could talk their way out of it. So Rettlinger went out by himself and sat in a prominent place in this local restaurant that was really well known up there in the north side. It’s north of downtown Chicago, and I can’t remember the name of it. [30:02] And he just sat there and pretty soon a car pulls up and two guys run in kind of like a Richard Cain kind of a deal and just start popping. And that was a Harry Aleman deal. That’s right. He did, I believe. There’s an old guy who married the girlfriend of Felix Adlericio, I believe. He and this woman are sitting out in front of their brownstone, and Aleman and some other dude pull out and get out when guys walk up to him and shoot him and kill him. [30:31] And so that was – Yeah, that was Petrocelli and Aleman walked up, And he had been, he had been dating, uh, uh, Aldericio’s, Alderico’s girlfriend. Now that’s the famous hit from beyond the grave. Because we’re going to go on the old Samuel’s just sitting in the lawn chair thinking he’d got it made. That’s right. You know, Gary, you and I did the show on the outfit, uh, a long time ago. No, I’m sorry. On the wild bunch, a long time ago. So a lot of those, and they did so much work back in the day. A lot of those run together, but yeah, you’re now, uh, now that you’re right, writing her was he was eating in a restaurant. I’m, Uh, I can’t remember the name. It may have been, been Luna’s, but he was, went out in public. He thought he’d be safe. And like you said, a lot of these guys have a six cents because they come up on the street and they know these things. And, uh, like a guy like Sammy and Reno knew it was coming. He was dodging them for a long time, but they, they know that their time is coming. Eventually they just, they stay ahead of it for a while and figure they can fight their way out or talk their way out. And yeah, they, he was blown away right in public. Like it was similar to the, I remember it being similar to the, to the Richard Cain murder. And this was in, it was right around the same time. It was, it was in the mid seventies, 75, 74, 75, 76. It might’ve been 75 that writing or happened right, right in the middle of the restaurant. [31:58] I’ve been a lot cheaper to pay the street tax, I reckon. You know, and it wasn’t, I don’t recall that they’re asking for so much, but once these murder started happening yeah i think it was it wasn’t like it was half or 75 i think they just wanted it was you know it might have been a quarter it might have just been a flat fee across the board but once that street tax was was instituted i mean we’ve talked about this before gary that was when the wild bunch was out there that was that was they really didn’t play around When Ferriola told these guys, get everybody in line, [32:31] they really cracked down and they weren’t playing at all. You pay or you die. And guys like Alem and Patrick Shelley, whether it was right in public or whatever, in the outfit in the 70s, Paul, you know this from Richard Cain and several others. They just write in public would just blow you away. and writing her was just was almost textbook just like the Richard Cain it was it was right in the right in the restaurant yeah I’ll tell you I’ll tell. [33:05] I was conflating him with Hal Smith. Okay. I’ll tell you something about those mob hits. When they kill somebody in public like that in a public way, more than likely it’s because whoever the victim is has been alerted, and they can’t get anybody to get close to them. They will already try to send somebody around to get them isolated, and when they can’t get them isolated, then they want them bad enough. They’ll just lay, as Frank Calabrese, I heard him say once, well, lay on them. And I thought, oh, that’s interesting. Well, lay on them. I read that somewhere else. They use that term when you’re following somebody and you’re trying to set them up, or yet they lay on them. Calabrese even said, you know, you’re like, get an empty refrigerator box and hide inside of it. I mean, it’s just like the kind of stuff we used to do at the intelligence unit to run surveillances on people. And so they’ll lay on them for a while until they can get you somewhat isolated. And if they can’t, then they’ll just take you out in public. It might be to send a message, but I don’t think so because it’s so risky to get somebody in public. You can have a young, all-fitty cop in there that you didn’t even notice, and he comes out blazing. And, you know, it’s just not worth it. Even if you take him out, he’s probably got to get you. [34:21] So it’s kind of a last resort. A desperation. Yeah, it’s desperation because they can’t get you isolated. [34:28] You look at some of these public murderers, guys like Richard Cain or Ridinger, like you said, who was on the watch. Sam Annarino, who was right on Cicero. [34:39] A guy like Chris Carty, who was years later. I mean, these are guys who would have been smart enough and street smart enough to be on the watch, to watch their step, to know what was going on. With the exception of a guy like Michael Cagnoni, who just happened to be difficult to get, and he probably might have had an idea that something was happening, but I think just he was a family guy, and so it was hard to isolate. They blew him up on the interstate, but I think that in general, that’s a good point, Gary. These guys, if they just run up and blow away, it’s just a last resort. That’s an excellent point. I have always been in that camp of, oh, that must be sending a message. But you, with your experience, I think you’re exactly right. One thing, guys, I think we’re mixing up Sambo Cesario with Sam Annarino. I was thinking when they – yeah, you’re right, Paul. I was thinking, though, when they blew away Sam Annarino in the parking lot with his family, though, they had been trying to get him for several months. And they finally just went after him in the parking lot, called in a robbery, and blew him away in the furniture store parking lot. That was what I meant. Yeah, Gary was referring to Sambo earlier. I just meant they had been trying to get Sam Annarino for a long time, and when they couldn’t, they just got him in the parking lot. [36:08] Well, interesting. You know, no matter how much terror these guys strike in the heart of their underlings, in the end, they still will turn once in a while. And I think people don’t really not turn because they’re afraid of getting killed so much if they don’t turn because they don’t want to have their family suffering the disgrace of them being a rat or a snitch. I think that’s more important to be a man and go out like a man in this subculture and believe me I’ve lived in a subculture where being a man and being a tough guy is more important than anything else, I think that’s the most important thing that keeps people from coming in you’re like a wimp you’re a puss, you can’t take it, can’t handle it you know what I mean you can’t handle five years I could do five years standing on my head or a tray like the dude told me so uh you know but even even with all that and still there’s a certain percentage that will end up coming in sure and usually there are people that either don’t care about their family like lenny patrick yeah or that don’t have close family so that they don’t have it so much of that pressure that you’re talking about gary because you make a really valid point that that that cultural value is so strong yeah yeah it’s it’s. [37:36] In a lot of these small towns, you see in Detroit where they’re all family tied in and everything, you don’t see informants. I think they’ve had one. Kansas City, as you said, Gary, you don’t see. But then you look at a place like Rochester where they’re all just lower tier mob guys. Everybody was informing on everybody because they really weren’t as upper echelon sort of mob guys. So I think that, like you said, once you get that culture seeped in, you’ve got those families and all, there’s a lot of factors. But if it’s a deep-rooted mob town, you really don’t see a lot of real informants. [38:11] So, guys, now we’ve got one that I did a show on. I did a couple of shows on him. I talked to the FBI agent who brought him in and dealt with him for quite a while. Ken Tokiojo Eto. He survived a murder attempt. When that didn’t happen for him with the outfit, what happened after that? [38:32] I believe his attempted assassins got killed themselves. So tell me a little bit about Tokyo Joe Eto. There’s a photograph I have from the late 50s, early 60s And it shows Joe Ferriola And a couple of other heavyweights Hanging around with a young Ken Eto, And a lot of people didn’t know who Ken Eto was But he ran the Japanese game, Gambling, Bolita And lots of money Poured into the outfit through Tokyo Joe As they called him And there was a rumor that perhaps Tokyo Joe was going to turn under a little bit of pressure. And so Jasper Campisi put three slugs in the back of his head. [39:22] Miraculously, he survived three slugs at point blank range. And if he wasn’t going to turn state’s evidence before, he certainly had a powerful incentive to do so now. He seems to insist As I’ve heard that he was not His intention was not It’s hard to say at this point But he says he had no intention Of flipping and that he’s not sure What the evidence was against him But he was not going to flip until, It was Yeah. [39:55] I’m drawing a blank, Paul. Who was it that sent? It wasn’t the saint. It was Vincent Solano. He was kind of Vincent Solano, who was a union guy and a made guy up there. He kind of had which one. [40:11] He was a capo. And which crew was it? Do you remember? He was on the north side. North side crew. North side crew. And actually, Ken went to Vince Solano and had a talk with him. Said you know what i can do this he was looking at a tray i had a dude tell me what’s that pressure and tried to get him to talk and he said uh he said what am i gonna get out of this a tray he said man i can do a tray standing on my head and i threw him right then that’s right gotta talk to me so uh and that’s all he had to do but solano for some reason uh who knows what was in his head because uh ken Eto had made him a lot of money a lot of money and he was a tough little dude he had he had survived he had been put in the uh concentration camps if you will during the internment camps yeah internment camps and then came as a young man up chicago and been around for a long time by the time this all came down he’d been with him for a long time and made him a lot of money and all kinds of different gambling operations but particularly the bolita. [41:13] So uh it just didn’t make sense i heard one thing that these guys in chicago got the idea Yeah, to keep the noise down, they were loading their own rounds with lighter loads of powder. I don’t know. They had like a hit car up there. The guys in Chicago were pretty sophisticated or tried to be. And so they used these lighter loads. And when it went into his head, it just didn’t penetrate his skull. I remember I was at the hospital once, and there was a young guy who had gotten shot in the head. And they said that the bullet was not a good bullet because it went in under his skin and then went under his scalp, along his skull, and then lodged up on his forehead. [41:56] Wow. And so Eto was kind of the same way. Those bullets were probably lodged up underneath his scalp. He pulled himself to a neighboring, I believe it was a pharmacy that was right there, a corner store. And then that guy went to help him. I think he had to dial a call of 911 or whatever. 911 was in place then. He had to call for help for himself from a phone booth. You know, he saved his own life by being smart and playing dead. Yeah, that’s right. And you look at Chicago, it’s a city of neighborhoods, and you’ve got the Mexican town, and you’ve got the different towns, and you’ve got Chinatown where there’s so much money and so much gambling. And while Haneda was Japanese and there’s obviously division between Japanese and Chinese, it would be much easier for him to go in and then some of these outfit guys and because of different things going on back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. But he could go into neighborhoods and represent the outfit in ways in different communities that the outfit wouldn’t go into or a lot of these made guys. [43:12] And that gave him entry into a lot of communities. In the Asian community, there’s a lot of gambling that he was able to tap into. He was smart enough to see that as a route that maybe the Italian guys didn’t, just like Lenny Patrick, who we’ve talked about in other episodes, had that access into the Jewish communities and other Jewish gangsters. There’s a lot of gambling there. If you can get somebody who has an in to different communities, that’s really a way to go and that’s part of why he made so much money. A game like BolEto wouldn’t normally be and that’s huge in the Hispanic communities and huge with Asians also. You know in kansas city that’s interesting that you should point that out camp we had a um large vietnamese community moved in after the the boat peoples when it started and they moved in through the same church uh. [44:09] Sacred Heart Church and Don Bosco Center that the Italians moved in, the Sicilians moved into back in the turn of the century, the same neighborhoods. And Italians are getting successful and they’re moving out the suburbs and the Vietnamese are moving in and creating the Vietnamese restaurants and Vietnamese shops. And they brought, they have a love for gambling. Like you said, they have huge love for gambling. They don’t drink so much or do so many drugs, but they do love to gamble, it seemed to me like. [44:36] And so they had their own book. he was called the king a guy a friend of mine told me a story uh there’s a mob book he got on the periphery that neighborhood’s got a joint and he he was running a sports book and he had a lot of action going in and out of his joint so this one vietnamese guy had a big debt owed to the king so he goes down and talks to this guy’s name was Larry Strada, he ends up getting killed by some other uh mobsters in a deal they thought he was going to testify but i just needed to hear are there, this young, middle-aged Vietnamese guy goes down to the Caddyshack, Larry Strada’s bar. And he starts telling him about the king. He said, man, he said, the king, you take all your business. He said, he got all business down here. He take all your business. He said, you know, you need to do something about the king. He said, you know, we’re close to the river here. And then he made a motion across his throat like he was cutting his throat. So he was trying to get out of his gambling debt to convince this Italian, La Cosa Nostra bookie to go back and kill me yeah king piano. [45:42] You know i’ve heard a lot of stories and some of them are true some are not that one had to ring a truth to it it had a definite ring of truth that that got to do that playing them against each other yeah you bet and you know another thing about tokyo joe and you know he could testify But Ben Solano had Campizé and Gattuso killed right away. Found them in the trunk of their car, I think. Maybe at the airport, even. [46:09] Chicago trunk music, but they have some saying like that. And so Solano knew that they could testify against him, and they didn’t want to go down for attempted murder, more than likely, and he just didn’t take a chance. So he had them killed, and I can’t remember if he went down behind this or not. But another thing Tokyo Joe was able to do, I mean, he certainly could expose all the inner workings of what he knew about to the FBI, which gives you a lot of tips on where to go, who to work on, and maybe where to throw up microphones or some wiretaps. But he also traveled around he came to Kansas City during the skimming trial because they’re working on the Chicago hierarchy. So they just fly him into town. They show him that picture, the last separate picture where everybody’s in the picture. And they say, now, who’s that? Oh, that’s Aiuppa. Okay, then who’s that? Oh, that’s Vince Solano. Yeah, he reports to Aiuppa. You know, and who’s that guy? I can’t remember the other people at all. So the nation said that Joe is up hard. Oh, yeah, he reports to this guy. So to show the organization of the mob in Chicago and that it is an organization that gives orders to have other people carry it to make the RICO case, that he was a storyteller for that. And he didn’t know anything about the skim at all. But he was a storyteller on getting the mob name and the organization in front of a jury. That’s huge, as you know, Paul. [47:35] Absolutely. We had a similar arrangement during the Carlesi trial about how [47:40] the Carlesi crew operated and who was who, and to tell the story. Yeah. You have to make it a story. Let’s take a look at Betty Toco, which, uh, this is pretty interesting. There was a, um, I’m not sure. Albert Toco was your husband. Remind me what his position was at the outfit at that time. So Al Toco was, there’s sort of a division on who was the leadership of, who was the central leader of Chicago Heights. There’s Dominic Tuts Palermo and Al Toco, who was really a powerhouse in Chicago Heights. And Tuts Palermo was definitely highly connected and across the pond too, also in Italy. But uh Toco was involved in the in the chop shop wars really really heavily involved and he had a lot of connections in chicago too he was involved with lombardo and a lot of these chop shops throughout chicago he had a lot of partnerships and so this was a 30 million dollar a year racket stolen cars chop shops international car rings uh car rings throughout stolen car rings throughout the country. Toco was responsible for burying the Spolatro brothers. It was very sectioned off. Each crew had a part in their murder. And then Chicago Heights was responsible for the burial. [49:02] And they were down in Enos, Indiana. They got kind of turned around a little bit. They were down a farm road. They were burying them in a freshly tilled field. And the road where they’re on, there’s a little side road that you would drive down. There’s very little down there. I’ve, I’ve seen it, but a car happened to come down middle of night and they were in a, there’s a, there were a couple of feet off of a wooded area and they see this car coming down and they sort of all panicked and before they had a chance to cover the area or really do anything, it just looked like a freshly dug, it really just looked like freshly dug mound. And so they all fled and three of Toco’s guys went one way and he went the other. They had the car in both radios. [49:46] He’s wandering around barefoot, and he calls his wife finally. She shows up, and he’s screaming and yelling. And he runs to Florida, and he’s waiting for permission to come back from Joe Ferriola. He’s worried he’s going to get killed because they find the Spallachos immediately because the farmer sees his field all messed up, freshly tilled ground, and it looks really suspicious, like somebody had been poaching deer and burying the carcass. Uh but Toco was a tyrant to his wife he was he was horrible to her he was he was when you think of what a mob guy was that was Toco you know tipping the guy who mows his lawn the kid who mows his lawn hundred bucks and wandered around town everybody knows him but he’d come home and unlike a lot of these guys he was he was a real you know a real. [50:36] Real bastard to his wife you know and for years she put up with this sort of abuse and finally after this this happened and it was in the news and all he finally pushed her too far and she began informing on him and and he was arrested later on he was in his jail cell talking about all the murders he had committed and and this and that about his wife and uh his his uh uh A cellmate repeated everything that he said to try and lessen his sentence. So really, Toco got buried by his big mouth and his terrible behavior. He initially fled to Greece before he was arrested, and they extradited him back from Greece. So this is, I mean, Toco is like deep in mob behavior. [51:22] I mean, fleeing the country and all. I mean, it doesn’t get much more mafia than Al Toco. I hesitate to use that word with Chicago, but that was, Al Toco was running deep. and that Betty Tocco’s testimony eventually led to the trial of Al Tocco. And that was really a blow to the Chicago Heights crew that nowadays, I mean, they continued on and had a few rackets, but after the eventual trial that stemmed from that, it really wasn’t, there’s not much activity now. I’m in that area and there’s just, there’s really nothing here. [51:59] Interesting. Now, so Tony and Michael Spilotro had been lured to somebody’s house on the promise that Michael was going to be made. It’s my understanding. I believe that’s what Frank Collada had reported. And some other people, not part of the Chicago Heights crew, killed him. How did that go down? And how did they pass off the body? You guys, is there anything out there about that? Wasn’t that the family secrets trial, maybe? It was. And, of course, it’s been popularly portrayed in the movie Casino. And it’s surprisingly accurate Except for the fact That where they were beaten But what happened was Little Jimmy Marcello called them. [52:41] And said Sam, meaning Sam Carlisi, the boss, wanted to see them. And they knew that that was ominous because of what was going on beyond the scope of this show. But they took off the jewelry. They left. They told their wives, if we’re not back by 930, it’s not good. They really did not suspect that it was to make Michael. That’s what Collada said. You’re absolutely right about that, Gary. But I don’t think that’s correct at all. They knew that it was bad. And they went. He took a pistol, which was against the rules. They hit him a pistol. Tony hit a pistol on his brother, which you do not do when you go to see the boss. And they were picked up by, by Marcello and taken to a house. I, uh, was it Bensonville? Yeah. Up in Bensonville. Uh, in, in the basement, they walked down the stairs and all of a sudden they looked into the eyes of Carlici and, uh, DeFranzo and everybody, the whole, all the couples were there to spread the, the, uh, liability around and they were beaten to death with, with fists and feet, uh, in, in that basement and then transported to that burial ground, which coincidentally was just maybe a couple hundred yards away from Joey Aupa’s farm. [54:00] Right. So I guess that they must have had, uh, Toco standing by, because I don’t believe he was in that basement. I like that. He must have had him standing by to go grab the bodies and take them out. Really interesting. He should have had the old Doug before he got there. You know, that’s what they always say. First you dig the hole then you go do the murder right and i don’t think he had it done before he got there yeah i don’t i really that’s a good that’s a good point gary i really don’t know and nobody’s ever come forward to say what the status of the hole was beforehand uh you know it was a deep it was a deep it was it was a pretty deep hole uh but they may have had a dug ahead of Tom, but, but, uh, cause they knew the location and it’s pretty obscure location. So they had clearly been there before. And, and, you know, everybody knew that that was, I, I hope was, I got it right. Farm. And, uh, So they may have had it dug, and they just did a shoddy job covering it up. [55:05] But I also haven’t heard the specific details about how they handed it off to Toco. I don’t recall seeing that in Calabrese’s testimony. Yeah, it was Nick Calabrese that testified about that. It brought up the light. He named the killer. So he may not have gone that far, probably having Toco and having his wife testify that he did do this. that she picked him up out there. It was just a piece of the entire prosecution on the spot, which it really never was a trial or anything on that. I don’t believe. Another odd thing is he, I believe he ranted and raved the entire car ride back. And from where he was, you would run up with, It’s now turns into Indianapolis. So it’s a good car ride from where they were to Chicago Heights. I believe he ranted and raved about the guys and his crew and the burial and everything, the entire car ride, which was not something most guys would do in front of their wives. But I really, especially when he treated like that. Right. And complained about how long it took her to get there and everything. So she was able to verify a lot of what Calabrese was saying from the final end of it. Interesting. A friend of mine was in the penitentiary, and he said, there’s a guy in there who called himself a verifier. He said, what do you mean? He said, I’m a professional verifier. What he was, he was an informant. That’s what he was, but he called himself a verifier. [56:33] A girl would come to him and say, well, I heard this, this, and this. Is that true or not? He’d say, well, that’s true. That’s not true. [56:40] I guess that’s a more preferable term. Yeah, she was a verifier. Well, that was great. I really appreciate having that on there and Paul. And I really, I still miss Cam. Every time I get ready to do a Chicago show, I think, oh, I want to get Cam or Rochester. [56:58] We did one about Rochester. We did one about Utica. I did several other shows about other families. And he was a good guy and a real great researcher and a real expert on the outfit and other mafia families. So rest in peace, Cam and Paul. I hope to talk to you again one of these days. Guys, don’t forget, I got stuff to sell out there. Just go to my website or just search on my name for Amazon. I can rent my movies about the skim in Las Vegas, about the big mob war between the Savella brothers and the Spiro brothers in Kansas City. Then one about the great 1946 ballot theft in which the mob… Rigged election, helped Harry Truman rig an election. It’s a little harder to find than mine. You need to put ballot theft and Gary Jenkins. I think you’ll find it then. The other two, Gangland Wire and Brothers Against Brothers, Sabella Spiro, were a little bit easier to find. Had to put it up a different way because Amazon changed the rules, but I got them up there. So thanks a lot, guys.

The final week of the regular season is here! There's no hope for Paul, but Bill is looking for a winning week to break above .500. *First Bet Offer $1500* 1. Download the BetMGM Sportsbook app on iOS or Android, or visit betmgm.com. Use the promo code BURR 2. Sign up and deposit at least ten dollars ($10.00) into your BetMGM Sportsbook account. 3. Place your first wager and receive up to $1,500 back in Bonus Bets if the bet loses. 4. If the bet does lose, your Bonus Bets will be available once your initial wager is settled. *First Touchdown* Place a pre-game, straight First Touchdown Scorer bet in any NFL game. If your player scores the first touchdown in the game, win your wager as normal. If your player scores the second touchdown in the game, you’ll get your stake back in cash. (Only straight bets apply to Second Chance. Any wager using a bonus bet, bonus or other reward token is ineligible for the campaign.) Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER (Available in the US). Call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP (AZ), 1-800-327-5050 (MA), 1-800-BETS-OFF (IA), 1-800-981-0023 (PR). First Bet Offer for new customers only. Subject to eligibility requirements. Rewards are non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire in 7 days. In partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel. See BetMGM.com for Terms. 21+ only. US promotional offers not available in New York, Nevada, Ontario, or Puerto Rico.

 “A sonnet,” said the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “is a moment's monument.” But who invented the sonnet? Who brought it to prominence? How has it changed over the years? And why does this form continue to be so compelling? In this episode of the History of Literature, we take a brief look at one of literature's most enduring forms, from its invention in a Sicilian court to the wordless sonnet and other innovative uses. Note: A version of this episode first ran in August 2018. It has been missing from our archives for many years. Join Jacke on a trip through literary England! Join Jacke and fellow literature fans on an eight-day journey through literary England in partnership with ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠John Shors Travel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ in May 2026! Scheduled stops include The Charles Dickens Museum, Dr. Johnson's house, Jane Austen's Bath, Tolkien's Oxford, Shakespeare's Globe Theater, and more. Learn more by emailing jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or masahiko@johnshorstravel.com, or by contacting us through our website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠historyofliterature.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. December update: Act soon - there are only two spots left! The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠gabrielruizbernal.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Help support the show at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/literature ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠historyofliterature.com/donate ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on For the Health of It, we sit down with David Cirillo — chef, owner, and the heart behind Boca Grande Burritos in Columbia, SC.Born and raised a true Gamecock, David brings 37 years of culinary experience to the table, blending his Sicilian roots, love for heavy metal, and bold creative flair into every dish he serves. From running a fast-casual favorite on Forest Drive to building a community around great food and good vibes, David's story is all about passion, grit, and staying true to who you are.We talk food, family, inspiration, the realities of running a local business, and what it really takes to turn decades of experience into a place people love.Thank you so much for listening! If you would like to see more from Boca Grande Burritos, you can find them here: https://www.instagram.com/bocagrandeburritos/https://www.facebook.com/BocaGrandeSChttps://www.bocagrandesc.com/This episode is sponsored by Columbia Family Chiropractor: https://www.cfcforhealth.com https://www.instagram.com/columbiafamilychiropracticIf you would like to follow us, we are on everything at Here For The Health Of It Podcast:https://www.instagram.com/hereforthehealthofitpodcasthttps://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hereforthehealthofit

Long before Prohibition, long before speakeasies and Tommy guns, Pittsburgh's underworld was already taking shape—quietly, violently, and largely unseen.This episode traces the true origins of organized crime in Western Pennsylvania, beginning not with a Mafia family as we know it today, but with knives in an alley, whispered threats, and fear used as a business model. We open on October 28, 1892, when a brutal Sicilian knife duel erupts on a dusty Pittsburgh street—an encounter that nearly kills Salvatore “The Banana King” Catanzaro and sets the tone for everything that follows.From there, the story widens. We travel back to southern Italy and the Mezzogiorno to understand the conditions that shaped the men who would later carry old-world codes of silence, honor, and vengeance across the Atlantic. We follow Italian immigrants into the mills, mines, and boarding houses of Pittsburgh and its surrounding towns—places where law enforcement was distant, protection was unreliable, and fear became currency.At the center of this episode is the rise of the Black Hand. Through contemporaneous newspaper accounts, police reports, and court records, we reconstruct a chilling pattern of extortion, kidnappings, bombings, and assassinations that terrorized Italian communities from the early 1900s through the First World War. Letters marked with daggers and bloody handprints. Demands signed “La Mano Nera.” Victims who paid, victims who vanished, and victims who fought back.We follow real cases that gripped the city: the kidnapping of a Brooklyn child believed hidden in Pittsburgh, assassinations tied to refusal to pay tribute, mining towns paralyzed by fear, and bodies burned or dumped in the hills outside the city. We examine how authorities alternately dismissed, denied, and misunderstood what was happening—even as the violence escalated.Threaded through it all is Salvatore Catanzaro—a man remembered publicly as a successful fruit merchant, civic leader, and pillar of the Italian community, yet whispered about by historians as Pittsburgh's first Mafia boss. We explore his rise from Sicily to America, his near-fatal duel, his quiet accumulation of influence through legitimate business, and the mystery surrounding his true role in the city's early underworld. Was he a padrone who ruled through respect rather than blood? Or a myth retroactively shaped by later generations?By the episode's end, one thing is clear: the Black Hand did not disappear—it evolved. As Prohibition loomed, extortion gave way to bootlegging, and loose networks hardened into organized hierarchies. The foundations of the Pittsburgh Mafia were already in place, built on fear, silence, and survival.This is not a romanticized story. It's a reconstruction—grounded in primary sources—of how organized crime took root in a city better known for steel and smoke than secret societies. And it's the first chapter in a much longer, darker history still to come.

Dive into a late-night mix of muscle car nostalgia, global conspiracies, and the fascinating world of linguistic nuances. Lionel explores why manual transmissions are a lost art, the hilarious (and potentially ghostly) mistranslations of Coca-Cola in China, and the "dangerous" hidden meanings of car names like the Ford Pinto. Between debating hit squads and the cultural differences between Sicily and Sardinia, Lionel celebrates the unsung heroism of sanitation workers and the revolutionary history of the indoor toilet. It is a fast-paced, informative journey through listener stories, "dashboard fails," and the "scholarly" side of verbal aggression. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Angelo Flaccavento has long been one of fashion's most distinctive critical voices — sharp yet empathetic, rigorous yet imaginative, always willing to question his own certainties. In this conversation, he traces his path from a Sicilian childhood spent absorbing magazines in boutique backrooms to becoming a writer whose clarity and candor designers both fear and admire. We discuss the formative power of self-doubt, the responsibility of the critic in an era shaped by branding and algorithms, and why genuine surprise has become fashion's rarest commodity. Angelo reflects on taste as a lifelong education, the tension between fantasy and reality, and the importance of staying fluid rather than defined in a moment obsessed with categorization. “I'm a dreamer, but not an escapist. Fantasy has to somehow crash to the ground in order to become reality.” - Angelo Flaccavento  Episode Highlights: A Sicilian childhood shaped by boutiques and early fashion literacy Angelo grew up in Ragusa surrounded by family-run boutiques at the height of Italy's fashion boom. Magazines, Versace dresses, Guy Bourdin images, and the glamour of the early '80s became his first education in style and visual culture. Discovering i-D and turning Ragusa into his personal London Getting a subscription to i-D as a teenager becomes a defining moment. He reads each issue obsessively, treating it as a window into a world he hasn't yet reached — the foundation of his sharp, culturally attuned eye. From aspiring designer to critic: finding the right medium Though he once dreamed of being a designer, he realized he was more drawn to ideas, imagery, and interpretation. Writing became his path, encouraged by teachers who sensed his voice before he did. A voice that evolves rather than settles Angelo talks about tone and style as living entities — shaped by constraints, sharpened by editors, and never fixed in place. He values clarity, concision, and atmosphere, always pushing himself toward more precision. Doubt as a creative engine He sees doubt not as insecurity but as momentum, calling it “the essence of progress.” Self-questioning keeps him open, curious, and resistant to stagnation. Criticism as decoding, not destruction For Angelo, the critic's role is to cut through PR storytelling and help readers understand what they're actually seeing. He believes in honesty delivered with generosity — critique as illumination, not cruelty. Maintaining integrity in a political, PR-driven industry He speaks openly about the emotional and professional navigation required each season, from access issues to difficult conversations, and why seeing shows live is essential to telling the truth. Fashion's power to surprise Angelo celebrates the rare, electric moments when a show shifts the mood of the entire industry — reminders of why fashion still matters and how a collection can rewire the cultural conversation. Taste as instinct refined over a lifetime For him, taste is a mix of instinct and education — shaped by art history, architecture, vertical lines, trial and error, and everything one has ever seen. Taste is biography turned into perspective. What is contemporary now: resisting definition Angelo concludes that the most contemporary stance is fluidity — refusing to let algorithms, labels, or nostalgia define us, and staying open enough to see the world anew. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textWe trace Saint Lucy's journey from Syracuse to martyrdom, exploring the miracles, symbols, and traditions that shape her patronage of sight and her enduring witness to Christ. We also share prayers, novenas, and practical ways to deepen devotion through Advent.• origins in Syracuse and early vow• courage under Diocletian's persecution• dowry given to the poor• miracles of immovability and restored sight• symbolism of eyes, light, and the Eucharist• feast day customs across Italy and Scandinavia• connection with Saint Agatha and Sicilian sanctity• Saint Lucy in Dante's Divine Comedy• prayers and novenas for healing of sight• resources, pilgrimages, and devotional toolsBe sure to click the link in the description for special news itemAnd since there is more to this article, finish reading and check out the special offerVisit JourneysofFaith.com website todaySaint Lucy CollectionOpen by Steve Bailey Support the showJourneys of Faith brings your Super Saints Podcasts ***Our Core Beliefs*** The Eucharist is the Source and Summit of our Faith." Catechism 132 Click Here “This is the will of God, your sanctification.” 1Thessalonians 4“ Click Here ... lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven...” Matthew 6:19-2 Click Here The Goal is Heaven Click Here Why you should shop here at Journeys of Faith official site! Lowest Prices and Higher discounts up to 50% Free Shipping starts at $18 - Express Safe Checkout Click Here Cannot find it let us find or create it - - Click Here Rewards Program is active - ...

In this episode of the Walk-In Talk Podcast, Carl sits down with Chef Massimo Orlando and Jack Ross for a powerful conversation about Italian heritage, food culture, and the stories that shape who we are.   Chef Massimo Orlando shares his journey from growing up in Italy and learning to cook in his grandmother's kitchen to working professionally at a young age in the kitchens around Lake Como. His path took him across the ocean to Miami Beach and eventually to California, where he built a life, a career, and a community. Massimo opens up about mentorship, immigration, the impact of the pandemic, rebuilding after loss, and how mental health and therapy changed his leadership and outlook on life. He also discusses his role with A.P.C.I. North America and the mission to protect and promote real Italian food and culture in the United States and Canada.   Joining the episode in the studio is Jack Ross, the creator of YO! Meatball. Jack is a home cook whose Sicilian family recipes are rooted in tradition, comfort, and the Sunday table. While cooking his signature meatballs live, Jack shares how family food traditions became a way to connect with community and preserve heritage outside of the professional kitchen. This episode explores two different paths connected by one common thread. Food as memory, identity, resilience, and connection.     Brand & Industry Partners • Metro https://www.metro.com • RAK Porcelain USA https://www.rakporcelain.com/usa • Pass the Honey https://www.passthehoney.com • Aussie Select https://www.aussieselect.com • Ibis Images Studio https://www.ibisimages.com Official Trade Show & Event Partners • New York Restaurant Show https://www.nyrestaurantshow.com • California Restaurant Show https://www.californiarestaurantshow.com • Florida Restaurant Show https://www.floridarestaurantshow.com • Pizza Tomorrow Summit https://www.pizzatomorrowsummit.com • U.S. Culinary Open at NAFEM Show https://www.usculinaryopen.org Cause & Community Partners • The Burnt Chef Project (Mental health advocacy in hospitality) https://www.theburntchefproject.com • Operation BBQ Relief https://operationbbqrelief.org • Hogs for the Cause https://hogsforthecause.org • Sustainable Supperclub https://www.sustainablesupperclub.com

The New Earth is asking for innovative thinkers and creators on a hearts mission to support our world. Are you a healer or holistic practitioner? What kind of passion do you need for success? How can you support others, while allowing life to support you?  For over two decades, Connie Costa, MA has been a luminous force in the world of spiritual transformation—empowering hundreds of coaches, healers, and visionaries to birth the soul-aligned businesses they were always meant to lead. But her path was not paved in ease. When she first stepped into her calling as a coach, she lived through trial after trial—painful failures, unexpected setbacks, and moments that shattered her only to rebuild her stronger, wiser, and infinitely more compassionate. These challenges became her initiation. Today, Connie stands as a highly respected healer and spiritual mentor who carries the sacred Munay-Ki rites—ancient energetic transmissions of the Q'ero lineage that ignite deep cellular remembrance, awaken intuition, and anchor one's highest destiny. Through these rites and her intuitive gifts, she helps spiritual entrepreneurs release the fear that binds them, reclaim their power, and step boldly into the impact they were born to make. Her mastery lies in transforming the lives of heart-centered entrepreneurs still trapped in soul-suffocating careers—those terrified that their dreams will die with them. Connie is devoted to collapsing their learning curve, guiding them to build businesses that feel purposeful, aligned, prosperous, and deeply sacred. Her clients don't just shift—they rise into the most extraordinary versions of themselves, creating impactful legacies that touch thousands of lives. Connie is also an international speaker, writer, and visionary curator of some of the world's most transformational high-end spiritual retreats. With a Master's Degree in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University and professional certifications in holistic and spiritual coaching, she bridges ancient wisdom with modern mastery. Her signature work is leading elite, life-altering retreats across Sicily, Ojai, and just added—England--immersions that weave luxury, spirituality, ancestral healing, and profound inner alchemy. Since 2010, she has crafted bespoke Sicilian experiences that blend opulence with soul: private access to sacred sites, exclusive culinary journeys, curated adventures, and powerful spiritual ceremonies designed to awaken the deepest parts of the self. What began as intimate retreats for her coaching clients has evolved into a global, sought-after transformational journey for those ready to elevate their lives. Connie's devotion to excellence, authenticity, and spiritual integrity is the heartbeat of her work. Every experience she creates—whether a retreat, a ceremony, an article, or a private session—is infused with intention, magic, and a fierce commitment to her clients' liberation and expansion. Contact her at https://www.conniecosta.com/ Her motto: "Fall in Love with Fear So You Can Marry Success." And she lives it—guiding every soul she touches to remember who they truly are, embody their sacred gifts, and rise into a life that is beautifully, powerfully, undeniably their own.  

Send us a textIn this conversation, Bob Sorrentino interviews Christina Marrocco, an English professor, author, and poet, about her Italian heritage and the impact of cultural displacement on Italian American communities. They discuss the history of Italian neighborhoods in Chicago, the importance of preserving language and cultural identity, and the role of storytelling in connecting with one's roots. Christina shares insights from her literary work, including her dissertation on the evil eye in Italian American literature, and emphasizes the need for cultural education and the preservation of family stories.Christina's grandfathers were Sicilian immigrants to America.The displacement of Italian communities in Chicago has left a lasting impact.Cultural identity is often tied to language and community.Many Italian neighborhoods have been gentrified and lost their original character.Preserving family stories is crucial for future generations.Cultural education should start at a young age to instill a sense of identity.Dialects are an important part of Italian heritage and should be recognized as full languages.Literature can bridge cultural gaps and explore complex identities.The evil eye is a significant cultural belief in Italian communities.It's important to document and share personal and family histories.Turnkey. The only thing you'll lift are your spirits.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREEAddio, Love MonsterMarrocco transports you into this small world of Signora Giuseppa, the “iron fist” of Singer StreetDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showPurchase my book "Farmers and Nobles" here or at Amazon.

Known as the King of Sicily, Nero d'Avola is a wine that can be very approachable and fruity, and might just be the wine that you need to serve your friends and family who have not found a wine they like yet. Historically used as a blending grape, sometimes called a ghost grape and “medicine wine” by the French, Nero d'Avola was added to blends to add structure and alcohol. But today, it is finding its legs as a standalone varietal. If you or someone you love is a fancy wine drinker, they will probably not love Nero d'Avola, but if you want a casual cookout or party wine, Nero d'Avola may do the trick. Listen in to learn more about this most famous of Sicilian wines, and see if it might be something you want to try. We also talk to another listener to get their tribe name for the week, and we learn about a brazen wine heist in our Wine in the News This Week section. Wines reviewed in this episode: 2023 Purato Nero d'Avola, 2022 Planeta La Segreta Nero D'AvolaSend us a Text Message and we'll respond in our next episode!Contact The Wine Pair Podcast - we'd love to hear from you!Visit our website, leave a review, and reach out to us: https://thewinepairpodcast.com/Follow and DM us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewinepairpodcast/Send us an email: joe@thewinepairpodcast.com

California's Fast Food Council has gone dormant. Here come the 2026 restaurant industry predictions. And a 10-unit wood-fired pizza concept is getting some growth funding.

On today's menu:

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with former FBI agent Séamus McElearney, author of Flipping Capo, for a deep dive into one of the most remarkable Mafia investigations and how he took down the DeCavalcante Family. McElearney recounts his unlikely path from the world of banking to the FBI, driven by a lifelong fascination with law enforcement. Despite being told he didn't have the “right background,” he pushed forward—eventually landing in New York's Organized Crime Squad C-10, where he investigated both the Bonanno and DeCavalcante crime families. He describes the rare and demanding experience of working two Mafia families at once, and the teamwork required to dismantle them from the inside out. As the conversation turns to his book, Flipping Capo, McElearney explains the years-long process of writing it and the rigorous FBI review needed to ensure no sensitive investigative techniques were revealed. He shares early memories of notorious boss Joe Massino, and the high-stakes surveillance and arrests that defined his career. A major focus of the episode is the arrest and flipping of Anthony Capo, a feared DeCavalcante soldier—and the first made member of that family ever to cooperate with the government. McElearney walks listeners through the tension of that operation, his calculated approach to treating Capo with respect, and the psychological tightrope that ultimately persuaded Capo to talk. That single decision triggered a domino effect of cooperation that helped bring down the New Jersey mob family many believe inspired The Sopranos. Gary and Séamus dive into the proffer process, cooperation agreements, and the behind-the-scenes strategies used to turn high-level mobsters. McElearney also draws comparisons between real mob figures and the fictional world of The Sopranos, revealing how much of the hit series was grounded in the actual cases he worked. The interview closes with McElearney's reflections on how organized crime continues to evolve. While today's mob may look different from the one he battled in the '90s, he stresses that the methods—and the money—still flow. His candid insights offer a rare look into the changing face of the American Mafia and the ongoing fight to contain it. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 2:26 Seamus’ FBI Journey 6:26 Inside the DeCavalcante Family 9:05 The Process of Flipping 10:27 Comparing Families 12:30 The First Cooperation 17:43 The Proffer Process 25:03 Protecting Cooperators 27:44 The Murder of Joseph Canigliaro 29:42 Life on Trial 30:28 The Real Sopranos 39:43 Leading the Columbo Squad 44:15 Major Arrests and Cases 50:57 Final Thoughts and Stories Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00]Well, hey, welcome all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. [0:07]Welcome to Gangland Wire [0:07]I have a former FBI agent as my guest today. And, you know, I love having these FBI agents on. I’ve had a lot of them on and I worked with a lot of the guys and they’re really good guy. Everyone I ever met and worked with was a really good guy. Now they got their deadhead just like we did. But these aggressive guys are the ones that write books and I’ve got one on today. Seamus McElherney. Welcome, Seamus. Thank you. It’s great to be here. All right. Well, an Irish name now working on the Italian mob, huh? How come you weren’t working on the Westie? So they were maybe gone by the time you came around. There’s no such thing. [0:47]Oh, yeah. You got your code. You Irish guys got your code, too. All right, Seamus, you got a book, Killing, or Killing, Flipping Capo. I want to see it back up over your shoulder there. Really interesting book, guys. He flipped a guy named Anthony Capo. And he really took down the real Sopranos, if you will. So Seamus, tell us a little about how you got started with the FBI, your early career. Okay. When I got out of school, I really didn’t know what to do. And I got into banking and I just decided that was really not for me. And I got lucky where I got to meet an FBI agent. and I was just so fascinated by the work. It seemed like every day was different. You know, one day you could meet a CEO and another day you could be doing surveillance. It just, the job just seemed really interesting. [1:38]Like fascinating to me. So I decided to try to become an agent. And I was constantly told, Shane, you should never become an agent. You didn’t have the background for it. And one, one, a motto in life to me is persistence beats resistance. And I was just determined to become an agent. And back then in the late 1990s, it was a long process and it took me close to two years to actually become an agent. And I was selected to go down to training and I was very fortunate to be selected to go down to training. Now it was your first office back up in New York and the, one of the organized crime squads, or did you go out into boonies and then come back? I actually was born and raised in New York, and I was fortunate to be selected to be sent back to New York. So my first squad, I was sent back to the city, back to 26 Federal Plaza, [2:26]Seamus’ FBI Journey [2:24]and I was assigned to a squad called C-10. And C-10 was an organized crime squad, which was responsible for the Bonanno family, and then later became the DeCavocanti family as well, which I can explain to you yeah yeah we’ll get we’ll get deep into that now now let’s let me ask you a little bit about the book tell the guys a little bit about the process of writing a book from your fbi experiences. [2:47]It’s a long process. First of all, I was contacted by someone who was interested [2:55]Writing a Book [2:53]in writing a book based upon my career. People had encouraged me to write a book because I had a very successful career. And when you work organized crime, it’s never just about you. It’s about the people that you work with, right? It’s definitely a team. It’s never just one person. I had great supervisors. I had great teammates. I had a great partner. And so I was approached to write a book. So then I had no idea. So there was an agent, a famous agent, an undercover agent named Jack Garcia. So I kind of really leaned on him to kind of learn how to write a book. And it’s a long process. You have to get an agent, the publisher, a co-author I had. And then when you finally have all that, and you do have the manuscript ready to be written, you have to send it down to the FBI. And that is a long process. The FBI, in this instance, probably took over a year for them to review the book because what they want to make sure is you’re not revealing any investigative techniques. Fortunately for me, a lot of the information that is in the book is public information because of all the trials that I did. Interesting. Yeah, it is. It is quite a I know it was quite a process. [4:00]Now, the banana squad, you work in a banana squad. You know, we know a little bit about the banana squad. [4:07]Was Joe Pacino the boss when you first came in? Yes, he was. And I actually had the pleasure of arresting Joe as well. Ah, interesting. I did a show on Joe. He’s a really interesting guy. I know my friend, who was at the banana squad, I think just before you were, and he talked a lot of, to me personally, he won’t go on the show, but he talked a lot about Joe Massino. He said, actually, saw him in the courtroom one time later on, he hadn’t seen him in several years. And, and Joe looked across the courtroom. He said, Doug, how are you doing? He said, Joe was that kind of guy. He was real personal. He was. [4:44]Yeah, so when I first got to the squad, the supervisor at the time was a gentleman named Jack Steubing, and he had the thought process to go after Joe and his money. So there was two accountants that were assigned to a squad at that time. It was Kimberly McCaffrey and Jeff Solette, and they were targeted to go after Joe and his money. And it was a very successful case. And when we arrested Joe, I think it was in January of 2003, I believe it was, I was assigned to be part of that arrest team. Interesting. You know, McCaffrey and Sled are going to be talking about that case out at the Mob Museum sometime in the near future. I can’t remember exactly when it is. And it was a hell of a case. I think it just happened, actually. Oh, did it? Okay. I actually just spoke to Jeff, so I think it just happened about a week or two ago. Okay. Yeah, I tried to get him to come on the show, and I think maybe he was committed to doing something else, and I didn’t keep after him. And I don’t like to pester people, you know. [5:44]And Fensell was the one that said, you got to get Jeff Sillett. You got to get Jeff Sillett. When I looked into that money angle of it, that was pretty interesting about how they were laundering their money through the parking lots and just millions. And when he gave up, like $10 million or something? I mean, it’s unbelievable. Yes. And that’s that’s one of the reasons why I wrote the book is because I don’t think the public or the press really put this together where that squad, C-10, is a very unique squad where we were dismantling the two families at the same time. Half the family was working the Bonanno family and half the family was working the Cavalcanti family. So it’s a very unique squad during that six or seven year time period where we were dismantling two families at the same time. [6:26]Inside the DeCavalcanti Family [6:26]Interesting and and that gets us into the dekavocante family i could always struggle with that name for some reason but that’s all right guys know i butcher these names all the time. [6:37]Forgive me guys anyhow so you ended up working on the dekavocante family down in new jersey now that you know that’s unusual how did that come about we got we got a new jersey branch of the fbi down there too, Yes, we do. So what happened was I went to training in February of 1998. The case actually starts in January of 1998, where an individual named Ralph Guarino was the mastermind behind this, but he had the idea of robbing the World Trade Center. So he had three people that actually tried to execute that plan. They did rob the World Trade Center, but when they came out, they took their mask off and they were identified by the cameras that were actually there. So those individuals were actually arrested pretty quickly. I think two were arrested that day. The third person, I think, fled to New Mexico and was found pretty quickly. Ralph was smart enough to know that he was going to be apprehended pretty quickly. So he reached out to an agent named George Hanna, a legendary agent within the office, and George was able to convince him to become a proactive witness, meaning he would make consensual recordings. That was in January of 1998. I think it was January 14th. [7:51]Approximately nine days later, there was a murder of an individual named Joseph Canigliaro. Who was a ruthless DeKalocanti associate assigned to a wheelchair. How he got in a wheelchair was back in the 70s, a DeKalocanti soldier and him went to go collect money from a loan shark victim. And the story goes that Jim Gallo, James Gallo, actually shot Joseph Canigliaro by accident and paralyzed him. No hard feelings. It was just the course of doing their business back then. But he was paralyzed from the 70s to the 90s. He was a ruthless individual. though. And the reason that they killed him is his crew around him had him killed. They actually killed him because he was such a ruthless person and who would extort people and just really was a bad person. There were stories that he would call people over to him in his wheelchair and shoot them. So a ruthless guy. And he was killed in, I think, January 23rd of 1998. [8:50]So that’s how this case starts. Ralph Guarino, as I said, became a proactive witness. When you have a proactive witness. You just don’t know where they’re going to go. What I mean by that is you would direct him through mob associates and many guys, and you’re trying to gather evidence on tape. [9:05]The Process of Flipping [9:06]Where Ralph Guarino led us was the Brooklyn faction of the DeCavalcanti family, namely Anthony Capo, Anthony Rotondo, Vincent Palermo. [9:17]Joseph Scalfani, a whole host of DeCavalcanti people that were located in Brooklyn. And that’s how we start to build this case. Now, granted, I was just in training at that time in February of 1998. I don’t get sent back to New York until May of 1998. And from May of 1998 until December of 1998, they put you through a rotation, meaning I go through the operations center, I go through surveillance, and then I finally get assigned to C-10 in December of 1998. At that point in time, Jeff and Kim are already on the squad, so they’re operating the case against Messino. I come to the squad, and the Decalvo Canty case has now started. So I’m assigned to the Decalvo Canty portion of the squad to work them. And as I said, that’s why we’re working two parallel cases at the time. One is against the Bananos, the other is against the Jersey family. And we operate, Ralph, proactively from January 1998 up until the first set of indictments, which was in December of 1999. So compare and contrast the Banano family structure and how they operated in [10:27]Comparing Families [10:24]a DeCavocante family structure and how they operate. Were they exactly the same or were there some differences? [10:31]They’re into the same types of the rackets that the Waldemar people are into, but I would say related to the Decalvo Canty family, since they’re based in Jersey, they really had a control of the unions out there. There was two unions that they basically controlled, Local 394, which was the labor union, and they also started their own union, which was the asbestos union, which was Local 1030. [10:53]And those were controlled by the Decalvo Canty family, so that was the bread and butter of the Decalvo Canty family. So, as I said, the first set, you know, we operated Ralph proactively for almost close to two years. And then in December of 1999, we executed our first set of arrests because there was whispers that Ralph, why wasn’t he arrested yet? Where he was the mastermind behind the World Trade Center being robbed, but he hasn’t been picked up yet. So there was whispers that he might be cooperating with the government. And for his safety, that’s why we took him off off the street and we executed our first round of arrest in December of 1999. [11:33]I’m a relatively new agent. I’d only been on the squad now for a year and we arrested 39 people that day. I get assigned to arrest Anthony Capo, who’s a soldier within the Decavacanti family based out of Staten Island. And I was really surprised by that because, as I said, I was just an agent for about a year. Usually when you’re a new agent, you’re assigned to the back, you know, like we are security. I was even surprised that I was going to be on a team. And I was fortunate enough to be the team leader, which is very surprising to me. And the case was out of the Southern District of New York. And in New York, just for the public, there is two districts. There’s a Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of New York. And the Eastern District of New York also had charges on Anthony Capo as well. So for my arrest team, I had members from the Eastern District of New York as well. There was a separate squad that was looking into Anthony Capo there. [12:30]The First Cooperation [12:27]So I got the ticket to arrest Anthony Capo in December of 1999. And that’s how this case starts. [12:33]Interesting. Now, nobody’s ever flipped out of the DeCavocante family before, I believe. It’s been a pretty tight family, really rigidly controlled by this Richie the Boot. I mean, he’s a fearsome, fearsome guy. I mean, you did not want to get crossways with him. And a smaller, tighter family, it seems to me like, than the New York families. That was right. Well, like up and up until that point, up until that point and unbeknownst to me that no made member in the DeKalbacanti family had ever cooperated with the government before. [13:08]So I had watched George Hanna, how he operated Ralph Guarino for those two years, and he always treated him with respect. And prior to going to arrest Anthony Capo, Anthony Capo had had a reputation of being an extremely violent person, hated by law enforcement and even hated by a lot of people within the mob. But I was going I wasn’t going to let that, you know, use that against him. I was going to treat him with respect regardless. Right. I didn’t know I didn’t know him. I never dealt with him before. And I would basically before I went to go arrest him, I was going to study everything about him, learn everything about him. And I was going to use the approach of treating him with respect and using some mind chess when I was going to arrest him. What I mean by that is I was going to learn everything charges about him, everything about his family. I wanted him to know that I knew him like the back of my hand from head to toe, the start of the book to the end of the book. [14:02]And when I went to arrest him, I remember when we went to his house, he wasn’t there. So all the planning that you do related to going into an arrest, the checks that you do, he’s at the house, you knock on his door, and guess what? He’s not there. So his wife basically tells us that he’s at his mom’s house. So then that throws all the planning out the window, and now we go to his mom’s house. And when I met him, you know, I saw that he had a relationship with his parents, which, you know, it gives me a different perspective from what I heard from him. Interesting. And that says something about him, that’s for sure. So everything that I heard of this violent person and hated person, the way he treated law enforcement, he wasn’t that way with me. [14:49]So when I get him in the car and I start to read him his rights and start to ask him questions, every question that I would ask him, I already had the answer to, like, your date of birth, social security number. And then he would invoke his right to counsel, and then you’re not allowed to ask him any more questions. So what I would do is I would let the mind game start then. And I would ask him, you know, tell him about the charges that he had at that point in time. He was only charged with a conspiracy to murder Charlie Maggiore, who was an acting panel boss of the Decalvo Canty family. At that time, that point in time, they had three panel bosses. It was Charlie Maggiore, Jimmy Palermo and Vincent Palermo. Vincent Palermo was known as the stronger personality and really known as the acting boss. And they wanted to kill Charlie Maggiore. So he was charged with that. conspiracy to murder. And he was also charged with, I believe, stock fraud or it was mail fraud that would lead to stock fraud. So when I would question him, I would tell him, since he already invoked his right to counsel, don’t say anything, just listen to me. For an example, I would say your plan was to murder Charles Majuri. Your plan was to ring his doorbell and shoot him right there with James Gallo, Joe Macella. But you guys didn’t do that because there was a cop on the block. So instead of just doing a ring and run, you guys were going to ring and shoot him, right? [16:17]And now you’ve got to think, I told him, don’t say anything. Just listen to what I just said, right? Because I can’t have him answer any questions. And this wasn’t a question. This was a statement. Yeah. So that gives him food for thought, because you got to think, how would I know that? He doesn’t know at that point in time, this is an indictment. How do I know that? He doesn’t know who the cooperator is. He doesn’t know who made a recording. So I’m just throwing this at him. And this is the first time he’s hearing this. So it’s got to make him think, like, what else does this agent know? And I did this with the other charges as well. And then I would just throw these little tidbits at him. And then I would speak to the driver. How are you doing this? just give him food for thought. And then we just developed a bond that day, just talking sports back and forth. He actually was a cowboy fan. I’m a Steeler fan. So we have that little intensity going back and forth about that. And then we just developed a bond that day. I think that was the first time that he had an interaction with law enforcement, where it was more of a respect thing, as opposed to someone yelling at him or being contentious with him. I don’t think he’s ever or experienced that before. [17:27]Also because of his delivery as well, right? You know, it works both ways where you can, he can have his delivery really angry and that could, you know, provoke law enforcement to be angry towards him too. [17:43]The Proffer Process [17:40]So I think that helped it that way that day. And then just throughout the whole day. And I think one of the things that I do talk about within the book is just explaining processes to people, which is generally, I haven’t seen that done in a book before about how pretrial works. So what is pretrial? How cooperation works? How trial works? So I think there’s a lot of tidbits within the book that kind of explain things like that. Even some crimes, too. Like everyone hears what loan sharking is. I go into detail as to what loan sharking is and how it really works, because it’s a very profitable way to make money. So we have our day together. And, you know, then I had to meet his stepfather. I think he had heard that I treated his stepfather with respect. And then approximately a week later, I get a call from his lawyer and I basically almost fell out of my chair when his lawyer said he wanted to cooperate. [18:37]I bet. And then, yeah. And, you know, keep in mind, I’ve only been on the job for a year and I immediately call the assistant who is a seasoned assistant. Maria Barton, what was her name? And she’s really concerned, like, what did I say? Right. So I told her in these situations, less is more. I just told her I was going to call you. That’s all I said. I didn’t say anything else. Didn’t promise anything at all. I said I was going to call you. So, you know, that started with the process and then you go through a proffer. So I explained what the proffer is and how that process works. Interesting. Yeah. A proffer, guys is is like a kind of agreement you know and you you have to be totally open and admit to every crime you ever did and and we’ll cover you but to a certain point the basis you’ll lie down the basics. [19:31]Right. So what, you know, what we kind of like call it is queen for a day, right? Where you come in, we can’t use your words against you unless you lie to us, right? If you were, if you were to lie to us and then go, go to trial and, you know, we could, if you were to take the stand, we could, we could use it against you. But as long as you come in and you tell us the truth and you tell us everything, all the crimes that you’ve done. And the beauty of the mob is when they do a crime, they never do a crime alone, right? They involve a lot of people within a crime. So that’s the beauty of that. So when we have our first proffer, you know, in time, you only have a short amount of time to actually speak about this because you can only be away from jail for a certain amount of time right before the bad guys start to realize that something might be up. Right. So he comes in. And even even before that, on his on his way back, when we’re taking him back to 26 Federal Plaza, one of the things that he tells us is and it makes sense when we went to his house, he wasn’t there. He was at his mom’s house in the car ride back. He throws a little shot at me and he goes, we knew you were coming. [20:33]Meaning that there was a leak. They got a leak. Yeah. Right. So then when we have the first proffer, he explains the leak to us. And it appears allegedly there was a court reporter within the Southern District that was feeding them information. So that’s not good. And then in the proffer, he tells us about two murders. So, and there might be the bodies, a body might be buried up in Phil Lamella, who was a DeCalvo County soldier, up in Marlboro, New York. So that’s the first thing that he tells us. So these are jewels to us, right? He tells us about a leak. He tells us about two murders. Bodies might be buried. So we have to huddle and we have to decide, is he telling us the truth or not? We all decide that he’s telling us the truth. The proper takes place with George Hanna, as I mentioned him before. Kenny McCabe, a legendary Southern District investigator, and me. And in these situations, again, I’m a new agent. Less is more. I don’t want to say something stupid. So I kind of keep my mouth shut, right? And just listen. So that went really well. And that kind of started this whole process. So now, as we said before, you have… No one cooperated in 100 plus years of this family. And now we have the first [21:49]A Spiral of Cooperation [21:48]made member to cooperate. And basically, Anthony starts a spiral effect of cooperation. [21:56]After he where he reported to in the family at that particular time, since he was such a violent person and hard to control within the family himself. Well, he reported to Vincent Palermo, who was the acting panel boss out of that panel that I talked about, but viewed as the acting boss because of his strong personality. So you have Anthony cooperating. He reports to the acting boss. So from our perspective, our perspective, that’s golden, right? Because now Vinny is going to have to make a decision. Is he going to cooperate or not? And then about three months later, guess what? Vinny decides to cooperate. So now we have a soldier and we have the acting boss who’s going to cooperate. So we go from no one in a hundred years to basically two people in three months. [22:45]Then we have an associate, Victor DiChiro, decides to cooperate. So we go and we arrest him. So now we have three people in four months. So we take all their information, and they have to plead guilty, and they get a cooperation agreement. I explain all that. And when you have a cooperation agreement, as I mentioned before, Anthony was initially arrested for conspiracy to murder, and I believe it was stock fraud. When he pleads guilty, he has to plead guilty to all his crimes that he committed throughout his entire life. Off the top of my head, I remember he pled guilty to two murders. [23:23]11 murder conspiracies, boatload of extortions, and basically every other crime you could think of. And then the same thing with Vinny and Victor. We take all their information, and then we have our next series of indictments. So the first series was 39 indictments. And then the second series of indictments is in October of 2000, October 19th, which we just we just passed the 25th anniversary of that. And that was known as the hierarchy arrest, where we arrested the official boss, John Riggi. We arrested the two other panel bosses, Charlie Maggiore and Jimmy Palermo. We arrested the consigliere, Steve Vitabli, a bunch of captains and soldiers. So that’s a significant arrest, right? So now, as you know, when you have an arrest, there’s trials, there’s plea negotiations. So now we arrested 39 people plus another 13. We’re already up to like 50 something like something people out of that arrest. We get a little shockwave in the sense is that there’s an associate named Frank Scarabino. Frank Scarabino comes forward one day and tells us that there’s a contract on Anthony Capo’s family and Anthony Capo. [24:43]And also, there’s a contract on law enforcement. They want to go back to the old Sicilian ways and basically send a message. So, you know, that’s basically a little bit of a jolt where now we have to try to move Capo’s family. [25:03]Protecting Cooperators [24:59]And Capo’s in prison. He’s defenseless. And I explain all that. People have this sense of you go into the witness security program, you get a whole new life and you’re off and having a great time. They don’t realize that there are prisons within the United States that you have to go to prison. So I can’t say where the prisons are, but I kind of explain that process of how the WITSEC program works, which is run by the marshals. So that’s in that’s in the book as well. Yeah, they have a whole prisons that are just for people in WITSEC. I heard about a guy that said he was in one out west somewhere. Yeah. So and, you know, for those prisons, it’s not like you have to prove yourself. They’re all doing the same time. So they’re basically just trying to do their time and try to get out and get into the next phase of the WoodSec program. So that was kind of a jolt, right? So now we have Frank Scarabino cooperate. So now we have another person. So it’s the list is just getting more and more now. You got to stop taking cooperators and start putting people in jail for the rest of their life, man. [26:03]So it got to after that, we had like two more people cooperate. So we went from having nobody to having seven people cooperate in this period. And it’s interesting. And I know we’re going to go back and forth, but we went from 100 years of having no one to having seven people during this three year period. And since that time period, no other members have cooperated since. So we’ve started the clock again. I think we’re at 25 years plus again since no one cooperated during that period. And I mentioned the murder that we started this case, Joseph Canigliaro. So he was the guy that was in the wheelchair. So as I said, they wanted to kill him because he just tortured his crew. We were able, one of the guys who was initially arrested as part of the December 1999 arrest, he sees everybody’s, he is deciding to cooperate with the government. So he decides to cooperate. His name is Tommy DeTora. So Tommy DeTora decides to cooperate. He’s out on bail. So since he’s out on bail, we decide, let’s make him make a consensual recording. And he makes one of the best consensual recordings the Bureau has ever made. He gets everyone involved in that murder together. [27:28]And they talk about the murder from A to Z. It’s a priceless consensual recording that we used at trial. And it just, you know, one of the things that does stick in my mind is the shooter was Marty Lewis, who got a life sentence. [27:44]The Murder of Joseph Canigliaro [27:45]Marty Lewis is describing when he shot him. And he’s like, I shot him like five or six times in his car. Right. And then Marty Lewis gets out of the car. Joseph Canigliaro drives away, gets to the top of the block in Brooklyn, puts a signal on, put a signal on. And drove the traffic laws, drives to Joseph Wrightson’s house. A guy who was part of the murder conspiracy honks his horn for Joseph Wrightson to come downstairs. So can you imagine Joseph Wrightson looking down the window seeing the guy that’s supposed to be dead right now and telling him to get in the car to go to the hospital with him? [28:32]Unfortunately, when they go to the hospital one of the things that does happen is joseph brightson has uh unfortunately an nyp detective cop who’s a cousin and involves him in this as well and the cop takes shells from the car and he becomes he gets locked up by us as well they all go to trial they get convicted and. [28:55]You know, we also arrested a Genevieve’s captain related to the leak. So in total, I think the numbers were 71 defendants were convicted, 11 murders were solved, seven trials transpired. You know, as everyone knows, you have the arrest, but then you have the trials, right? And I know that from December 2002 up until November of 2003 was the year that I was on trial. There was three trials that I had, and then there was another trial. There was two trials that one was a mistrial. Then we had another trial. So during that one year, we had a year of trials, and the biggest trial I had went on for two months. [29:42]Life on Trial [29:38]So I basically had a year of no life where it was just trials. And as you know yourself, when you have trial, it’s not just you just show up at trial. You have trial prep beforehand. And then when you’re actually on trial every day, it’s 20, it’s 24, seven, you have a trial, you have trial, then at night you have to prep a witness. So there’s just constant stuff throughout the day. Yeah, really? It’s a, it’s a long, boring process for you guys. [30:05]You know, these are like what we would say the real Sopranos, you know, the Sopranos, Tom Soprano, and that’s kind of based on this New Jersey family. I tell you, that Soprano, so much of it was ripped from real life. I don’t know. They interviewed you for details. They interviewed some agents and looked some court cases in order to write those scripts. I know that. And in particular, I think of the gay member that was killed. [30:28]The Real Sopranos [30:27]You know, you guys had that down there. So there’s a lot of references in your book or things in the book that the guys will say, oh, yeah, they did that in the Sopranos. Can you tell us about some of them? [30:37]Well, the thing that was great, especially for trial, is in March of 1999, the show starts in January of 1999. And we have a consensual recording in March where we have DeCavocanti members talking about the show and them saying, saying, this is you, this is you, and this is you, which was priceless for trial. Right. It’s like a jury’s going to hear that. And even during the trial, the judge had to give the jury instructions about the show to make sure that it wouldn’t sway their decision. Then if you watch the show, the first season, the official boss in the show dies of stomach cancer. In real life, that’s happened in real life. In June of 1997, Jake Amari was the acting boss of the Decaval Canty family. He dies of stomach cancer. So that’s a… [31:40]It’s a part of the show right there. Then I know everyone sees the strip club, right? Well, the acting boss, as I told you at the time, Vincent Palermo, he had a strip club in Queens, Wiggles. [31:53]So there’s a similarity there. Then they have the meat market that they go to, right, back and forth in the show. That’s a real meat market. I don’t want to say the name of the real meat market here, but there is a real type of meat market there. We discussed the union angle, the two unions that they have. So there’s so many scams related to the unions. There’s the no show job, right, where you don’t have to show up to work. There’s the no work job where you come, but you don’t have to do any work at all. [32:26]Back then, what it was called was they had union halls, right, where you actually had to show up early in the morning. There’d be a line of people, and you would show up. It was called the shape up. and you would wait online and hopefully that you would get work that day. Well, the DeCable Cante members, they wouldn’t show up early and wait online. They would show up whenever they want and they would cut the line and they would get work. So these were their types of unions that they had. Then, as you mentioned, there was the gay angle too. So on the DeCable Cante real side, there was a guy named John D’Amato. And John D’Amato basically made himself the acting boss when John Riggie went to jail in the early 1990s. John D’Amato was part, was very close to John Gotti. There was a murder. It’s probably the most indictable murder in mob history called the murder of Fred Weiss. John Gotti wanted Fred Weiss killed because John Gotti thought that Fred Weiss was cooperating with the government. all because Fred Weiss switched lawyers. [33:35]He was paranoid that Fred Weiss was cooperating. So it became a race to kill Fred Weiss. So you had two mob families trying to kill him, the Decalvo Canty family and the Gambino family. So in total, I think either 15 people at least have either pled guilty or have been convicted of that murder. That murder happened on 9-11-1989, a horrible day, right? So, where I’m going is that happened in 89. In 1990, 1991, John D’Amato becomes the acting boss of the family. So, now he’s the acting boss of the DeKalb Alcanti family. John D’Amato had a girlfriend. His girlfriend starts to tell Anthony Capo that John D’Amato is going to sex clubs with her and they’re having sex with men. So this is this is brought to Anthony Capo’s attention. And he has to tell his superiors that we have a gay acting boss representing our family. And in his eyes, this cannot happen. Right. So he brings it to Vincent Palermo, brings it to Rudy Ferron, and the superiors that this is what’s happening. And they decide that he has to be killed. Now, also what he was doing was, and you speak to Anthony Rotondo, who also cooperated with the government. [34:58]John DeMotta was also stealing money from the family. He was borrowing money from the other families, telling him that it was for the DeCalbacanti family, but it was really to cover his game of the gambling losses that he was incurring. So those are two things that he was doing. Right. He was he was if you ask Anthony Rotondo, he says he was killed because of the gambling that he was incurring the losses. And if he asks Anthony Capo, he was killed because it was looking bad for our family, for their family, that he was a gay acting boss. And at that time, it wasn’t acceptable. Times have changed. But back then, it wasn’t an acceptable thing. And that’s similar to the show. There’s a gay angle within the show as well. [35:41]The Gay Angle in the Mob [35:42]Interesting. It’s the real Sopranos. I remember I watched that show, even going back and watch some of them every once in a while. And I just think, wow, that’s real. So, so even though the director says no one was speaking to them, it’s kind of ironic that there are a lot of like similarities between the show and real life. Yeah. And especially down there in New Jersey and, and, and their connection to the Bonanno family or to a New York, the New York families. And then also, and then also within the show is, is, is the stock stood. There’s also stocks. Oh yeah, the stock fraud. Yeah. They did a boiler room or something. And they were pumping and dumping stocks and Tony was making money out of that. So, yeah, that’s I’d forget. And then from and in real life, Bill Abrama was like the wizard of Wall Street. [36:37]So interesting. Well, you’ve had quite, quite a career. What do you think about New York organized crime now that today, you know, we just had quack, quack, Ruggiero, Ruggiero’s son and some other guys that were connected to families indicted for gambling. He’s got my gambling fraud. I haven’t really studied it yet. It is like they had some rig gambling games, which is common. Like in Kansas city, when I was working this, they would have, they would bring in guys who would love to gamble and had money businessmen. And then they’d, they’d play them for sure. They would cheat them and take a bunch of money from them. This was much more sophisticated, but that’s a, that’s a story that’s been going on a long time. You think that Bob is on a comeback from that? Ha, ha, ha, ha. [37:24]The mob has been around for 125 years. They’re not going to go away. Okay. They get smarter and they adapt. And it’s like, I haven’t read the indictment from head to toe, but they’ve used some, you know, sophisticated investigative techniques just to kind of con people. So they’re getting better, right? So some of the techniques that they use when you hear, it’s like some of the things that I saw where the poker tables that they use, the tables that they use were able to see the card. So they use some pretty, you know, slick techniques, you know, and then like some of the glasses or the contact lenses. So, you know, they’re not going to go away. They’re just going to keep on trying to rebuild. That’s why you have to continue to put resources towards them. Yeah. I think what people don’t understand for these mob guys, it’s if they don’t get out and go into legitimate business selling real estate or something like that. It’s it’s a constant scam a constant hustle every day to figure out another way to make money because they don’t have a paycheck coming in and so they got to figure out a way to make money and they got to make it fast and they got to make it big and in a short period of time it’s just constant every day every time they walk by knew a drug addict one time as a professional burglar and he said every time he’s in recovery he said every time i’ll buy a pharmacy he said in my mind I’m figuring out how to take that pharmacy off. So that’s the way these mob guys are. [38:52]And sports betting has been a staple of theirs forever. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And the apps are getting into them a little bit, but I see what’s going on now. Also, we had these players, Trailblazers coach and a couple, three players, are now helping people rig the bets. And you go to the apps, and you bet a bunch of money on some guy who’s going to have a bad day. And then he just doesn’t show up to work. You end up being the supervisor of the Columbo squad, I see. Same as after that DeCavoconte case, and you spent all that time, you ended up getting promoted to a supervisor and you must’ve been good because they kept you right there in New York and gave you another mob squad. I know one agent here in Kansas City that was promoted and he kept the one squad here, as they called it. [39:43]Leading the Columbo Squad [39:40]And that was really unusual. Usually it’d be somebody in from out of town. So that says something about you. So tell us about your experiences doing that. [39:48]Well, after we did this case, which was about six years, I was requested to go down to run the Columbo squad. And at that time, I think the Columbo squad had eight supervisors in eight years. I really thought I was too young to be a supervisor because I only had six years on. So I was basically voluntold, I would say, to go down there. And guys, that is young. I want to tell you something. I’ve seen a lot of different Bob squad supervisors come through here in Kansas City. And and they were all you know like 20 year agents 15 18 year agents that came from somewhere else so yeah so you know again I thought I was just way too young to be a supervisor as I said I was just on the job for about six years and I was voluntold to go down there yeah and I said if I’m going to go down there there’s a couple of things just based upon what I saw a I’m not a yes man and two the squad needs some sort of stability so I went down there and I was able to stay there I was there from actually December of 2004 all the way up until June of 2013. [40:51]So we at that time when I first got there we really didn’t have a lot of cases going trying to go on so I was able to change the tactics right because I think juries had changed at that point in time where instead of having a historical witness just go on to stand and tell things, now we had shows out there, right? You had NCIS where the whole DNA-type stuff came in, so I had to change our approach, and proactive witnesses making consensual recordings were the way to go. And I think during a seven-year time period, our squad. [41:24]Did an amazing job. Now it went from C10. I went, the squad went down to, it became C38. And we made probably 1,800 recordings in a seven and a half year time period. So, which is an amazing amount of recordings. So, a lot of transcriptions too. A lot of transcriptions. And I, you know, a three-hour tape could take you a day to listen to because you’re just trying to find that little piece of information. Yeah. Because a lot of it is just talk, right? Yeah. So I think our first big case was in June of 2008. And we took down the acting boss, a bunch of captains. And that’s when things really started to take off. We had a violent soldier cooperate named Joseph Compatiello. And, you know, we talk about proffers. His first proffer, he comes in and he basically tells us that there are three bodies buried right next to each other. So the layman would think, OK, they’re right next to each other. They weren’t right next to each other they were about 1.1 miles apart from each other. [42:28]And you could be in your your room there and we’re trying to find a body it’s really hard to find so we were actually able to find two of the bodies one of the bodies was a guy named while Bill Cattullo he was the under boss of the Colombo family we found him in Formingdale Long Island he was behind a berm we were out there for about eight days and each day you know I’m getting pressure from my superiors. We’re going to find something because there’s a lot of press out there. There was another victim named Cormone Gargano who was buried. He was killed in 1994 and buried out there. Unfortunately, there was a new building built. [43:06]And we could not find him there, but he was initially killed at a body shop in Brooklyn, and they buried him in Brooklyn, and then they decided to dig him up and bring him out to Long Island. So we went back to the body shop. What the Colombo family used to do, though, is they used to kill you, bury you, and put lime on top of the body. What lime does is it kills the smell, but preserves the body. Oh, I didn’t realize that. I thought it was supposed to deteriorate the body too. I think most people bought that. So good information. So, so when we found wall of bill, basically from his, from his hips up were intact. Oh, And when related to Cormier Gargano, because they had killed him in the body shop and then dug him up and brought him out to Long Island. We went back to the shop and figuring, let’s see if we can actually see if there’s any parts of him there. And there actually were. And we’re able to get DNA and tie it back and confirm it was him. [44:15]Major Arrests and Cases [44:12]So that’s how that dismantling of the Colombo family started. And then just to fast forward a little bit in January 2011, we have I spearhead the largest FBI mob arrest where we arrested 127 people that day across the states and also went to Italy, too, to take down people. [44:32]And after that, the Bureau decides to reduce the resources dedicated to organized crime. And I then get the Bonanno family back. So C-10 merges back into my squad. And then I have the Bananos, the Columbos, and the Decafacanthes as well. So now I have all three families back. And I basically run that for another two years. And I guess my last official act as a supervisor is related to Goodfellas, where Jimmy Burke had buried a body in his basement. We saw a 43-year-old cold case murder where he killed an individual named Paul Katz, buried him in his basement. And when he went away for the point shaving, the Boston College point shaving case, well, he killed him in 1969, buried him in his basement. Then he goes to jail in the 80s. He gets fearful that the cops that he had on his payroll back in the 60s were going to talk. So he decides to have our witness at the time, Gaspar Valenti, who came forward back in the 80s, moved the body with Vincent S. Our son so they move the body but again they’re not professional so pieces are going to be back there so in 2013 we go back and we dig and we actually find pieces of paul cats and we tie that to dna to his son to his son and we confirm that it was him. [45:57]So that was my last official act as a supervisor. Talk about art, art, imitating life again, you know, in the Goodfellas, they dug up a body. In the Sopranos, they dug up a body. I think I saw another show where they dug up a body. One of them, they were like, man, this smells. [46:13]I mean, can you imagine that going back and having to dig up a body? And then, you know, and, you know, they’re just wearing t-shirts and jeans and maybe leather gloves. And they’d have to deal with all that stuff and put it in some kind of a bag can take it somewhere else oh my god you know i have a question while bill cutello that this guy was part of the the hit team that took him out do you remember anything about right i’m trying to remember i’ve read this story once he was kind of like more of a peacemaker and and if i remember right you remember what the deal was with him well back like what happens is in the early 1990s there’s a colombo war right you have the persicos versus the arena faction and one thing about the Colombos and the Persicos, they never forget. So in the early 1990s, while Bill Cotullo was on the arena side, and as I said, there was a war where approximately 13 people were killed. In the late 1990s, Ali Persico was going to be going to jail, and while Bill Cotullo thought that Ali was going to go to jail and that he would take over the family, Ali didn’t want that to happen. So basically while Vilcunzulo thought he was getting the keys to the kingdom and they were going to kill him. [47:28]And what they did is they lured him to Dino Saraceno’s house in Brooklyn and Dino Calabro lured him into the basement and shot him in the back of the head. And we had all these guys then decide to cooperate. As I said, Joe Caves was the first person to cooperate. Dino Calabro cooperated. [47:48]Sebi Saraceno cooperated. So we had a whole host of people cooperate and we were able to dismantle the Colombo family. And I’ve been extremely blessed to be part of teams that have dismantled three families, Bananos, the Columbos, and the D. Calacanti family. So, you know, as I said, and it’s never just one person. It’s always teammates, partners, and also other supervisors that I’ve had. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, it does take a lot of people to take those down. When you’re writing books, you try to make sure everybody gets a little bit of credit. Yeah. And, you know, I think, you know, the thing that was that was, you know, crazy when related to the recovery of Wild Bill is we had our evidence response team out there. And, you know, the witness takes us out there to show us where he thinks the bodies are buried. And related to Wild Bill, it was in the back of a field. And he kept on saying it was behind a berm. So we took him back there and he showed us where he thought it was. So we had our evidence response team dig. And they basically dug us an Olympic-sized pool. [48:57]We could not find him. So there was two other sites that we were trying to look at because Richie Greaves was supposed to be next to the train tracks. And as I mentioned, Cormac Gargano was next to a building that had been replaced. So my squad, actually our squad, C-38, decides, Seamus, do you mind if we get some shovels? So I was like, sure. So there was, because we were just looking at each other at the time. So my team, Vincent D’Agostino, they’re pretty close by. He got some shovels and came back. And there was like six of us. And we just started digging ourselves. So we dug in one area, nothing. Then another agent basically said, let’s dig over here. [49:38]And sure enough, like talk about, you know, I always say hard work leads to good luck. We started digging and then we found the white stuff. We found the line and jackpot. It was while Bill, he was hogtied face down with his feet up. And as soon as I saw the white stuff and then I saw, you know, like his foot, then we stopped and I said, let me go get the professionals. I ran over, I drove over, and I got the team leader from ERT. She got in the car. And, you know, of course, she’s very excited. I was like, you know, we F.M. got him, you know. And so I drove her back over there. And that’s when you kind of contain the crime scene. And we were able to find him. But, you know, it was our squad that found him. And then, as I said before, then, you know, our squad decides to go back to the body shop. And we found remnants of Carmine Gargano there. So the squad just did an amazing job but really we basically found two bodies ourselves you know and i think in my career i’ve been extremely blessed to find five you know which is just crazy well that’s not something those accountants and lawyers and stuff were trained for you need to get those former cops out there on those shovels and digging for bodies. [50:57]Final Thoughts and Stories [50:57]Well interesting this this has really been fun seamus any any other stories you can think of You want to you want to just want to tell just busting to make sure people know that’s in this book. I tell you what, guys, this is an interesting book. It’s it’s, you know, as I said, those kinds of stories and the procedures and how FBI works. There’s there’s a lot of stories in there. I don’t want to give to give the book away. You know, there’s a lot of stories even. Yeah. You know, there’s an even during that year of trials. There’s plenty of stories there. There was a blackout that that year, too. So there’s a lot of stories related to that. You know, even even the trials, there’s a lot of things that came up at trial. So I don’t want to give to give those stories away. But I think it’s a good read. As I said, I think it’s one of the few books that actually explains things because, you know, I think the public hears these words, but they don’t know what these words mean. And I just think it’s important that they do know what it means, because there’s a lot of things that go on behind the scenes, especially with the jury. Right. You know, the jury only sees what they see. There’s a lot of things that go on when the jury leaves the room between the government, the judge and also the defense attorney. So I try to bring to shed some light related to that as well. [52:13]Interesting. Well, Seamus McElherney. And the book is Flipping Capo. That’s Anthony Capo. The first guy to be flipped in the Cavalcante family ever, which led to a cascade of other mob guys flipping, didn’t it? [52:32]Sure did. Just like in a Bonanno family, you know, they start flipping there. And it just, I didn’t know where it was ever going to end. Finally, it ended. [52:41]It sure did. Well, I have to say, it’s been great to meet you. I wish you continued success. And this has been a lot of fun. All right. Yeah, it’s been great to have you on Seamus. Thanks a lot. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So when you’re out on the streets there and you’re a big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website. They’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem if you’ve got that problem or gambling. If not, you can go to Anthony Ruggiano. He’s a counselor down in Florida. He’s got a hotline on his website. If you’ve got a problem with gambling, most states will have, if you have gambling, most states will have a hotline number to call. Just have to search around for it. You know, I’ve always got stuff to sell. I got my books. I got my movies. They’re all on Amazon. I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon sales page and you can figure out what to do. I really appreciate y’all tuning in and we’ll keep coming back and doing this. Thanks guys.

I happen to be in Sicily with a group of Patrons (this could be you if you join Patreon!).    While I was in Verona at Wine2Wine, in 2019, I had the honor to speak with Alessio Planeta, President at Assovini Sicilia and Owner at Planeta Winery     For five centuries and through seventeen generations, Planeta has been active in changing and improving agriculture in Sicily. Alessio Planeta has spent his life dedicated to the study of Sicily and figuring out how to make it a significant force in world wine. With his family, Alessio now has six wineries around Sicily, and they have almost single-handedly put Sicily on the map as a quality player.   Planeta continues its mission to show what Sicily can do and what it's forgotten varietals can bring to the world of wine. They are one of the big reasons we have access to excellent Sicilian wine today.     Full show notes and all back episodes are on Patreon. Become a member today! www.patreon.com/winefornormalpeople _______________________________________________________________   Check out my exclusive sponsor, Wine Access.  They have an amazing selection -- once you get hooked on their wines, they will be your go-to! Make sure you join the Wine Access-Wine For Normal People wine club for wines I select delivered to you four times a year!    To register for an AWESOME, LIVE WFNP class with Elizabeth or get a class gift certificate for the wine lover in your life go to: www.winefornormalpeople.com/classes    

TEXAS! Tom will be in Amarillo at the Amarillo Civic Center Complex on November 1st, then November 2nd in Lubbock at Buddy Holly Hall and El Paso at the Abraham Chavez Theatre on November 6th. Go get your tickets now at https://tomsegura.com/tour. SPONSORS: - Head to https://DRINKAG1.com/BEARS to get a FREE Welcome Kit, including a bottle of Vitamin D and free AG1 Travel Packs, when you first subscribe! - Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/BEARS. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. - Sponsored by BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at https://betterhelp.com/bears - Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at https://shopify.com/bears. This week on 2 Bears, 1 Cave, Bort sits down with comedy legend Sebastian Maniscalco for one of the funniest, most honest conversations yet. They dive deep into Sebastian's new stand-up special filmed at the United Center, what it takes to stay passionate about comedy, and how fatherhood changes everything. From crying at movies and parenting philosophies to the “arrogance of boring” and buying boats, this episode is packed with heart, humor, and classic Bert chaos. The two swap stories about old-school comedy days, meeting Jerry Seinfeld and Robert De Niro, and the truth about balancing fame, family, and fun. Tim will return next week...promise. 2 Bears, 1 Cave Ep. 311 https://tomsegura.com/tour https://www.bertbertbert.com/tour https://store.ymhstudios.com Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:30 - Stand-Up, Sicilians, & Sensitivity 00:14:16 - Dressed To Impress 00:22:27 - Small Talk & Small Comedians 00:34:28 - Playing The Hits 00:39:30 - DeNiro & Casinos 00:46:20 - Wine, Wants, & Life Experiences 00:56:35 - Fun Dad & Discipline Dad 01:03:05 - Pete Correale 01:07:32 - Does Sebastian Do This? 01:16:06 - Married To An Artist 01:19:08 - Edit This Out! + Wrap Up Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marcus Tullius Cicero's Rise, Corruption Trials, and the Catiline Conspiracy Professor Josiah Osgood profiled the Roman "new man" orator Marcus Tullius Cicero and his dramatic rise through corruption trials and political intrigue. Cicero established his career by solving the murder case of Roscius and prosecuting corrupt Sicilian governor Verres for theft. His career climaxed with the suppression of the Catiline Conspiracy, elevating him as a patriot. However, Cicero made a grave political error by executing conspirators without trial, a move opposed by Julius Caesar. 1583 LIVY

Marcus Tullius Cicero's Rise, Corruption Trials, and the Catiline Conspiracy Professor Josiah Osgood profiled the Roman "new man" orator Marcus Tullius Cicero and his dramatic rise through corruption trials and political intrigue. Cicero established his career by solving the murder case of Roscius and prosecuting corrupt Sicilian governor Verres for theft. His career climaxed with the suppression of the Catiline Conspiracy, elevating him as a patriot. However, Cicero made a grave political error by executing conspirators without trial, a move opposed by Julius Caesar. 2593 ROMAN WOMEN

Marcus Tullius Cicero's Rise, Corruption Trials, and the Catiline Conspiracy Professor Josiah Osgood profiled the Roman "new man" orator Marcus Tullius Cicero and his dramatic rise through corruption trials and political intrigue. Cicero established his career by solving the murder case of Roscius and prosecuting corrupt Sicilian governor Verres for theft. His career climaxed with the suppression of the Catiline Conspiracy, elevating him as a patriot. However, Cicero made a grave political error by executing conspirators without trial, a move opposed by Julius Caesar. 1500 AENEID

Marcus Tullius Cicero's Rise, Corruption Trials, and the Catiline Conspiracy Professor Josiah Osgood profiled the Roman "new man" orator Marcus Tullius Cicero and his dramatic rise through corruption trials and political intrigue. Cicero established his career by solving the murder case of Roscius and prosecuting corrupt Sicilian governor Verres for theft. His career climaxed with the suppression of the Catiline Conspiracy, elevating him as a patriot. However, Cicero made a grave political error by executing conspirators without trial, a move opposed by Julius Caesar. 1450 VIRGIL READING THE AENEID

CBS EYE ON THE WORLD WITH JOHN BATCHELOR THE SHOW BEGINS IN THE DOUBTS ABOUT THE HAMAS DEAL... BARCELONA 1899 10-9-25 FIRST HOUR 9-915 The Genesis of Hamas, the Failure of "Land for Peace," and Theological Jihad Cliff May discussed the failure of the "land for peace" policy following Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and the violent takeover by Hamas. Hamas, representing the Muslim Brotherhood and born from theological jihad, views its mission as the destruction of Israel to establish an emirate. May emphasized that any cessation of hostilities is merely a hudna (truce), used by Hamas to rebuild for future battles, not a lasting peace. 915-930 Javier Milei's Dilemma: Midterms, the Wobbling Peso, and the Push for Dollarization Mary Anastasia O'Grady analyzed Argentinian President Javier Milei's economic and political dilemma as he faces midterms with a wobbling peso leading up to the October 26th elections. The peso is suffering due to fears that the opposition Peronist coalition will block Milei's reforms. O'Grady advocated for dollarization as the solution to stabilize the currency, reduce interest rates, and impose fiscal discipline on reckless spending. Powerful financial special interests prefer the status quo of an unanchored peso. 930-945 The Valdai Conference, Russia's Global South Strategy, and Warnings to the West Anatol Lieven discussed the Valdai conference in Sochi, where President Putin projected confidence but issued stark warnings against the US providing Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine and Europeans committing "piracy" by seizing Russian cargos. Attendees focused on the BRICS group and the Global South as Russia pursues alternative alliances. Russians express disappointment in Donald Trump's failure to deliver peace and worry about the war's slow progress. The conflict is fundamentally viewed by Russians as a struggle with NATO. 945-1000 The Valdai Conference, Russia's Global South Strategy, and Warnings to the West Anatol Lieven discussed the Valdai conference in Sochi, where President Putin projected confidence but issued stark warnings against the US providing Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine and Europeans committing "piracy" by seizing Russian cargos. Attendees focused on the BRICS group and the Global South as Russia pursues alternative alliances. Russians express disappointment in Donald Trump's failure to deliver peace and worry about the war's slow progress. The conflict is fundamentally viewed by Russians as a struggle with NATO. SECOND HOUR 10-1015   US Military Posturing, Venezuela's Cartel de Los Soles, and Instability in the Americas Professor Evan Ellis analyzed President Trump's escalating military posturing and actions against drug cartels, particularly impacting the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro and the Cartel de Los Soles. Senate members raised constitutional concerns over the use of military force. Ellis also examined political resistance to Argentinian President Javier Milei's austerity measures amid broader instability in the Americas, and noted positive strategic movements toward improved relationships with Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum and Brazil's Lula da Silva. 1015-1030 US Military Posturing, Venezuela's Cartel de Los Soles, and Instability in the Americas Professor Evan Ellis analyzed President Trump's escalating military posturing and actions against drug cartels, particularly impacting the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro and the Cartel de Los Soles. Senate members raised constitutional concerns over the use of military force. Ellis also examined political resistance to Argentinian President Javier Milei's austerity measures amid broader instability in the Americas, and noted positive strategic movements toward improved relationships with Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum and Brazil's Lula da Silva. 1030-1045 US Military Posturing, Venezuela's Cartel de Los Soles, and Instability in the Americas Professor Evan Ellis analyzed President Trump's escalating military posturing and actions against drug cartels, particularly impacting the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro and the Cartel de Los Soles. Senate members raised constitutional concerns over the use of military force. Ellis also examined political resistance to Argentinian President Javier Milei's austerity measures amid broader instability in the Americas, and noted positive strategic movements toward improved relationships with Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum and Brazil's Lula da Silva. 1045-1100 US Military Posturing, Venezuela's Cartel de Los Soles, and Instability in the Americas Professor Evan Ellis analyzed President Trump's escalating military posturing and actions against drug cartels, particularly impacting the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro and the Cartel de Los Soles. Senate members raised constitutional concerns over the use of military force. Ellis also examined political resistance to Argentinian President Javier Milei's austerity measures amid broader instability in the Americas, and noted positive strategic movements toward improved relationships with Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum and Brazil's Lula da Silva. THIRD HOUR 1100-1115 Marcus Tullius Cicero's Rise, Corruption Trials, and the Catiline Conspiracy Professor Josiah Osgood profiled the Roman "new man" orator Marcus Tullius Cicero and his dramatic rise through corruption trials and political intrigue. Cicero established his career by solving the murder case of Roscius and prosecuting corrupt Sicilian governor Verres for theft. His career climaxed with the suppression of the Catiline Conspiracy, elevating him as a patriot. However, Cicero made a grave political error by executing conspirators without trial, a move opposed by Julius Caesar. 1115-1130 Marcus Tullius Cicero's Rise, Corruption Trials, and the Catiline Conspiracy Professor Josiah Osgood profiled the Roman "new man" orator Marcus Tullius Cicero and his dramatic rise through corruption trials and political intrigue. Cicero established his career by solving the murder case of Roscius and prosecuting corrupt Sicilian governor Verres for theft. His career climaxed with the suppression of the Catiline Conspiracy, elevating him as a patriot. However, Cicero made a grave political error by executing conspirators without trial, a move opposed by Julius Caesar. 1130-1145 Marcus Tullius Cicero's Rise, Corruption Trials, and the Catiline Conspiracy Professor Josiah Osgood profiled the Roman "new man" orator Marcus Tullius Cicero and his dramatic rise through corruption trials and political intrigue. Cicero established his career by solving the murder case of Roscius and prosecuting corrupt Sicilian governor Verres for theft. His career climaxed with the suppression of the Catiline Conspiracy, elevating him as a patriot. However, Cicero made a grave political error by executing conspirators without trial, a move opposed by Julius Caesar. 1145-1200 Marcus Tullius Cicero's Rise, Corruption Trials, and the Catiline Conspiracy Professor Josiah Osgood profiled the Roman "new man" orator Marcus Tullius Cicero and his dramatic rise through corruption trials and political intrigue. Cicero established his career by solving the murder case of Roscius and prosecuting corrupt Sicilian governor Verres for theft. His career climaxed with the suppression of the Catiline Conspiracy, elevating him as a patriot. However, Cicero made a grave political error by executing conspirators without trial, a move opposed by Julius Caesar. FOURTH HOUR 12-1215 Fiscal Irresponsibility, the Cost of Debt, and the Loss of Welfare Reform Lessons Veronique De Rugy of the Mercatus Center criticized Washington's fiscal irresponsibility and the mounting cost of debt, arguing that enormous deficits create an anti-growth drag on the economy. She noted that failing to cut spending is a future tax hike. De Rugy lamented the loss of lessons from the 1996 welfare reform, which showed that work requirements reduced poverty, as politicians now prioritize spending checks over fiscal prudence.D 1215-1230 Deepseek's AI Claims, Huawei's Chip Ambitions, and US/China Tech Competition Chris Riegel analyzed the escalating tech competition between the US and China, focusing on Chinese AI firm Deepseek and noting its claims of superiority were potentially misleading due to non-transparency and reliance on Nvidia technology. He discussed Huawei's chip fabrication efforts and ambitions, concluding that US sanctions, particularly restricting ASML tools, keep China one to one and a half generations behind. The US scale advantage, exemplified by investments like Colossus, remains significant in the AI competition. 1230-1245 The Artemis Program, the New Space Race with China, and the Role of Elon Musk Mark Whittington discussed the Artemis program and the new space race with China, emphasizing that the US is driven back to the moon by competition with the People's Republic of China. The moon is viewed as a source for mining and a refueling stepping stone to Mars, with Elon Musk's SpaceX playing a central role. Co-host David Livingston questioned the engineering challenge of SpaceX's Starship and life support systems for Mars. The program's sustainability depends on phasing out the costly, expendable Space Launch System (SLS). 1245-100 AM The Artemis Program, the New Space Race with China, and the Role of Elon Musk Mark Whittington discussed the Artemis program and the new space race with China, emphasizing that the US is driven back to the moon by competition with the People's Republic of China. The moon is viewed as a source for mining and a refueling stepping stone to Mars, with Elon Musk's SpaceX playing a central role. Co-host David Livingston questioned the engineering challenge of SpaceX's Starship and life support systems for Mars. The program's sustainability depends on phasing out the costly, expendable Space Launch System (SLS).