March 4, 2025 • 39 mins
We meet a new mafia boss who gives Ken orders for his first hit. Ken's twin brother Rich shares stories of their troubled youth. Ken discovers a new hobby that helps him cope with his demons.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
If you're listening to a tenor foot TV podcast, Girls.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Krook County is released weekly and brought to you absolutely free.
But if you want to hear the whole season right now,
it's available ad free on tenderfoot Plus. For more information,
check out the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
You're listening to Krook County. The views and opinions expressed
in this podcast are solely those of the individuals participating
in the podcast. This episode also contains subject matter, including
graphic depictions of violence, which may not be suitable for everyone. Listener.
Discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Previously on Crook.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
County for six months, he proposed to me.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Kenny, got engaged, called it off only a few months later.
He realized, at nineteen years old, what am I doing?
Being a gain aged? The cops organized a few phony busts.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
So I took two of those and the girls would
come with me and you know, a little party.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Everybody be laughing, having a good time. And a robbery
at the club turned out to be an inside job.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Why Danny was working, He had someone come in and
robbed the place, so of course Dan's gotta put up
his arms, take the money and leave.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Danny had to go, and Kenny was asked to step in.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Got him in the car and drove him to one
of the chop shops, dropped him off there, and whatever
I did with him from.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
There, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I'm your host, Kyle Tequila, Welcome to Crook County.
Speaker 6 (01:58):
When we were growing up, Dad was the coolest guy
in the whole town. Everybody wanted Dad as their dad,
but they didn't know what was going on at home.
The game that they played for me and Ken was
really bad. There was a loud violence.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Episode five, Bully.
Speaker 7 (02:27):
You can begin to listen to that crowd.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
They know they can tell.
Speaker 6 (02:30):
Slowly, but surely, the nineteen seventies are disappearing.
Speaker 7 (02:35):
The nineteen eighties will be upon us. He first nineteen
(02:55):
in America.
Speaker 8 (02:57):
We have a brand new decade.
Speaker 7 (03:00):
It's a whole new beginning. Everybody, please kiss your loved one, Come.
Speaker 8 (03:04):
On, fish, your loved one, your husband, your sweetheart.
Speaker 7 (03:09):
I don't want the last next years, everybody, let's hear it.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Everybody seen Nixon, Watergate, the end of the Vietnam War,
a global recession, gas shortages, rolling blackouts, crime waves, record unemployment,
and the ominous shadow of the Cold War, the nineteen
seventies was a decade steeped in anxiety and uncertainty, and
(03:35):
the curtain had been pulled back on the American dream. Hell,
even Disco was dead. History may label this decade the
Great Awakening, but for Ken, now in his mid twenties,
it felt more like some terrible dream. And while the
world was racing toward the glimmering promise of the nineteen eighties,
(03:59):
Ken stood still feeling nothing at all, no comfort, no hope.
He was simply numb. After they hit on Danny, the
bosses knew they could count on Kenny for heavy work,
and when the calls came, there wasn't so much of
(04:20):
a question as a demand, and Kenny had no choice
but to comply. As the pressures of his new reality mounted,
he withdrew further and turned a cocaine to numbs pain.
In this world, emotion was a weakness, and sympathy could
get you killed. If he wanted to stay alive in
(04:42):
his new role within the Outfit, he would need to
dig deep down to the darkest part of his soul
and abandon the light forever.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I could be a pretty nasty for anyway, I was
recruited into doing some hits. Okay, so there was another
part of that. So not only working and running whorehouses,
I'm doing occasional hits on the site, all right, ordered
hits our own people.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Rogue. I asked him what he means by going rogue?
Speaker 1 (05:12):
So what these guys would do. These guys are the
guys that would fuck up. They'd steal, they'd rat, they
were just bad seats, or they were or they were
overly aggressive, or they became dangerous. They became rogue, meaning
they lost control of what they were doing. They just
started getting violent and you know, could start bringing the
(05:33):
heat down on this particular outfit that I worked for.
So we wanted to keep the heat away. So if
somebody became rogue, somebody needed to do something about these people.
My job was to be the heat, be the heat
for my particular outfit. You know, I got a reputation
though after a while, where you know, if they knew
(05:54):
I was coming, he were running.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I remembered something he used to tell my brother and
I when we were kids. He would say when he
was young that he was the bully of the bullies
at his school and if we ever saw someone getting
bullied at our school, that we should step in and
stop it. He was quite proud of this bit of
parenting advice, and to be honest, I was quite proud
(06:23):
of him too. I always admired him for it, and
to this day I think about those very words. I
even taught that same lesson to my own kid, defend
the weak and have the courage to fight against those
who would fight against you. And now, more than twenty
years later, here is my dad telling me that he
was hired to apply a version of that logic to
(06:44):
the metaphorical bullies of the outfit. At least that's what
he's telling me. It is very possible that he's just
softening the blow about the kind of people that were
in his crosshairs. I mean, does it really make me
feel any better that the only people he killed were
bad guys? Honestly, the answer is yes, it does. But
(07:06):
the simple fact is I will never really know if
any of this stuff is true. All I can do
is take him at his word.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Whether it was a hit, whether it was a beating,
just depend on what the punishment was called. Now, I
never decided what the punishment was. I was always given
the punishment on a little piece of paper by a
guy named He always gave me my assignment big fat.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
And now let me introduce you to the next character
in our story, a feared boss within the outfit and
a man who would make an enormous impact on the
life of young Kenny. Paul Taglia, which I will remind
you for the safety of everyone involved, is not his
real name.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
I would get a phone call, get on the phone,
meet me, and I knew exactly where.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
To meet him.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
And I'd meet him in a parking lot and one
of the houses were there, one of the whorehouses were there.
I meet him at a parking lot. I'd walk up
to his big fucking Cadillac and he'd rolled on his window,
hand me a little piece of paper, and then he'd
drive away. And on a piece of paper was where
the person was going to be, the type of car
(08:29):
he drove, and license plates, and that would and that
What all that did was made me do more work.
But it kept them even, kept them more and kept
them further away from the hit. So because now I
had to do all the leg work, So I'd have
to go look for the car, look for the license plate,
wait for the person, get in there, scope them, watch them. Okay,
(08:52):
that's so I got to hit. I gotta hit that
guy right there, based on the license plate and the
car description. Okay, so I know I got a description
a guy I have to hit, and then I would
do my due diligence for about two weeks, follow him around,
get a pattern, and then after I figured out how
I was going to do it, and I always did
(09:12):
it one way. I would uh, I would do it.
It's all that was to it. It didn't happen a lot,
but it happened to people. It happened enough for it
and or it really bothers me. It really bothers me
a lot.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I don't like to talk about this. I don't want
to talk about that shit. Man.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
First of all, I'm trying desperately to forget all this stuff.
A therapist is probably gonna tell me, no, you need
to spit it out and then deal with it. Well,
I think I've already dealt with it, but I'm still
trying to bury it because it because it's not a
pleasant thought. It's not something that I'm very proud of
at all. And I got don't take a quick break.
Speaker 9 (09:52):
Yeah, I gotta.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Swallow over so stupid, we decided to break for the day.
He's exhausted, and honestly so am I. There's so much
to unpack here and I don't even nowhere to begin.
I started recording these interviews back in twenty seventeen, and
it was apparent then that his health was failing him.
(10:17):
Since then, he's continued to decline, and I honestly don't
know how long he has left. He recently showed me
an entire backpack full of prescriptions he's taken for a
dozen or so conditions. He's pale, swollen, shakes uncontrollably. His
legs are covered in red marks and bruises, and he's
(10:37):
a hard time walking. He's about the furthest thing you
can get from the Fearless Mafia, heavy of his youth.
What the hell happened to this man? How was he
able to do the things he did? What kind of
person is my father? And what kind of person does
(10:57):
that make me?
Speaker 7 (11:15):
Look at this guy?
Speaker 5 (11:16):
Man?
Speaker 9 (11:16):
How are you doing?
Speaker 5 (11:18):
Bud?
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Goodness to you? All right, it's been way, way too long.
I'm back in Chicago visiting my uncle, rich Ken's twin brother.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Long ago.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
Yeah, I got married and well I left school in
oh seven, and I moved to Atlanta all right, pretty.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Much came back like maybe once and there was too
much shrama, and so I never came back.
Speaker 6 (11:41):
I left high school, never even looked over my shoulder.
It's like, fuck you, I'm out.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
It's his birthday, that's right, Yeah, you remember that. What
it's like in two days?
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Isn't it today?
Speaker 7 (11:54):
You probably should?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Oh? My god, nice going, Kyle boy.
Speaker 6 (12:08):
You look like your dad.
Speaker 7 (12:11):
That look?
Speaker 4 (12:12):
That look? Did I just give you the Ken look?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Look?
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Holy shit? Is it going to give you the chills?
Speaker 7 (12:24):
And that's a Ken look too.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
I am my father's son. We spent some time catching
up and cracking jokes about my old man.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
What's the project again? So what's a podcast? So what's
the deal?
Speaker 2 (12:38):
I can tell Rich is a bit hesitant to dig
up the past like this, and I get it from
what I've been hearing. It's not like they had the
happiest childhood.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
My name's Rich.
Speaker 6 (12:49):
I'm the oldest twin Ken's fraternal twin brother by how long.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Six minutes? I believe it is.
Speaker 6 (13:01):
And since I came out first, I've always said that
the problems I have with my my back of my
neck and stuff for your dad's fault, because you know
he was stepping on me that whole time.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
In the womb.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
They were the firstborns of the family, followed by younger
brothers Stan and.
Speaker 6 (13:17):
Matt Stands five years younger than myself and your dad,
and then eleven years for Matt.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
He tells me there was a joke in the family
that Ken must have had a different father.
Speaker 6 (13:30):
Because Ken and I are so different. We don't look
the same, we don't act the same. I mean, there
was nothing about us at that point that was even
close to being twin material. So yeah, it always pissed
off Mile though when we would say that, what's a
family joke?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
So she's probably like, wait today, now.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
There was.
Speaker 6 (13:54):
You know, that's kind of funny because you know there
was some kind of half truth meaning behind our thought process.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
But you know.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
That's interesting. If you remember from episode one, Kenny was
kicked out of his house by his mom for accusing
her of having an affair, which she was and which
of course started off this whole chain of events that
led to Ken joining the Outfit in the first place.
I asked Ritch what he remembers I.
Speaker 6 (14:25):
Was out So when I came home, I walked through
because I would always come in the basement door. And
when I walked into the basement door, I heard screaming
and yelling from the kitchen. So as you walk up
the stairs, you walk right into the kitchen on you know,
one end of the kitchen was Mom with Dad's forty five,
(14:45):
just screaming, bloody murder and pointing to gun, just shaking,
you know. And Ken was in the ollow corner of
the kitchen, just you know, in the back. I don't
remember anything that was said, just a lot of noise
and stuff. And I walked up to mother and she's
like this, I just stepped right in front of her.
So now I got a gun pointing right at my chest.
(15:07):
I grabbed her hand, I lifted them up so her
hands are now over her head and I'm holding her
hands on the gun compared to Ken said you should leave,
and he.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Left and that was it and he never came back. Wow. Wow, WOWOW.
I loved my Grandma Adele. She was the sweetest old
woman you could ever meet. She loved science and history
and Native American culture. The stories of her younger years
(15:40):
are full of intrigue and adventure. She moved out to
California in her late teens and was one of the
first women ever to work at NASA. She then took
a job in the FBI and was only one of
a handful of women there. She was a trailblazer and
painted beautiful landscapes inspired by all her travels that filled
the walls of her home. She taught me how to
(16:02):
play piano and to appreciate the wild beauty of nature,
and to picture this saint of a woman pointing a
gun at her teenage son is completely unbelievable to me.
But if I've learned anything at this point, it's that
nobody is exactly who you think they are. And apparently
(16:24):
my sweet old grandma wasn't always so sweet.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
Did she ever tell you the stories about her brawling
in Chicago and stuff, the street fights everything?
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Never heard about that?
Speaker 5 (16:38):
Huh?
Speaker 7 (16:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (16:39):
I remember my telling me that her and her friend's
pals whatever would go out for the street fights, and
the girls would take towels and they would wrap up
their boobs, I mean, like tape them down, you know,
so that there was nothing hanging out there, nothing to
grab on, its nothing to get hurt. Basically before they
went to their street fights.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Oh yeah, she.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Was a badass.
Speaker 6 (17:03):
We're talking knives and clubs and all sorts of stuff,
you bet, Oh yeah, yeah, sweep my ass.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
You didn't grow up with.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Her, Okay. So if Grandma was some sort of fearless
knife fighting street pirate, then I guess you can argue
that a hot temper is just in our blood, and
Ken was just to chip off the old block.
Speaker 6 (17:29):
Anything could set him off, anything, blind rage, out of
control could not stop him temper, And until he got
past that rage, you couldn't stop him. It's like he
didn't even know what he was doing.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
Practically.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
He tells me a few old stories, like Ken punching
out a gym teacher in high school, or stealing Rich's
car at sixteen and disappearing for a week, apparently driving
it all the way to California, and.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
I was gonna have him arrested for car theft, you know.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
And then showing up like nothing happened.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
Hey kids, Hot, eh raight, what's going on, buddy?
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Thing's fine. I'm like, fucking an asshole, you stole my
fucking car.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
And stories of cruel violence.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
He shot me once, he stabbed me once.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
That was fun. He just stopped there. You have to
tell me the story.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
It was a BB gun, but it was a BB
gun that could go halfway through a two by four.
I still have that BB gun, by the way, it's downstairs.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
You still have the BB in your flash. And all
that we dug out is that way.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
So did the stabb income because he did.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
That was a different That was a different time.
Speaker 7 (18:39):
No.
Speaker 6 (18:39):
He he stabbed me with a needle. The needle was
probably about eight inches long, and he just, you know,
in his blank rage wisdom. I was walking up the
stairs and he just came up behind me and just
stabbed me right.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
And he asked, what.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
I'm beginning to doubt my dad's bully of the bullies claim.
The story has always been he was the bully of
the bullies, and you would beat up like the bullies
at school. And as you know, he's the protector of
the innocent at school, he.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Particular through the innocent. He was a freaking cycle.
Speaker 7 (19:15):
Protector of the innocent. Did he tell you that the.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Bully he was the bully? Yeah, he was a bully.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, this one hurt. I know it may sound silly
after everything else we've heard, but this one positive character.
Trait was something I held onto my whole life. It
was foundational to the image I had of my father,
and to learn it was complete bullshit. It's a fucking
hard pill to swallow.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
You know.
Speaker 6 (19:43):
As he got older, I'm sure he learned how to
control it and use it to his advantage. But you know,
as we were growing up, just totally out of control.
There was a lot of pain in agony, and yeah,
there was a lot of violence.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Violence, both physical and emotional, was a constant part of
their daily lives. The father would beat the kid's bloody wap.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
Right across the head against the wall, knock me up.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
And their mother, as we've learned, was just as cruel, and.
Speaker 6 (20:14):
She picked up a kitchen chair and she was going
to crack me over the head with it.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
They would starve their kids while mom and dad ate
a nice meal.
Speaker 6 (20:22):
I remember eating dog food because I was so damn hungry,
Or when i'd give the dog a treat, I would.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
Bite the ends off and I would eat it before
I would give it to the dog.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
I was hungry, and at times two things so horrible
my uncle won't even speak of them.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
You know.
Speaker 6 (20:40):
Some of the torture stuff I wouldn't. I'd never speak
of it ever, Yeah, because I don't really want, you know,
mom and Dad to be portrayed as you know, animal
child abusers.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Even though it was kind of like.
Speaker 6 (20:57):
That, you know, we probably would have been taken away,
you know, in today's day and age. You know, I'm
sure we would have taken away if somebody had said something.
But that's not how it was back then.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
I Mean, the.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Amazing thing is is I don't I don't see you
as having any of this volatility and in his violence.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
And like that.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
D he never struck us.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
He never struck us.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
Yeah, he made And that's another thing that so bizarre
about this.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
It's like, why again, why we never even like, you know,
I've seen him beat up a guy or two or
three or five, But.
Speaker 6 (21:37):
Did he tell you about beat the guy up and
left him on the hood of his car?
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Do you know why?
Speaker 2 (21:41):
That one?
Speaker 6 (21:42):
This was when we were working at the bar up
in Northbrook at the hotel. Ken and I were both
working there, and you know, they had cops that would
come in and they would be the security, you know,
part time job stuff. And he was telling me about
this quality had that there was a guy passed out
on the hood of his car in the middle of
an intersection, and oh, okay, fine. Well the next day
(22:05):
I'm talking to Ken and he's telling me about this
guy who he dragged out of the window of his car,
beat the shit out of him, and left him on
the hood of his car in the intersection.
Speaker 7 (22:14):
I'm like, oh, that was you.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
What's interesting about this incident is it would have been
in those early years after Ken joined the outfit, so
it's very possible it was mob related. I asked him
if he knew what his brother was into at that time.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
I knew that he was definitely dealing drugs. I knew
that he was.
Speaker 6 (22:39):
Working quote unquote in a whorehouse. But I never got
into any of those details.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
I really didn't want to know.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
You know, it just it wasn't my lifestyle. You know,
it was nothing I really cared about. You know, that's
what you want to.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Do, that's what you do.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
You could see why he could be.
Speaker 6 (22:59):
An enforcer because he just had that mentality, very violent mentality.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
I should have word more in you were a man?
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Oh high? Yeah, yeah, I don't need to worry about
some contagione.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
Nice to meet you.
Speaker 7 (23:25):
Well, I have met you several times, but you.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
Were a child, I was a baby.
Speaker 7 (23:29):
Huh.
Speaker 9 (23:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
This is Maureen, my dad's high school girlfriend.
Speaker 7 (23:34):
Thank you for having me and doing this. I don't
know what I'm doing. I don't know what you're doing here.
Speaker 5 (23:39):
Your father wouldn't tell me anything.
Speaker 7 (23:41):
He was very short and said, I don't have time.
I will tell you.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Everything, all right.
Speaker 7 (23:48):
Well that's true.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
I will tell you everything, and hopefully you'll tell me everything. Maureen.
It was a name that would occasionally echo through our
childhood home. She was like this mythical creature who at
the very mention of her cursed name would send my
mother into fits of rage and jealousy. And I just
I feel so bad that she.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
I know, oh how much time she spent hating me,
hating him, thinking, you know thoughts. I'm a woman, I
know how women think. And if there's one regret that
I have is that I feel bad that your mom
thought Kenny and I were having interfere And we never did, never, ever, ever, ever,
(24:32):
not since we were high school sweethearts at sixteen and
seventeen years old.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Tell me about it.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
We were just we were like the movie Grease. You know,
it was like sort of like John Travolta and Olivia Newton.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
John, No, stop stop, stop, stop, stop stoping. No, I'm
not doing this again. First, my dad is John Travolta
from Saturday Night Fever. Okay, fine, but now you're telling
me he's John Travolta from Greece. I just I can't.
(25:10):
I'm not going to do it. Okay, let's move on.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
He was cool, He was a real cool kid. He
was my first boyfriend.
Speaker 7 (25:22):
And it was fun.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
We had fun, and we had good times, and of
course we wanted to grow up and get married and
have a household of kids and just didn't work out
that way.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
I have a million questions for Maureen because she has
a truly unique perspective in all this, as someone who
saw a softer side of Kenny during those formative teenage years.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
I don't think I've ever loved anybody as much as
a friend as him. You know, they say that you've
got if you've got five good friends on one hand,
you're a lucky person.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
And he's one of them.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
He's been we've been good friends. I asked her about
Kenny's fabled hot temper.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
I never saw him with a temper or being aggressive
or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Or if she was aware of the abuse the brothers
were victims of at home.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
He didn't want to be at home. He didn't like
being there. He liked being at our house. My mom
would come into my room at ten or eleven o'clock
and say, we're in someone's in the backyard. First, I
looked out the front window, and I see his car,
and I go in the back. He used to take
a tent and tent in our backyard and sleep. Wow,
(26:37):
I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, my mom said that
she had seen it a few times, but it was
too late to wake me up. And then that was
and I went in there.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
And I was like, what are you doing? He said,
I don't want to go home. Or if she knew
of his ties to the mafia.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
There would be no way Ken would do any of
those things. Everybody adored him, They loved him, They cared
about him, and they trusted him.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
She goes on to say that she only recently heard
about it from Kenny's mother, Adele, when he.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
Went over to Calibournia. She started calling me and telling
me all these things, and that's when I found out
about the mafia. That's when I found out about drugs.
She said, well, you know he was junkie. I said, no,
I didn't know that, but now I do. I guess.
And she also told me that he murdered someone. Oh
(27:34):
my god, I can't believe cute people.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Oh my god, how did he get that way? She's
crying and takes a moment to collect herself, and then
suddenly she remembers something from long ago.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
Did he ever tell you a story of Kenny Mindelki,
the boy that drowned? No, it was his best friend.
Speaker 7 (28:14):
They were all.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
Set to go scuba diving. There were like five boys,
and I had to work that day, and my parents
had to work at the restaurant. There was no one
to watch my four siblings. And I said to Kenny,
said would you do me a big favor and watch
the kids? And he said, I'm already written signed up
to go scuba diving with Mendelki and the rest of
(28:36):
the guys. And I said please, and he said, okay,
I'll do it. So he stayed home. The equipment that
he was to have used was given to Mendelki, his buddy,
and Mendelki's equipment failed and he was like, he's dead
(28:59):
and it should have been Kenny. That should have been
the equipment that he should have used.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
And it was really bad.
Speaker 5 (29:08):
But that was the first time that Kenny had to
deal with death of a friend of a good friend.
And also he felt guilty that if he would have gone,
you know, Mondelki would have lived. And he and then
he took off. And I think now that I think
in in hindsight where him taking off. He took off
(29:30):
in his car and he was gone for like two
days after the funeral. Right after the funeral, nobody knew
where he was. Richie went out for like a day
looking for him. I think he ended up in Iowa
or somewhere.
Speaker 7 (29:45):
He just ran.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
He just kept running and running and running until he
probably ran out of money and gas and came back
and probably be the start of major issues because that
was hard on him, really really hard.
Speaker 6 (30:13):
You know, I'm glad you brought up workout martial arts stuff,
because that's something I actually completely forgot about.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Well, how do you think I could have done half
the shit I did if I didn't have all that
martial arts training. Well, that's what I want to talk
to mom about that I had years of martial arts training,
years martial arts training. I was a beast.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
It was widely known around the family that Ken was
a fourth degree black belt. There were legends about his
prowess on the mat, how even defeated his own master
at one point. Even the style of martial arts he
practiced sounded exotic and dangerous to us as kids.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Was that Chung mu kwan was a really soft form.
It was it was comfortul it wasn't a hard form.
Caught it bullshit well, almost like a.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Dance dance like movement. Chung mu kwan. I had never
heard of it before and never had a reason to
look into it until, of course, I started down this
insane family rabbit hole of mine. I wasn't expecting to
find anything interesting at all, to be honest, but when
I learned the history of this mysterious brand of kung fu,
(31:16):
I was absolutely shocked at what I found.
Speaker 10 (31:24):
Many students are attracted to Chung mu kwan because the
training looks impressive. The schools say that by developing a
strong mind and body, you not only learn self defense,
but also learn to understand yourself and find fue happiness.
A school brochure says Chung Mu Kwuan is an investment
in life.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
I found this investigative news report from nineteen eighty nine
about Chung Mu Kwan. It's fascinating.
Speaker 10 (31:52):
There are ten Chung Mu Kuan schools in the Chicago
area and a dozen others across the country. They were
founded here in the late nineteen seventies by John C. Kim,
a former maintenance man who promotes him as a.
Speaker 7 (32:08):
Martial arts master.
Speaker 10 (32:10):
His followers say he has supernatural powers.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
His powers are phenomenal.
Speaker 8 (32:16):
They made him seem like a god to us.
Speaker 10 (32:20):
We talked to dozens of former students and instructors who've
been with Chung Mu Kwan over the last twelve years.
Most of them asked us to disguise their identities. They
say they're afraid because the schools they were at thrived
on an atmosphere of intimidation and violence.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Our investigation found.
Speaker 10 (32:38):
That some of the schools have also exploited students to
take their money and to take over their minds. That's
why experts call it a cult.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
So not only is my dad and the mob, which
is bad enough, by the way, he's also in some
goddamn kung fu mind control cult. Jesus fucking Christ. He's
either an evil genius or the unluckiest man alive.
Speaker 10 (33:01):
Experts say that some Chung mu Quan students seem to
be subjected to a form of mind control that begins
the martial arts training, for example, constantly repeating a movement
or holding poses for long periods on orders from their instructor.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Okay, let's stop there for a second. Now, listen to
this clip for my dad. You would do a.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Form for an hour, hour and a half. It's all
you would do, is a form, A form? Is this movement?
So constant movement for an hour and a half.
Speaker 11 (33:34):
What happens is that they go into an altered state
of consciousness. In that type of altered state, they're very
susceptible to suggestions. It's the same kind of thing that
takes place in a hypnotic trance.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Now, let's go back to episode one. Well, my dad
talks about mentally preparing himself for a hit.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I sit in my car and I do what I
always do. I breathe, I make myself aware. I heighten
my senses, my sight, my smell, my hearing. I don't
know how I do it, but I do it. As
I'm listening to the music, I feel my senses start
to kick in. As they kick in, the moment arises.
(34:24):
The moment always hits me. I don't know how it
hits me, but I know when I'm ready for the.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Moment, and there it is. This whole time, I've been
struggling to understand just how he could take that enormous
leap from doorman to hip man, or how he could
jump back and forth so easily from mob life to
family life without us ever even coming close to knowing.
Speaker 11 (34:51):
What happens is that they go into an altered state
of consciousness. It's the same kind of thing that takes
place in a hypnotic trance.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Not a trance, not every trance. I think it was
the perfect storm of terrible childhood, abusive parents, hitting the
streets as a kid, no prospects finding a father figure,
which just happens to be in the outfit, and then
(35:20):
you introduce Chung Mu Kwan and it's meditative mind control techniques, but.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
You know it taught to you know all the points,
all the all the all the points that can name kill,
temporarily put somebody out of business. I always had that advantage.
I had no fear at all, and that really got
me through a lot.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Next week on Crooked County.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
He was fucking up made guy or not, he was
fucking up man, and eventually it was going to catch
up to him, but I took care of it myselfe.
Speaker 5 (36:14):
No.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Crook County is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot
TV in association with Common Enemy. All episodes are written, produced,
and hosted by Me Kyle Tequila. Executive producers are Donald
Albright and Payne Lindsay. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Main title song is called Aloha by the band Starry Eyes,
(36:37):
and credit song is called no Show, also by the
band Starry Eyes. Sound mix by Cooper Skinner. Thank you
to Orrin Rosenbaum and the excellent team at UTA for
their support and to my fearless attorney, Wendy Bench for
her guidance. To stay updated on all things Crook County,
follow us on all socials at Crook County Podcast, or
(36:58):
leave us a voicemail by visiting crookcountypodcast dot com. For
more podcasts like Crook County, search Tenderfoot TV on your
favorite podcast app, or visit Tenderfoot dot tv. Thanks for listening.
The story continues next week.
Speaker 8 (37:15):
Awesome message Joe five, I watch show.
Speaker 9 (37:47):
Shower show. No no no no no no no no
(38:39):
no
If you're listening to a tenor foot TV podcast, Girls.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Krook County is released weekly and brought to you absolutely free.
But if you want to hear the whole season right now,
it's available ad free on tenderfoot Plus. For more information,
check out the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
You're listening to Krook County. The views and opinions expressed
in this podcast are solely those of the individuals participating
in the podcast. This episode also contains subject matter, including
graphic depictions of violence, which may not be suitable for everyone. Listener.
Discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Previously on Crook.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
County for six months, he proposed to me.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Kenny, got engaged, called it off only a few months later.
He realized, at nineteen years old, what am I doing?
Being a gain aged? The cops organized a few phony busts.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
So I took two of those and the girls would
come with me and you know, a little party.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Everybody be laughing, having a good time. And a robbery
at the club turned out to be an inside job.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Why Danny was working, He had someone come in and
robbed the place, so of course Dan's gotta put up
his arms, take the money and leave.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Danny had to go, and Kenny was asked to step in.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Got him in the car and drove him to one
of the chop shops, dropped him off there, and whatever
I did with him from.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
There, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I'm your host, Kyle Tequila, Welcome to Crook County.
Speaker 6 (01:58):
When we were growing up, Dad was the coolest guy
in the whole town. Everybody wanted Dad as their dad,
but they didn't know what was going on at home.
The game that they played for me and Ken was
really bad. There was a loud violence.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Episode five, Bully.
Speaker 7 (02:27):
You can begin to listen to that crowd.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
They know they can tell.
Speaker 6 (02:30):
Slowly, but surely, the nineteen seventies are disappearing.
Speaker 7 (02:35):
The nineteen eighties will be upon us. He first nineteen
(02:55):
in America.
Speaker 8 (02:57):
We have a brand new decade.
Speaker 7 (03:00):
It's a whole new beginning. Everybody, please kiss your loved one, Come.
Speaker 8 (03:04):
On, fish, your loved one, your husband, your sweetheart.
Speaker 7 (03:09):
I don't want the last next years, everybody, let's hear it.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Everybody seen Nixon, Watergate, the end of the Vietnam War,
a global recession, gas shortages, rolling blackouts, crime waves, record unemployment,
and the ominous shadow of the Cold War, the nineteen
seventies was a decade steeped in anxiety and uncertainty, and
(03:35):
the curtain had been pulled back on the American dream. Hell,
even Disco was dead. History may label this decade the
Great Awakening, but for Ken, now in his mid twenties,
it felt more like some terrible dream. And while the
world was racing toward the glimmering promise of the nineteen eighties,
(03:59):
Ken stood still feeling nothing at all, no comfort, no hope.
He was simply numb. After they hit on Danny, the
bosses knew they could count on Kenny for heavy work,
and when the calls came, there wasn't so much of
(04:20):
a question as a demand, and Kenny had no choice
but to comply. As the pressures of his new reality mounted,
he withdrew further and turned a cocaine to numbs pain.
In this world, emotion was a weakness, and sympathy could
get you killed. If he wanted to stay alive in
(04:42):
his new role within the Outfit, he would need to
dig deep down to the darkest part of his soul
and abandon the light forever.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I could be a pretty nasty for anyway, I was
recruited into doing some hits. Okay, so there was another
part of that. So not only working and running whorehouses,
I'm doing occasional hits on the site, all right, ordered
hits our own people.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Rogue. I asked him what he means by going rogue?
Speaker 1 (05:12):
So what these guys would do. These guys are the
guys that would fuck up. They'd steal, they'd rat, they
were just bad seats, or they were or they were
overly aggressive, or they became dangerous. They became rogue, meaning
they lost control of what they were doing. They just
started getting violent and you know, could start bringing the
(05:33):
heat down on this particular outfit that I worked for.
So we wanted to keep the heat away. So if
somebody became rogue, somebody needed to do something about these people.
My job was to be the heat, be the heat
for my particular outfit. You know, I got a reputation
though after a while, where you know, if they knew
(05:54):
I was coming, he were running.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I remembered something he used to tell my brother and
I when we were kids. He would say when he
was young that he was the bully of the bullies
at his school and if we ever saw someone getting
bullied at our school, that we should step in and
stop it. He was quite proud of this bit of
parenting advice, and to be honest, I was quite proud
(06:23):
of him too. I always admired him for it, and
to this day I think about those very words. I
even taught that same lesson to my own kid, defend
the weak and have the courage to fight against those
who would fight against you. And now, more than twenty
years later, here is my dad telling me that he
was hired to apply a version of that logic to
(06:44):
the metaphorical bullies of the outfit. At least that's what
he's telling me. It is very possible that he's just
softening the blow about the kind of people that were
in his crosshairs. I mean, does it really make me
feel any better that the only people he killed were
bad guys? Honestly, the answer is yes, it does. But
(07:06):
the simple fact is I will never really know if
any of this stuff is true. All I can do
is take him at his word.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Whether it was a hit, whether it was a beating,
just depend on what the punishment was called. Now, I
never decided what the punishment was. I was always given
the punishment on a little piece of paper by a
guy named He always gave me my assignment big fat.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
And now let me introduce you to the next character
in our story, a feared boss within the outfit and
a man who would make an enormous impact on the
life of young Kenny. Paul Taglia, which I will remind
you for the safety of everyone involved, is not his
real name.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
I would get a phone call, get on the phone,
meet me, and I knew exactly where.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
To meet him.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
And I'd meet him in a parking lot and one
of the houses were there, one of the whorehouses were there.
I meet him at a parking lot. I'd walk up
to his big fucking Cadillac and he'd rolled on his window,
hand me a little piece of paper, and then he'd
drive away. And on a piece of paper was where
the person was going to be, the type of car
(08:29):
he drove, and license plates, and that would and that
What all that did was made me do more work.
But it kept them even, kept them more and kept
them further away from the hit. So because now I
had to do all the leg work, So I'd have
to go look for the car, look for the license plate,
wait for the person, get in there, scope them, watch them. Okay,
(08:52):
that's so I got to hit. I gotta hit that
guy right there, based on the license plate and the
car description. Okay, so I know I got a description
a guy I have to hit, and then I would
do my due diligence for about two weeks, follow him around,
get a pattern, and then after I figured out how
I was going to do it, and I always did
(09:12):
it one way. I would uh, I would do it.
It's all that was to it. It didn't happen a lot,
but it happened to people. It happened enough for it
and or it really bothers me. It really bothers me
a lot.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I don't like to talk about this. I don't want
to talk about that shit. Man.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
First of all, I'm trying desperately to forget all this stuff.
A therapist is probably gonna tell me, no, you need
to spit it out and then deal with it. Well,
I think I've already dealt with it, but I'm still
trying to bury it because it because it's not a
pleasant thought. It's not something that I'm very proud of
at all. And I got don't take a quick break.
Speaker 9 (09:52):
Yeah, I gotta.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Swallow over so stupid, we decided to break for the day.
He's exhausted, and honestly so am I. There's so much
to unpack here and I don't even nowhere to begin.
I started recording these interviews back in twenty seventeen, and
it was apparent then that his health was failing him.
(10:17):
Since then, he's continued to decline, and I honestly don't
know how long he has left. He recently showed me
an entire backpack full of prescriptions he's taken for a
dozen or so conditions. He's pale, swollen, shakes uncontrollably. His
legs are covered in red marks and bruises, and he's
(10:37):
a hard time walking. He's about the furthest thing you
can get from the Fearless Mafia, heavy of his youth.
What the hell happened to this man? How was he
able to do the things he did? What kind of
person is my father? And what kind of person does
(10:57):
that make me?
Speaker 7 (11:15):
Look at this guy?
Speaker 5 (11:16):
Man?
Speaker 9 (11:16):
How are you doing?
Speaker 5 (11:18):
Bud?
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Goodness to you? All right, it's been way, way too long.
I'm back in Chicago visiting my uncle, rich Ken's twin brother.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Long ago.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
Yeah, I got married and well I left school in
oh seven, and I moved to Atlanta all right, pretty.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Much came back like maybe once and there was too
much shrama, and so I never came back.
Speaker 6 (11:41):
I left high school, never even looked over my shoulder.
It's like, fuck you, I'm out.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
It's his birthday, that's right, Yeah, you remember that. What
it's like in two days?
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Isn't it today?
Speaker 7 (11:54):
You probably should?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Oh? My god, nice going, Kyle boy.
Speaker 6 (12:08):
You look like your dad.
Speaker 7 (12:11):
That look?
Speaker 4 (12:12):
That look? Did I just give you the Ken look?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Look?
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Holy shit? Is it going to give you the chills?
Speaker 7 (12:24):
And that's a Ken look too.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
I am my father's son. We spent some time catching
up and cracking jokes about my old man.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
What's the project again? So what's a podcast? So what's
the deal?
Speaker 2 (12:38):
I can tell Rich is a bit hesitant to dig
up the past like this, and I get it from
what I've been hearing. It's not like they had the
happiest childhood.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
My name's Rich.
Speaker 6 (12:49):
I'm the oldest twin Ken's fraternal twin brother by how long.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Six minutes? I believe it is.
Speaker 6 (13:01):
And since I came out first, I've always said that
the problems I have with my my back of my
neck and stuff for your dad's fault, because you know
he was stepping on me that whole time.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
In the womb.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
They were the firstborns of the family, followed by younger
brothers Stan and.
Speaker 6 (13:17):
Matt Stands five years younger than myself and your dad,
and then eleven years for Matt.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
He tells me there was a joke in the family
that Ken must have had a different father.
Speaker 6 (13:30):
Because Ken and I are so different. We don't look
the same, we don't act the same. I mean, there
was nothing about us at that point that was even
close to being twin material. So yeah, it always pissed
off Mile though when we would say that, what's a
family joke?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
So she's probably like, wait today, now.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
There was.
Speaker 6 (13:54):
You know, that's kind of funny because you know there
was some kind of half truth meaning behind our thought process.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
But you know.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
That's interesting. If you remember from episode one, Kenny was
kicked out of his house by his mom for accusing
her of having an affair, which she was and which
of course started off this whole chain of events that
led to Ken joining the Outfit in the first place.
I asked Ritch what he remembers I.
Speaker 6 (14:25):
Was out So when I came home, I walked through
because I would always come in the basement door. And
when I walked into the basement door, I heard screaming
and yelling from the kitchen. So as you walk up
the stairs, you walk right into the kitchen on you know,
one end of the kitchen was Mom with Dad's forty five,
(14:45):
just screaming, bloody murder and pointing to gun, just shaking,
you know. And Ken was in the ollow corner of
the kitchen, just you know, in the back. I don't
remember anything that was said, just a lot of noise
and stuff. And I walked up to mother and she's
like this, I just stepped right in front of her.
So now I got a gun pointing right at my chest.
(15:07):
I grabbed her hand, I lifted them up so her
hands are now over her head and I'm holding her
hands on the gun compared to Ken said you should leave,
and he.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Left and that was it and he never came back. Wow. Wow, WOWOW.
I loved my Grandma Adele. She was the sweetest old
woman you could ever meet. She loved science and history
and Native American culture. The stories of her younger years
(15:40):
are full of intrigue and adventure. She moved out to
California in her late teens and was one of the
first women ever to work at NASA. She then took
a job in the FBI and was only one of
a handful of women there. She was a trailblazer and
painted beautiful landscapes inspired by all her travels that filled
the walls of her home. She taught me how to
(16:02):
play piano and to appreciate the wild beauty of nature,
and to picture this saint of a woman pointing a
gun at her teenage son is completely unbelievable to me.
But if I've learned anything at this point, it's that
nobody is exactly who you think they are. And apparently
(16:24):
my sweet old grandma wasn't always so sweet.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
Did she ever tell you the stories about her brawling
in Chicago and stuff, the street fights everything?
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Never heard about that?
Speaker 5 (16:38):
Huh?
Speaker 7 (16:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (16:39):
I remember my telling me that her and her friend's
pals whatever would go out for the street fights, and
the girls would take towels and they would wrap up
their boobs, I mean, like tape them down, you know,
so that there was nothing hanging out there, nothing to
grab on, its nothing to get hurt. Basically before they
went to their street fights.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Oh yeah, she.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Was a badass.
Speaker 6 (17:03):
We're talking knives and clubs and all sorts of stuff,
you bet, Oh yeah, yeah, sweep my ass.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
You didn't grow up with.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Her, Okay. So if Grandma was some sort of fearless
knife fighting street pirate, then I guess you can argue
that a hot temper is just in our blood, and
Ken was just to chip off the old block.
Speaker 6 (17:29):
Anything could set him off, anything, blind rage, out of
control could not stop him temper, And until he got
past that rage, you couldn't stop him. It's like he
didn't even know what he was doing.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
Practically.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
He tells me a few old stories, like Ken punching
out a gym teacher in high school, or stealing Rich's
car at sixteen and disappearing for a week, apparently driving
it all the way to California, and.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
I was gonna have him arrested for car theft, you know.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
And then showing up like nothing happened.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
Hey kids, Hot, eh raight, what's going on, buddy?
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Thing's fine. I'm like, fucking an asshole, you stole my
fucking car.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
And stories of cruel violence.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
He shot me once, he stabbed me once.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
That was fun. He just stopped there. You have to
tell me the story.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
It was a BB gun, but it was a BB
gun that could go halfway through a two by four.
I still have that BB gun, by the way, it's downstairs.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
You still have the BB in your flash. And all
that we dug out is that way.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
So did the stabb income because he did.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
That was a different That was a different time.
Speaker 7 (18:39):
No.
Speaker 6 (18:39):
He he stabbed me with a needle. The needle was
probably about eight inches long, and he just, you know,
in his blank rage wisdom. I was walking up the
stairs and he just came up behind me and just
stabbed me right.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
And he asked, what.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
I'm beginning to doubt my dad's bully of the bullies claim.
The story has always been he was the bully of
the bullies, and you would beat up like the bullies
at school. And as you know, he's the protector of
the innocent at school, he.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Particular through the innocent. He was a freaking cycle.
Speaker 7 (19:15):
Protector of the innocent. Did he tell you that the.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Bully he was the bully? Yeah, he was a bully.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, this one hurt. I know it may sound silly
after everything else we've heard, but this one positive character.
Trait was something I held onto my whole life. It
was foundational to the image I had of my father,
and to learn it was complete bullshit. It's a fucking
hard pill to swallow.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
You know.
Speaker 6 (19:43):
As he got older, I'm sure he learned how to
control it and use it to his advantage. But you know,
as we were growing up, just totally out of control.
There was a lot of pain in agony, and yeah,
there was a lot of violence.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Violence, both physical and emotional, was a constant part of
their daily lives. The father would beat the kid's bloody wap.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
Right across the head against the wall, knock me up.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
And their mother, as we've learned, was just as cruel, and.
Speaker 6 (20:14):
She picked up a kitchen chair and she was going
to crack me over the head with it.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
They would starve their kids while mom and dad ate
a nice meal.
Speaker 6 (20:22):
I remember eating dog food because I was so damn hungry,
Or when i'd give the dog a treat, I would.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
Bite the ends off and I would eat it before
I would give it to the dog.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
I was hungry, and at times two things so horrible
my uncle won't even speak of them.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
You know.
Speaker 6 (20:40):
Some of the torture stuff I wouldn't. I'd never speak
of it ever, Yeah, because I don't really want, you know,
mom and Dad to be portrayed as you know, animal
child abusers.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Even though it was kind of like.
Speaker 6 (20:57):
That, you know, we probably would have been taken away,
you know, in today's day and age. You know, I'm
sure we would have taken away if somebody had said something.
But that's not how it was back then.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
I Mean, the.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Amazing thing is is I don't I don't see you
as having any of this volatility and in his violence.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
And like that.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
D he never struck us.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
He never struck us.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
Yeah, he made And that's another thing that so bizarre
about this.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
It's like, why again, why we never even like, you know,
I've seen him beat up a guy or two or
three or five, But.
Speaker 6 (21:37):
Did he tell you about beat the guy up and
left him on the hood of his car?
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Do you know why?
Speaker 2 (21:41):
That one?
Speaker 6 (21:42):
This was when we were working at the bar up
in Northbrook at the hotel. Ken and I were both
working there, and you know, they had cops that would
come in and they would be the security, you know,
part time job stuff. And he was telling me about
this quality had that there was a guy passed out
on the hood of his car in the middle of
an intersection, and oh, okay, fine. Well the next day
(22:05):
I'm talking to Ken and he's telling me about this
guy who he dragged out of the window of his car,
beat the shit out of him, and left him on
the hood of his car in the intersection.
Speaker 7 (22:14):
I'm like, oh, that was you.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
What's interesting about this incident is it would have been
in those early years after Ken joined the outfit, so
it's very possible it was mob related. I asked him
if he knew what his brother was into at that time.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
I knew that he was definitely dealing drugs. I knew
that he was.
Speaker 6 (22:39):
Working quote unquote in a whorehouse. But I never got
into any of those details.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
I really didn't want to know.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
You know, it just it wasn't my lifestyle. You know,
it was nothing I really cared about. You know, that's
what you want to.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Do, that's what you do.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
You could see why he could be.
Speaker 6 (22:59):
An enforcer because he just had that mentality, very violent mentality.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
I should have word more in you were a man?
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Oh high? Yeah, yeah, I don't need to worry about
some contagione.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
Nice to meet you.
Speaker 7 (23:25):
Well, I have met you several times, but you.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
Were a child, I was a baby.
Speaker 7 (23:29):
Huh.
Speaker 9 (23:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
This is Maureen, my dad's high school girlfriend.
Speaker 7 (23:34):
Thank you for having me and doing this. I don't
know what I'm doing. I don't know what you're doing here.
Speaker 5 (23:39):
Your father wouldn't tell me anything.
Speaker 7 (23:41):
He was very short and said, I don't have time.
I will tell you.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Everything, all right.
Speaker 7 (23:48):
Well that's true.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
I will tell you everything, and hopefully you'll tell me everything. Maureen.
It was a name that would occasionally echo through our
childhood home. She was like this mythical creature who at
the very mention of her cursed name would send my
mother into fits of rage and jealousy. And I just
I feel so bad that she.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
I know, oh how much time she spent hating me,
hating him, thinking, you know thoughts. I'm a woman, I
know how women think. And if there's one regret that
I have is that I feel bad that your mom
thought Kenny and I were having interfere And we never did, never, ever, ever, ever,
(24:32):
not since we were high school sweethearts at sixteen and
seventeen years old.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Tell me about it.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
We were just we were like the movie Grease. You know,
it was like sort of like John Travolta and Olivia Newton.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
John, No, stop stop, stop, stop, stop stoping. No, I'm
not doing this again. First, my dad is John Travolta
from Saturday Night Fever. Okay, fine, but now you're telling
me he's John Travolta from Greece. I just I can't.
(25:10):
I'm not going to do it. Okay, let's move on.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
He was cool, He was a real cool kid. He
was my first boyfriend.
Speaker 7 (25:22):
And it was fun.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
We had fun, and we had good times, and of
course we wanted to grow up and get married and
have a household of kids and just didn't work out
that way.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
I have a million questions for Maureen because she has
a truly unique perspective in all this, as someone who
saw a softer side of Kenny during those formative teenage years.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
I don't think I've ever loved anybody as much as
a friend as him. You know, they say that you've
got if you've got five good friends on one hand,
you're a lucky person.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
And he's one of them.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
He's been we've been good friends. I asked her about
Kenny's fabled hot temper.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
I never saw him with a temper or being aggressive
or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Or if she was aware of the abuse the brothers
were victims of at home.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
He didn't want to be at home. He didn't like
being there. He liked being at our house. My mom
would come into my room at ten or eleven o'clock
and say, we're in someone's in the backyard. First, I
looked out the front window, and I see his car,
and I go in the back. He used to take
a tent and tent in our backyard and sleep. Wow,
(26:37):
I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, my mom said that
she had seen it a few times, but it was
too late to wake me up. And then that was
and I went in there.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
And I was like, what are you doing? He said,
I don't want to go home. Or if she knew
of his ties to the mafia.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
There would be no way Ken would do any of
those things. Everybody adored him, They loved him, They cared
about him, and they trusted him.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
She goes on to say that she only recently heard
about it from Kenny's mother, Adele, when he.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
Went over to Calibournia. She started calling me and telling
me all these things, and that's when I found out
about the mafia. That's when I found out about drugs.
She said, well, you know he was junkie. I said, no,
I didn't know that, but now I do. I guess.
And she also told me that he murdered someone. Oh
(27:34):
my god, I can't believe cute people.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Oh my god, how did he get that way? She's
crying and takes a moment to collect herself, and then
suddenly she remembers something from long ago.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
Did he ever tell you a story of Kenny Mindelki,
the boy that drowned? No, it was his best friend.
Speaker 7 (28:14):
They were all.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
Set to go scuba diving. There were like five boys,
and I had to work that day, and my parents
had to work at the restaurant. There was no one
to watch my four siblings. And I said to Kenny,
said would you do me a big favor and watch
the kids? And he said, I'm already written signed up
to go scuba diving with Mendelki and the rest of
(28:36):
the guys. And I said please, and he said, okay,
I'll do it. So he stayed home. The equipment that
he was to have used was given to Mendelki, his buddy,
and Mendelki's equipment failed and he was like, he's dead
(28:59):
and it should have been Kenny. That should have been
the equipment that he should have used.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
And it was really bad.
Speaker 5 (29:08):
But that was the first time that Kenny had to
deal with death of a friend of a good friend.
And also he felt guilty that if he would have gone,
you know, Mondelki would have lived. And he and then
he took off. And I think now that I think
in in hindsight where him taking off. He took off
(29:30):
in his car and he was gone for like two
days after the funeral. Right after the funeral, nobody knew
where he was. Richie went out for like a day
looking for him. I think he ended up in Iowa
or somewhere.
Speaker 7 (29:45):
He just ran.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
He just kept running and running and running until he
probably ran out of money and gas and came back
and probably be the start of major issues because that
was hard on him, really really hard.
Speaker 6 (30:13):
You know, I'm glad you brought up workout martial arts stuff,
because that's something I actually completely forgot about.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Well, how do you think I could have done half
the shit I did if I didn't have all that
martial arts training. Well, that's what I want to talk
to mom about that I had years of martial arts training,
years martial arts training. I was a beast.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
It was widely known around the family that Ken was
a fourth degree black belt. There were legends about his
prowess on the mat, how even defeated his own master
at one point. Even the style of martial arts he
practiced sounded exotic and dangerous to us as kids.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Was that Chung mu kwan was a really soft form.
It was it was comfortul it wasn't a hard form.
Caught it bullshit well, almost like a.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Dance dance like movement. Chung mu kwan. I had never
heard of it before and never had a reason to
look into it until, of course, I started down this
insane family rabbit hole of mine. I wasn't expecting to
find anything interesting at all, to be honest, but when
I learned the history of this mysterious brand of kung fu,
(31:16):
I was absolutely shocked at what I found.
Speaker 10 (31:24):
Many students are attracted to Chung mu kwan because the
training looks impressive. The schools say that by developing a
strong mind and body, you not only learn self defense,
but also learn to understand yourself and find fue happiness.
A school brochure says Chung Mu Kwuan is an investment
in life.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
I found this investigative news report from nineteen eighty nine
about Chung Mu Kwan. It's fascinating.
Speaker 10 (31:52):
There are ten Chung Mu Kuan schools in the Chicago
area and a dozen others across the country. They were
founded here in the late nineteen seventies by John C. Kim,
a former maintenance man who promotes him as a.
Speaker 7 (32:08):
Martial arts master.
Speaker 10 (32:10):
His followers say he has supernatural powers.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
His powers are phenomenal.
Speaker 8 (32:16):
They made him seem like a god to us.
Speaker 10 (32:20):
We talked to dozens of former students and instructors who've
been with Chung Mu Kwan over the last twelve years.
Most of them asked us to disguise their identities. They
say they're afraid because the schools they were at thrived
on an atmosphere of intimidation and violence.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Our investigation found.
Speaker 10 (32:38):
That some of the schools have also exploited students to
take their money and to take over their minds. That's
why experts call it a cult.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
So not only is my dad and the mob, which
is bad enough, by the way, he's also in some
goddamn kung fu mind control cult. Jesus fucking Christ. He's
either an evil genius or the unluckiest man alive.
Speaker 10 (33:01):
Experts say that some Chung mu Quan students seem to
be subjected to a form of mind control that begins
the martial arts training, for example, constantly repeating a movement
or holding poses for long periods on orders from their instructor.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Okay, let's stop there for a second. Now, listen to
this clip for my dad. You would do a.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Form for an hour, hour and a half. It's all
you would do, is a form, A form? Is this movement?
So constant movement for an hour and a half.
Speaker 11 (33:34):
What happens is that they go into an altered state
of consciousness. In that type of altered state, they're very
susceptible to suggestions. It's the same kind of thing that
takes place in a hypnotic trance.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Now, let's go back to episode one. Well, my dad
talks about mentally preparing himself for a hit.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I sit in my car and I do what I
always do. I breathe, I make myself aware. I heighten
my senses, my sight, my smell, my hearing. I don't
know how I do it, but I do it. As
I'm listening to the music, I feel my senses start
to kick in. As they kick in, the moment arises.
(34:24):
The moment always hits me. I don't know how it
hits me, but I know when I'm ready for the.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Moment, and there it is. This whole time, I've been
struggling to understand just how he could take that enormous
leap from doorman to hip man, or how he could
jump back and forth so easily from mob life to
family life without us ever even coming close to knowing.
Speaker 11 (34:51):
What happens is that they go into an altered state
of consciousness. It's the same kind of thing that takes
place in a hypnotic trance.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Not a trance, not every trance. I think it was
the perfect storm of terrible childhood, abusive parents, hitting the
streets as a kid, no prospects finding a father figure,
which just happens to be in the outfit, and then
(35:20):
you introduce Chung Mu Kwan and it's meditative mind control techniques, but.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
You know it taught to you know all the points,
all the all the all the points that can name kill,
temporarily put somebody out of business. I always had that advantage.
I had no fear at all, and that really got
me through a lot.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Next week on Crooked County.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
He was fucking up made guy or not, he was
fucking up man, and eventually it was going to catch
up to him, but I took care of it myselfe.
Speaker 5 (36:14):
No.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Crook County is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot
TV in association with Common Enemy. All episodes are written, produced,
and hosted by Me Kyle Tequila. Executive producers are Donald
Albright and Payne Lindsay. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Main title song is called Aloha by the band Starry Eyes,
(36:37):
and credit song is called no Show, also by the
band Starry Eyes. Sound mix by Cooper Skinner. Thank you
to Orrin Rosenbaum and the excellent team at UTA for
their support and to my fearless attorney, Wendy Bench for
her guidance. To stay updated on all things Crook County,
follow us on all socials at Crook County Podcast, or
(36:58):
leave us a voicemail by visiting crookcountypodcast dot com. For
more podcasts like Crook County, search Tenderfoot TV on your
favorite podcast app, or visit Tenderfoot dot tv. Thanks for listening.
The story continues next week.
Speaker 8 (37:15):
Awesome message Joe five, I watch show.
Speaker 9 (37:47):
Shower show. No no no no no no no no
(38:39):
no
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