October 24, 2024 • 48 mins
Joe Massino's last stand delivers a message to the world of organized crime: this could be the end. And, law enforcement's attention gets diverted to new and more dangerous adversary.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a
production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
In the criminal justice system, landmark trials transcend the courtroom
to reshape the law. The brave many women who investigate
and prosecute these cases are part of a select group
that is defined American history. These are their stories. Monday,
June twenty eighth, two thousand and four, Eastern District Federal Court, Brooklyn.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Vinnie, the Chinigante, Genevie's family boss, is serving twelve years
for racketeering. John Gotti, nicknamed the Dapper Dawn, died in
federal prison two years ago. Joseph Big Joey Messino, close
friend of the late Gotti, alleged boss of the Banano family,
is the last Dawn.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
The trial of Joe Messino, there was a dramatic affair
which peaked with the testimony of his underboss and eventual rival, Salvitally,
a man Messino himself had ordered to be killed.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
The only time that it got super tense in the
courtroom was when sal testified against Joe. I mean, you
could just feel it. Joe Messino practically raised Salvatally, and
here he was basically putting in men jail for the
rest of his life, betraying a family oath. And his
(01:31):
sister is sitting in the courtroom, his nieces. It got
pretty tense.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Sal's sister was also Messino's wife. This was family drama
on a whole other level.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
In the world of organized crime, there is no greater
sin than being a government's in foremant. So imagine the
pressure on a man named Salvator Vitale. He is the
former number two of the Bonano crime family. He is
testifying against his boss, Joseph Massino, who also happens to
be Vitali's brother in law.
Speaker 6 (02:05):
Oh gosh, the tension, it was palpable. He's on the stand,
we're looking forward, but the glares, the death stairs that
are coming right. It's a packed courtroom when Battally is testifying,
and yet it's absolutely quiet. He was well aware of
the hatred that was being directed at him by the
(02:26):
people who he was the closest to in life up
until that point.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Good Looking Style saw everything, he says, including the nineteen
eighty one triple murder of Messino's rivals at a Brooklyn
social club. He also testified that Messino ordered the murder
of the man responsible for allowing an FBI agent to
infiltrate the mafia, a case made famous in the movie
Donnie Brasco.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
From closest confidant to double crosser, Vitali was revealing all
of Messino's murderous secrets. The Last Dawn was truly on
his own.
Speaker 6 (03:12):
You're not with the mob because you want to be.
Speaker 7 (03:15):
It's the gangster that decides whether you're his associated.
Speaker 6 (03:18):
On if you like your life, you will vote to acquit.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
I'm Anniseega Nicolazzi. My father should have been a dead
man from Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. This is Law
and Order Criminal Justice System. In their tireless pursuit of
Banano boss Joe Messino, the government had their sight set
(03:46):
on his right hand man, sal Vitally, who was not
only Messino's trusted ally, but they were family. Messino had
been married to Vitally's sister, Josephine, four years, but before
investigators could approach him, they needed some leverage. Luckily, according
to former FBI agent Kim McCaffrey, there was never a
(04:09):
shortage of crimes to pin on sal Salvatally.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
He is living in Dix Hills and there's a bank
eab Bank, And you know there's some people that go
to banks and they can't get loans because their credit's
bad or there's a variety of reasons why banks choose
not to give certain people loans. Well, there's a corrupt
branch manager who happens to be friends with Salvatally. So
(04:34):
if you don't qualify from the bank, you then can
get a loan from your local mobsters. You pay a
little extra an interest, and if you can't make your payment, well,
then you get called into the bank conference room and
you don't get a bad credit rating, you get a beating.
And Salvatally was part of that.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Once again, Kim took a fine tooth comb to his
financial and uncovered a pattern of very suspicious banking.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
You know, if you deposit more than ten thousand dollars,
banks have to fill out a form. People know this,
and people don't want banks to fill out forms on them,
so they will continually deposit just under that amount. But
when you do that, that is a crime, and it's
called structuring.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
It wasn't murder, but it was evidence of fraud and
perhaps more and could come with a lengthy jail sentence,
but the government was ready to dangle an even bigger
incentive for Vitally to cooperate.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
We knew that Joe was considering killing Sal even though
it was his brother in law, just from other cooperators
within his inner circle that had started talking to us,
and so we thought that maybe Sao would have some
incentive to cooperate. Why not give it a shot. So
the day he was arrested and we pitched him and
(06:01):
we actually showed him Joe Messino's detention memo which talked
about the plot to kill Salbatally. We showed him the
pages that talked about it. Sal just looked at us
and he said, I want you to prove this. Prove
to me that this is true. And I said, Sal,
we don't have to prove this to you. You already
(06:23):
know it's true. And he kind of just looked a
bit defeated and he said, you're right. I think we
knew at that point that he would eventually cooperate with us.
Speaker 6 (06:35):
Once Vitally hears that this guy who he looked up
to and loved was ready to murder him, he says,
kill me, Okay, forget it, I'm going to flip, and
then he flips, and it's this real family drama, that
bond that they shared. It was so shocking and great
(06:58):
for the case. When Vitally decided to.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Cooperate, that's Mitra Hermosi, former Assistant United States Attorney in
the Eastern District of New York. Sal Vitally would be
the highest ranking and most consequential Banano mobster to testify
against Messino, and he was determined to make it count.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Sal Vitali, in particular, was I felt open and honest
about everything that he had done. When we asked him
to talk about the murder that he had been indicted for,
He's like, Oh, do you want to start there or
do you want to start with the first murder I
committed back in the nineteen sixties. Let's just start from
the beginning and go chronologically.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Vitali's murderous resume read like a history of the modern mob.
Speaker 6 (07:46):
Once he decided to cooperate, it was like a light switch.
That was it. It was here's the laundry list, and
no emotion in his description of all the acts of
violence and criminality that occurred.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
Salvatally's knowledge destroyed the family. I mean He was involved
in eleven homicides for the Banana family.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Including the three Capos murders that claimed the life of
messino rival Sonny red In Delacado. Salvatally had dedicated his
life to securing Messino's rise to power, and now he
would deliver the blow that would finally bring him down.
Speaker 6 (08:28):
It was so crazy when Salvatally decided to cooperate, and
then you knew you had the boss. You could really
bring down this organization.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Once word got out that Salvatally was cooperating, I mean literally,
there were made members that were calling the US Attorney's
office saying, if this is true, I'll wear a wire.
I'll do whatever you need to do because this life
is over.
Speaker 6 (08:54):
Vitally, when he wasn't so stoically, matter of factly talking
about murders and extortion and loan sharking and violence, he
was like your good friend's father, just such a normal,
easy going literally I'm like, you remind me of my
(09:16):
friend Lisa's dad. Just that slight accent.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Like he's picking us up from the carpool.
Speaker 6 (09:23):
Totally. He lived in Long Island and he had this
life of I'm sure what the neighbors thought was normalcy,
and yet here he was co running this unbelievable mafia family.
It was very fun to just sort of observe the
dichotomy between who he actually was and who he presented as.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
I think the way that the Bananos conducted some of
their business is what protected them for so long.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
According to Special Agent Kim McCaffrey, in addition to learning
how to traditional surveillance techniques, Joe Messino liked to make
sure all of his men weren't in on the big plans.
So if it was an organized hit and you were
a Banano, you were in for a penny, in for
a pound.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
Think about involving fifteen people in a murder. If we
involve everyone and all of these things, then we're sort
of insulating and protecting ourselves. But as soon as the
first domino fell, that's what ultimately led to their demise.
Once Frank Coopa started talking, and then Richie Canarella started talking,
(10:38):
sal He's not a dumb man like these guys. At
that point they knew it was a choice of I'm
going to prison for the rest of my life or
I have a shot of getting out. What ultimately protected
the Banana family for so long was what destroyed them.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
In the end, the Commission case had chipped away at
the ballot If and Omerta the mafia sworn oath of
secrecy and loyalty. By the time the FBI were rounding
up the Bananos, Omerta was dead. Like the Commission or
a front table at the Copa Cabana. It was a
relic of the mafia's past.
Speaker 6 (11:18):
You know, if you look back, there was such a
sense among the five families of you go to prison,
you don't cooperate. And as luck would have it, some
of these people had gotten older, sixties and wealthy, and
all of a sudden thought, do I really want to
spend the rest of my life in jail. It was
lucky in some sense that one or two of the
(11:40):
high level members of the group decided to cooperate, and
once they did, everyone else was like, wait, why would
I go to prison if these two guys are going
to get a much lighter sentence. The rules have changed, Yeah,
the rules changed.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Salvitally, the Banano underboss just given up his brother in
law and the so called last Don Joe Messino, and
with his testimony, the government had a solid case, not
just on counts of extortion and racketeering, but murder, specifically
the gangland execution of his old friend Sunny Black Nepolitano.
(12:21):
It was finally time to bring him in. In a
fitting demonstration of just how much the mobs world had changed,
Messino's arrest would come at the hands of not a
swat team, nor a swarm of black suited agents, but
two accountants, Jeff and Kim.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Jeff is blasting the beastie boys on our way to
the arrest because that's what he liked to play in
the car, and we roll off on Joe Messino's house.
We knock on the door and he is ready for us.
He is dressed in like a black tracksuit and his
hair is is perfectly done, and he's ready to go.
(13:03):
He says, yeah, I was expecting you guys yesterday.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
In the end, Joe Messino, the last don would go
down without a fight.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
And then in the car we just, you know, are
talking small talk and he does say you must be
Kimberly and you must be Jeffrey, And we say, oh,
you know a lot about us, and he says, well,
you do your homework, I do mine. It was definitely
a very surreal moment after four years of investigation, you know,
sitting in the backseat with Joe Messino.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Their impression he was a gentleman, polite, charming even, but
they also knew who he really was, a criminal and
a killer.
Speaker 8 (13:47):
The reputed mafia Boston, New York City was arrested today.
Joseph Messino allegedly runs the Bonano crime family. He was
indicted on federal charges of murder, conspiracy, and other crimes
over too decades. Prosecutors said Messino was the last official
boss of New York's five mafia families who wasn't already
(14:07):
in jail.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
That has to do with one murder when we initially
arrested him, but then obviously that was superseded upon he
went to trial on seven homicides because obviously sal knew
everything that Joe was involved in.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
And with his testimony and that of other cooperating witnesses,
Mietra inter fellow prosecutors were building a case that would
make sure Messino would spend some real time in a
jail cell.
Speaker 6 (14:38):
It was a racketeering case, going after the boss of
a criminal enterprise. By the time we're ready to go
to trial, we have seven murders that either Messino had
participated or sanctioned. We had loan sharking, we had extortions,
even pump and dumb schemes.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
And while not all those financial crimes are tabloid worthy,
they can be just as insidious and damaging to society
as murder, and prosecutors were determined to get justice for
the victims of those crimes as well.
Speaker 6 (15:16):
As a prosecutor. The highlights are always the murders or
the violence, but the day to day loan sharking activity,
the day to day extortions, the drug dealing is the
bread and butter of the organization. It's all about the money.
There wasn't a window that was installed in New York
that didn't have a kickback to a member of organized crime.
(15:39):
They controlled some of these unions in such a way
where their people would get the no show jobs. There
were so many no show jobs, and then you'd have
little store owners who if they didn't give part of
their profits to these guys walking up and down the street,
they would get beat up, their legs would get broken.
It was really violent and horrible, and so every day
(16:03):
it impacts people's lives in a very negative.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Way, and thanks to the work of the investigators, they
had their receipts to prove it. In the end, federal
prosecutors had built a rock solid case against Messino and
the consequences promise to be far reaching. Not the Mitra
noticed at the time.
Speaker 6 (16:26):
The nice thing is you're growing with it, so to speak.
You don't think about it, right, You're just working every day.
It's like, oh, let's step back and look at the
forest for the trees, like it's all trees when you're
trying to build the case. And then certainly once the
trial starts, right, it's just sixteen hours a day every
day of what is the task at hand because there
(16:47):
are so many and it's only after the whole thing
is over that you sit back and think, wow, that
was pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Messino's trial began on May twenty fourth, two thousand and four,
with Judge Nicholas Garraffus presiding and Greg Andres leading the prosecution.
Speaker 6 (17:16):
It's such a strong case. We have so many witnesses,
there's so much evidence that it would have been shocking
had we not convicted. Having said that, you're still nervous.
You don't know what's going to happen. Did they get
to a juror or who knows what can happen.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
In fact, right from the start, Mietra herself was involved
in a nearly devastating hiccup.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
Every trial has its surprises. Greg asked me to put
on this one witness. He may have been like eighty
four years old. He was on medication. And I go
to Greg. I'm like, I don't think he's taken his medication.
He's a little nervous. I'm not sure he's ready. Rather
not put him on right now. Greg's like, just put
(18:03):
him on, because this is how we've orchestrated the lineup.
Like okay, so first witness, and I ask the witness
about Joe Messino. Yes, member of the Banano family boss,
Like okay, so do you see him in the courtroom today?
He looks around and he says no. And I'm just thinking,
(18:26):
oh god, you know, you're just like, okay, it's in
the defense seat, but you can't say anything. And none
of us thought to be like, this is what Joe
Messino looks like.
Speaker 9 (18:36):
Now.
Speaker 6 (18:36):
He hadn't seen the guy in twenty five years, and
so he had a young version and he himself at age.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
It's the stuff of prosecutor nightmares.
Speaker 6 (18:48):
And I recall he says, that's not Joe Messino. And
Greg's looking at me like I'm going to kill you.
I told you he wasn't ready. Oh and the poor guy,
he said he needed a break and the start was
not great, but it all worked out. Every other witness
said this was Joe Messino.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Other testimony was impactful in both content and emotion, a
stark reminder to the jury that when it came to murder,
you were talking about human lives. Sixty five year old
frank Lino had survived the three Capos murders that Messino
and Vitally carried out, and not even a life of
(19:33):
crime as a Banano captain could keep him from tearing
up when he recounted the murder of his friends.
Speaker 6 (19:41):
Frank Lino was old school mafia. He clearly was very
fond of the three captains and talking about how he
almost got killed by the crossfire. Obviously he wasn't told
because they were too worried. He would forewarn the three captains.
Frankie was a tough character, very no nonsense, and he
(20:04):
definitely in the courtroom he teared up talking about their
murders and his almost right he almost got killed.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
As for the defendant, Joe Messino, for much of his
trial he appeared unfazed.
Speaker 6 (20:19):
Messino outwardly appeared to be mellow, more quiet, unlike a gottie.
He didn't want press, he didn't want attention. Everyone generally
seemed to like Messino, even in the courtroom every day,
super polite, always said good morning. He'd share food if
(20:39):
you wanted, and we're like, no, thank you, but very pleasant.
So in that world he seemed like a relatively liked
and peaceful for what that's worth. Boss.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Maybe in another life, Big Joey Messino would have been
happy selling sandwich from his lunch wagon, and even on
trial for his life, there were glimpses of the person
that might have been.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
Joe would order these elaborate Italian lunches every day. At
one point, maybe halfway through the trial, the defense lawyer
and the guards they just brought him his lunch and
he looks at me and he says, Petra, you're getting
too skinny. Come sit, have something you need to eat.
(21:30):
Thank you, Joe, I really appreciate it. I'm good though
I'm trying to put you in jail for the rest
of your life.
Speaker 10 (21:37):
You enjoy your meal.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Over the course of the trial, Messino is happy to
let his animated defense team do all the kicking and screaming.
Speaker 6 (21:48):
Because their clients wanted it a lot of showmanship. There's
so much evidence that it's hard to crack that wall.
But what you can do is kick and scream and
talk about the unfairness and the injustice and that the
prosecutors are being outrageous and that the cooperators are just
absolutely lying. And so he was very aggressive and animated,
(22:15):
and he and Greg would really like go at it,
and poor Judge Garifus would be like, okay, the two
of you, you know, take a minute. Very contentious from
start to finish.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Soon it was time for the government's main witness, sal Vitally,
to testify.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
Sal conducted himself as he did when we were debriefing them.
He was just telling his story over the course of
two days.
Speaker 6 (22:44):
He was the star witness. I will have to say,
Vitally had this unbelievable memory of who was there, where
was it, going back twenty five years, and we were
able to corroborate then everything he said. Did it help
that all these other Cooper readers said the same thing,
because obviously no one witness knows what the other witness
is saying. Yes, but his historical, all encompassing knowledge was
(23:11):
absolutely the critical piece of the case.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
In the end, Vitally's testimony proved devastating, not just to Messino,
but also to his sister, who stood by Messino's side
throughout the trial.
Speaker 6 (23:27):
His wife showed up every day of trial, right his
wife and daughters like without fail. And you know, you
can imagine, here is her brother, the lead witness against
her husband, and her husband is on trial.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
In the courtroom, Messino's wife, Josephine, spends her days glaring
at her brother sal Vitali, whose testimony could.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Land her husband in prison. Nonetheless, in a show of
family over family, Vitally refused to disparage or incriminate his sisters.
Speaker 6 (24:01):
Till the end. He loved his sister, he said, that's
the one person he would not give evidence about.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
When it finally came time for closing statements, there seemed
to be little doubt that the government had made their case.
But still Mitya remembers being overcome with nerves before her
final presentation.
Speaker 6 (24:22):
So it was my fourth trial. It was my third
year in the office, and here you have a completely
packed courtroom with reporters and the defense lawyer is much
more senior and very aggressive. On the one hand, though,
it was great because we had such a strong case
(24:44):
that the nerves were calmed by the fact that we
have the facts, but terrified when I had to give
my closing. I'm sure I probably went into the bathroom
thinking will I be able to speak? And then once
you start speaking that first word, talking to the jury
with such a pack courtroom that you're just like whispering,
(25:05):
and then you get into it, and then you're like, oh,
I've got this. I know this.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Just as nerve wracking was the wait for the jury's verdict.
Speaker 6 (25:14):
Because who knows right, who knows?
Speaker 11 (25:18):
You know.
Speaker 6 (25:18):
I had an acquaintance who once sat on a jury
and he ended up causing that jury to hang because
in his head reasonable doubt ment, no doubt, and there's
no such thing as no doubt. So you don't know
the jury right, they're anonymous. You think the case is
so strong, but you just never know until they come back.
(25:40):
So everyone is just a little like you hold your breath.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
After deliberating for five days, the jury finally returned with
a decision.
Speaker 6 (25:52):
It was guilty on all accounts. You keep your composure.
There's no emotion on your face. You're just listen, but
inside you're just like, oh, thank god, it's like Hugh.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
On July thirtyeth two thousand and four, Joe Messina was
found guilty of eleven counts of arson, extortion, loan sharking,
illegal gambling, money laundering, and murder.
Speaker 6 (26:20):
He turned to his wife. He sort of looked at
her and he was just like, what are you going
to do?
Speaker 1 (26:27):
As for Salvitally, he had admitted under oath to eleven murders,
but for his cooperation, he was sentenced to time served
and entered the Witness Protection program. He is reportedly still
alive and living in an undisclosed location. Messino sentencing was
scheduled for the coming October and he was expected to
(26:49):
receive life imprisonment with no possibility of parole.
Speaker 4 (26:54):
It was a nine week trial. At the end of
the day, the jury found him guilty on everything, and
as he was being led back, he told the marshal
that he wanted to talk to us.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Apparently the last Dawn was finally ready to make a deal.
Speaker 6 (27:09):
I was surprised.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
I mean, he was just convicted to a life sentence
and ten point four million dollars in forfeiture. But I
was kind of mad personally, like, dude, we just went
through nine weeks of trial. Now you want to talk
to us, what's the point? I mean, obviously you're not
not going to meet with them, right.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
I mean he is the Bonano boss.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
The main reason he was now willing to cooperate a
looming death sentence for a murder charge that had been
severed from the Rico.
Speaker 6 (27:42):
Trial Orlanda Sasha George from Canada. He was high up
in the Canadian heart of the Banano family. We were
able to charge, and it did get severed because we
were able to seek the death penalty for Messino. Another
part of the reason I think why he ended up cooperating.
It's one thing to spend your life in prison. It's
(28:04):
another to be given a death sentence.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
And now it was Messino's turn to give up what
he knew, selling out what remained of the Banano family
for a chance to live out his days in prison.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
He just told us his side of things, which was interesting.
Messino's value was more towards other families and towards the
future or the current state of the Banano family.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
And with his cooperation, the last Dawn became the last informant.
In doing so, Joe Messino became the first sitting boss
of one of the New York Five families to turn
state's evidence.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
You know, Jack Stubing's plan came together. For so long
they had no cooperators. And to be sitting across the
table from Joe Messino, the boss who had ruled with
the iron fist, the one who everyone was so afraid of,
he sort of had no choice. When Salvatally basically lays
out the entire crime family for the last thirty years,
(29:12):
they don't have a choice. Their choice is prison for
the rest of their life for what or do what
everyone else is doing and maybe have a chance of
being with their families again.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Messino implicated a fellow gangster named Vincent Basciano for the
unsolved murder of Randolph Pizzolo, and he was even willing
to wear a wire to record Bashiano's confession. Here's a
piece of that recording.
Speaker 8 (29:39):
Should I want you to be honest, I have always focus.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
But you can't play with me the other day.
Speaker 9 (29:43):
You play with me and I let it go.
Speaker 5 (29:45):
So I'm conshined with this Randy nothing who knows about it?
Speaker 2 (29:52):
You want to all practical purposes.
Speaker 9 (29:55):
Nobody could think that it came from you.
Speaker 11 (29:57):
Nobody, nobody, nobody.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Could Brandy and I gave Hi one hundred chances.
Speaker 8 (30:04):
However, is but you still can't do it out getting
okay from They're not the boss.
Speaker 9 (30:08):
You gotta have JULII.
Speaker 6 (30:10):
You can't win.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
As part of Messino's plea bargain, he also finally admitted
to his involvement in the nineteen eighty one murders up
the Three Capos, and offered to provide the last two
pieces of that unsolved puzzle. A few weeks after the murders,
the body of Sunny Red and Delacado had been found
in an empty lot in Queen's, but the bodies of
(30:34):
the two remaining victims, Dominic Trinchera and Philip Giaconi, had
never been found.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
Joe Massino's like, listen, those bodies, they are where the
other body surfaced, So you guys need to dig there.
We had this huge football size lot that we were
digging in. Gosh, I don't even know how long we'd
dug there. We had photographers that were trying to pinpoint
an exact location based on where the body of Sunny
Red and Delicado had been found twenty years prior. I know,
(31:04):
on the eighth day, we finally found some of the
jewelry that the family had described that Dominic Trinchero was
wearing the day that he was murdered. All of us
are like super excited. We're like man like, the bones
have to be somewhere around here, Like we found the
jewelry and we're all like down there in the dirt,
and the forensic anthropologist walks by and he goes, I
(31:27):
think this is what you were looking for, And it
was literally the skull like practically laying in like plain view.
It was just crazy.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
The remains corroborated everything that sal Vitally had testified to.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
Sal described the murders that day and he talked about
how the one captain was literally shot one bullet in
the back of his head. When we found his skull
perfectly intact, one bullet in the back of his head,
like incredible twenty years later to find that and to
corroborate exactly the way that he said that the murder
(32:03):
had happened crazy.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
The discovery of the three murdered Banano capos likely brought
little comfort to any of the people they victimized during
their criminal careers, but it did prove one thing that
the truth somehow will find its way to the surface.
(32:32):
In two thousand and five, Joe Messino, head of the
Banano crime family, was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences
for convictions on eleven Rico counts, including his participation in
at least seven murders, one more than serial killer Son
of Sam, as part of a plea bargain that spared
(32:53):
him the death penalty. Messino would go on to testify
in open court as a witness in Vincent Basciano's trial
for the murder of Randy Pizzolo and again in the
twenty twelve extortion trial of a Genevise captain to provide
background as an expert on the American mafia. In June
of twenty thirteen, the US Department of Justice filed a
(33:18):
request to reduce Messino's sentence to time served, citing his
unprecedented cooperation with ongoing federal investigations. The judge granted the
request and Messino was given supervised release. He moved to
an upscale retirement community outside Cleveland and would live out
his remaining days in the Federal Witness Protection program under
(33:40):
the name Ralph Rogers. Joe Messino died in twenty twenty three.
He was eighty years old.
Speaker 6 (33:49):
There's always this like, oh, it's just business. They're only
like killing each other. No. No, the damage that they
caused through not only the drug dealing, but the extortions
and the loan sharking. And there is no glory in
being part of an organized crime family, or there should
be no glory.
Speaker 10 (34:11):
When you really know what this life is and how
the movies portray it. This this honorable society, this brotherhood
of honorable men follow a crap. Joe Bernano's son, Bill Bonano,
wrote a couple of books, and he used to refer
to men of my father's tradition, like there's part of
(34:31):
this grand and glorious thing again going back to sicily,
this protector of the common man and everything, and it
just isn't so they're crooks.
Speaker 6 (34:42):
It's art imitating life. The soprano all these shows, it
really was from his meals to his conduct and the
television shows glamorize it. Oh, in reality, it's a lot uglier.
There's paranoia, there's no trust, a lot of their actions
will own. Families are a mess, whether from being drug
(35:04):
addicts or the kids are in trouble. There's no real friendships.
If they could kill each other for the dollar, they would,
And it seems like a really pretty ugly rough life.
I can't imagine going through life that way.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Between nineteen eighty seven and two thousand and five, the
federal government had prosecuted and convicted the bosses of every
New York crime family Colombo, lu Casey, Gambino, Genevis and Banano.
And it was the takedown of Joe Messino that seemed
to forever relegate the American mafia into the shadows. For
(35:46):
special agents Jack Stubing and Kim McCaffrey. It was the
case of a lifetime.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
The biggest thing for me was, you know, these two
Jeff would argue that we weren't nerdy, but these two
nerdy accountants doing an investigation totally different than it had
been done in the past, and how it just ended
up with the cooperation of Joseph Massino. I will forever
be grateful for Jack for having that plan at the
(36:14):
time that he had the plan.
Speaker 10 (36:17):
They were attentive, they took my advice seriously, and they
went on to great careers. Jeff retired as the number
three guy in the bureau. They really made me proud.
I hope I at least played some small role in
their success. But I was just blessed to have them.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
It was the right investigation at the right time, with
the right people. When I say I miss it, I
could not go back to it. I could not go
back to the pace that we worked now that I'm
fifty one. But I loved every minute of it. I
loved our prosecution team, I loved my FBI team. I
(36:58):
literally loved everything about working that case. And I remember
that George Hannah, one of our supervisors, said I feel
bad for you guys, because you are literally working one
of the best cases you will ever work in the FBI,
and it's the first case that you're ever working. George
(37:19):
was definitely right when he made that statement.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
The Commission trial and its subsequent investigations left the New
York crime families largely leaderless and rudderless, garnering the cooperation
of so many mobsters from the lowly associate to the
boss of bosses. Criminal co conspirators. Once bound by Omerta,
had destroyed the very core of what had made the
(37:45):
mafia so successful and so destructive for so many years.
Working together, every element of the criminal justice system, from
the local police to the special agents, supervisors and teams
of relentless prosecutors, had taken aim at this unstoppable, malevolent
force in American life, and they had won. So where
(38:10):
does that leave the American mafia today.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
It's not what it used to be, but they're still around.
They'll never go away completely.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
According to Kim McCaffrey, these organizations are a ghost of
their former selves, but she knows that wherever there is money,
there will always be those eager to take it by
any means necessary.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
When we would do interviews back in the beginning, normal
businesses were being extorted by them, and they were not
huge dollar amounts, but five hundred dollars a month these
various businesses were paying, and the owners of those businesses
would say, oh, well, it's just the cost of doing
business in New York, and I'm thinking this is so
not true. It's nineteen ninety eight. That's not the cost
(38:58):
of doing business in New York. But to them, paying
that five hundred dollars a month was worth it not
to have your storefront go on fire or not to
deal with whatever they were going to do to make
your life more miserable. And so it's just always going to.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Be that way.
Speaker 4 (39:16):
They'll always be illegal gambling, they'll always be loan sharking,
so they'll always be organized crime guys who were there
to willingly accept your money. And I'm not sure it'll
ever go away completely.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
According to retired special agent Jack Stubing, the mob has
not gone extinct. It has evolved.
Speaker 10 (39:37):
In my own mind, I call it the suburbanization of
the mob. When I started out as a young agent,
I could walk to social clubs all around twenty six
Federal Plaza and chat up wise guys standing on street
corners and that kind of thing. And those kind of
opportunities don't really present themselves anymore. They are more sophisticated.
(39:59):
They're populated by younger people who understand the technology. They
know how to use Venmo and chat apps in all
manner of other communication devices and ways to spread money
that simply didn't exist when I was on the street.
You don't see the kind of mafia violence that you
saw thirty years ago. You'll have occasional hits where people
(40:22):
will just disappear, but blast them up and leave them
in the street is not the way they operate now.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
And for that reason, the job never ends.
Speaker 10 (40:34):
In my experience, one of law enforcements bad tendencies is
they make a big case, declare victory, and walk away,
and as soon as they do, the bad actors start multiplying.
I've always likened them to cockroaches in the dark. There's
never just one, and they're always busy, and if you
(40:56):
don't keep the lights on and do whatever it is
you got to do to keep them under control, you're
never going to eliminate him.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
And there are other seismic changes in American culture that
can dramatically shift the landscape and the priorities of the
criminal justice system.
Speaker 12 (41:15):
It appeared to back sharply and smash directly, perhaps purposely
into Oh my goodness, oh god, there's another one. Oh,
oh my goodness, there's another one.
Speaker 5 (41:29):
Seems to be on purpose.
Speaker 12 (41:31):
Oh my goodness. Value Now it's obvious. I think that
there's a second plane just crashed into.
Speaker 10 (41:38):
The World Trade Center after nine to eleven, it was
all hands on deck. I worked terrorism for eight or
ten months. I was at the office constantly chasing down
terrorist leads. They were throwing every resource available into that thing. Then,
of course, for years after, every time you started working
(41:58):
wise guys again they ask you how come you're not
chasing bin loott And instead of bothering them.
Speaker 4 (42:03):
I feel like it's sort of the natural. This is
how it kind of goes in New York a lot.
Like they're very successful against organized crime, and then they
condense squads, and then organized crime grows again, and then
they have to expand squads, and then they condense again.
So it's kind of an ebb and flow. But of
course nine to eleven changed everything. Even in my own mind,
(42:24):
I was like, man, I feel like I should be
working terrorism, working organized crime. Obviously it was serious, there
were murders, there were victims, but I felt like there
were three thousand plus innocent victims who weren't part of
a crime family, who just went to work in New
York that day, and if I could help stop the
(42:45):
next nine to eleven, like that's what I wanted to
be working.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Just as the cigar chomping dawns of the criminal underworld
gave way to international cartels. The face of crime is
always changing, and those tasked with keeping the criminals at
bay they have to change just as fast, working as
a local attorney. James Leonard winnes the shift and priority
in real time.
Speaker 11 (43:11):
What happens at the turn of the century, we go
from the war against the mafia into the war on terror.
Guess where all of the FBI agents that were tracking
the five families went after nine to eleven. They went
to anti terrorism squads because prosecuting terrorists in the United
(43:35):
States that could kill thousands of people who were certainly
more of a priority than chasing around a bunch of
guys from Brooklyn or Manhattan or Queen's or the Bronx.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
In some ways, the investigators dedicated to fighting organized crime
were a victim of their own success. They had breached
the wall of the enemy and dealt them a massive blow,
and now with a new threat on the horizon, their
forces were redeployed to other battlefields. Here again is former
Brooklyn Prosecutor Chris Blank.
Speaker 7 (44:13):
At that time there were about two hundred agents on
those various squads, and over time, after nine to eleven.
In particular, those squads got decimated as resources were put
into anti terrorism, and now the organized crime section of
the FBI is a shadow of what it was back
in the eighties and early nineties, some for legitimate reasons
and some for just resource based priorities.
Speaker 11 (44:36):
I couldn't tell you who the boss of the Geneees
crime family was today if you asked me to battle
on it, because I don't even know that the government knows.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
According to veteran prosecutor Andrew Weisman, underestimating today's organized crime
is a great mistake.
Speaker 9 (44:54):
My sense is not by any means that it's gone.
I'm not that naive, but I don't think it has
the grip on every major industry in the city that
it used to have. But I do also think it
requires constant vigilance. If you don't continue, these things grow back.
Speaker 7 (45:16):
As much as you're talking about organized crime, whatever it is,
there's only one reason this stuff is going on. It's
all about the money. Who's making money and who's not.
To me, every rico I ever did was always about
making money and protecting your position so you could make more.
That aspect of the desire to make money has never
gone away, and the mob still exists and is still
(45:38):
out there and is still doing it. They've realized though,
that these in your face take to can only leave.
The gun kind of incidents are costly to them and
their way of doing business, so they're still out there
doing this stuff. They're not as crass and in your face,
but on an individual level, the answer is yeah, you
could find yourself running a foul of one of these
(46:00):
guys and having to deal with them just like you
would have had to deal with them in the nineteen.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Fifties, and sometimes a victim's only defense in the face
of that injustice is the criminal justice system, the officers,
the agents, the prosecutors, and most importantly, the everyday citizens
that make up juries. These are the people working together
(46:23):
with a singular mission to fight crime, yes, but really
to secure the safety to go about our lives, to
earn a living, to feed our families without fear and
without being victimized. It's a never ending battle and often thankless.
But like the people who shared their stories with us
(46:44):
this season, these are not the kinds of people who
do it for their recognition. The payoff is and always
will be, in the achievement of Justice in Knowing You
serve the victims, both the living and the dead.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Law and Order Criminal Justice System is a production of
Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. Our host is Anna Sega Nicolazi.
This episode was written by Walker Lamond and Anna Sega Nicolazzi.
Executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliott Wolf, and Stephen Michael
at Wolf Entertainment on behalf of iHeartRadio. Executive produced by
(47:33):
Alex Williams and Matt Frederick, with supervising producers Trevor Young
and Chandler Mays, and producers Jesse Funk, Nomes Griffin, and
Rima Alkali. This season is executive produced by Anna Sega Nicolazzi,
story producer Walker Lamond. Our researchers are Carolyn Talmach and
(47:55):
Luke Stance. Editing and sound designed by Nomes Griffin. Original
music by John O'Hara, original theme by Mike Post, additional
music by Steve Moore, and additional voiceover by me Steve Zernkelton.
Special thanks to Fox five in New York, ABC and
(48:17):
CBS for providing archival material for the show. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio and Wolf Entertainment, visit the iHeartRadio, app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Thanks for listening.
You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a
production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
In the criminal justice system, landmark trials transcend the courtroom
to reshape the law. The brave many women who investigate
and prosecute these cases are part of a select group
that is defined American history. These are their stories. Monday,
June twenty eighth, two thousand and four, Eastern District Federal Court, Brooklyn.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Vinnie, the Chinigante, Genevie's family boss, is serving twelve years
for racketeering. John Gotti, nicknamed the Dapper Dawn, died in
federal prison two years ago. Joseph Big Joey Messino, close
friend of the late Gotti, alleged boss of the Banano family,
is the last Dawn.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
The trial of Joe Messino, there was a dramatic affair
which peaked with the testimony of his underboss and eventual rival, Salvitally,
a man Messino himself had ordered to be killed.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
The only time that it got super tense in the
courtroom was when sal testified against Joe. I mean, you
could just feel it. Joe Messino practically raised Salvatally, and
here he was basically putting in men jail for the
rest of his life, betraying a family oath. And his
(01:31):
sister is sitting in the courtroom, his nieces. It got
pretty tense.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Sal's sister was also Messino's wife. This was family drama
on a whole other level.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
In the world of organized crime, there is no greater
sin than being a government's in foremant. So imagine the
pressure on a man named Salvator Vitale. He is the
former number two of the Bonano crime family. He is
testifying against his boss, Joseph Massino, who also happens to
be Vitali's brother in law.
Speaker 6 (02:05):
Oh gosh, the tension, it was palpable. He's on the stand,
we're looking forward, but the glares, the death stairs that
are coming right. It's a packed courtroom when Battally is testifying,
and yet it's absolutely quiet. He was well aware of
the hatred that was being directed at him by the
(02:26):
people who he was the closest to in life up
until that point.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Good Looking Style saw everything, he says, including the nineteen
eighty one triple murder of Messino's rivals at a Brooklyn
social club. He also testified that Messino ordered the murder
of the man responsible for allowing an FBI agent to
infiltrate the mafia, a case made famous in the movie
Donnie Brasco.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
From closest confidant to double crosser, Vitali was revealing all
of Messino's murderous secrets. The Last Dawn was truly on
his own.
Speaker 6 (03:12):
You're not with the mob because you want to be.
Speaker 7 (03:15):
It's the gangster that decides whether you're his associated.
Speaker 6 (03:18):
On if you like your life, you will vote to acquit.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
I'm Anniseega Nicolazzi. My father should have been a dead
man from Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. This is Law
and Order Criminal Justice System. In their tireless pursuit of
Banano boss Joe Messino, the government had their sight set
(03:46):
on his right hand man, sal Vitally, who was not
only Messino's trusted ally, but they were family. Messino had
been married to Vitally's sister, Josephine, four years, but before
investigators could approach him, they needed some leverage. Luckily, according
to former FBI agent Kim McCaffrey, there was never a
(04:09):
shortage of crimes to pin on sal Salvatally.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
He is living in Dix Hills and there's a bank
eab Bank, And you know there's some people that go
to banks and they can't get loans because their credit's
bad or there's a variety of reasons why banks choose
not to give certain people loans. Well, there's a corrupt
branch manager who happens to be friends with Salvatally. So
(04:34):
if you don't qualify from the bank, you then can
get a loan from your local mobsters. You pay a
little extra an interest, and if you can't make your payment, well,
then you get called into the bank conference room and
you don't get a bad credit rating, you get a beating.
And Salvatally was part of that.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Once again, Kim took a fine tooth comb to his
financial and uncovered a pattern of very suspicious banking.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
You know, if you deposit more than ten thousand dollars,
banks have to fill out a form. People know this,
and people don't want banks to fill out forms on them,
so they will continually deposit just under that amount. But
when you do that, that is a crime, and it's
called structuring.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
It wasn't murder, but it was evidence of fraud and
perhaps more and could come with a lengthy jail sentence,
but the government was ready to dangle an even bigger
incentive for Vitally to cooperate.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
We knew that Joe was considering killing Sal even though
it was his brother in law, just from other cooperators
within his inner circle that had started talking to us,
and so we thought that maybe Sao would have some
incentive to cooperate. Why not give it a shot. So
the day he was arrested and we pitched him and
(06:01):
we actually showed him Joe Messino's detention memo which talked
about the plot to kill Salbatally. We showed him the
pages that talked about it. Sal just looked at us
and he said, I want you to prove this. Prove
to me that this is true. And I said, Sal,
we don't have to prove this to you. You already
(06:23):
know it's true. And he kind of just looked a
bit defeated and he said, you're right. I think we
knew at that point that he would eventually cooperate with us.
Speaker 6 (06:35):
Once Vitally hears that this guy who he looked up
to and loved was ready to murder him, he says,
kill me, Okay, forget it, I'm going to flip, and
then he flips, and it's this real family drama, that
bond that they shared. It was so shocking and great
(06:58):
for the case. When Vitally decided to.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Cooperate, that's Mitra Hermosi, former Assistant United States Attorney in
the Eastern District of New York. Sal Vitally would be
the highest ranking and most consequential Banano mobster to testify
against Messino, and he was determined to make it count.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Sal Vitali, in particular, was I felt open and honest
about everything that he had done. When we asked him
to talk about the murder that he had been indicted for,
He's like, Oh, do you want to start there or
do you want to start with the first murder I
committed back in the nineteen sixties. Let's just start from
the beginning and go chronologically.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Vitali's murderous resume read like a history of the modern mob.
Speaker 6 (07:46):
Once he decided to cooperate, it was like a light switch.
That was it. It was here's the laundry list, and
no emotion in his description of all the acts of
violence and criminality that occurred.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
Salvatally's knowledge destroyed the family. I mean He was involved
in eleven homicides for the Banana family.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Including the three Capos murders that claimed the life of
messino rival Sonny red In Delacado. Salvatally had dedicated his
life to securing Messino's rise to power, and now he
would deliver the blow that would finally bring him down.
Speaker 6 (08:28):
It was so crazy when Salvatally decided to cooperate, and
then you knew you had the boss. You could really
bring down this organization.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Once word got out that Salvatally was cooperating, I mean literally,
there were made members that were calling the US Attorney's
office saying, if this is true, I'll wear a wire.
I'll do whatever you need to do because this life
is over.
Speaker 6 (08:54):
Vitally, when he wasn't so stoically, matter of factly talking
about murders and extortion and loan sharking and violence, he
was like your good friend's father, just such a normal,
easy going literally I'm like, you remind me of my
(09:16):
friend Lisa's dad. Just that slight accent.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Like he's picking us up from the carpool.
Speaker 6 (09:23):
Totally. He lived in Long Island and he had this
life of I'm sure what the neighbors thought was normalcy,
and yet here he was co running this unbelievable mafia family.
It was very fun to just sort of observe the
dichotomy between who he actually was and who he presented as.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
I think the way that the Bananos conducted some of
their business is what protected them for so long.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
According to Special Agent Kim McCaffrey, in addition to learning
how to traditional surveillance techniques, Joe Messino liked to make
sure all of his men weren't in on the big plans.
So if it was an organized hit and you were
a Banano, you were in for a penny, in for
a pound.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
Think about involving fifteen people in a murder. If we
involve everyone and all of these things, then we're sort
of insulating and protecting ourselves. But as soon as the
first domino fell, that's what ultimately led to their demise.
Once Frank Coopa started talking, and then Richie Canarella started talking,
(10:38):
sal He's not a dumb man like these guys. At
that point they knew it was a choice of I'm
going to prison for the rest of my life or
I have a shot of getting out. What ultimately protected
the Banana family for so long was what destroyed them.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
In the end, the Commission case had chipped away at
the ballot If and Omerta the mafia sworn oath of
secrecy and loyalty. By the time the FBI were rounding
up the Bananos, Omerta was dead. Like the Commission or
a front table at the Copa Cabana. It was a
relic of the mafia's past.
Speaker 6 (11:18):
You know, if you look back, there was such a
sense among the five families of you go to prison,
you don't cooperate. And as luck would have it, some
of these people had gotten older, sixties and wealthy, and
all of a sudden thought, do I really want to
spend the rest of my life in jail. It was
lucky in some sense that one or two of the
(11:40):
high level members of the group decided to cooperate, and
once they did, everyone else was like, wait, why would
I go to prison if these two guys are going
to get a much lighter sentence. The rules have changed, Yeah,
the rules changed.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Salvitally, the Banano underboss just given up his brother in
law and the so called last Don Joe Messino, and
with his testimony, the government had a solid case, not
just on counts of extortion and racketeering, but murder, specifically
the gangland execution of his old friend Sunny Black Nepolitano.
(12:21):
It was finally time to bring him in. In a
fitting demonstration of just how much the mobs world had changed,
Messino's arrest would come at the hands of not a
swat team, nor a swarm of black suited agents, but
two accountants, Jeff and Kim.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Jeff is blasting the beastie boys on our way to
the arrest because that's what he liked to play in
the car, and we roll off on Joe Messino's house.
We knock on the door and he is ready for us.
He is dressed in like a black tracksuit and his
hair is is perfectly done, and he's ready to go.
(13:03):
He says, yeah, I was expecting you guys yesterday.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
In the end, Joe Messino, the last don would go
down without a fight.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
And then in the car we just, you know, are
talking small talk and he does say you must be
Kimberly and you must be Jeffrey, And we say, oh,
you know a lot about us, and he says, well,
you do your homework, I do mine. It was definitely
a very surreal moment after four years of investigation, you know,
sitting in the backseat with Joe Messino.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Their impression he was a gentleman, polite, charming even, but
they also knew who he really was, a criminal and
a killer.
Speaker 8 (13:47):
The reputed mafia Boston, New York City was arrested today.
Joseph Messino allegedly runs the Bonano crime family. He was
indicted on federal charges of murder, conspiracy, and other crimes
over too decades. Prosecutors said Messino was the last official
boss of New York's five mafia families who wasn't already
(14:07):
in jail.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
That has to do with one murder when we initially
arrested him, but then obviously that was superseded upon he
went to trial on seven homicides because obviously sal knew
everything that Joe was involved in.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
And with his testimony and that of other cooperating witnesses,
Mietra inter fellow prosecutors were building a case that would
make sure Messino would spend some real time in a
jail cell.
Speaker 6 (14:38):
It was a racketeering case, going after the boss of
a criminal enterprise. By the time we're ready to go
to trial, we have seven murders that either Messino had
participated or sanctioned. We had loan sharking, we had extortions,
even pump and dumb schemes.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
And while not all those financial crimes are tabloid worthy,
they can be just as insidious and damaging to society
as murder, and prosecutors were determined to get justice for
the victims of those crimes as well.
Speaker 6 (15:16):
As a prosecutor. The highlights are always the murders or
the violence, but the day to day loan sharking activity,
the day to day extortions, the drug dealing is the
bread and butter of the organization. It's all about the money.
There wasn't a window that was installed in New York
that didn't have a kickback to a member of organized crime.
(15:39):
They controlled some of these unions in such a way
where their people would get the no show jobs. There
were so many no show jobs, and then you'd have
little store owners who if they didn't give part of
their profits to these guys walking up and down the street,
they would get beat up, their legs would get broken.
It was really violent and horrible, and so every day
(16:03):
it impacts people's lives in a very negative.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Way, and thanks to the work of the investigators, they
had their receipts to prove it. In the end, federal
prosecutors had built a rock solid case against Messino and
the consequences promise to be far reaching. Not the Mitra
noticed at the time.
Speaker 6 (16:26):
The nice thing is you're growing with it, so to speak.
You don't think about it, right, You're just working every day.
It's like, oh, let's step back and look at the
forest for the trees, like it's all trees when you're
trying to build the case. And then certainly once the
trial starts, right, it's just sixteen hours a day every
day of what is the task at hand because there
(16:47):
are so many and it's only after the whole thing
is over that you sit back and think, wow, that
was pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Messino's trial began on May twenty fourth, two thousand and four,
with Judge Nicholas Garraffus presiding and Greg Andres leading the prosecution.
Speaker 6 (17:16):
It's such a strong case. We have so many witnesses,
there's so much evidence that it would have been shocking
had we not convicted. Having said that, you're still nervous.
You don't know what's going to happen. Did they get
to a juror or who knows what can happen.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
In fact, right from the start, Mietra herself was involved
in a nearly devastating hiccup.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
Every trial has its surprises. Greg asked me to put
on this one witness. He may have been like eighty
four years old. He was on medication. And I go
to Greg. I'm like, I don't think he's taken his medication.
He's a little nervous. I'm not sure he's ready. Rather
not put him on right now. Greg's like, just put
(18:03):
him on, because this is how we've orchestrated the lineup.
Like okay, so first witness, and I ask the witness
about Joe Messino. Yes, member of the Banano family boss,
Like okay, so do you see him in the courtroom today?
He looks around and he says no. And I'm just thinking,
(18:26):
oh god, you know, you're just like, okay, it's in
the defense seat, but you can't say anything. And none
of us thought to be like, this is what Joe
Messino looks like.
Speaker 9 (18:36):
Now.
Speaker 6 (18:36):
He hadn't seen the guy in twenty five years, and
so he had a young version and he himself at age.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
It's the stuff of prosecutor nightmares.
Speaker 6 (18:48):
And I recall he says, that's not Joe Messino. And
Greg's looking at me like I'm going to kill you.
I told you he wasn't ready. Oh and the poor guy,
he said he needed a break and the start was
not great, but it all worked out. Every other witness
said this was Joe Messino.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Other testimony was impactful in both content and emotion, a
stark reminder to the jury that when it came to murder,
you were talking about human lives. Sixty five year old
frank Lino had survived the three Capos murders that Messino
and Vitally carried out, and not even a life of
(19:33):
crime as a Banano captain could keep him from tearing
up when he recounted the murder of his friends.
Speaker 6 (19:41):
Frank Lino was old school mafia. He clearly was very
fond of the three captains and talking about how he
almost got killed by the crossfire. Obviously he wasn't told
because they were too worried. He would forewarn the three captains.
Frankie was a tough character, very no nonsense, and he
(20:04):
definitely in the courtroom he teared up talking about their
murders and his almost right he almost got killed.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
As for the defendant, Joe Messino, for much of his
trial he appeared unfazed.
Speaker 6 (20:19):
Messino outwardly appeared to be mellow, more quiet, unlike a gottie.
He didn't want press, he didn't want attention. Everyone generally
seemed to like Messino, even in the courtroom every day,
super polite, always said good morning. He'd share food if
(20:39):
you wanted, and we're like, no, thank you, but very pleasant.
So in that world he seemed like a relatively liked
and peaceful for what that's worth. Boss.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Maybe in another life, Big Joey Messino would have been
happy selling sandwich from his lunch wagon, and even on
trial for his life, there were glimpses of the person
that might have been.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
Joe would order these elaborate Italian lunches every day. At
one point, maybe halfway through the trial, the defense lawyer
and the guards they just brought him his lunch and
he looks at me and he says, Petra, you're getting
too skinny. Come sit, have something you need to eat.
(21:30):
Thank you, Joe, I really appreciate it. I'm good though
I'm trying to put you in jail for the rest
of your life.
Speaker 10 (21:37):
You enjoy your meal.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Over the course of the trial, Messino is happy to
let his animated defense team do all the kicking and screaming.
Speaker 6 (21:48):
Because their clients wanted it a lot of showmanship. There's
so much evidence that it's hard to crack that wall.
But what you can do is kick and scream and
talk about the unfairness and the injustice and that the
prosecutors are being outrageous and that the cooperators are just
absolutely lying. And so he was very aggressive and animated,
(22:15):
and he and Greg would really like go at it,
and poor Judge Garifus would be like, okay, the two
of you, you know, take a minute. Very contentious from
start to finish.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Soon it was time for the government's main witness, sal Vitally,
to testify.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
Sal conducted himself as he did when we were debriefing them.
He was just telling his story over the course of
two days.
Speaker 6 (22:44):
He was the star witness. I will have to say,
Vitally had this unbelievable memory of who was there, where
was it, going back twenty five years, and we were
able to corroborate then everything he said. Did it help
that all these other Cooper readers said the same thing,
because obviously no one witness knows what the other witness
is saying. Yes, but his historical, all encompassing knowledge was
(23:11):
absolutely the critical piece of the case.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
In the end, Vitally's testimony proved devastating, not just to Messino,
but also to his sister, who stood by Messino's side
throughout the trial.
Speaker 6 (23:27):
His wife showed up every day of trial, right his
wife and daughters like without fail. And you know, you
can imagine, here is her brother, the lead witness against
her husband, and her husband is on trial.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
In the courtroom, Messino's wife, Josephine, spends her days glaring
at her brother sal Vitali, whose testimony could.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Land her husband in prison. Nonetheless, in a show of
family over family, Vitally refused to disparage or incriminate his sisters.
Speaker 6 (24:01):
Till the end. He loved his sister, he said, that's
the one person he would not give evidence about.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
When it finally came time for closing statements, there seemed
to be little doubt that the government had made their case.
But still Mitya remembers being overcome with nerves before her
final presentation.
Speaker 6 (24:22):
So it was my fourth trial. It was my third
year in the office, and here you have a completely
packed courtroom with reporters and the defense lawyer is much
more senior and very aggressive. On the one hand, though,
it was great because we had such a strong case
(24:44):
that the nerves were calmed by the fact that we
have the facts, but terrified when I had to give
my closing. I'm sure I probably went into the bathroom
thinking will I be able to speak? And then once
you start speaking that first word, talking to the jury
with such a pack courtroom that you're just like whispering,
(25:05):
and then you get into it, and then you're like, oh,
I've got this. I know this.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Just as nerve wracking was the wait for the jury's verdict.
Speaker 6 (25:14):
Because who knows right, who knows?
Speaker 11 (25:18):
You know.
Speaker 6 (25:18):
I had an acquaintance who once sat on a jury
and he ended up causing that jury to hang because
in his head reasonable doubt ment, no doubt, and there's
no such thing as no doubt. So you don't know
the jury right, they're anonymous. You think the case is
so strong, but you just never know until they come back.
(25:40):
So everyone is just a little like you hold your breath.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
After deliberating for five days, the jury finally returned with
a decision.
Speaker 6 (25:52):
It was guilty on all accounts. You keep your composure.
There's no emotion on your face. You're just listen, but
inside you're just like, oh, thank god, it's like Hugh.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
On July thirtyeth two thousand and four, Joe Messina was
found guilty of eleven counts of arson, extortion, loan sharking,
illegal gambling, money laundering, and murder.
Speaker 6 (26:20):
He turned to his wife. He sort of looked at
her and he was just like, what are you going
to do?
Speaker 1 (26:27):
As for Salvitally, he had admitted under oath to eleven murders,
but for his cooperation, he was sentenced to time served
and entered the Witness Protection program. He is reportedly still
alive and living in an undisclosed location. Messino sentencing was
scheduled for the coming October and he was expected to
(26:49):
receive life imprisonment with no possibility of parole.
Speaker 4 (26:54):
It was a nine week trial. At the end of
the day, the jury found him guilty on everything, and
as he was being led back, he told the marshal
that he wanted to talk to us.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Apparently the last Dawn was finally ready to make a deal.
Speaker 6 (27:09):
I was surprised.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
I mean, he was just convicted to a life sentence
and ten point four million dollars in forfeiture. But I
was kind of mad personally, like, dude, we just went
through nine weeks of trial. Now you want to talk
to us, what's the point? I mean, obviously you're not
not going to meet with them, right.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
I mean he is the Bonano boss.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
The main reason he was now willing to cooperate a
looming death sentence for a murder charge that had been
severed from the Rico.
Speaker 6 (27:42):
Trial Orlanda Sasha George from Canada. He was high up
in the Canadian heart of the Banano family. We were
able to charge, and it did get severed because we
were able to seek the death penalty for Messino. Another
part of the reason I think why he ended up cooperating.
It's one thing to spend your life in prison. It's
(28:04):
another to be given a death sentence.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
And now it was Messino's turn to give up what
he knew, selling out what remained of the Banano family
for a chance to live out his days in prison.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
He just told us his side of things, which was interesting.
Messino's value was more towards other families and towards the
future or the current state of the Banano family.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
And with his cooperation, the last Dawn became the last informant.
In doing so, Joe Messino became the first sitting boss
of one of the New York Five families to turn
state's evidence.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
You know, Jack Stubing's plan came together. For so long
they had no cooperators. And to be sitting across the
table from Joe Messino, the boss who had ruled with
the iron fist, the one who everyone was so afraid of,
he sort of had no choice. When Salvatally basically lays
out the entire crime family for the last thirty years,
(29:12):
they don't have a choice. Their choice is prison for
the rest of their life for what or do what
everyone else is doing and maybe have a chance of
being with their families again.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Messino implicated a fellow gangster named Vincent Basciano for the
unsolved murder of Randolph Pizzolo, and he was even willing
to wear a wire to record Bashiano's confession. Here's a
piece of that recording.
Speaker 8 (29:39):
Should I want you to be honest, I have always focus.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
But you can't play with me the other day.
Speaker 9 (29:43):
You play with me and I let it go.
Speaker 5 (29:45):
So I'm conshined with this Randy nothing who knows about it?
Speaker 2 (29:52):
You want to all practical purposes.
Speaker 9 (29:55):
Nobody could think that it came from you.
Speaker 11 (29:57):
Nobody, nobody, nobody.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Could Brandy and I gave Hi one hundred chances.
Speaker 8 (30:04):
However, is but you still can't do it out getting
okay from They're not the boss.
Speaker 9 (30:08):
You gotta have JULII.
Speaker 6 (30:10):
You can't win.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
As part of Messino's plea bargain, he also finally admitted
to his involvement in the nineteen eighty one murders up
the Three Capos, and offered to provide the last two
pieces of that unsolved puzzle. A few weeks after the murders,
the body of Sunny Red and Delacado had been found
in an empty lot in Queen's, but the bodies of
(30:34):
the two remaining victims, Dominic Trinchera and Philip Giaconi, had
never been found.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
Joe Massino's like, listen, those bodies, they are where the
other body surfaced, So you guys need to dig there.
We had this huge football size lot that we were
digging in. Gosh, I don't even know how long we'd
dug there. We had photographers that were trying to pinpoint
an exact location based on where the body of Sunny
Red and Delicado had been found twenty years prior. I know,
(31:04):
on the eighth day, we finally found some of the
jewelry that the family had described that Dominic Trinchero was
wearing the day that he was murdered. All of us
are like super excited. We're like man like, the bones
have to be somewhere around here, Like we found the
jewelry and we're all like down there in the dirt,
and the forensic anthropologist walks by and he goes, I
(31:27):
think this is what you were looking for, And it
was literally the skull like practically laying in like plain view.
It was just crazy.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
The remains corroborated everything that sal Vitally had testified to.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
Sal described the murders that day and he talked about
how the one captain was literally shot one bullet in
the back of his head. When we found his skull
perfectly intact, one bullet in the back of his head,
like incredible twenty years later to find that and to
corroborate exactly the way that he said that the murder
(32:03):
had happened crazy.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
The discovery of the three murdered Banano capos likely brought
little comfort to any of the people they victimized during
their criminal careers, but it did prove one thing that
the truth somehow will find its way to the surface.
(32:32):
In two thousand and five, Joe Messino, head of the
Banano crime family, was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences
for convictions on eleven Rico counts, including his participation in
at least seven murders, one more than serial killer Son
of Sam, as part of a plea bargain that spared
(32:53):
him the death penalty. Messino would go on to testify
in open court as a witness in Vincent Basciano's trial
for the murder of Randy Pizzolo and again in the
twenty twelve extortion trial of a Genevise captain to provide
background as an expert on the American mafia. In June
of twenty thirteen, the US Department of Justice filed a
(33:18):
request to reduce Messino's sentence to time served, citing his
unprecedented cooperation with ongoing federal investigations. The judge granted the
request and Messino was given supervised release. He moved to
an upscale retirement community outside Cleveland and would live out
his remaining days in the Federal Witness Protection program under
(33:40):
the name Ralph Rogers. Joe Messino died in twenty twenty three.
He was eighty years old.
Speaker 6 (33:49):
There's always this like, oh, it's just business. They're only
like killing each other. No. No, the damage that they
caused through not only the drug dealing, but the extortions
and the loan sharking. And there is no glory in
being part of an organized crime family, or there should
be no glory.
Speaker 10 (34:11):
When you really know what this life is and how
the movies portray it. This this honorable society, this brotherhood
of honorable men follow a crap. Joe Bernano's son, Bill Bonano,
wrote a couple of books, and he used to refer
to men of my father's tradition, like there's part of
(34:31):
this grand and glorious thing again going back to sicily,
this protector of the common man and everything, and it
just isn't so they're crooks.
Speaker 6 (34:42):
It's art imitating life. The soprano all these shows, it
really was from his meals to his conduct and the
television shows glamorize it. Oh, in reality, it's a lot uglier.
There's paranoia, there's no trust, a lot of their actions
will own. Families are a mess, whether from being drug
(35:04):
addicts or the kids are in trouble. There's no real friendships.
If they could kill each other for the dollar, they would,
And it seems like a really pretty ugly rough life.
I can't imagine going through life that way.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Between nineteen eighty seven and two thousand and five, the
federal government had prosecuted and convicted the bosses of every
New York crime family Colombo, lu Casey, Gambino, Genevis and Banano.
And it was the takedown of Joe Messino that seemed
to forever relegate the American mafia into the shadows. For
(35:46):
special agents Jack Stubing and Kim McCaffrey. It was the
case of a lifetime.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
The biggest thing for me was, you know, these two
Jeff would argue that we weren't nerdy, but these two
nerdy accountants doing an investigation totally different than it had
been done in the past, and how it just ended
up with the cooperation of Joseph Massino. I will forever
be grateful for Jack for having that plan at the
(36:14):
time that he had the plan.
Speaker 10 (36:17):
They were attentive, they took my advice seriously, and they
went on to great careers. Jeff retired as the number
three guy in the bureau. They really made me proud.
I hope I at least played some small role in
their success. But I was just blessed to have them.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
It was the right investigation at the right time, with
the right people. When I say I miss it, I
could not go back to it. I could not go
back to the pace that we worked now that I'm
fifty one. But I loved every minute of it. I
loved our prosecution team, I loved my FBI team. I
(36:58):
literally loved everything about working that case. And I remember
that George Hannah, one of our supervisors, said I feel
bad for you guys, because you are literally working one
of the best cases you will ever work in the FBI,
and it's the first case that you're ever working. George
(37:19):
was definitely right when he made that statement.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
The Commission trial and its subsequent investigations left the New
York crime families largely leaderless and rudderless, garnering the cooperation
of so many mobsters from the lowly associate to the
boss of bosses. Criminal co conspirators. Once bound by Omerta,
had destroyed the very core of what had made the
(37:45):
mafia so successful and so destructive for so many years.
Working together, every element of the criminal justice system, from
the local police to the special agents, supervisors and teams
of relentless prosecutors, had taken aim at this unstoppable, malevolent
force in American life, and they had won. So where
(38:10):
does that leave the American mafia today.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
It's not what it used to be, but they're still around.
They'll never go away completely.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
According to Kim McCaffrey, these organizations are a ghost of
their former selves, but she knows that wherever there is money,
there will always be those eager to take it by
any means necessary.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
When we would do interviews back in the beginning, normal
businesses were being extorted by them, and they were not
huge dollar amounts, but five hundred dollars a month these
various businesses were paying, and the owners of those businesses
would say, oh, well, it's just the cost of doing
business in New York, and I'm thinking this is so
not true. It's nineteen ninety eight. That's not the cost
(38:58):
of doing business in New York. But to them, paying
that five hundred dollars a month was worth it not
to have your storefront go on fire or not to
deal with whatever they were going to do to make
your life more miserable. And so it's just always going to.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Be that way.
Speaker 4 (39:16):
They'll always be illegal gambling, they'll always be loan sharking,
so they'll always be organized crime guys who were there
to willingly accept your money. And I'm not sure it'll
ever go away completely.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
According to retired special agent Jack Stubing, the mob has
not gone extinct. It has evolved.
Speaker 10 (39:37):
In my own mind, I call it the suburbanization of
the mob. When I started out as a young agent,
I could walk to social clubs all around twenty six
Federal Plaza and chat up wise guys standing on street
corners and that kind of thing. And those kind of
opportunities don't really present themselves anymore. They are more sophisticated.
(39:59):
They're populated by younger people who understand the technology. They
know how to use Venmo and chat apps in all
manner of other communication devices and ways to spread money
that simply didn't exist when I was on the street.
You don't see the kind of mafia violence that you
saw thirty years ago. You'll have occasional hits where people
(40:22):
will just disappear, but blast them up and leave them
in the street is not the way they operate now.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
And for that reason, the job never ends.
Speaker 10 (40:34):
In my experience, one of law enforcements bad tendencies is
they make a big case, declare victory, and walk away,
and as soon as they do, the bad actors start multiplying.
I've always likened them to cockroaches in the dark. There's
never just one, and they're always busy, and if you
(40:56):
don't keep the lights on and do whatever it is
you got to do to keep them under control, you're
never going to eliminate him.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
And there are other seismic changes in American culture that
can dramatically shift the landscape and the priorities of the
criminal justice system.
Speaker 12 (41:15):
It appeared to back sharply and smash directly, perhaps purposely
into Oh my goodness, oh god, there's another one. Oh,
oh my goodness, there's another one.
Speaker 5 (41:29):
Seems to be on purpose.
Speaker 12 (41:31):
Oh my goodness. Value Now it's obvious. I think that
there's a second plane just crashed into.
Speaker 10 (41:38):
The World Trade Center after nine to eleven, it was
all hands on deck. I worked terrorism for eight or
ten months. I was at the office constantly chasing down
terrorist leads. They were throwing every resource available into that thing. Then,
of course, for years after, every time you started working
(41:58):
wise guys again they ask you how come you're not
chasing bin loott And instead of bothering them.
Speaker 4 (42:03):
I feel like it's sort of the natural. This is
how it kind of goes in New York a lot.
Like they're very successful against organized crime, and then they
condense squads, and then organized crime grows again, and then
they have to expand squads, and then they condense again.
So it's kind of an ebb and flow. But of
course nine to eleven changed everything. Even in my own mind,
(42:24):
I was like, man, I feel like I should be
working terrorism, working organized crime. Obviously it was serious, there
were murders, there were victims, but I felt like there
were three thousand plus innocent victims who weren't part of
a crime family, who just went to work in New
York that day, and if I could help stop the
(42:45):
next nine to eleven, like that's what I wanted to
be working.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Just as the cigar chomping dawns of the criminal underworld
gave way to international cartels. The face of crime is
always changing, and those tasked with keeping the criminals at
bay they have to change just as fast, working as
a local attorney. James Leonard winnes the shift and priority
in real time.
Speaker 11 (43:11):
What happens at the turn of the century, we go
from the war against the mafia into the war on terror.
Guess where all of the FBI agents that were tracking
the five families went after nine to eleven. They went
to anti terrorism squads because prosecuting terrorists in the United
(43:35):
States that could kill thousands of people who were certainly
more of a priority than chasing around a bunch of
guys from Brooklyn or Manhattan or Queen's or the Bronx.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
In some ways, the investigators dedicated to fighting organized crime
were a victim of their own success. They had breached
the wall of the enemy and dealt them a massive blow,
and now with a new threat on the horizon, their
forces were redeployed to other battlefields. Here again is former
Brooklyn Prosecutor Chris Blank.
Speaker 7 (44:13):
At that time there were about two hundred agents on
those various squads, and over time, after nine to eleven.
In particular, those squads got decimated as resources were put
into anti terrorism, and now the organized crime section of
the FBI is a shadow of what it was back
in the eighties and early nineties, some for legitimate reasons
and some for just resource based priorities.
Speaker 11 (44:36):
I couldn't tell you who the boss of the Geneees
crime family was today if you asked me to battle
on it, because I don't even know that the government knows.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
According to veteran prosecutor Andrew Weisman, underestimating today's organized crime
is a great mistake.
Speaker 9 (44:54):
My sense is not by any means that it's gone.
I'm not that naive, but I don't think it has
the grip on every major industry in the city that
it used to have. But I do also think it
requires constant vigilance. If you don't continue, these things grow back.
Speaker 7 (45:16):
As much as you're talking about organized crime, whatever it is,
there's only one reason this stuff is going on. It's
all about the money. Who's making money and who's not.
To me, every rico I ever did was always about
making money and protecting your position so you could make more.
That aspect of the desire to make money has never
gone away, and the mob still exists and is still
(45:38):
out there and is still doing it. They've realized though,
that these in your face take to can only leave.
The gun kind of incidents are costly to them and
their way of doing business, so they're still out there
doing this stuff. They're not as crass and in your face,
but on an individual level, the answer is yeah, you
could find yourself running a foul of one of these
(46:00):
guys and having to deal with them just like you
would have had to deal with them in the nineteen.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Fifties, and sometimes a victim's only defense in the face
of that injustice is the criminal justice system, the officers,
the agents, the prosecutors, and most importantly, the everyday citizens
that make up juries. These are the people working together
(46:23):
with a singular mission to fight crime, yes, but really
to secure the safety to go about our lives, to
earn a living, to feed our families without fear and
without being victimized. It's a never ending battle and often thankless.
But like the people who shared their stories with us
(46:44):
this season, these are not the kinds of people who
do it for their recognition. The payoff is and always
will be, in the achievement of Justice in Knowing You
serve the victims, both the living and the dead.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Law and Order Criminal Justice System is a production of
Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. Our host is Anna Sega Nicolazi.
This episode was written by Walker Lamond and Anna Sega Nicolazzi.
Executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliott Wolf, and Stephen Michael
at Wolf Entertainment on behalf of iHeartRadio. Executive produced by
(47:33):
Alex Williams and Matt Frederick, with supervising producers Trevor Young
and Chandler Mays, and producers Jesse Funk, Nomes Griffin, and
Rima Alkali. This season is executive produced by Anna Sega Nicolazzi,
story producer Walker Lamond. Our researchers are Carolyn Talmach and
(47:55):
Luke Stance. Editing and sound designed by Nomes Griffin. Original
music by John O'Hara, original theme by Mike Post, additional
music by Steve Moore, and additional voiceover by me Steve Zernkelton.
Special thanks to Fox five in New York, ABC and
(48:17):
CBS for providing archival material for the show. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio and Wolf Entertainment, visit the iHeartRadio, app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Thanks for listening.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.