August 22, 2024 • 40 mins
The execution of three Bonanno captains marks a pivotal moment in New York’s criminal history, set against the backdrop of a covert battle waged by law enforcement to dismantle the Mafia.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a
production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
In the criminal justice System, landmark trials transcend the courtroom
to reshape the law. The brave men and women who
investigate and prosecute these cases are part of a select
group that is defined American history. These are their stories.
May fifth, nineteen eighty one, benson Hurst, Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
A group of men waited inside an empty nightclub. The
nineteen seventy nine murder of Carmi Galanti two years before
had resulted in a power struggle at the top of
the Banano crime family, and these men were here to
sort it out. The man calling the shots was thirty
eight year old Joe Messino, truck hijacker, ruthless killer, and
(01:00):
loyal ally of Banano boss Rusty Rostelli. Messino was also
one of the men responsible for Carmine Galanti's murder. On
the agenda for this so called administration meeting peace talks
with three ambitious captains buying for control of the family
in the wake of Galante's death. With one unassuming soldier
(01:23):
in tow, the three capos entered the club unarmed, expecting
a peaceful negotiation. As they neared, one of Messino's men
discreetly ran a hand through his hair. It was a signal.
Four masked gunmen burst out of a closet, armed with
pistols and a sawd off shotgun. The three capos they
(01:50):
didn't stand a chance. Power was once again restored to
Rusty Rostelli, while Joe Messino had amassed more influence than
ever before and he was far from finished.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
You're not with the mob because you want to be.
It's the gangster that decides whether you're his associated on.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
If you like your life, you will vote to acquit.
I'm Anethega Nicolazzi. My father should have been a dead man.
From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. This is Law and
Order Criminal Justice System. In our last episode, we brought
(02:43):
you the story of Carmen Gallanti, a one time hitman
who rose through the ranks of organized crime to become
the de facto boss of the Banano crime family. That
is until he was gunned down outside an Italian restaurant
in Brooklyn in July of nineteen seventy nine. His murder
would mark a seminal moment, and not just the history
(03:04):
of the mob. In New York, but also in law
enforcements approach to investigating and prosecuting the mafia. For nearly
a century, the Five Families had used bribery, blackmail, extortion,
and murder to control the city with little or no
opposition from law enforcement, and by the end of the
(03:24):
nineteen seventies their power had reached new heights. But after
Galante's murder, that was all about to change. Armed with
what was then cutting edge technology, the FBI knew that
the best way to crack a coat of silence was
to infiltrate the very homes and hangouts of mobsters, eavesdropping
(03:47):
on their conversations. To accomplish this, they would rely on
an array of hidden bugs and wire taps placed by
a team of fearless undercover operatives known as black bagging.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
We did have black bags on occasion, but any bag
would work if you had to slip into some place.
My name is Joseph Canta Messa. I was a special
agent with the FBI for twenty two years. I retired
in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Joe was one of the bureau's most successful tech specialists,
whose work directly led to the incarceration of countless members
of organized crime, but at the time of the Three
Kappos murder in nineteen eighty one, Joe was a young
agent working undercover as a phone repairman in Little Italy,
known to locals as.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Joe Aquino a q U, I n complete identity, backstopped
if necessary, driver's license, vehicle registration, real true address if
you wanted to check it. Joe was a phone man,
but I could have been an electrician. I could have
been a TV repairman. I had different identity for different companies.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And much like a spy, before even attempting to bug
his prospective target, Joe took meticulous care in building his
backstory to establish himself as a believable and familiar member
of the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Little Literally, it's a pretty popular, touristy kind of place.
There are regulars there, and there were a few social
clubs there, and they pretty much pay attention to what's
going on unless you're a tourist.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
These social clubs were members only, commonly used as a
base of operations for crime families.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
For me to be recognized, I would show up on
a frequent basis in my telephone truck. I would find
the closest social club, and I would park right in
front of the door, and I would get out, and
I would walk the neighborhood, going in and out of
various front doors. You know, again, I've been ingratiating myself
(06:01):
to the neighborhood doing favors because back then the New
York Telephone and the Bell system owned everything. You leased
everything from the phone company. Here I am the gracious
guy who will occasionally throw a client the long cord
or whatever. It took weeks for me to get recognized
(06:22):
as somebody that belonged in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
The easiest part about fronting as a telephone repairman is
that for Joe it wasn't a lie because he actually
had the same job in high school.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Well, I was working for New Jersey Bell Telephone as
a telephone installer repairman. There were only two truly former
telephone installer repairman as FBI agents in the entire organization,
so we didn't have to like figure out how to
look like being a phone man. We were the phone man.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
But given the kind of people he was up against,
he would also need the ability to improvise and stay
cool under pressure. One false move could mean his life.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I don't always know how it's going to play out.
I know what I want to try and accomplish. You
had to just kind of like take what came along.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Like the time Joe was installing a microphone behind a
telephone wall plate. His target became suspicious and started quizzing him.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
The question came up as to where I was from,
and I said, East Broncx, you know, right off of
White Plains Road. And I started talking about, you know,
my aunt worked in the Vicaro's bakery, my other aunt
was a ticket taker at the Wakefield. And I'm explaining
all of this pretty confidently, and then he asked me
(07:50):
a question or make some statement about something that has
nothing to do with this neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Luckily, Joe immediately realized he was being tested.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
I get a glance of his wife, who was looking
at him, and I turned to him and I go,
what part of the Bronx are you talking about? You know?
He laughed, and that sort of like cleared it up
right away. He was throwing me a curve, and fortunately
I picked up on it.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Much of Joe's success as an agent was emblematic of
the changing strategy of the FBI in the fight against
the mafia. The agents of the bureaus passed just weren't
getting the results they wanted and that the public needed.
But Joe had a natural edge when talking to mobsters
because he grew up around them.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
My grandparents on my father's side were very strong Northern Italians,
and most of my formative years were actually in New Jersey,
with regular trips back to the Bronx to see family members.
And while my father was a law abiding citizen, a
few of our other family members got to be a
(08:58):
little sketchy at times.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
After a stint in the army, Joe went back to
work with a telephone company, but one of his neighbors,
who happened to be an FBI agent, noticed Joe's natural
ability with tech equipment and convinced him to pursue a
career in law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
It was a gamble for me again because I barely
got out of high school, but I took a chance.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
And that chance paid off. Joe immediately excelled at his
new gig, and it wasn't long before his unique skill
set led him to the FBI Special Operations Unit, and.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I became the technical supervisor for so one FBI Special
operations in New York City.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Joe was one of a select group of agents utilizing
the full resources and technology at the FBI to accomplish
one mission infiltrate and dismantle the mafia from the top down.
And over the next decade, the SO one Squad was relentless.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
We did hundreds of surreptitious entries nights weekends when a
place was vacant. Surreptitious was always the preferred method to
install electronic surveillance or tracking, etc. But there were many
instances where the place was never vacant. When we were
(10:17):
confronted with that, I could create a scenario and fabricate
a problem that the subject would want to invite me in.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
His targets some of the most dangerous and ruthless criminals
in America. But before we talk about all the ways
law enforcement infiltrated the Mob, I think it's important to
understand a little bit more about how the commission came
to be and why for so many decades authorities had
been so ineffective in stopping them. By the nineteen seventies,
(10:53):
New York was in trouble.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Every week you would see something in the paper, a
shooting between mob guys.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
That's Jim Kostler, a former FBI special agent, and he
witnessed the violence firsthand.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
I was hired as a special agent with the FBI
in nineteen seventy I spent eight years in Newark investigating
organized crime. In nineteen seventy nine, I was promoted and
sent to New York. My role was the position of
Labor Racketeering Program Manager for the New York Office.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Jim was persuaded to join the FBI by an agent
he met at a party. Leaving behind his career as
a special education teacher, he chose to serve the public
in a new way. Back when Jim was starting his career,
joining the FBI was the dream of every young kid
interested in law enforcement. The image of the straight backed,
all American g man was seared into popular culture. But
(11:48):
the truth was that despite its reputation and resources, the
Bureau was woefully behind encountering the mafia. In fact, the
Bureau was still under the control of its first director,
a man who for decades refused to even acknowledge the
existence of the mob.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
You know, at that time, jag Or Hoover was the
director of the FBI. It was much different than it
is today.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Obviously, during Hoover's first thirty years as director, not a
single agent was assigned to work organized crime. Hoover even
famously banned the use of the word mafia in internal reports,
publicly downplaying mafia's as a mere hoodlums and a nuisance
to be dealt with by local law enforcement. This resulted
(12:31):
in what you could call a bottom up approach to
enforcing crime, focusing on individual perpetrators rather than the men
at the top pulling the strings. It was a never
ending battle. Hoover's policy severely limited Jim's ability to fight
organized crime.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
The mission of the FBI at that point in time
was every agent was given assignments to take responsibility for
and to achieve something in a given period of time.
The response ability of every agent was to produce statistics.
At the end of the year, when it came time
for your evaluation, they looked at how many statistics you
(13:09):
had for that year, how many people did you arrest,
how many people did you put in jail, how much
did you recover? You recover stolen goods, and so forth.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
And while handfuls of low level gangsters might be locked up,
mob leadership went unscathed. At the heart of the problem
was the way the FBI was organized.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
When I got into organized crime in New Jersey. Every
morning we would come in and we would say hello
to each other, and then every agent on the squad
would go their own way. It was disjointed in that sense.
We didn't have a plan, just a matter of go
find a gambler, go find a loan shark, and you'll
be successful. I came to realize that that was not
(13:50):
a good method, another good system, because organized crime is organized.
The folks that were involved in it at a structure,
and they've worked under our hierarchy. We didn't work as groups.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
It turns out the FBI should have taken a lesson
from the very men they were chasing. Translated from Italian,
the term cosin nostra literally means our thing. But that
(14:27):
seemingly innocuous designation is a ruse because that thing, the mafia,
is actually a highly organized, highly regulated system of rules, ranks,
and rituals that go back centuries. Much like an army,
an organized crime family operates with a strict hierarchy, with soldiers, captains, underbosses,
(14:49):
all reporting to a top boss and then as overseers
of it all. The Commission, a secretive council composed of
the five New York bosses. The Commission and ensured unity
and coordination among crime families nationwide, usually under the threat
of their iron fist, and it was this historical cooperation
(15:10):
that gave the families their power, reach, and sense of invincibility.
The Commission's origins, however, were anything but civil, so.
Speaker 5 (15:20):
When the Mob was first form around nineteen thirty, it
followed what it was called the Castell Maurici War.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
That's former Prosecutor Ron Goldstock, who at the time was
the director of the New York Organized Crime Task Force
and fair warning, We're going to be throwing a lot
of names at you in the next couple of minutes,
but I promise there won't be a quiz. The Castela
Maurici War was a bloody power struggle between two rival bosses,
Joe Massarea and Salvator Marenzano, both born in Sicily, both
(15:51):
notoriously ruthless, but a cunning and ambitious young gangster by
the name of Charles Lucky Luciano had his own eye
on the topso in April of nineteen thirty one, Luciano
conspired with Marenzano to take out the competition, and so
at a card game in Coney Island, Luciano casually excused
(16:12):
himself from the table right before four gunmen entered the
restaurant and opened fire, leaving Joe Massaia dead on the floor.
As a result of the brazen hit, Luciano inherited all
of Masaria's rackets. Marenzana then called a meeting with Luciano
(16:33):
and the heads of the three other mafia factions to
establish the Five Families, but Marenzana wanted to retain ultimate power.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
In order to deal with problems that came about because
of competing interests of the families. He created a position
for himself as Boss of All Bosses, the Boss.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Of Bosses, but Marenzano's reign was short lived.
Speaker 5 (17:00):
Luciano then had him killed just as he was plotting
to have Luciano killed, but Luciano was quicker.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
In a plot befitting of Marenzano's nickname of Little Caesar,
four men disguised as fedes raided his office and stabbed
the boss multiple times before shooting him in the head
for good measure. Now with an opportunity to reign over
the entire mafia, Lucky Luciano faced a critical decision.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Luciano recognized that the position of boss of old bosses
was problematic. He just created enemies because whenever you would
rule on anything, you are always going to rule against somebody,
and so you needed another vehicle for dealing with each
of the family's competing interests. And so what he did
(17:52):
was to create the Commission.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Five seats, with each seat establishing equal representation, and to
prevent the war from continuing, Luciano offered a commission seat
to Marizano's underboss, Joe Banano, seeing it as the path
to peace. Banano accepted. Luciano held a national conference in
Chicago with the heads of the five New York families
(18:16):
and over twenty other mafia leaders from around the country,
and it was there in Chicago that Luciano instituted many
of the rules and traditions that would govern organize crime
for decades to come.
Speaker 5 (18:30):
So he established the position of consolieri counselor, which meant
that the kap regime, if they had a problem with
the boss, could go to somebody as an ombutzman deal
with him, rather than having to confront the boss straight on.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
As a trusted confidant to the boss, Consiglieri became one
of the top three administrative positions, usually equal in rank
to the underboss. With its rigid chain of command and
sworn oaths of fidelity, the modern American mafia was born.
It would enjoy unrivaled prosperity for decades. Crime boss Joe
(19:07):
Banano later described this period in his memoirs, writing that
and I quote. For nearly a thirty year period after
the Castella Morasi War, no internal squabbles marred the unity
of our family, and no outside interference threatened the family
or me. Everything would change in nineteen fifty seven, when
(19:29):
three major events thrust Cosinostra out of the shadows and
into the glare of the public spotlight. The first was
the attempted assassination of Luciano family boss Frank Costello by
up and comer Vincent the Chin Giganti. As Costello walked
through the lobby of his apartment building, Giganti snuck up
(19:50):
behind him and said, this is for you, Frank. A
hit that incredibly Costello survived the bullet just grazing his forehead,
but the real marvel is what happened next. Given the
opportunity to identify his shooter in court, Costello refused to
name Gigante Here's defense attorney, James Leonard.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
During the trial, something right out of a movie. When
Costello was asked if he recognizes person's shot him, clearly
he knows who shot him, clearly, he knows who Giganty is.
Because Giganty is connected to Genevies, he says he can't identify.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
It was a striking example of the Mafia's infamous code
of silence. But Omerta, as it was known, was not
just an oath of loyalty. It was the mafia's single
biggest defensive weapon against prosecution, denying law enforcement of cooperating
witnesses in any potential trial, and in the case of Giganty,
it likely saved him from a life in prison. In
(20:51):
another scene worthy of a movie, Giganty leaned towards Costello
while he was leaving the courtroom and whispered thanks a lot, Frank.
The second landmark event of Mobler from nineteen fifty seven
occurred a few months later, when mob boss Albert Anastasia
was shot and killed mid shave in a Manhattan barbershop.
(21:15):
It was more fallout from the Boch Costello hit, and
the very public midday murder was plastered all over every
front page in New York. Unwilling to retaliate for the headshot,
and perhaps fed up with a treacherous mob life fall together,
Frank Costello decided to go into early retirement, relinquishing full
control of the Lucciano family to his scheming underboss Vito Genovese. Then,
(21:40):
seeking to legitimize his power and rebrand the family name,
Genovis called for a national meeting to be held in
a sleepy farming town in upstate New York, which brings
us to the third major mob event of nineteen fifty seven.
Here's former prosecutor Guild Childers on what would prove to
be a devastating mistaken by mob leaders.
Speaker 7 (22:02):
It was a national convention of lacos andostra at a
guy's house in Applelach in New York. Nice house in
a rural area if everyone thought it was out of
the way and safe and no one would find out
about it. But a couple of the local policemen, two
of them started noticing that there were a lot of
out of state license plates driving through town.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Authorities ran the plates on a bunch of expensive cars
and quickly learned that this convention wasn't your typical farmer's expo.
So they set up roadblocks and descended upon the appalak
And estate.
Speaker 7 (22:37):
And they all fled like cockroach just wanted to turn
the light on in a New York City apartment.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Dozens of middle Agian elderly mobsters in suits and dress
shoes fled into the surrounding woods. Over sixty bosses, underbosses, consiglieries,
and capos were eventually arrested. Troopers found it embarrassed Joba
running through a nearby cornfield.
Speaker 7 (23:03):
That scene was comically captured in the movie Analyzed This,
where it shows a couple mob guys writing a tractor
all the way back to New York City to escape
the cops from the time.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
But more importantly, the Appalachan meetings signified actual proof, both
to the public and the government, the existence of a
nationwide criminal network. These were not just a random assortment
of local hoodlums as Hoover had described them. This was
an organization. Here's Ron Goldstock.
Speaker 5 (23:35):
Federal government was not involved in the investigation and prosecution
of organized crime until the seventies, and it was only
after the Appalachian Meeting that the federal government first started
to take a look at it.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Soon, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies would launch
a new line of attack against organized crime.
Speaker 5 (23:59):
The FBI began to use electronic surveillance to investigate the mob,
and they began to learn through the taps and bugs
they had put in a great deal about the mob structure.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Armed with modern technology and a deeper understanding of their
opponents and their weaknesses, small and nimble teams of undercover
officers and agents began to infiltrate the dark underworld of
Cosa Nostra, heralding the biggest defensive against organized crime the
nation had ever seen. After that almost laughable roundup of
(24:43):
mobsters in Upstate New York, public awareness of the mafia
had reached new heights. Here again, its defense attorney James Leonard.
Speaker 6 (24:51):
When we get to the Bobby Kennedy era, it's a
very different time. Now we know about the mob, we
know that the mob exists, and ironically, one of the
main reasons that we know about the Mob is from
a defector from within the Genevese crime family.
Speaker 8 (25:10):
What is the name of it.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
It is.
Speaker 8 (25:15):
Causing in Italian, causing nostra in Italian, our thing and
our family In English?
Speaker 3 (25:24):
That is an organization?
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Is it that requires The defector's name was Joseph Flacci.
He was a Genevieve soldier who in nineteen sixty three
became the first major violator of the Mafia code of silence. Oh, Marta,
that's right, yeah.
Speaker 8 (25:40):
Why do you feel like it should be destroyed? First
of all, I want revenge. The second of all, they've
been very bad to the soldiers. They've been thinking for
themselves all through the years. As the senator put it before,
what did I get out of it? Why do you
get out but misery.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Lachi's testimony of mob life was unprecedented. He detailed the
induction ceremony of new members. He confirmed the existence of
the five families, their leaders, their structure, and he even
name dropped the commission.
Speaker 8 (26:13):
What are the different physicians or ratings or ranked in
that organization? Starting at the top, what do you have?
Speaker 3 (26:23):
We have.
Speaker 8 (26:25):
What we call agunliasium in English, she would express it
as a commission.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
The hearings capture the nation's attention and the term Cosonostra
cemented itself into American vernacular.
Speaker 6 (26:42):
All of a sudden, the mob is in every living
room in the country, and we start to see things
like the Kennedy assassination and then the knee jerk reaction
was well, that was the mob, right, and the mob
did that for whatever reasons, again not proven but speculated.
So organized crime, the mafia really comes into our lexicon
(27:05):
in the mid sixties, and it's cemented forever in the
early seventies with the Godfather movie. That's it, and once
that happens, there's no turning back.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
But while the mafia's power and notoriety was reaching an
all time high, a counter attack was developing over at
the FBI. The bureau's tallest hurtle out flanking the mob's
fortress like code of silence their solution technology seventies style
(27:37):
special agent Joe Cantamsa, who we met earlier, used his
guile and experience as a former telephone repairman to talk
his way into the homes and hangouts of several suspected mobsters.
But the most notorious and most dangerous was a Banano
captain named Alphonse in Delacado, known on the street as
Sonny Red. Sonny Read was a ruthless Kapa regime about
(28:04):
as violent as they come, and his rank in the
Banana hierarchy made him a very high value target for
the FEDS, and since Joe had already established himself as
a local, now he needed to make contact with Sonny
red sister Marie.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
In Marie's apartment at one seventeen Elizabeth Street, she was
always home or somebody was always in the apartment. Sonny
would come back late the night, early morning, and you know, crash.
I mean, I want to get into her apartment. I
want to kind of take a look and see what
it looks like, and I want to try and figure
out if I could ever get a microphone in there.
(28:41):
But I got to get in there first.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And so Joe came up with a little ruse involving
a series of prank calls utilizing one of the FBI's
Chinese translators.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
Translator comes down to her name is Ming. She obviously
knows English very well. I explained to her, I want
her to call this number right in front of me,
and I wanted to start talking Chinese, ask for somebody,
and then be a little bit stubborn about you know,
not getting cooperation. She does that, Marie hangs up the
phone on her I go, we'll wait a minute, and
we call back again. She makes the second call, Marie
(29:15):
hangs up again. This is two times. Marie's getting annoyed
that she's getting these calls. She calls a third time.
I'm looking straight at her. Her eyes get real big.
She drops the phone and runs out of my office.
Well that was good enough for me. Marie is going
to remember this phone call. The next day, I show
(29:39):
up and knock on Marie's door New York. Tell we
got a report of a crossed line. Have you gotten
any calls? And she lights up like a oh yeah,
you know, and then she starts complaining to me. I go, listen,
I'm just here to see where the line is crossed. So,
you know, she calms down.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
And just like that, Joe would soon be up on
Sunny Red's phone. He was able to discreetly survey the
apartment for the ideal location to install a miniature transmitter,
commonly referred to as a bug.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
You had to pay attention, but you couldn't pay so
much attention it looked like you were paying attention.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
And if you play it cool. Sometimes you even get lucky.
After Joe explained the so called crossline problem.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Marie asked me if I could put her phone in
for an extension. Well, that's what I was waiting for
her to ask, I said, but this is the only
place I could put it in, which was in the hallway.
There was a little table there pretty close to where
the room was that Sonny would conduct his business perfect,
(30:48):
I said, well, I'll have to come back. We'll take
care of it.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Oh and while he was at it, could he also
stop by her sister in last place too?
Speaker 3 (30:57):
She tells me that her sister in law lives at
one fifteen, and you know, could I go up and
see what she needed? And it turns out, unbeknownst to me,
this is Sonny Red's brother JB in Delicato.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
JB. He was another mobster the Feds are keeping an
eye on, and while not Joe's target, when opportunity knocks,
you go ahead and answer. But still the risk of
being made was ever present, and sometimes it came from
the most unexpected places. When Joe arrived, JB asked him
to install a new touchdown phone to replace his old
rotary one.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Yeah, I could throw a touchstone in there for a
couple of bucks. I made an appointment to go back
and do that. I come back later, and now I'm
bringing with me one of my associates, John Kravic, because
I want to show him because when it comes time
to do this, I'm going to need more than one
person to do this.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Marie directs him to her mother's ground floor apartment for
the access that Joe said he needed to get their
job done.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
I knock on the door. It's like nine o'clock in
the morning. The door opens and there's a woman about
four foot ten. I tell her I was just next door.
We got to get in the courtyard. We're walking back.
She stops dead right in front of us, turns around
and points to both of our faces and says, I
(32:22):
know you. You're the FBI. You come tap of the
phones in broken English. I look at John, and I
look at I go, Grandma, who cares what you say
on the phone? She paused, and she laughs, and then
everybody laughs.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Joe was working in the Lions then. Opportunity and life
threatening danger was literally behind every door.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
John is in the basement. I'm kneeling on the floor
behind an open door, drilled a hole in the base board.
The door swings and it knocks me over, and I hear,
who the fuck are you.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Looming over? Joe was the mob captain himself Sonny read
In Delocado, and Sonny was not happy to deflex suspicion.
Joe reverted to his roots and actually being from the Bronx.
He was a natural.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
And as I'm getting up, I'm going, who the fuck
are you? I go, I'm doing something for Marie. I said,
I don't know you.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
And with some quick thinking, Joe diffuses the situation with
one of his tried and true methods, convincing Sonny red
In Delocado to actually help him install the very wiretap
that Joe was hoping to use to bring him down.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
I go, well, listen, if you give me a hand
for just a minute or two, I'll find out where
the guy is downstairs and I'll get out of here.
He goes, what do you want? I go? I want
you to come right here and bang this little thing
on the floor and I'm going to go down the
basement and find out whareness. He says, okay, he comes
(34:04):
over starts tapping it. I go out, go down the basement.
John is walking around the flashlight in a completely wrong spot.
I tear down a piece of old sheet rock sort
of stuff. I grabbed the thing I got. I holler up,
I got it. He points, Who's that? I say to John,
it's sunny. John's eyes get this big. But nonetheless I
(34:29):
go back upstairs. I put my little connector block in.
I dropped the wire down, we make the splice, and
we're out of there. Perfect install.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
It was one of the more daring wire tap installations
of his career, because little did he know that across
the river in Brooklyn, trouble was brewing and Sonny Red
was right in the middle of it. A day or
so later, Joe returned to install the requested touchdown phone.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
I'm feeling pretty good the case. I'nt happy. The microphone's
in and working. I trot upstairs to JB's apartment. I
knock on the door and there's a little bit of
a pause.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
The usual time it took to answer the door had passed. Eventually,
JB's wife called out, who is it.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
I go, it's Joe, Joey the phone guy.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
After another pause, Joe immediately has the thought that every
black bag agent has that his cover had been blown
and there was no telling who might be on the
other side of the door waiting for him. JB's wife
finally opens the door, and.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
I could see she's been crying. I go okay, and
she because yes, and I'm thinking, all right, whatever's going on,
it ain't me. I walk over to the kitchen. Over
to my right on the couch, JB waves. I go over.
I changed the kitchen phone. I picked up my twenty
dollars tip.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
I leave and he leaves in a hurry.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
As I make the last turn to the foyer, all
I see is a soaking wet face and hair, and
then I realize between me and that face is a
large barrel revolver right in my face. That I did
not see.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
On the other side of the revolver was a man
in obvious distress, scared, breathing heavily, and looking like he'd
been running for quite some time.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
I go, okay, everything's cool, everything's good.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
But the man would not lower his gun. Then a
miracle as help came in the form of a nosy
neighbor who recognized Joe as the phone guy.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
He's okay, he's okay, it's Joey, he's okay. Sally, who
is one of the women I got friendly with in
the neighborhood, is yelling at this person who I don't
know who it is, that everything is okay. So he
puts this gun back in his waistband. I walk out
the door onto Elizabeth Street. I turned towards Grand and
(37:10):
my heart rate jumps from normal to one hundred and twenty.
So it was a delayed reaction to what might have happened.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
All those weeks Joe spent establishing himself as a local
likely saved his life.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
I walked down to the closest payphone. I called the office.
I asked for the supervisor, Damon Taylor. I go, Damon,
I just left Elizabeth Street, and Damon says to me, oh,
I forgot to call you. Forgot to call me and
tell me what There was a hit last night. Sonny's dead.
(37:49):
They're hunting for Bruno, his son. I go, well, I'm
pretty sure I just ran into Bruno.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
It turns out that the night before Sonny red in
Delakado was one of the three capos gunned down in
Bensonhurst at the hands of Joe Messino and his son
Bruno and Delacado had every reason to be running for
his life. If there was ever any doubt that Joe
had penetrated the very center of the New York mob world,
(38:17):
it had vanished with Sunny Red's murder. The only problem
the bug planted in in Delocado's house was now worthless.
Sonny was dead, but the fight wasn't because, as it
turns out, Joe and his fellow Feds weren't the only
ones in town getting eyes and ears inside organized crime.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Next time on Law and Order Criminal Justice System.
Speaker 6 (38:51):
We are going to utilize this to dismantle organized crime
by cutting off its head.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
I dream of the day that you guys put all
the bosses of the families in jail in one place.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
You had to be capable, confident, and dedicated to the mission.
I worked literally one hundred hours a week.
Speaker 5 (39:11):
Where like a battleship, it takes us forever to turn
the ship around, but once we get where we're going,
we can knock out anybody in sight.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
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 Chandler Mays and Anna Sega
Nicolazzi Executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliott Wolf, and Stephen
Michael at Wolf Entertainment on behalf of iHeartRadio. Executive produced
(39:47):
by Alex Williams and Matt Frederick, with supervising producers Trevor
Young and Chandler Mays and producers Jesse Funk, Nolms Griffin,
and Rima Olkali. This season is executive produced by Anna
Sega Nicolazzi, story producer Walker Lamond. Our researchers are Carolyn
(40:09):
Talmage and Luke Stents. 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,
(40:30):
ABC and 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 (00:13):
In the criminal justice System, landmark trials transcend the courtroom
to reshape the law. The brave men and women who
investigate and prosecute these cases are part of a select
group that is defined American history. These are their stories.
May fifth, nineteen eighty one, benson Hurst, Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
A group of men waited inside an empty nightclub. The
nineteen seventy nine murder of Carmi Galanti two years before
had resulted in a power struggle at the top of
the Banano crime family, and these men were here to
sort it out. The man calling the shots was thirty
eight year old Joe Messino, truck hijacker, ruthless killer, and
(01:00):
loyal ally of Banano boss Rusty Rostelli. Messino was also
one of the men responsible for Carmine Galanti's murder. On
the agenda for this so called administration meeting peace talks
with three ambitious captains buying for control of the family
in the wake of Galante's death. With one unassuming soldier
(01:23):
in tow, the three capos entered the club unarmed, expecting
a peaceful negotiation. As they neared, one of Messino's men
discreetly ran a hand through his hair. It was a signal.
Four masked gunmen burst out of a closet, armed with
pistols and a sawd off shotgun. The three capos they
(01:50):
didn't stand a chance. Power was once again restored to
Rusty Rostelli, while Joe Messino had amassed more influence than
ever before and he was far from finished.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
You're not with the mob because you want to be.
It's the gangster that decides whether you're his associated on.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
If you like your life, you will vote to acquit.
I'm Anethega Nicolazzi. My father should have been a dead man.
From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. This is Law and
Order Criminal Justice System. In our last episode, we brought
(02:43):
you the story of Carmen Gallanti, a one time hitman
who rose through the ranks of organized crime to become
the de facto boss of the Banano crime family. That
is until he was gunned down outside an Italian restaurant
in Brooklyn in July of nineteen seventy nine. His murder
would mark a seminal moment, and not just the history
(03:04):
of the mob. In New York, but also in law
enforcements approach to investigating and prosecuting the mafia. For nearly
a century, the Five Families had used bribery, blackmail, extortion,
and murder to control the city with little or no
opposition from law enforcement, and by the end of the
(03:24):
nineteen seventies their power had reached new heights. But after
Galante's murder, that was all about to change. Armed with
what was then cutting edge technology, the FBI knew that
the best way to crack a coat of silence was
to infiltrate the very homes and hangouts of mobsters, eavesdropping
(03:47):
on their conversations. To accomplish this, they would rely on
an array of hidden bugs and wire taps placed by
a team of fearless undercover operatives known as black bagging.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
We did have black bags on occasion, but any bag
would work if you had to slip into some place.
My name is Joseph Canta Messa. I was a special
agent with the FBI for twenty two years. I retired
in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Joe was one of the bureau's most successful tech specialists,
whose work directly led to the incarceration of countless members
of organized crime, but at the time of the Three
Kappos murder in nineteen eighty one, Joe was a young
agent working undercover as a phone repairman in Little Italy,
known to locals as.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Joe Aquino a q U, I n complete identity, backstopped
if necessary, driver's license, vehicle registration, real true address if
you wanted to check it. Joe was a phone man,
but I could have been an electrician. I could have
been a TV repairman. I had different identity for different companies.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And much like a spy, before even attempting to bug
his prospective target, Joe took meticulous care in building his
backstory to establish himself as a believable and familiar member
of the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Little Literally, it's a pretty popular, touristy kind of place.
There are regulars there, and there were a few social
clubs there, and they pretty much pay attention to what's
going on unless you're a tourist.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
These social clubs were members only, commonly used as a
base of operations for crime families.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
For me to be recognized, I would show up on
a frequent basis in my telephone truck. I would find
the closest social club, and I would park right in
front of the door, and I would get out, and
I would walk the neighborhood, going in and out of
various front doors. You know, again, I've been ingratiating myself
(06:01):
to the neighborhood doing favors because back then the New
York Telephone and the Bell system owned everything. You leased
everything from the phone company. Here I am the gracious
guy who will occasionally throw a client the long cord
or whatever. It took weeks for me to get recognized
(06:22):
as somebody that belonged in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
The easiest part about fronting as a telephone repairman is
that for Joe it wasn't a lie because he actually
had the same job in high school.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Well, I was working for New Jersey Bell Telephone as
a telephone installer repairman. There were only two truly former
telephone installer repairman as FBI agents in the entire organization,
so we didn't have to like figure out how to
look like being a phone man. We were the phone man.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
But given the kind of people he was up against,
he would also need the ability to improvise and stay
cool under pressure. One false move could mean his life.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I don't always know how it's going to play out.
I know what I want to try and accomplish. You
had to just kind of like take what came along.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Like the time Joe was installing a microphone behind a
telephone wall plate. His target became suspicious and started quizzing him.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
The question came up as to where I was from,
and I said, East Broncx, you know, right off of
White Plains Road. And I started talking about, you know,
my aunt worked in the Vicaro's bakery, my other aunt
was a ticket taker at the Wakefield. And I'm explaining
all of this pretty confidently, and then he asked me
(07:50):
a question or make some statement about something that has
nothing to do with this neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Luckily, Joe immediately realized he was being tested.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
I get a glance of his wife, who was looking
at him, and I turned to him and I go,
what part of the Bronx are you talking about? You know?
He laughed, and that sort of like cleared it up
right away. He was throwing me a curve, and fortunately
I picked up on it.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Much of Joe's success as an agent was emblematic of
the changing strategy of the FBI in the fight against
the mafia. The agents of the bureaus passed just weren't
getting the results they wanted and that the public needed.
But Joe had a natural edge when talking to mobsters
because he grew up around them.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
My grandparents on my father's side were very strong Northern Italians,
and most of my formative years were actually in New Jersey,
with regular trips back to the Bronx to see family members.
And while my father was a law abiding citizen, a
few of our other family members got to be a
(08:58):
little sketchy at times.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
After a stint in the army, Joe went back to
work with a telephone company, but one of his neighbors,
who happened to be an FBI agent, noticed Joe's natural
ability with tech equipment and convinced him to pursue a
career in law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
It was a gamble for me again because I barely
got out of high school, but I took a chance.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
And that chance paid off. Joe immediately excelled at his
new gig, and it wasn't long before his unique skill
set led him to the FBI Special Operations Unit, and.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I became the technical supervisor for so one FBI Special
operations in New York City.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Joe was one of a select group of agents utilizing
the full resources and technology at the FBI to accomplish
one mission infiltrate and dismantle the mafia from the top down.
And over the next decade, the SO one Squad was relentless.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
We did hundreds of surreptitious entries nights weekends when a
place was vacant. Surreptitious was always the preferred method to
install electronic surveillance or tracking, etc. But there were many
instances where the place was never vacant. When we were
(10:17):
confronted with that, I could create a scenario and fabricate
a problem that the subject would want to invite me in.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
His targets some of the most dangerous and ruthless criminals
in America. But before we talk about all the ways
law enforcement infiltrated the Mob, I think it's important to
understand a little bit more about how the commission came
to be and why for so many decades authorities had
been so ineffective in stopping them. By the nineteen seventies,
(10:53):
New York was in trouble.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Every week you would see something in the paper, a
shooting between mob guys.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
That's Jim Kostler, a former FBI special agent, and he
witnessed the violence firsthand.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
I was hired as a special agent with the FBI
in nineteen seventy I spent eight years in Newark investigating
organized crime. In nineteen seventy nine, I was promoted and
sent to New York. My role was the position of
Labor Racketeering Program Manager for the New York Office.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Jim was persuaded to join the FBI by an agent
he met at a party. Leaving behind his career as
a special education teacher, he chose to serve the public
in a new way. Back when Jim was starting his career,
joining the FBI was the dream of every young kid
interested in law enforcement. The image of the straight backed,
all American g man was seared into popular culture. But
(11:48):
the truth was that despite its reputation and resources, the
Bureau was woefully behind encountering the mafia. In fact, the
Bureau was still under the control of its first director,
a man who for decades refused to even acknowledge the
existence of the mob.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
You know, at that time, jag Or Hoover was the
director of the FBI. It was much different than it
is today.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Obviously, during Hoover's first thirty years as director, not a
single agent was assigned to work organized crime. Hoover even
famously banned the use of the word mafia in internal reports,
publicly downplaying mafia's as a mere hoodlums and a nuisance
to be dealt with by local law enforcement. This resulted
(12:31):
in what you could call a bottom up approach to
enforcing crime, focusing on individual perpetrators rather than the men
at the top pulling the strings. It was a never
ending battle. Hoover's policy severely limited Jim's ability to fight
organized crime.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
The mission of the FBI at that point in time
was every agent was given assignments to take responsibility for
and to achieve something in a given period of time.
The response ability of every agent was to produce statistics.
At the end of the year, when it came time
for your evaluation, they looked at how many statistics you
(13:09):
had for that year, how many people did you arrest,
how many people did you put in jail, how much
did you recover? You recover stolen goods, and so forth.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
And while handfuls of low level gangsters might be locked up,
mob leadership went unscathed. At the heart of the problem
was the way the FBI was organized.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
When I got into organized crime in New Jersey. Every
morning we would come in and we would say hello
to each other, and then every agent on the squad
would go their own way. It was disjointed in that sense.
We didn't have a plan, just a matter of go
find a gambler, go find a loan shark, and you'll
be successful. I came to realize that that was not
(13:50):
a good method, another good system, because organized crime is organized.
The folks that were involved in it at a structure,
and they've worked under our hierarchy. We didn't work as groups.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
It turns out the FBI should have taken a lesson
from the very men they were chasing. Translated from Italian,
the term cosin nostra literally means our thing. But that
(14:27):
seemingly innocuous designation is a ruse because that thing, the mafia,
is actually a highly organized, highly regulated system of rules, ranks,
and rituals that go back centuries. Much like an army,
an organized crime family operates with a strict hierarchy, with soldiers, captains, underbosses,
(14:49):
all reporting to a top boss and then as overseers
of it all. The Commission, a secretive council composed of
the five New York bosses. The Commission and ensured unity
and coordination among crime families nationwide, usually under the threat
of their iron fist, and it was this historical cooperation
(15:10):
that gave the families their power, reach, and sense of invincibility.
The Commission's origins, however, were anything but civil, so.
Speaker 5 (15:20):
When the Mob was first form around nineteen thirty, it
followed what it was called the Castell Maurici War.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
That's former Prosecutor Ron Goldstock, who at the time was
the director of the New York Organized Crime Task Force
and fair warning, We're going to be throwing a lot
of names at you in the next couple of minutes,
but I promise there won't be a quiz. The Castela
Maurici War was a bloody power struggle between two rival bosses,
Joe Massarea and Salvator Marenzano, both born in Sicily, both
(15:51):
notoriously ruthless, but a cunning and ambitious young gangster by
the name of Charles Lucky Luciano had his own eye
on the topso in April of nineteen thirty one, Luciano
conspired with Marenzano to take out the competition, and so
at a card game in Coney Island, Luciano casually excused
(16:12):
himself from the table right before four gunmen entered the
restaurant and opened fire, leaving Joe Massaia dead on the floor.
As a result of the brazen hit, Luciano inherited all
of Masaria's rackets. Marenzana then called a meeting with Luciano
(16:33):
and the heads of the three other mafia factions to
establish the Five Families, but Marenzana wanted to retain ultimate power.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
In order to deal with problems that came about because
of competing interests of the families. He created a position
for himself as Boss of All Bosses, the Boss.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Of Bosses, but Marenzano's reign was short lived.
Speaker 5 (17:00):
Luciano then had him killed just as he was plotting
to have Luciano killed, but Luciano was quicker.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
In a plot befitting of Marenzano's nickname of Little Caesar,
four men disguised as fedes raided his office and stabbed
the boss multiple times before shooting him in the head
for good measure. Now with an opportunity to reign over
the entire mafia, Lucky Luciano faced a critical decision.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Luciano recognized that the position of boss of old bosses
was problematic. He just created enemies because whenever you would
rule on anything, you are always going to rule against somebody,
and so you needed another vehicle for dealing with each
of the family's competing interests. And so what he did
(17:52):
was to create the Commission.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Five seats, with each seat establishing equal representation, and to
prevent the war from continuing, Luciano offered a commission seat
to Marizano's underboss, Joe Banano, seeing it as the path
to peace. Banano accepted. Luciano held a national conference in
Chicago with the heads of the five New York families
(18:16):
and over twenty other mafia leaders from around the country,
and it was there in Chicago that Luciano instituted many
of the rules and traditions that would govern organize crime
for decades to come.
Speaker 5 (18:30):
So he established the position of consolieri counselor, which meant
that the kap regime, if they had a problem with
the boss, could go to somebody as an ombutzman deal
with him, rather than having to confront the boss straight on.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
As a trusted confidant to the boss, Consiglieri became one
of the top three administrative positions, usually equal in rank
to the underboss. With its rigid chain of command and
sworn oaths of fidelity, the modern American mafia was born.
It would enjoy unrivaled prosperity for decades. Crime boss Joe
(19:07):
Banano later described this period in his memoirs, writing that
and I quote. For nearly a thirty year period after
the Castella Morasi War, no internal squabbles marred the unity
of our family, and no outside interference threatened the family
or me. Everything would change in nineteen fifty seven, when
(19:29):
three major events thrust Cosinostra out of the shadows and
into the glare of the public spotlight. The first was
the attempted assassination of Luciano family boss Frank Costello by
up and comer Vincent the Chin Giganti. As Costello walked
through the lobby of his apartment building, Giganti snuck up
(19:50):
behind him and said, this is for you, Frank. A
hit that incredibly Costello survived the bullet just grazing his forehead,
but the real marvel is what happened next. Given the
opportunity to identify his shooter in court, Costello refused to
name Gigante Here's defense attorney, James Leonard.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
During the trial, something right out of a movie. When
Costello was asked if he recognizes person's shot him, clearly
he knows who shot him, clearly, he knows who Giganty is.
Because Giganty is connected to Genevies, he says he can't identify.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
It was a striking example of the Mafia's infamous code
of silence. But Omerta, as it was known, was not
just an oath of loyalty. It was the mafia's single
biggest defensive weapon against prosecution, denying law enforcement of cooperating
witnesses in any potential trial, and in the case of Giganty,
it likely saved him from a life in prison. In
(20:51):
another scene worthy of a movie, Giganty leaned towards Costello
while he was leaving the courtroom and whispered thanks a lot, Frank.
The second landmark event of Mobler from nineteen fifty seven
occurred a few months later, when mob boss Albert Anastasia
was shot and killed mid shave in a Manhattan barbershop.
(21:15):
It was more fallout from the Boch Costello hit, and
the very public midday murder was plastered all over every
front page in New York. Unwilling to retaliate for the headshot,
and perhaps fed up with a treacherous mob life fall together,
Frank Costello decided to go into early retirement, relinquishing full
control of the Lucciano family to his scheming underboss Vito Genovese. Then,
(21:40):
seeking to legitimize his power and rebrand the family name,
Genovis called for a national meeting to be held in
a sleepy farming town in upstate New York, which brings
us to the third major mob event of nineteen fifty seven.
Here's former prosecutor Guild Childers on what would prove to
be a devastating mistaken by mob leaders.
Speaker 7 (22:02):
It was a national convention of lacos andostra at a
guy's house in Applelach in New York. Nice house in
a rural area if everyone thought it was out of
the way and safe and no one would find out
about it. But a couple of the local policemen, two
of them started noticing that there were a lot of
out of state license plates driving through town.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Authorities ran the plates on a bunch of expensive cars
and quickly learned that this convention wasn't your typical farmer's expo.
So they set up roadblocks and descended upon the appalak
And estate.
Speaker 7 (22:37):
And they all fled like cockroach just wanted to turn
the light on in a New York City apartment.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Dozens of middle Agian elderly mobsters in suits and dress
shoes fled into the surrounding woods. Over sixty bosses, underbosses, consiglieries,
and capos were eventually arrested. Troopers found it embarrassed Joba
running through a nearby cornfield.
Speaker 7 (23:03):
That scene was comically captured in the movie Analyzed This,
where it shows a couple mob guys writing a tractor
all the way back to New York City to escape
the cops from the time.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
But more importantly, the Appalachan meetings signified actual proof, both
to the public and the government, the existence of a
nationwide criminal network. These were not just a random assortment
of local hoodlums as Hoover had described them. This was
an organization. Here's Ron Goldstock.
Speaker 5 (23:35):
Federal government was not involved in the investigation and prosecution
of organized crime until the seventies, and it was only
after the Appalachian Meeting that the federal government first started
to take a look at it.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Soon, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies would launch
a new line of attack against organized crime.
Speaker 5 (23:59):
The FBI began to use electronic surveillance to investigate the mob,
and they began to learn through the taps and bugs
they had put in a great deal about the mob structure.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Armed with modern technology and a deeper understanding of their
opponents and their weaknesses, small and nimble teams of undercover
officers and agents began to infiltrate the dark underworld of
Cosa Nostra, heralding the biggest defensive against organized crime the
nation had ever seen. After that almost laughable roundup of
(24:43):
mobsters in Upstate New York, public awareness of the mafia
had reached new heights. Here again, its defense attorney James Leonard.
Speaker 6 (24:51):
When we get to the Bobby Kennedy era, it's a
very different time. Now we know about the mob, we
know that the mob exists, and ironically, one of the
main reasons that we know about the Mob is from
a defector from within the Genevese crime family.
Speaker 8 (25:10):
What is the name of it.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
It is.
Speaker 8 (25:15):
Causing in Italian, causing nostra in Italian, our thing and
our family In English?
Speaker 3 (25:24):
That is an organization?
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Is it that requires The defector's name was Joseph Flacci.
He was a Genevieve soldier who in nineteen sixty three
became the first major violator of the Mafia code of silence. Oh, Marta,
that's right, yeah.
Speaker 8 (25:40):
Why do you feel like it should be destroyed? First
of all, I want revenge. The second of all, they've
been very bad to the soldiers. They've been thinking for
themselves all through the years. As the senator put it before,
what did I get out of it? Why do you
get out but misery.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Lachi's testimony of mob life was unprecedented. He detailed the
induction ceremony of new members. He confirmed the existence of
the five families, their leaders, their structure, and he even
name dropped the commission.
Speaker 8 (26:13):
What are the different physicians or ratings or ranked in
that organization? Starting at the top, what do you have?
Speaker 3 (26:23):
We have.
Speaker 8 (26:25):
What we call agunliasium in English, she would express it
as a commission.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
The hearings capture the nation's attention and the term Cosonostra
cemented itself into American vernacular.
Speaker 6 (26:42):
All of a sudden, the mob is in every living
room in the country, and we start to see things
like the Kennedy assassination and then the knee jerk reaction
was well, that was the mob, right, and the mob
did that for whatever reasons, again not proven but speculated.
So organized crime, the mafia really comes into our lexicon
(27:05):
in the mid sixties, and it's cemented forever in the
early seventies with the Godfather movie. That's it, and once
that happens, there's no turning back.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
But while the mafia's power and notoriety was reaching an
all time high, a counter attack was developing over at
the FBI. The bureau's tallest hurtle out flanking the mob's
fortress like code of silence their solution technology seventies style
(27:37):
special agent Joe Cantamsa, who we met earlier, used his
guile and experience as a former telephone repairman to talk
his way into the homes and hangouts of several suspected mobsters.
But the most notorious and most dangerous was a Banano
captain named Alphonse in Delacado, known on the street as
Sonny Red. Sonny Read was a ruthless Kapa regime about
(28:04):
as violent as they come, and his rank in the
Banana hierarchy made him a very high value target for
the FEDS, and since Joe had already established himself as
a local, now he needed to make contact with Sonny
red sister Marie.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
In Marie's apartment at one seventeen Elizabeth Street, she was
always home or somebody was always in the apartment. Sonny
would come back late the night, early morning, and you know, crash.
I mean, I want to get into her apartment. I
want to kind of take a look and see what
it looks like, and I want to try and figure
out if I could ever get a microphone in there.
(28:41):
But I got to get in there first.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And so Joe came up with a little ruse involving
a series of prank calls utilizing one of the FBI's
Chinese translators.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
Translator comes down to her name is Ming. She obviously
knows English very well. I explained to her, I want
her to call this number right in front of me,
and I wanted to start talking Chinese, ask for somebody,
and then be a little bit stubborn about you know,
not getting cooperation. She does that, Marie hangs up the
phone on her I go, we'll wait a minute, and
we call back again. She makes the second call, Marie
(29:15):
hangs up again. This is two times. Marie's getting annoyed
that she's getting these calls. She calls a third time.
I'm looking straight at her. Her eyes get real big.
She drops the phone and runs out of my office.
Well that was good enough for me. Marie is going
to remember this phone call. The next day, I show
(29:39):
up and knock on Marie's door New York. Tell we
got a report of a crossed line. Have you gotten
any calls? And she lights up like a oh yeah,
you know, and then she starts complaining to me. I go, listen,
I'm just here to see where the line is crossed. So,
you know, she calms down.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
And just like that, Joe would soon be up on
Sunny Red's phone. He was able to discreetly survey the
apartment for the ideal location to install a miniature transmitter,
commonly referred to as a bug.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
You had to pay attention, but you couldn't pay so
much attention it looked like you were paying attention.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
And if you play it cool. Sometimes you even get lucky.
After Joe explained the so called crossline problem.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Marie asked me if I could put her phone in
for an extension. Well, that's what I was waiting for
her to ask, I said, but this is the only
place I could put it in, which was in the hallway.
There was a little table there pretty close to where
the room was that Sonny would conduct his business perfect,
(30:48):
I said, well, I'll have to come back. We'll take
care of it.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Oh and while he was at it, could he also
stop by her sister in last place too?
Speaker 3 (30:57):
She tells me that her sister in law lives at
one fifteen, and you know, could I go up and
see what she needed? And it turns out, unbeknownst to me,
this is Sonny Red's brother JB in Delicato.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
JB. He was another mobster the Feds are keeping an
eye on, and while not Joe's target, when opportunity knocks,
you go ahead and answer. But still the risk of
being made was ever present, and sometimes it came from
the most unexpected places. When Joe arrived, JB asked him
to install a new touchdown phone to replace his old
rotary one.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Yeah, I could throw a touchstone in there for a
couple of bucks. I made an appointment to go back
and do that. I come back later, and now I'm
bringing with me one of my associates, John Kravic, because
I want to show him because when it comes time
to do this, I'm going to need more than one
person to do this.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Marie directs him to her mother's ground floor apartment for
the access that Joe said he needed to get their
job done.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
I knock on the door. It's like nine o'clock in
the morning. The door opens and there's a woman about
four foot ten. I tell her I was just next door.
We got to get in the courtyard. We're walking back.
She stops dead right in front of us, turns around
and points to both of our faces and says, I
(32:22):
know you. You're the FBI. You come tap of the
phones in broken English. I look at John, and I
look at I go, Grandma, who cares what you say
on the phone? She paused, and she laughs, and then
everybody laughs.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Joe was working in the Lions then. Opportunity and life
threatening danger was literally behind every door.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
John is in the basement. I'm kneeling on the floor
behind an open door, drilled a hole in the base board.
The door swings and it knocks me over, and I hear,
who the fuck are you.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Looming over? Joe was the mob captain himself Sonny read
In Delocado, and Sonny was not happy to deflex suspicion.
Joe reverted to his roots and actually being from the Bronx.
He was a natural.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
And as I'm getting up, I'm going, who the fuck
are you? I go, I'm doing something for Marie. I said,
I don't know you.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
And with some quick thinking, Joe diffuses the situation with
one of his tried and true methods, convincing Sonny red
In Delocado to actually help him install the very wiretap
that Joe was hoping to use to bring him down.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
I go, well, listen, if you give me a hand
for just a minute or two, I'll find out where
the guy is downstairs and I'll get out of here.
He goes, what do you want? I go? I want
you to come right here and bang this little thing
on the floor and I'm going to go down the
basement and find out whareness. He says, okay, he comes
(34:04):
over starts tapping it. I go out, go down the basement.
John is walking around the flashlight in a completely wrong spot.
I tear down a piece of old sheet rock sort
of stuff. I grabbed the thing I got. I holler up,
I got it. He points, Who's that? I say to John,
it's sunny. John's eyes get this big. But nonetheless I
(34:29):
go back upstairs. I put my little connector block in.
I dropped the wire down, we make the splice, and
we're out of there. Perfect install.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
It was one of the more daring wire tap installations
of his career, because little did he know that across
the river in Brooklyn, trouble was brewing and Sonny Red
was right in the middle of it. A day or
so later, Joe returned to install the requested touchdown phone.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
I'm feeling pretty good the case. I'nt happy. The microphone's
in and working. I trot upstairs to JB's apartment. I
knock on the door and there's a little bit of
a pause.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
The usual time it took to answer the door had passed. Eventually,
JB's wife called out, who is it.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
I go, it's Joe, Joey the phone guy.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
After another pause, Joe immediately has the thought that every
black bag agent has that his cover had been blown
and there was no telling who might be on the
other side of the door waiting for him. JB's wife
finally opens the door, and.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
I could see she's been crying. I go okay, and
she because yes, and I'm thinking, all right, whatever's going on,
it ain't me. I walk over to the kitchen. Over
to my right on the couch, JB waves. I go over.
I changed the kitchen phone. I picked up my twenty
dollars tip.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
I leave and he leaves in a hurry.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
As I make the last turn to the foyer, all
I see is a soaking wet face and hair, and
then I realize between me and that face is a
large barrel revolver right in my face. That I did
not see.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
On the other side of the revolver was a man
in obvious distress, scared, breathing heavily, and looking like he'd
been running for quite some time.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
I go, okay, everything's cool, everything's good.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
But the man would not lower his gun. Then a
miracle as help came in the form of a nosy
neighbor who recognized Joe as the phone guy.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
He's okay, he's okay, it's Joey, he's okay. Sally, who
is one of the women I got friendly with in
the neighborhood, is yelling at this person who I don't
know who it is, that everything is okay. So he
puts this gun back in his waistband. I walk out
the door onto Elizabeth Street. I turned towards Grand and
(37:10):
my heart rate jumps from normal to one hundred and twenty.
So it was a delayed reaction to what might have happened.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
All those weeks Joe spent establishing himself as a local
likely saved his life.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
I walked down to the closest payphone. I called the office.
I asked for the supervisor, Damon Taylor. I go, Damon,
I just left Elizabeth Street, and Damon says to me, oh,
I forgot to call you. Forgot to call me and
tell me what There was a hit last night. Sonny's dead.
(37:49):
They're hunting for Bruno, his son. I go, well, I'm
pretty sure I just ran into Bruno.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
It turns out that the night before Sonny red in
Delakado was one of the three capos gunned down in
Bensonhurst at the hands of Joe Messino and his son
Bruno and Delacado had every reason to be running for
his life. If there was ever any doubt that Joe
had penetrated the very center of the New York mob world,
(38:17):
it had vanished with Sunny Red's murder. The only problem
the bug planted in in Delocado's house was now worthless.
Sonny was dead, but the fight wasn't because, as it
turns out, Joe and his fellow Feds weren't the only
ones in town getting eyes and ears inside organized crime.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Next time on Law and Order Criminal Justice System.
Speaker 6 (38:51):
We are going to utilize this to dismantle organized crime
by cutting off its head.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
I dream of the day that you guys put all
the bosses of the families in jail in one place.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
You had to be capable, confident, and dedicated to the mission.
I worked literally one hundred hours a week.
Speaker 5 (39:11):
Where like a battleship, it takes us forever to turn
the ship around, but once we get where we're going,
we can knock out anybody in sight.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
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 Chandler Mays and Anna Sega
Nicolazzi Executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliott Wolf, and Stephen
Michael at Wolf Entertainment on behalf of iHeartRadio. Executive produced
(39:47):
by Alex Williams and Matt Frederick, with supervising producers Trevor
Young and Chandler Mays and producers Jesse Funk, Nolms Griffin,
and Rima Olkali. This season is executive produced by Anna
Sega Nicolazzi, story producer Walker Lamond. Our researchers are Carolyn
(40:09):
Talmage and Luke Stents. 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,
(40:30):
ABC and 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.
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