August 18, 2025 • 32 mins
Marc’s descent to rock bottom picks up speed as he gambles, drinks, sells and does cocaine at a local dive bar several nights a week. He’s making fast cash and hooking up with faster women, but it’s all coming at a cost - And the family and lifelong friends he holds dear are unaware of his debaucherous behavior.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode includes subject matter, including graphic depictions of drug
use and sexual encounters, which may not be suitable for everyone.
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
My mindset was let me go out, have some drinks,
do some blow and get late in that order.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
We were all doing a lot of cocaine.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Everybody was from iHeartRadio and Doghouse Pictures. This is shock incarceration.
I'm Jeff Keating. As Mark continued to party hard week
(01:08):
after week, he met new friends at the Naughty Monkey.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
The first time I met Billy, we were playing pool
and just like anything a small bar, you see the
same people over and over. You start you have a
conversation with them, Hey, what's your name, what do you
do for a living? And we just hit it off.
We did same age, same interests. We exchanged numbers, and
I was like, hey, what are you doing tomorrow? And
we just became really good friends. I was a single
guy at the time. He was too. He was divorced
(01:34):
with two kids, and he lived with his parents, so
he always had a babysitter so he could go out
a lot. There was this one girl that he had
brought back and she was a total train wreck. But
I was on a third floor my condo, and you
had sliders going out to a little balcony, and she
opened the sliders, she pulled down her pants and just
(01:55):
peed all over my deck, like right in front of
ten people. I mean, these are the kind of morons
hanging out with you know, seriously, what the fuck are
you doing. We had a lot of fun together, but
a lot of stupidity together too.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
And another new member of the crew was Aimon.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Well.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
First time I met Amon, I was introduced to him
by Todd actually down at the same bar that was
the spot where everybody met.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
And he was trash.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
He really was. This a little short, stocky kid thought
he was better than everybody. His parents owned a restaurant
a couple of towns over. But I don't even think
they wanted him involved. You know, he was a troublemaker.
I didn't hang out with him that much at all.
He was a quick pop in, whether he was dropping
something off for somebody else because he was selling it
as well, or if he was looking for something. It
(02:43):
was a text or a phone call to me, Hey
are you at the bar. I'm going to swing down
in the parking lot. You know, I'll meet you out
front in twenty minutes type thing.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Mark partied his troubles away with Rob Todd, Amon, Billy,
and Cathy, since wandering far from the life he had
with Liz, and as he struggled to avoid hitting rock bottom,
she dealt with her own healing after the divorce and
was clueless to his debauchery.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
I had no idea.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
I had no idea.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
I didn't know any of the people that he hung
out with.
Speaker 6 (03:13):
I was, you know, we're near And.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
At that point, I was probably still angry that he
didn't fight for us and stick up and he chose basically,
he chose his brother's life over ours. And I mean
I had some resentment and I didn't take it out
on him, but I probably was like, you got yourself
into this mess. I don't know what you're going to do.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
But I was shocked.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
And when Mark got together with his childhood friends like Jason,
he didn't divulge any details about his other life.
Speaker 6 (03:40):
I didn't know that that's what he was up to.
There was some partying going on that I was aware of,
but as far as what Mark was doing on the
side or with other individuals that we didn't know, it.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Wasn't a conversation about that.
Speaker 6 (03:55):
It was more just hanging out, reminiscing having a good time.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Burden with addiction, debt, and guilt, Mark got deeper and
deeper into selling cocaine.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
As a dealer, you want to protect yourself at all times,
and you don't know.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Who you're dealing with. If you don't know who they are.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
There, it all depends on what state of mind I
was in. If it was in the beginning of the
night and I had just had a beer or two,
and if somebody that I knew said, Hey, this guy
over here, you know he's looking to get something from you,
I would size him up. Normally, if somebody had asked
me that, I would say, you know what, you get
the money here?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
What do they want?
Speaker 4 (04:32):
You do it?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
You handle it, Just give me the money back. So
on a first time visit, I was a little skeptical
as that I progressed.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
My decision changed.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Fast forward five hours later and I was lit and
I was wired up, I would say, yep, what do
you want? That was the gray line. I apologize for
smiling for those who can't see me smiling, because there
was absolutely no way did I ever think that that
would be my career. As far as selling drugs, no way,
because I know you're gonna get caught. It's a vicious cycle.
(05:05):
It's a cycle that doesn't end until you, unfortunately get
to the bottom. Everybody hits rock bottom.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
By twenty eleven, cocaine consumption in the United States surpassed
all countries, and America's relationship with cocaine was complex. Dealers
came in all shapes and sizes, from the cartel leader
to the small suburban candy man. And what better place
for Mark Lombardo to ply his wares than a bar
(05:36):
near his condo.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
The walk from my house to the Naughty Monkey was
five hundred yards.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
The bar outdated. It was very dark, very dark.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
The bar was always full, whether it was women, businessmen
after work, construction guys. It's all walks of life. There
was a pool table with a Budweiser light. It looks
like it's been there for forty years, outdated, couple sick
of burns on it. You could probably find more people
hanging out in the bathrooms than up in the front.
If you didn't know it was a coke bar, you
will probably from out of town. Every regular that went
(06:09):
in there at one point was in that bathroom before
the end of the night, and it wasn't to take
a piss or a shit. My first time selling was
definitely a nervous time. If you don't feel that way,
something's wrong with you, something seriously wrong with you. You
have to know. If you get caught, you're in serious
fucking trouble. Regardless of the amount. It's against the law.
(06:29):
You have to know that. And I did know that.
Every time I sold it, I said, why are you
doing this?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
What are you doing? I questioned myself every fucking time,
But I still did it.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
I didn't want to be the center of attention, but
I did want people to know that if you want something,
I got it.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
You know, come to me, don't go to anybody else.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Mark learned the ins and outs of selling drugs quickly
and realized that the fast cast was just as addictive
as the cocaine.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
It was extremely easy to sell. I learned very quickly
who was doing it. I knew exactly who mike clientele
was going to be. Most of these people that I
was hanging out with who were partying, they were getting
it from multiple different sources. I said, let me buy
the larger amount and I'll sell to all of them.
It was very simple. Ultimately, what I did was when
I continued to buy, I was buying an ounce at
(07:15):
a time. My customers were all walks of life. There
was a bouncer at one of the bars in town.
I had a local painter. I had a guy on
Wall Street. I had a stripper. I had a couple
waitresses at the diner. They'd get off at one two
o'clock in the morning and they'd come down and get
a bag or two. I had all different ages, from
(07:37):
twenty two to twenty three up to probably fifty.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Five, with customers from all walks of life. Mark met
a swath of people who knew him only as the
man with the blow.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
It was easy to meet women, but not the best
level of women. There was some beautiful women, there were
some nice women that went in there, but for the
most part, a lot of them were trashy, trashy. I'm
not a player by any means. Obviously, having the YEO
in my favor worked in my favor. Okay, I'm not
fucking GQ celebrity.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Mini guys and bellas their tails of sex, drugs and
rock and roll. But in the case of Mark Lombardo,
his friend Rob was right there to witness the debauchery.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
As far as the coke and stuff, you can lay
down a naked woman right here and do lines off
of any part of a body.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
We had a couple of nice, really looking women, we'd
get them naked, lay them down, fucking cover them with
coke in certain areas, and have some fun. Sniff away,
leck away, have a shit ton of fun. Definitely easy.
Hey do you want to go and do a line
of coke off my cock? I'll do one off your pushy.
Let's have some fun. I live right up the hill.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
It happened. It happened a lot.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
I think sex and drugs with the right people go
hand in hand. It enhances it depending on the mood.
My mindset was, let me go out, we have some drinks,
do some blow, and get laid in that order. I
already had the beers, I've been doing coke. What's next,
I gotta get laid. I pretty much got laid almost
every night. I have to admit to walk into a
(09:14):
room where where maybe there was a couple of good
looking women that I knew did blow and they thought,
oh shit, Mark's here. Maybe that's an opportunity for me
to give her a little sum and get a little
sum myself.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Robin Todd realized Mark was out of control and decided
to teach him a lesson.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
So one time, I said, what did you do the
last night I met this girl? I to go home?
I said, Mark, did you use a condom? He goes, No,
I didn't use a condom, I said, Mark, I told
you something's going to happen. I said, I told you,
Mark that you got to wear a condom. So I
walked it down on my calendar, and nine months later
I went to the dollar store and I bought it's
a girl balloons and we went to his condo and
(09:54):
I tied him to his door. And you can see
the balloons from the parking lot. So here we are,
we're in my backyard, would drinking and we're waiting for Walker.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Came home from work.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
I went up and I saw these balloons on my
door and read the note, and I thought she was inside.
I completely lost my breath. I could not speak. I
didn't know nine months I could rattle off forty women.
I ran down those stairs into the parking lot and
I immediately called him, what do I do. I called
(10:26):
Rob the first thing. That's somebody's whatever you do? You
call Rob, you're in trouble, you call Rob?
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Hello, Rob, Rob? I can't Rob. What's the matter? You
get an accident? Are you okay?
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Are you home yet?
Speaker 4 (10:39):
He's a rob Rob. It's a girl. What's a girl?
Speaker 3 (10:41):
You hit a girl?
Speaker 4 (10:43):
And I was really playing it up okay, And he says,
there's balloons, balloons? What balloons? Mork.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
I literally thought I was having a heart attack. I
was running pacing. You don't understand, man, there's fucking balloons.
It's a girl.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
And Todd goes, He's gonna have a fucking heart attack.
Stop it. I put him on mute. I said, he's
fucking girl with it without condoms. He needs a lesson,
and I'm giving him a lesson today. Finally he was
going to have a heart attack. He was walking up
down the parking lot, puffing and puffing, and I actually
thought he was I said Mark, he was, it was you?
I go, yes, it was me, And then he came
(11:17):
over and we had fun that day.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
As far as the women in my life, I never
wanted a brag. I think I did very well for myself.
As far as the girlfriends and wives that I've had,
I always respected them and I absolutely treated them with
nothing but respecting class. The women on blow is a
totally different mindset.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
So we had I have a big backyard party. If
you've seen it, you'd fall in love with it. And Todd,
the guy with the balloons, and Mark we're all friends.
And there was a few guys with that girl. And
so one time at the party, you just say, hey,
you want to fucking she'd fuck? So I said, can
I film this? Can I watch?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Come on, So we go up with his nice trees
and a nice lawn. I got my cell phone out,
and she gets down the ground. She takes the clothes
off and walks over and then he looks back like
this and he sees me. He goes, rather, I can't
do it. I can't do it. I said, what's the matter, Mark,
you're a professional, and he goes, you got to hide
or something. You gotta hide. I so just but then
I'm not here. So I picked up a twig and
I had it like this, and I'm filming, and fifteen
(12:18):
twenty seconds later and Mark does one of these and
sees me with the twig and he loses his shit man,
so Mark. He was the real deal womanizer. That's why
I call him the Lumbardo four hundred.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
There was one exception to most of the women Mark
hooked up with at the bar. That was Kathy.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
She had been coming around as she knew Todd partied
as well. She wanted to get out and let loose
him get high. We started hooking up, pulling around, and
her and I hung out all the time.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
If you saw her, wouldn't want to hook up with
anybody either. She was great. She fulfilled all the needs.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Kathy juggled being a single mom one week and a
party girl the next. And even though she and Mark
spent a lot of time together, they weren't exclusive with
each other.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
She had a very good, solid, cordial relationship. The kids
would rotate one week with her, one week with him,
and that week that they weren't with her, she would
loose cannon. She was out and about. She had her kids.
She would say, Hey, I have the kids this week.
I'll give you a call next weekend. We would talk
throughout the week just to say hello, but I wouldn't
see her and hang out with her. I definitely had
(13:24):
some trust with Kathy. I had an attraction to her,
and when you're drinking and doing drugs, sex usually goes
with it. Kathy was my partner when it came to that,
but she was still screwing around with other people. I
was not dating her. I wasn't one on one with her.
But when we were together, we knew it was us.
I don't know if you really call that loyalty. Maybe
it's not one hundred percent loyalty, but I did feel
(13:45):
comfortable when I was around her. She'd get a call
from an old guy and she'd go out with them,
and it pissed me off a little bit. But again,
we were not together together. You know, I understood she
wants to go out and mess around. I'd but never loyal,
never loyal to her. And again, it wasn't We weren't
one hundred an item. We weren't dating, we weren't this,
(14:06):
We weren't that. We just knew that when we hung out,
it was ultimately we were gonna have sex or we
were gonna fool around. She screwed around with other people too,
you know, so it goes both ways.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Mark and Kathy love to party hard together, but there
was one thing that concerned him.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Kathy, she loved pills.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
She was ecstasy and percocets and Viking ins. Her mood
was up and down all over the place, and I
would don't it, don't fuck, don't don't mess with those pills.
Don't mess with those pills.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Mark's business was up and running. He had regulars he
could count on. Neither Grammar and eight ball. Mark Lombardo
was the man. He had new friends and customers streaming
in and out of his life.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
I met Jay for the first time, and I remember
very well.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
We were at the bar.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
We're doing our Thursday routine and drinking some beers and
tooting a little up the nose, and he had Yankee
had on. He was by himself. He came over and
he says, what's that game you guys are playing there?
He said, Oh, it's a game we call three ball.
He's like, you mind if I play?
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (15:24):
No problem with your name?
Speaker 4 (15:25):
Jay? O.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Hey, how are you Mark? Nice to meet you.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
All right, guys, Jay's gonna play a couple of rounds
with us. He introduced them to Greg and Billy and
all the other assholes, and we had a great night.
Nothing was brought up about drugs. Nothing was brought up
about coke or anything. And we continued to play probably
three four hours, and he's like, hey, guys, it was.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Great to meet you.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
You do this every week. I'll be back next Thursday.
If that's school, are you guys going to be in
no problem?
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Were here every Thursday.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Through the world of cocaine, Mark had friends in the
life who gave him access the places in power. Outside
of his crew.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
A friend of mine and I would frequent a strip
club down in Jersey doing coke and hanging out with strippers.
I don't want to say his name. He has some
connections with some organized crime families in Jersey. He and
I were at this strip club. You couldn't smoke in
bars anymore, he says to the bartender, give me an ashtray.
She gives him an ashtray. I said, we can smoke
(16:23):
in here? Is he can do whatever the fuck you
want to do in here. So we're sitting there smoking
and there was two guys directly across from us, and
you could almost read their lips like, hey, look at
those guys, you know, pointing to us, they can smoke.
They pull out a cigarette and light it up. This bouncer.
He would look like a linebacker for the giants. He
grabbed them and threw them the fuck out of it,
like you wouldn't believe the guy is.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
He says, let's go upstairs. So we went upstairs.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
It was a little private, you know, where you would
go to do a lap dance type kind of room,
and it was just dump the coke and he would
lean over the ledge. Hey, come on up, come on up,
and those girls, four or five girls come up. One
sits on your lap, one sits on his lab ones
rubbing your back, tits in your face, you know.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
And you just did.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Lines all night, two, three, four o'clock in the morning,
five o'clock. Sometimes we had some fun down there. We
had a lot of fun. The ride home was tough.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Mark still had his nine to five, but while his
confidence grew as a dealer, the endless nights of partying
began to clout his judgment.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I did know the circle that I was dealing with,
but quickly there was people being introduced to that circle
that I didn't know. That I did sell to vouching
for somebody, Especially when you're going into a larger quantity,
there's a.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Lot of things you want to watch.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
You don't want too many people not knowing it's you,
but actually doing the transaction and seeing it and being
a part of it, keep me out of it.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
But I didn't do that.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
I just say, yeah, come on in, come on in,
come on in, come on in. Anybody who's next serving
number twenty two?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Who's up?
Speaker 4 (17:50):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
After Flocko got busted, I still needed an avenue to
find below, and ultimately I did reach out to my
guy that I continued to buy from is involved with
a family, so I used him for that connection moving forward,
you pick and choose your battles, right, and I chose
to get it from people who you don't want to
(18:12):
fuck around with. Then one day, Jay he approached me,
probably the fourth maybe fifth time that he came in.
He pulled me aside and he says, uh, hey, do
you know where I can get some coke around here?
Just like that, very simple, Do you know where I
can get some coke around here? I'm like, yeah, why
don't you asked me a couple of weeks ago? The
(18:33):
fuck you didn't know that we're all doing this shit?
Speaker 3 (18:35):
You couldn't tell? It was very simple. He asked me.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
I said yes, and he said I don't need it tonight,
but maybe you can get me like an ounce.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
There's no problem.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
I'll take care for you.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
He said, next week, maybe i'll give you a call. Sure,
here's my number. And that next week called me and said, hey,
I'm running down to the bar.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Where do you live. I'll stop by your place. We'll
just have a beer whatever. I'm like, yeah, sure, no problem.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
This guy actually came my house.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
We had a beer, you know, on my kitchen table,
and I'm like, if you want to head down, yeah, sure,
let's head down. So we're hanging out and he's like, well,
next week I want to I'd like to get an
ounce from it. And I'm like, oh an ounce, okay, yeah,
no problem, we could do that. And he's like, I'll
give you a call. He said something like that, we
could do it Tuesday or Wednesday. Said yeah, give me
a call. I'll meet you somewhere.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Mark's world was endless nights of booze, blow and women.
As he started to make some real money, the laws
of gravity began to take hold.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
The ultimate goal was to somehow get myself out of
this hole that my brother put me on these loans.
That was the ultimate goal. I think I crossed the
line where I was just having too much fun and
wasn't so much about getting to that ultimate goal. It
was like, if I get there, I get there, but
let's have fun while doing it. Meanwhile, I could have
(19:54):
died in a heart attack. I was still partying. There
was no sleep. Weekend were out of control. They really were.
Starting on a Saturday noontime, you could go sit outside,
you have a couple of beers, through a few bumps
in the bathroom. Keep you going. You're flying high. And
I would ride it until Sunday night before I went
(20:14):
to sleep. You didn't go to sleep on a Saturday.
We stayed up all night and just kept going and
going and going, or until you ran out of coke.
I was in the bathroom one day and I was
sitting on the toilet and I really thought I was
having a heart attack. I took a cold shower. I
stood in the shower. I remember, I put my hands
on the walls and I just let the water hit
(20:35):
the back of my neck. I was sweating like a pig.
I was burnt up.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Really truly thought I was having a heart attack.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
They did I got really scared, and I remember laying
in bed just trying to go to sleep. You're so wired,
you can't just close your eyes and you're beating yourself up.
Go to sleep, Go to sleep, Just try to go
to sleep. Because what I wanted to do was not
worry about it anymore and sleep it off and wake up.
But then there was a part of me saying, holy shit,
am I going to wake up? Am I going to
wake up? Because it was that bad, the same bottom,
(21:07):
a vicious cycle, over and over. It was that tug
of war, the angel and devil on the shoulder. And
it wasn't just on Sunday, on a Wednesday and Thursday.
I would say to myself, stay the fuck home, stay home,
you gotta get up early, you gotta gotta work, and
it would never win. That one side always won, That
one side always won. It was like they had extra
(21:29):
hands over there. Anybody that gets involved in that, it's
eventually going to catch up with you.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
There's no question.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Mark had a tradition of meeting his father and brothers
at King George's Diner every Sunday for breakfast, but he
started missing many of those family bonding moments as his
cocaine use escalated.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Sunday mornings was a tradition with my family and my
father would go to breakfast every morning, and that's when
I started to get into the habit of missing one Sunday,
then it was another's because you were so addicted to
this lifestyle at that point. Instead of getting up eight
thirty nine o'clock in the morning and going to breakfast
with my brothers and my father.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
What I wanted to do was sleep.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I started to miss out on that tradition and realized
that it wasn't the best thing I wanted to do.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
You feel guilty.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
You look at the way my father looked at it,
probably right because he was looking forward to seeing us
every week. That was Dad day. It was Sunday, that
was the only day we saw him. So for me
to miss that, that's how did that make him feel?
He probably looked forward to it all week, and then
here comes Sunday and I don't show up. So I
(22:38):
start to feel guilty about that. It hurt me a
lot that I was missing family time. I would beat
myself up over it. Are you're gonna hang out with
these fucking derelics at a bar? You should be going
to seeing your brothers and your father. Many at times,
many at times that that thought went through my mind.
But I was too hungover, I was too out of it,
(22:59):
I had no motivation. My one friend said, you better
stop that shit. You're going to turn into his skid.
He used to call him kids, And there was a
part of me I thought about that. I said, really,
am I turning into one of these fucking guys.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
There was a lot of times when I was partying. Yes,
you were enjoying the moment. But when I really felt
that the most is when I woke up ridiculously hungover
or you know, just cobwebbed out on a Sunday. I
would lay on the couch and watch TV and say, Mark,
what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Mark had to rationalize his actions and mask his guilt
in order to function. In his mind, he was simply
digging himself out of a financial hole. Basically, he needed
to tell himself he was a good guy.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
When I was dealing, and that's what I was doing.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
I guess I wanted to be looked at Mark, the
friend that had some extracurricular activities.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
I never wanted anybody to be.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Like, Oh, Mark's a drug dealer who wants to be
known as a fucking drug dealer.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Nobody, Nobody.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Maybe some people do, maybe they want to be the
next kingpin.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
That's not me. I'm not one of them.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Because every single one of those fucking people that I
sold to, I thought they were all scumbags, every single
one of them. I didn't give a shit that they
were a scumbag because they were giving me money and
I was giving them what they wanted. But I thought
every single one of them was a fucking scumbag. Then
here I am doing it with him. But what does
that make me? Makes me a fucking scumbag too?
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Right?
Speaker 2 (24:47):
You just get to a point where you just think
you're better than them. What makes me better than them?
I'm doing exactly what you're doing. Maybe it was because
I had a better job or I was making more money.
That really isn't a good enough reason, but that was
part of it. And I'm still going to wake up
Monday morning going to work. A couple of them didn't
even work. They were notorious for calling out I guess,
deep down inside, I always thought I was just a
(25:09):
little bit better than them. I wasn't a true comeback
that was a half a scumebag. It's hard for me
to say that about myself.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
It is.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
It's very hard to say that, but it's true.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
The tight knit group of friends Mark grew up with
had all moved to different parts of the country and
started families of their own. Darren was down in Florida
and Jason had settled in San Diego.
Speaker 6 (25:34):
When I first learned Mark's kind of post first marriage life.
At that point, I was still back in Jersey on
a fairly regular basis. We used to go up to Warwick,
both him and Matt were kind of up there together,
and we had hung out there multiple times at some
(25:55):
of the local bars and stuff, And honestly, it was
spawn Work is a guy that likes to have a
good time, like we all do. I think that was
kind of one of our common ponds growing up.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
And we continue to do that.
Speaker 6 (26:08):
And to me, it seemed like Mark was just being
a young single guy having a good time up in
New York and kind of moving on with his life.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Everybody that I was really tight with in high school
all through college, they're married, they have kids, well they're
divorced to have kids, but they have kids.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
I'm the only one that doesn't have kids. Out of
all of my.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Good high school buddies, I'm still to this day the
only one that doesn't have any biological kids. And that
makes a difference. You tend to just attract those the
people that are in the same boat as you.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Maybe you know, if I'm a plumber, I'm gonna hang
out plumbers.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Right. Every single person that was in this circle, to
my knowledge, had no kids. I was their family. It
was the drug family, you know it. It was the
Koch family, it was the hookup family. You always had
an easy outlet. My core friends moved on with their lives.
They wanted to start families.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
I didn't.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
I wanted to drink, I wanted to hang out. I
didn't have kids. I didn't have to worry about putting
a college fund together. You know they did.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Mark was struggling to keep this cocaine world separate from
his workplace world. With his coke habit now at its peak,
that was becoming harder and harder to manage.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Found myself at work all the time dragging. There was
multiple days I said to my service advisors, listen, I'm
really not feeling that well. And that was basically the
nicest way of saying, stay the fuck out of my office.
I'm going to close the door, and I don't want
to be bothered. I knew that was doing the wrong thing.
Here's people coming to work for me. They're my first
line of defense. Service advisors at a car dealership. If
(27:43):
they had an irate customer, they needed to come to me,
and here I am telling them stay away from me.
Figure it out. What do they need me for. There
was many a night's I said, holy shit, how am
I going to get to work tomorrow? And if I
had a blow, I would have failed the test. There
was nights where I drank until one two o'clock during
the week. And don't forget, I worked a lot of
(28:03):
Saturday So Friday nights, if you're going home at four
o'clock and you got to be down there by seven
point thirty on a Saturday, I literally went home, just
took a quick shower and looked in the mirror and.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Was like, what the fuck am I going to do?
And I drove to work.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
I remember one day driving down to New York State
Thruway and just doing key bumps the whole way, looking
in my mirror because I said you got to wake
the fuck up, man, You got to wake up.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
I mean, who wants to do that? Who wants to
live a life that way?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
And I did that just because that was going to
get me through the day by going the bathroom do
another one. At works, I was dragging. The only way
to get through the day at work was to continue.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
There was nice.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
I said, all right, I gott to leave some in
my pocket because there's no way I'm going to get
through work without doing coke in the bathroom, or coke
before I go in. I get to the parking spot
and I do a big one, and then the booze
is wearing off. Everything's starting to come down, and you
need that quick pick me up. Nobody at work knew
I was doing it. If they did, they never said it.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Months had passed since the day Mark lost his marriage,
his nest egg, and now his self respect. His old
friends were distant, and he was surrounded by collection of
drug buddies who Mark really knew very little about, like
Billy and Jay.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Billy I met at the bar well before I was
doing anything as far as using, and he was a
guy that quite honestly as a single guy. Billy also
lived in town, walking distance to the place. We just
kind of hit it off. We really did. We had
the same interest, we were the same age, We laughed,
we liked to drink. He was the guy I hung
(29:38):
out with just about every day down there. Jay had
also become friends with Billy Well down at the bar
and friends with me. And Billy and I had such
a close relationship that I would have him sometimes go
and bring announce to somebody and then give me the money.
Whether I was busy or if I couldn't do it,
I just had something going on. Hey, Billy, do me
a favor. I'll bring Announced. Bring it to so and so,
(30:01):
he'll give you money, give it to me later. I mean,
I trusted the guy, really did.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
One time, announce of cocaine Mark was picking up from
Billy was meant for Jay. It was January twenty fifth, wintertime,
so it was cold out and dark by five pm.
As Mark drove his car to meet Billy.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
When I pulled up at his house to get it,
he was outside. Actually I didn't go inside the house.
He had it on him, so he came up to
my door. I put the window down, he gave it
to me. I said, hey, have fun with your kids.
I'll give you a call later. It was as easy
as that. I grabbed it and took the seven minute
ride over to Woodbury Commons. I went in the back entrance.
(30:42):
I was communicating with Jay. He said, we're behind the
Calvin Kleine store. In the back, you'll see my pickup truck.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Jay told Mark there was a spot near the back
entrance of the mall. It was crowded, so he should
look out for his blue pickup truck and park in
the space next to him.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
I pulled into the parking space and I got out
of my car. I hopped in his passenger seat and
I closed the door. I went into my pocket, and
before I even got it out of my pocket, I
was ripped out of that car by about eight to
ten State troopers, cops, DEA agents.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
One guy threw me on the ground. He put his
foot right on my throat and put a gun to
my head.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Shock Incarceration is a joint production from iHeartRadio and Doghouse Pictures,
produced and hosted by Jeff Keating. Executive producers are Mark Lombardo,
Tommy James, Noel Brown, and Jeff Keating. Written by Jim Roberts,
Tommy James, Chris Rigozzo and Jeff Keating. Story edit by
Jim Roberts, Edit mix and sound design by Laine Crafts
(31:56):
from Herd's Creek Productions. Music composed by A Diamond Street Productions,
accompanied by Tyler Greenwell, Danny Wattanas, Sean Thompson and Spencer Garne.
Special thanks to Trinity Investigative Group and Mark Lombardo's family
and friends who contributed to the podcast.
This episode includes subject matter, including graphic depictions of drug
use and sexual encounters, which may not be suitable for everyone.
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
My mindset was let me go out, have some drinks,
do some blow and get late in that order.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
We were all doing a lot of cocaine.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Everybody was from iHeartRadio and Doghouse Pictures. This is shock incarceration.
I'm Jeff Keating. As Mark continued to party hard week
(01:08):
after week, he met new friends at the Naughty Monkey.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
The first time I met Billy, we were playing pool
and just like anything a small bar, you see the
same people over and over. You start you have a
conversation with them, Hey, what's your name, what do you
do for a living? And we just hit it off.
We did same age, same interests. We exchanged numbers, and
I was like, hey, what are you doing tomorrow? And
we just became really good friends. I was a single
guy at the time. He was too. He was divorced
(01:34):
with two kids, and he lived with his parents, so
he always had a babysitter so he could go out
a lot. There was this one girl that he had
brought back and she was a total train wreck. But
I was on a third floor my condo, and you
had sliders going out to a little balcony, and she
opened the sliders, she pulled down her pants and just
(01:55):
peed all over my deck, like right in front of
ten people. I mean, these are the kind of morons
hanging out with you know, seriously, what the fuck are
you doing. We had a lot of fun together, but
a lot of stupidity together too.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
And another new member of the crew was Aimon.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Well.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
First time I met Amon, I was introduced to him
by Todd actually down at the same bar that was
the spot where everybody met.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
And he was trash.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
He really was. This a little short, stocky kid thought
he was better than everybody. His parents owned a restaurant
a couple of towns over. But I don't even think
they wanted him involved. You know, he was a troublemaker.
I didn't hang out with him that much at all.
He was a quick pop in, whether he was dropping
something off for somebody else because he was selling it
as well, or if he was looking for something. It
(02:43):
was a text or a phone call to me, Hey
are you at the bar. I'm going to swing down
in the parking lot. You know, I'll meet you out
front in twenty minutes type thing.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Mark partied his troubles away with Rob Todd, Amon, Billy,
and Cathy, since wandering far from the life he had
with Liz, and as he struggled to avoid hitting rock bottom,
she dealt with her own healing after the divorce and
was clueless to his debauchery.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
I had no idea.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
I had no idea.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
I didn't know any of the people that he hung
out with.
Speaker 6 (03:13):
I was, you know, we're near And.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
At that point, I was probably still angry that he
didn't fight for us and stick up and he chose basically,
he chose his brother's life over ours. And I mean
I had some resentment and I didn't take it out
on him, but I probably was like, you got yourself
into this mess. I don't know what you're going to do.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
But I was shocked.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
And when Mark got together with his childhood friends like Jason,
he didn't divulge any details about his other life.
Speaker 6 (03:40):
I didn't know that that's what he was up to.
There was some partying going on that I was aware of,
but as far as what Mark was doing on the
side or with other individuals that we didn't know, it.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Wasn't a conversation about that.
Speaker 6 (03:55):
It was more just hanging out, reminiscing having a good time.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Burden with addiction, debt, and guilt, Mark got deeper and
deeper into selling cocaine.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
As a dealer, you want to protect yourself at all times,
and you don't know.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Who you're dealing with. If you don't know who they are.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
There, it all depends on what state of mind I
was in. If it was in the beginning of the
night and I had just had a beer or two,
and if somebody that I knew said, Hey, this guy
over here, you know he's looking to get something from you,
I would size him up. Normally, if somebody had asked
me that, I would say, you know what, you get
the money here?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
What do they want?
Speaker 4 (04:32):
You do it?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
You handle it, Just give me the money back. So
on a first time visit, I was a little skeptical
as that I progressed.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
My decision changed.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Fast forward five hours later and I was lit and
I was wired up, I would say, yep, what do
you want? That was the gray line. I apologize for
smiling for those who can't see me smiling, because there
was absolutely no way did I ever think that that
would be my career. As far as selling drugs, no way,
because I know you're gonna get caught. It's a vicious cycle.
(05:05):
It's a cycle that doesn't end until you, unfortunately get
to the bottom. Everybody hits rock bottom.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
By twenty eleven, cocaine consumption in the United States surpassed
all countries, and America's relationship with cocaine was complex. Dealers
came in all shapes and sizes, from the cartel leader
to the small suburban candy man. And what better place
for Mark Lombardo to ply his wares than a bar
(05:36):
near his condo.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
The walk from my house to the Naughty Monkey was
five hundred yards.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
The bar outdated. It was very dark, very dark.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
The bar was always full, whether it was women, businessmen
after work, construction guys. It's all walks of life. There
was a pool table with a Budweiser light. It looks
like it's been there for forty years, outdated, couple sick
of burns on it. You could probably find more people
hanging out in the bathrooms than up in the front.
If you didn't know it was a coke bar, you
will probably from out of town. Every regular that went
(06:09):
in there at one point was in that bathroom before
the end of the night, and it wasn't to take
a piss or a shit. My first time selling was
definitely a nervous time. If you don't feel that way,
something's wrong with you, something seriously wrong with you. You
have to know. If you get caught, you're in serious
fucking trouble. Regardless of the amount. It's against the law.
(06:29):
You have to know that. And I did know that.
Every time I sold it, I said, why are you
doing this?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
What are you doing? I questioned myself every fucking time,
But I still did it.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
I didn't want to be the center of attention, but
I did want people to know that if you want something,
I got it.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
You know, come to me, don't go to anybody else.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Mark learned the ins and outs of selling drugs quickly
and realized that the fast cast was just as addictive
as the cocaine.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
It was extremely easy to sell. I learned very quickly
who was doing it. I knew exactly who mike clientele
was going to be. Most of these people that I
was hanging out with who were partying, they were getting
it from multiple different sources. I said, let me buy
the larger amount and I'll sell to all of them.
It was very simple. Ultimately, what I did was when
I continued to buy, I was buying an ounce at
(07:15):
a time. My customers were all walks of life. There
was a bouncer at one of the bars in town.
I had a local painter. I had a guy on
Wall Street. I had a stripper. I had a couple
waitresses at the diner. They'd get off at one two
o'clock in the morning and they'd come down and get
a bag or two. I had all different ages, from
(07:37):
twenty two to twenty three up to probably fifty.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Five, with customers from all walks of life. Mark met
a swath of people who knew him only as the
man with the blow.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
It was easy to meet women, but not the best
level of women. There was some beautiful women, there were
some nice women that went in there, but for the
most part, a lot of them were trashy, trashy. I'm
not a player by any means. Obviously, having the YEO
in my favor worked in my favor. Okay, I'm not
fucking GQ celebrity.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Mini guys and bellas their tails of sex, drugs and
rock and roll. But in the case of Mark Lombardo,
his friend Rob was right there to witness the debauchery.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
As far as the coke and stuff, you can lay
down a naked woman right here and do lines off
of any part of a body.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
We had a couple of nice, really looking women, we'd
get them naked, lay them down, fucking cover them with
coke in certain areas, and have some fun. Sniff away,
leck away, have a shit ton of fun. Definitely easy.
Hey do you want to go and do a line
of coke off my cock? I'll do one off your pushy.
Let's have some fun. I live right up the hill.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
It happened. It happened a lot.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
I think sex and drugs with the right people go
hand in hand. It enhances it depending on the mood.
My mindset was, let me go out, we have some drinks,
do some blow, and get laid in that order. I
already had the beers, I've been doing coke. What's next,
I gotta get laid. I pretty much got laid almost
every night. I have to admit to walk into a
(09:14):
room where where maybe there was a couple of good
looking women that I knew did blow and they thought,
oh shit, Mark's here. Maybe that's an opportunity for me
to give her a little sum and get a little
sum myself.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Robin Todd realized Mark was out of control and decided
to teach him a lesson.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
So one time, I said, what did you do the
last night I met this girl? I to go home?
I said, Mark, did you use a condom? He goes, No,
I didn't use a condom, I said, Mark, I told
you something's going to happen. I said, I told you,
Mark that you got to wear a condom. So I
walked it down on my calendar, and nine months later
I went to the dollar store and I bought it's
a girl balloons and we went to his condo and
(09:54):
I tied him to his door. And you can see
the balloons from the parking lot. So here we are,
we're in my backyard, would drinking and we're waiting for Walker.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Came home from work.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
I went up and I saw these balloons on my
door and read the note, and I thought she was inside.
I completely lost my breath. I could not speak. I
didn't know nine months I could rattle off forty women.
I ran down those stairs into the parking lot and
I immediately called him, what do I do. I called
(10:26):
Rob the first thing. That's somebody's whatever you do? You
call Rob, you're in trouble, you call Rob?
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Hello, Rob, Rob? I can't Rob. What's the matter? You
get an accident? Are you okay?
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Are you home yet?
Speaker 4 (10:39):
He's a rob Rob. It's a girl. What's a girl?
Speaker 3 (10:41):
You hit a girl?
Speaker 4 (10:43):
And I was really playing it up okay, And he says,
there's balloons, balloons? What balloons? Mork.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
I literally thought I was having a heart attack. I
was running pacing. You don't understand, man, there's fucking balloons.
It's a girl.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
And Todd goes, He's gonna have a fucking heart attack.
Stop it. I put him on mute. I said, he's
fucking girl with it without condoms. He needs a lesson,
and I'm giving him a lesson today. Finally he was
going to have a heart attack. He was walking up
down the parking lot, puffing and puffing, and I actually
thought he was I said Mark, he was, it was you?
I go, yes, it was me, And then he came
(11:17):
over and we had fun that day.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
As far as the women in my life, I never
wanted a brag. I think I did very well for myself.
As far as the girlfriends and wives that I've had,
I always respected them and I absolutely treated them with
nothing but respecting class. The women on blow is a
totally different mindset.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
So we had I have a big backyard party. If
you've seen it, you'd fall in love with it. And Todd,
the guy with the balloons, and Mark we're all friends.
And there was a few guys with that girl. And
so one time at the party, you just say, hey,
you want to fucking she'd fuck? So I said, can
I film this? Can I watch?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Come on, So we go up with his nice trees
and a nice lawn. I got my cell phone out,
and she gets down the ground. She takes the clothes
off and walks over and then he looks back like
this and he sees me. He goes, rather, I can't
do it. I can't do it. I said, what's the matter, Mark,
you're a professional, and he goes, you got to hide
or something. You gotta hide. I so just but then
I'm not here. So I picked up a twig and
I had it like this, and I'm filming, and fifteen
(12:18):
twenty seconds later and Mark does one of these and
sees me with the twig and he loses his shit man,
so Mark. He was the real deal womanizer. That's why
I call him the Lumbardo four hundred.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
There was one exception to most of the women Mark
hooked up with at the bar. That was Kathy.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
She had been coming around as she knew Todd partied
as well. She wanted to get out and let loose
him get high. We started hooking up, pulling around, and
her and I hung out all the time.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
If you saw her, wouldn't want to hook up with
anybody either. She was great. She fulfilled all the needs.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Kathy juggled being a single mom one week and a
party girl the next. And even though she and Mark
spent a lot of time together, they weren't exclusive with
each other.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
She had a very good, solid, cordial relationship. The kids
would rotate one week with her, one week with him,
and that week that they weren't with her, she would
loose cannon. She was out and about. She had her kids.
She would say, Hey, I have the kids this week.
I'll give you a call next weekend. We would talk
throughout the week just to say hello, but I wouldn't
see her and hang out with her. I definitely had
(13:24):
some trust with Kathy. I had an attraction to her,
and when you're drinking and doing drugs, sex usually goes
with it. Kathy was my partner when it came to that,
but she was still screwing around with other people. I
was not dating her. I wasn't one on one with her.
But when we were together, we knew it was us.
I don't know if you really call that loyalty. Maybe
it's not one hundred percent loyalty, but I did feel
(13:45):
comfortable when I was around her. She'd get a call
from an old guy and she'd go out with them,
and it pissed me off a little bit. But again,
we were not together together. You know, I understood she
wants to go out and mess around. I'd but never loyal,
never loyal to her. And again, it wasn't We weren't
one hundred an item. We weren't dating, we weren't this,
(14:06):
We weren't that. We just knew that when we hung out,
it was ultimately we were gonna have sex or we
were gonna fool around. She screwed around with other people too,
you know, so it goes both ways.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Mark and Kathy love to party hard together, but there
was one thing that concerned him.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Kathy, she loved pills.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
She was ecstasy and percocets and Viking ins. Her mood
was up and down all over the place, and I
would don't it, don't fuck, don't don't mess with those pills.
Don't mess with those pills.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Mark's business was up and running. He had regulars he
could count on. Neither Grammar and eight ball. Mark Lombardo
was the man. He had new friends and customers streaming
in and out of his life.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
I met Jay for the first time, and I remember
very well.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
We were at the bar.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
We're doing our Thursday routine and drinking some beers and
tooting a little up the nose, and he had Yankee
had on. He was by himself. He came over and
he says, what's that game you guys are playing there?
He said, Oh, it's a game we call three ball.
He's like, you mind if I play?
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (15:24):
No problem with your name?
Speaker 4 (15:25):
Jay? O.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Hey, how are you Mark? Nice to meet you.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
All right, guys, Jay's gonna play a couple of rounds
with us. He introduced them to Greg and Billy and
all the other assholes, and we had a great night.
Nothing was brought up about drugs. Nothing was brought up
about coke or anything. And we continued to play probably
three four hours, and he's like, hey, guys, it was.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Great to meet you.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
You do this every week. I'll be back next Thursday.
If that's school, are you guys going to be in
no problem?
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Were here every Thursday.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Through the world of cocaine, Mark had friends in the
life who gave him access the places in power. Outside
of his crew.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
A friend of mine and I would frequent a strip
club down in Jersey doing coke and hanging out with strippers.
I don't want to say his name. He has some
connections with some organized crime families in Jersey. He and
I were at this strip club. You couldn't smoke in
bars anymore, he says to the bartender, give me an ashtray.
She gives him an ashtray. I said, we can smoke
(16:23):
in here? Is he can do whatever the fuck you
want to do in here. So we're sitting there smoking
and there was two guys directly across from us, and
you could almost read their lips like, hey, look at
those guys, you know, pointing to us, they can smoke.
They pull out a cigarette and light it up. This bouncer.
He would look like a linebacker for the giants. He
grabbed them and threw them the fuck out of it,
like you wouldn't believe the guy is.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
He says, let's go upstairs. So we went upstairs.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
It was a little private, you know, where you would
go to do a lap dance type kind of room,
and it was just dump the coke and he would
lean over the ledge. Hey, come on up, come on up,
and those girls, four or five girls come up. One
sits on your lap, one sits on his lab ones
rubbing your back, tits in your face, you know.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
And you just did.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Lines all night, two, three, four o'clock in the morning,
five o'clock. Sometimes we had some fun down there. We
had a lot of fun. The ride home was tough.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Mark still had his nine to five, but while his
confidence grew as a dealer, the endless nights of partying
began to clout his judgment.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I did know the circle that I was dealing with,
but quickly there was people being introduced to that circle
that I didn't know. That I did sell to vouching
for somebody, Especially when you're going into a larger quantity,
there's a.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Lot of things you want to watch.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
You don't want too many people not knowing it's you,
but actually doing the transaction and seeing it and being
a part of it, keep me out of it.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
But I didn't do that.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
I just say, yeah, come on in, come on in,
come on in, come on in. Anybody who's next serving
number twenty two?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Who's up?
Speaker 4 (17:50):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
After Flocko got busted, I still needed an avenue to
find below, and ultimately I did reach out to my
guy that I continued to buy from is involved with
a family, so I used him for that connection moving forward,
you pick and choose your battles, right, and I chose
to get it from people who you don't want to
(18:12):
fuck around with. Then one day, Jay he approached me,
probably the fourth maybe fifth time that he came in.
He pulled me aside and he says, uh, hey, do
you know where I can get some coke around here?
Just like that, very simple, Do you know where I
can get some coke around here? I'm like, yeah, why
don't you asked me a couple of weeks ago? The
(18:33):
fuck you didn't know that we're all doing this shit?
Speaker 3 (18:35):
You couldn't tell? It was very simple. He asked me.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
I said yes, and he said I don't need it tonight,
but maybe you can get me like an ounce.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
There's no problem.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
I'll take care for you.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
He said, next week, maybe i'll give you a call. Sure,
here's my number. And that next week called me and said, hey,
I'm running down to the bar.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Where do you live. I'll stop by your place. We'll
just have a beer whatever. I'm like, yeah, sure, no problem.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
This guy actually came my house.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
We had a beer, you know, on my kitchen table,
and I'm like, if you want to head down, yeah, sure,
let's head down. So we're hanging out and he's like, well,
next week I want to I'd like to get an
ounce from it. And I'm like, oh an ounce, okay, yeah,
no problem, we could do that. And he's like, I'll
give you a call. He said something like that, we
could do it Tuesday or Wednesday. Said yeah, give me
a call. I'll meet you somewhere.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Mark's world was endless nights of booze, blow and women.
As he started to make some real money, the laws
of gravity began to take hold.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
The ultimate goal was to somehow get myself out of
this hole that my brother put me on these loans.
That was the ultimate goal. I think I crossed the
line where I was just having too much fun and
wasn't so much about getting to that ultimate goal. It
was like, if I get there, I get there, but
let's have fun while doing it. Meanwhile, I could have
(19:54):
died in a heart attack. I was still partying. There
was no sleep. Weekend were out of control. They really were.
Starting on a Saturday noontime, you could go sit outside,
you have a couple of beers, through a few bumps
in the bathroom. Keep you going. You're flying high. And
I would ride it until Sunday night before I went
(20:14):
to sleep. You didn't go to sleep on a Saturday.
We stayed up all night and just kept going and
going and going, or until you ran out of coke.
I was in the bathroom one day and I was
sitting on the toilet and I really thought I was
having a heart attack. I took a cold shower. I
stood in the shower. I remember, I put my hands
on the walls and I just let the water hit
(20:35):
the back of my neck. I was sweating like a pig.
I was burnt up.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Really truly thought I was having a heart attack.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
They did I got really scared, and I remember laying
in bed just trying to go to sleep. You're so wired,
you can't just close your eyes and you're beating yourself up.
Go to sleep, Go to sleep, Just try to go
to sleep. Because what I wanted to do was not
worry about it anymore and sleep it off and wake up.
But then there was a part of me saying, holy shit,
am I going to wake up? Am I going to
wake up? Because it was that bad, the same bottom,
(21:07):
a vicious cycle, over and over. It was that tug
of war, the angel and devil on the shoulder. And
it wasn't just on Sunday, on a Wednesday and Thursday.
I would say to myself, stay the fuck home, stay home,
you gotta get up early, you gotta gotta work, and
it would never win. That one side always won, That
one side always won. It was like they had extra
(21:29):
hands over there. Anybody that gets involved in that, it's
eventually going to catch up with you.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
There's no question.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Mark had a tradition of meeting his father and brothers
at King George's Diner every Sunday for breakfast, but he
started missing many of those family bonding moments as his
cocaine use escalated.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Sunday mornings was a tradition with my family and my
father would go to breakfast every morning, and that's when
I started to get into the habit of missing one Sunday,
then it was another's because you were so addicted to
this lifestyle at that point. Instead of getting up eight
thirty nine o'clock in the morning and going to breakfast
with my brothers and my father.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
What I wanted to do was sleep.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I started to miss out on that tradition and realized
that it wasn't the best thing I wanted to do.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
You feel guilty.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
You look at the way my father looked at it,
probably right because he was looking forward to seeing us
every week. That was Dad day. It was Sunday, that
was the only day we saw him. So for me
to miss that, that's how did that make him feel?
He probably looked forward to it all week, and then
here comes Sunday and I don't show up. So I
(22:38):
start to feel guilty about that. It hurt me a
lot that I was missing family time. I would beat
myself up over it. Are you're gonna hang out with
these fucking derelics at a bar? You should be going
to seeing your brothers and your father. Many at times,
many at times that that thought went through my mind.
But I was too hungover, I was too out of it,
(22:59):
I had no motivation. My one friend said, you better
stop that shit. You're going to turn into his skid.
He used to call him kids, And there was a
part of me I thought about that. I said, really,
am I turning into one of these fucking guys.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
There was a lot of times when I was partying. Yes,
you were enjoying the moment. But when I really felt
that the most is when I woke up ridiculously hungover
or you know, just cobwebbed out on a Sunday. I
would lay on the couch and watch TV and say, Mark,
what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Mark had to rationalize his actions and mask his guilt
in order to function. In his mind, he was simply
digging himself out of a financial hole. Basically, he needed
to tell himself he was a good guy.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
When I was dealing, and that's what I was doing.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
I guess I wanted to be looked at Mark, the
friend that had some extracurricular activities.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
I never wanted anybody to be.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Like, Oh, Mark's a drug dealer who wants to be
known as a fucking drug dealer.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Nobody, Nobody.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Maybe some people do, maybe they want to be the
next kingpin.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
That's not me. I'm not one of them.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Because every single one of those fucking people that I
sold to, I thought they were all scumbags, every single
one of them. I didn't give a shit that they
were a scumbag because they were giving me money and
I was giving them what they wanted. But I thought
every single one of them was a fucking scumbag. Then
here I am doing it with him. But what does
that make me? Makes me a fucking scumbag too?
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Right?
Speaker 2 (24:47):
You just get to a point where you just think
you're better than them. What makes me better than them?
I'm doing exactly what you're doing. Maybe it was because
I had a better job or I was making more money.
That really isn't a good enough reason, but that was
part of it. And I'm still going to wake up
Monday morning going to work. A couple of them didn't
even work. They were notorious for calling out I guess,
deep down inside, I always thought I was just a
(25:09):
little bit better than them. I wasn't a true comeback
that was a half a scumebag. It's hard for me
to say that about myself.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
It is.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
It's very hard to say that, but it's true.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
The tight knit group of friends Mark grew up with
had all moved to different parts of the country and
started families of their own. Darren was down in Florida
and Jason had settled in San Diego.
Speaker 6 (25:34):
When I first learned Mark's kind of post first marriage life.
At that point, I was still back in Jersey on
a fairly regular basis. We used to go up to Warwick,
both him and Matt were kind of up there together,
and we had hung out there multiple times at some
(25:55):
of the local bars and stuff, And honestly, it was
spawn Work is a guy that likes to have a
good time, like we all do. I think that was
kind of one of our common ponds growing up.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
And we continue to do that.
Speaker 6 (26:08):
And to me, it seemed like Mark was just being
a young single guy having a good time up in
New York and kind of moving on with his life.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Everybody that I was really tight with in high school
all through college, they're married, they have kids, well they're
divorced to have kids, but they have kids.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
I'm the only one that doesn't have kids. Out of
all of my.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Good high school buddies, I'm still to this day the
only one that doesn't have any biological kids. And that
makes a difference. You tend to just attract those the
people that are in the same boat as you.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Maybe you know, if I'm a plumber, I'm gonna hang
out plumbers.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Right. Every single person that was in this circle, to
my knowledge, had no kids. I was their family. It
was the drug family, you know it. It was the
Koch family, it was the hookup family. You always had
an easy outlet. My core friends moved on with their lives.
They wanted to start families.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
I didn't.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
I wanted to drink, I wanted to hang out. I
didn't have kids. I didn't have to worry about putting
a college fund together. You know they did.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Mark was struggling to keep this cocaine world separate from
his workplace world. With his coke habit now at its peak,
that was becoming harder and harder to manage.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Found myself at work all the time dragging. There was
multiple days I said to my service advisors, listen, I'm
really not feeling that well. And that was basically the
nicest way of saying, stay the fuck out of my office.
I'm going to close the door, and I don't want
to be bothered. I knew that was doing the wrong thing.
Here's people coming to work for me. They're my first
line of defense. Service advisors at a car dealership. If
(27:43):
they had an irate customer, they needed to come to me,
and here I am telling them stay away from me.
Figure it out. What do they need me for. There
was many a night's I said, holy shit, how am
I going to get to work tomorrow? And if I
had a blow, I would have failed the test. There
was nights where I drank until one two o'clock during
the week. And don't forget, I worked a lot of
(28:03):
Saturday So Friday nights, if you're going home at four
o'clock and you got to be down there by seven
point thirty on a Saturday, I literally went home, just
took a quick shower and looked in the mirror and.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Was like, what the fuck am I going to do?
And I drove to work.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
I remember one day driving down to New York State
Thruway and just doing key bumps the whole way, looking
in my mirror because I said you got to wake
the fuck up, man, You got to wake up.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
I mean, who wants to do that? Who wants to
live a life that way?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
And I did that just because that was going to
get me through the day by going the bathroom do
another one. At works, I was dragging. The only way
to get through the day at work was to continue.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
There was nice.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
I said, all right, I gott to leave some in
my pocket because there's no way I'm going to get
through work without doing coke in the bathroom, or coke
before I go in. I get to the parking spot
and I do a big one, and then the booze
is wearing off. Everything's starting to come down, and you
need that quick pick me up. Nobody at work knew
I was doing it. If they did, they never said it.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Months had passed since the day Mark lost his marriage,
his nest egg, and now his self respect. His old
friends were distant, and he was surrounded by collection of
drug buddies who Mark really knew very little about, like
Billy and Jay.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Billy I met at the bar well before I was
doing anything as far as using, and he was a
guy that quite honestly as a single guy. Billy also
lived in town, walking distance to the place. We just
kind of hit it off. We really did. We had
the same interest, we were the same age, We laughed,
we liked to drink. He was the guy I hung
(29:38):
out with just about every day down there. Jay had
also become friends with Billy Well down at the bar
and friends with me. And Billy and I had such
a close relationship that I would have him sometimes go
and bring announce to somebody and then give me the money.
Whether I was busy or if I couldn't do it,
I just had something going on. Hey, Billy, do me
a favor. I'll bring Announced. Bring it to so and so,
(30:01):
he'll give you money, give it to me later. I mean,
I trusted the guy, really did.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
One time, announce of cocaine Mark was picking up from
Billy was meant for Jay. It was January twenty fifth, wintertime,
so it was cold out and dark by five pm.
As Mark drove his car to meet Billy.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
When I pulled up at his house to get it,
he was outside. Actually I didn't go inside the house.
He had it on him, so he came up to
my door. I put the window down, he gave it
to me. I said, hey, have fun with your kids.
I'll give you a call later. It was as easy
as that. I grabbed it and took the seven minute
ride over to Woodbury Commons. I went in the back entrance.
(30:42):
I was communicating with Jay. He said, we're behind the
Calvin Kleine store. In the back, you'll see my pickup truck.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Jay told Mark there was a spot near the back
entrance of the mall. It was crowded, so he should
look out for his blue pickup truck and park in
the space next to him.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
I pulled into the parking space and I got out
of my car. I hopped in his passenger seat and
I closed the door. I went into my pocket, and
before I even got it out of my pocket, I
was ripped out of that car by about eight to
ten State troopers, cops, DEA agents.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
One guy threw me on the ground. He put his
foot right on my throat and put a gun to
my head.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Shock Incarceration is a joint production from iHeartRadio and Doghouse Pictures,
produced and hosted by Jeff Keating. Executive producers are Mark Lombardo,
Tommy James, Noel Brown, and Jeff Keating. Written by Jim Roberts,
Tommy James, Chris Rigozzo and Jeff Keating. Story edit by
Jim Roberts, Edit mix and sound design by Laine Crafts
(31:56):
from Herd's Creek Productions. Music composed by A Diamond Street Productions,
accompanied by Tyler Greenwell, Danny Wattanas, Sean Thompson and Spencer Garne.
Special thanks to Trinity Investigative Group and Mark Lombardo's family
and friends who contributed to the podcast.
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