February 26, 2024 • 41 mins
Lucky Luciano’s conviction sits atop a rising wave of public panic about the seeping influence of crime and corruption on American life.
It’s a perception that’s been mythologised in Hollywood retellings about the mob for decades. The idea of an all-powerful mafia served Thomas Dewey’s professional ambitions well too, but how much of it was actually true?
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Novel.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I read a lot of romance novels. People have a
tendency to make fun of them, mostly because it's a
genre largely targeted towards and written by women. Romance novels
are full of hope, humor, and yes, sometimes there's really
steamy sex. You like dragons and elves. You want to
(00:32):
know what it looks like when a whole hockey team
finds love. Maybe you'd like a fictionalized version of an
amish courtship, or what would it look like for a
rabbi to fall for a former sex worker. Romance has
it all, Pumpkin. There's even a world where Italian gangsters
learn there's more to life than money and violence. I'd
(00:56):
actually never read any mafia romances before I came across
you his story, so I figured i'd pick up a
few for research purposes. Of course, I asked my Twitter
followers what they liked about mafia stories and got a
variety of answers. People are fascinated by the strong sense
of loyalty, the found family narratives, and the protectiveness, plus
(01:20):
the secretive nature of the community. And there's much to
be said about size stepping government overreach. Everybody loves sticking
it to the man. Add in the mysts about Italian men,
their appreciation for good food, good living, and good loving,
and well, it can be hard to resist a good
mob romance. A lot of these images that feed into
(01:42):
the lore of gangsters were shaped by Eunice and Dewey's
conviction of Lucky Luciano.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Okay, a brief synopsis of America's fascination with the Italian mafia.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
If I may.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
In the nineteen thirties, when the Lucky Luciano trial first
started to hit the local papers, life imitated art and
aught imitated life.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
In those days.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Until the trial of Lucky there may have been rising
public panic about the seeping influence of crime and corruption
on American life, but the gangsters themselves.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
American people started to pick up sympathy for these guys.
You've got this crazy dichotomy between people fascinated with the
mob and people who hated and feared the mob. For
very good reason.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
We can thank Hollywood for that.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Those early gangster movies were based on real life crime figures.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
In the early thirties, Hollywood is turning out film after
film about anti hero gangsters. Whether it's Edward g Robinson
playing Rico in the nineteen thirty one movie Little.
Speaker 5 (02:54):
Caesar Allison Rico.
Speaker 6 (02:56):
I'm gonna talk to you, but you're not gonna hear
a word I say.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
That would have been al Capone.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
This is inside dope, and if it gets out, it'll
be just too bad for somebody.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Or Humphrey Bogart as Duke Manty in The Petrified Forest,
released in nineteen thirty six.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
If you'll think I was kitten when I said I'd
be glad to knock you up.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
People all love The Petrified Forest because that's Dilinger. You know,
Bogi really nailed it.
Speaker 6 (03:26):
You're all right, Paly, I got good ideas. I'll try
that picture soos that don't hurt.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
By the early thirties, it di was kissed that people
wanted to see the gangsters.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
The government, unsurprisingly doesn't like this.
Speaker 7 (03:46):
The gangster is being seen as the hero. We've got
to stop that. We've got to stop that.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
So the government starts promoting their own style of hero
in films.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Now we're going to make movies about g men, you know,
government men, the FBI agents.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I don't think the public ever really bought that. After all,
having the law as Heroes doesn't exactly fit with most
people's experiences.
Speaker 7 (04:08):
The general attitude towards criminality come nineteen thirty three as well.
The gangsters in fact that in many ways they're better
than the police. At least they're not being paid by
the state. They're not taking money and being paid by
the state, so they're cleaner than that.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Then there's Dewey, with his investigation into the Mob. This
mustachioled crusader works hard to frame Dutch Schultz and then
Lucky Luciano as public enemy number one. Dewey does start
to have some success here changing public attitudes. He begins
(04:43):
using radio broadcasts and newspaper headlines, and the hype of
Lucky's trial helps chase away any lingering doubts the public
may have about how bad the Mob is. By the
time of the guilty verdict, the legend of Lucky Luciano
and his downfall is being broadcast triumphantly across America. The
(05:04):
gangster who revolutionized the mob has been taken down the
boss of bosses laid Low, the original godfather. But even
as Lucky is led away from that courtroom in handcuffs,
people are already starting as to question the lines between
the truth and fiction.
Speaker 8 (05:26):
Lucky Luciano, who is this guy? Who was he for real?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
When it comes to unicon Dewey's prized mob conviction? Is
it possible the whole story of Lucky is a fraud?
From the teams at iHeartRadio and novel I'm Nicole Perkins
and this is the Godmother, Episode seven Disorganized Crime. On
(06:31):
June eighteenth, nineteen thirty six, twelve days after Lucky Luciano
was found guilty on charges of compulsory prostitution, he returns
to court for sentencing Dewey, Lucky, and the other co
defendants pushed past the crowds and step into the Manhattan courtroom.
(06:52):
There they all stand before Judge McCook, a judge you
might remember who had been specially appointed to take on
organis crime.
Speaker 8 (07:01):
They were set on putting these guys away for as
long as they could, particularly Luciano.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
A few weeks ago, Lucky had been all arrogance and
swagger as he took to the stand in that same courtroom.
But if he'd been surprised by the jury's eventual guilty verdict,
it was nothing compared to his slack jaw shock. As
Judge McCook reads his sentence aloud to the courtroom.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Holy Toledo for prostitution, you're giving me a life sentence.
Speaker 8 (07:36):
Lucky Luciano took the harshest term from Judge McCook.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Thirty to fifty years in prison. It was a life sentence.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Once all sentences have been handed out, Lucky and the
other defendants are taken away for processing.
Speaker 8 (07:54):
It was quickly determined they needed to be split up
and sent to different prisons so that they couldn't reorganize
this sex trafficking gang.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Lucky heads upstate to a prison on the Canadian border,
up the river.
Speaker 6 (08:09):
As they say, he wasn't taken down by taxes like
al Capone or Waxi Garden. He wasn't shot in the
head by arrival like Dutch Schalt. He was brought down
by a bunch of two bit hores. Most men in
the underworld insisted it could not be true.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
In the end, it's the women who bring Lucky low.
Lucky might be down, but he and his team of
expensive lawyers are far from done because, let's face it,
the prosecution's case hadn't exactly been watertight.
Speaker 7 (08:48):
At best, questionable, if not don't right illegal.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So as that summer of nineteen thirty six passes, Lucky's
team starts to work on their appeal in an attempt
to swiftly free Lucky from his new home up the river.
And while they're working on that, what is Eunice Carter
doing what she does?
Speaker 9 (09:07):
After Luciano's trial, Thomas Dewey's team continues to investigate organized crime.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
She and Dewey are back in their office on the
Woolworth Building's fourteenth floor. She was a relative rookie when
she joined Dewey's investigation, But Eunice Harbor's ambitions of becoming
a judge one day It's a lofty goal on any scale,
let alone for a black woman in the footheels of
a vast mountain of systemic racism and sexism in America.
(09:41):
But I wouldn't be surprised if Eunice thought why not?
Her career as a prosecutor was off to the best
possible start with a high profile Lucky conviction. It's easy
to imagine Unice back in her office desk, light burning
her eyes as she goes back over every piece of
evidence in preparation for Lucky so appeal. She has to
(10:02):
know everything will be called into question. It was her
original work that got the conviction in the first place.
She may not have received kudos in public, but if
Lucky won his appeal, the prosecution's loss will definitely have
her name all over it. By nineteen thirty seven, Lucky's
(10:22):
lawyers think a do over might be imminent. There was
one obvious weakness in his original conviction.
Speaker 6 (10:29):
The witnesses the Underworld had a strong self interest in
pressing the narrative that these women were unreliable witnesses.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
It wasn't just what the witnesses had said on the stand,
it's the way Eunice and Dewey had coaxed that testimony
out of them in the first place.
Speaker 10 (10:46):
So they were effectively held against their will in communicado
unlesson until they cooperate.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Lucky and his team are well aware of just how
shady the coercion of testimonies had been from the witnesses.
In fact, most of America is becoming aware. The public
has been reading a slow trickle of allegations that had
found their way into the newspapers. Some of the witnesses
who had cooperated with the prosecution are now talking to
(11:16):
reporters about their experiences. I wonder if Dewey's composure cracks
away from the courthouse as he reads the newspaper over
his breakfast each morning. Maybe he worries his mustache into disarray,
wondering who could be leaking all of this information. Readers
aren't just learning about brutal coercion. Eunice and Dewey may
(11:37):
have turned the bad cop dial up a little too high,
but they'd also been using the good cop routine.
Speaker 6 (11:44):
It is certainly true that the ones who were willing
to talk were given special treatment. They didn't have to
stay necessarily in the jails. In some cases, they were
put into secret apartments.
Speaker 10 (11:56):
Dewey's assistant prosecutors was taking the girls out the bar
and getting drunk with them.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I'm pretty sure Unis wasn't the assistant prosecutor taking the
girls out, but who knows.
Speaker 10 (12:07):
The idea of whining and dining the ones who were
released from jail was fairly outrageous.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
And the newspaper reports are now alleging that this coaxing
of the witnesses didn't stop with simple nights out on
the town. Apparently, certain promises were made to the witnesses
about rewards After a positive conviction, several.
Speaker 10 (12:25):
Of them received emoluments that were highly unusual. Two of
the women were sent on a cruise around the world,
paid for by doing as prosecutors.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
When the trial began, Judge McCook reminded the jurors of
the sex workers humanity, But maybe he should have delivered
that message to the prosecution as well. These witnesses had
been exploited at every turn by their customers, the mob,
the prosecution, the defense, and now the press. Yes, everyone
(13:01):
wants these little birdies to sing for their supper, with
promises of gilded cages for protection, but there's no real
safety after you read out the mob is there. The
good guys want you to be grateful as if they
saved you. The bad guys want you punished, and the
press wants you to keep singing. But all those gilded
(13:21):
cages flake and rust, So which one do you choose.
There's no way to be truly free, is there. Dewey
and his team are about to learn the hard way
that some of their key witnesses are falling back into
the hands of the mob. Koki Flow was one of
(14:00):
the prosecution's key witnesses. You remember Koki, She was going
through detox on the stand. Koch's testimony, like nearly all
the witnesses, had put her life in great danger. No
one likes a snitch, especially if they're pointing fingers at
the boss of bosses. But if Dewey was worried about
the safety of Kochi or any of the rest of
(14:23):
the women, he didn't show signs of it, at least
not in his media briefings.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
His press releases afterwards were more of a justification of
what had been done during the trial. He was very
mute on what steps were being taken to protect the women.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
After the trial, when Lucky is convicted, Cokey and Millie Harris,
one of the other trial witnesses, understandably decide to get
the hell out of Dodge. They flee upstate to Rochester,
New York, and whole up in a cheap hotel. Breathing
fresh air and looking over their shoulders.
Speaker 10 (15:06):
They began writing these stories that they were hired to
write for Liberty Magazine.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
They were offered the magazine deal in exchange for their
life stories.
Speaker 10 (15:18):
A series of stories was called Underworld Nights.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Liberty Magazine is a popular magazine that features stories from
people of all walks of life, including celebrities, politicians, and
former sex workers turned prosecution witnesses. The series of articles
is published.
Speaker 10 (15:38):
Once they finished that and they were paid for that,
they couldn't go back to New York to their old lives,
so they decided to go on a road trip and
they bought a car. They took the southern route out
to California, California.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Because Flow and Millie aren't just magazine writers now, in
the aftermath of the trial, they'd also been offered a
movie deal.
Speaker 10 (16:06):
They were under the impression that this film deal was
imminent and they wanted to be in LA when the
film deal went down.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
The ladies don't end up in Tinseltown right away. Maybe
they want to make their money stretch a little longer,
or try their hand at living straight. Because before long
they're living in Pomona, just outside of LA and they're
getting short of cash because they've spent their remaining money
on a kind of a strange new business.
Speaker 10 (16:37):
They decided to open a gas station and Pomona, of
all things, and the two of them opened a gas
station and they ran it for a while, and Koki
Flow is okay.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
With that, But for Millie Harris. It's not so simple.
Hollywood tends to take its time, and the film about
their lives still hasn't come about yet. And the gas
station Pomona life isn't quite what she'd anticipated. I'm sure
it lacked all the glitz and glam of New York City,
and she's a city girl. Plus she's carrying an emotional weight.
Speaker 10 (17:14):
She wanted to get back to New York.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
She missed her husband, a husband she had helped put
away alongside.
Speaker 10 (17:20):
Lucky who was in jail and sing sing.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Maybe the guilt is eating away at her.
Speaker 10 (17:25):
Because Millie Harris, without Kochie Flow's knowledge, started communicating with
the lawyers for Luciana who were handling his appeal, and
an investigator wanted to get her to recant her testimony,
which she did.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Eventually, both women returned to New York together, back to
their old lives. Cochie goes back on heroin, she became.
Speaker 10 (17:50):
An addict again. They both went into a sanitarium to
try to take the cure to get off of heroin,
and it was during that time that they signed these
affidavits recanting their testimony.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Sometimes the fear of something new is as much of
a prison as anything else. By March nineteen thirty seven,
all the prosecution's key witnesses have officially turned. Eunice and
Dewey have lost the very foundation of their case against Lucky,
(18:24):
and Lucky's defense is picking up steam. All they have
to do now is get these recanted statements in front
of an appeals court, get the conviction overturned, and then
Lucky will be a free man. Dewey is clearly worried
about this too. He re enlists Eunice as his assistant
for an April nineteen thirty seven hearing for a retrial.
(18:49):
But Eunice, Dewey, and Lucky haven't factored in Judge McCook,
that belligerent, dedicated, anti mob judge who had already come
up with his own plan for this turn and of events.
Speaker 10 (19:01):
McCook did something that was highly unusual.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
You see, back in June of nineteen thirty six, when
the Blue Ribbon jury had dropped the bombshell of Lucky
Luciano's conviction, When Dewey was striding triumphantly from the courtroom
and Eunice was well not there as the drama played out,
another scene was also taking place, this one behind closed doors.
(19:33):
Judge McCook, instead of taking a well earned break after
ruling over the trial of the Century, is in his
office surrounded by sex workers.
Speaker 10 (19:43):
After the verdict, and while the motion for new trial
was pending, he called all seventy some women who were
still in jail into his chambers.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
These seventy women are the sex workers and madams who
have been witnesses in the trial. And this isn't some
post trial party.
Speaker 10 (20:03):
And without any notice to the defense or without any
defense lawyer being present, on the record, with a prosecutor present,
he made them reassert their testimony.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
All seventy women are told to swear again that their
testimony was accurate.
Speaker 10 (20:19):
Highly unusual to do that, outrageous. Actually, the case really
reeks a prosgatorial misconduct, at least by today's standards.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
These women don't have a cushy life at the start
of Lucky's trial, and we know it took a lot
to persuade them to testify in the first place. Their
lives leading up to the trial had been severely uprooted,
and it probably didn't get any easier after their names
had been dragged through the press. Plus, I imagine the
mob and their defense attorneys probably weren't very sweet when
(20:53):
it came time to convince them to recant. It's been
one harrowing experience after another, and now recanting their testimony
means nothing. Lucky's defense team tries everything they have to
get the case invalidated. In fact, by October tenth, nineteen
thirty eight, they've taken this all the way to the
(21:15):
highest court in the land.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
The conviction was analyzed by the appellate and was denied
for an appeal. They denied a retrial, and they denied
a mistrial.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Thanks in part to Judge McCook's early intervention.
Speaker 8 (21:33):
Judge McCook, I'm not saying it was a crooked trial.
I'm just saying, in nineteen thirty six, don't be a
high profile criminal. They put him away in a manner
that today standards I would hope wouldn't hold water.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
It was not fair, but it was considered fair for
its time.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Dewey and Unice's triumph is now set in stone. It
looks like Charles Lucky Luciano is stuck in jail for
the foreseeable future, and as he languishes there while his
lawyers try and fail to win an appeal, Eunice and
Dewey are already busy again. They both continue their fight
(22:18):
against organized crime, although with very different results. Unice is
now diligently prosecuting Numbers runners in Harlem.
Speaker 9 (22:32):
She winds up taking down some numbers racket leaders in Harlem,
which is sort of met with mixed feelings within the
Harlem community.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Unice's success on this front isn't met with blanket approval.
Speaker 9 (22:47):
There's definitely a lot of people who are very happy
because they do not want there to be criminal activity
in their community. But then also when you look at
the newspapers, not only black owned papers in carl but
across the city, there's editorials that are like, why is
this woman targeting her own community?
Speaker 2 (23:10):
In order to get ahead in the predominantly white world
of law and justice, Unice has to prosecute people who
walk the same streets as she does. It's a fine line.
I imagine she has to prove to her white colleagues
she won't be biased in her work, while also trying
to prove her self trustworthy to her Harlem community.
Speaker 5 (23:30):
We talk frequently today about the constraints on black womanhood
in the public eye. Right we know that black women
are subjected to more critique, to more hate, to a
different set of standards than other people. These pressure from
within the black community to be a representative of the
(23:52):
race would also presumably have made Unice Carter fuel pressure
even when she wasn't in white spaces.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
During this time. Whenever Unice Carter opens the paper and
sees her name, it's not with professional accolades or recognition.
In the society pages, she reads judgments of her loyalty,
her character, and her image. The newspapers that used to
praise Unice now judge her as harshly as any jury. Meanwhile,
(24:28):
Dewey is receiving a much more positive reception in the media.
(24:50):
By the end of nineteen thirty seven, Thomas Dewey is
no longer a special prosecutor. He gets sworn in as
one of five New York District jorneys with a power
to decide who gets prosecuted. The law was only ever
a stepping stone. He wants to break into politics. The
following year, he's on the move again. He runs and
(25:13):
loses a gubernatorial race, but in nineteen forty two he
runs again and is successfully elected governor of New York.
His dreams of political office have come true. His rise
is by any standards, meteoric. He's ridden a wave of
popularity that followed Lucky's prosecution, far higher and faster than
(25:35):
many might have expected. How did he manage it?
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Not in cooperation with police and federal law enforcement departments throughout.
Speaker 10 (25:42):
The United States.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
The only national program that brings you authentic police case
history gain in Muster.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
In the immediate aftermath of Lucky's trial. Dewey is not
shy about trumpeting his performance.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
He gave his reports on WNYC radio. He also regularly
gave interviews. Dewey, by thirty seven thirty eight was in
the news. He was the guy who put Lucciano away.
He was the gangbuster.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Gangbusters is a law versus gangster fact based radio drama.
It first aired in nineteen thirty five. It's a program
that Dewey becomes associated with by nineteen thirty six. In
nineteen thirty nine, a book called ninety Times Guilty is published.
It tells a now familiar story of Lucky Luciano as
(26:43):
a shadowy mafia figure pulling the strings of the underworld,
a criminal mastermind. Hickman Powell, a former political reporter for
The New York Herald Tribune writes the book while working
for Thomas Dewey as a volunteer speechwriter and researcher.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Ninety Times Guilty came out with the idea that Luciano
had centralized, organized modernized the American mafia.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
It's a great pr strategy for Dewey to lean into.
Speaker 7 (27:11):
He knows that victory of a kingping boss is going
to be incredibly good publicity for him.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
The only problem is this book was largely fiction. It
combines some of the hype about Lucky that Dewey has
been feeding to the press with some new tar tales.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
The idea that Luciano organized crime in America because he'd
killed sixty to eighty Greeces as they were called old
style mafia gangsters. It gives credence to the idea that
he was a dominant figure in organized crime in America nationally.
Speaker 10 (27:41):
It was just a.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Completely made up story that true crime writers ran with.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
And it isn't just these scenes of vicious mob murders
this book has fictionalized. It's also cementing a bigger lie
about Lucky too.
Speaker 8 (28:00):
I'm not trying to be the cheerleader for Lucky Luciano.
But I realized the opposition had a self righteous, zealous
campaign going and they needed a poster boy.
Speaker 7 (28:15):
If you want to make your name, there's no point
in putting some small time hoodlum from downtown Manhattan in prison.
That's not going to make you famous. But you get
the boss of all bosses of the mafia, and suddenly
you were all over the papers.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Dewey needed to position Lucky as the one true face
of crime in America. It was vital for people to
think it had been Lucky pulling all the strings. And
now that he's been taken down, the war on crime
has been won.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
By the end of nineteen thirties, with Dewey's success as
well as Whover's success, American newspapers are saying, well, we've
beaten organized crime.
Speaker 10 (28:54):
Of course they hadn't.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
The book is part of a winning career political strategy.
Speaker 8 (28:59):
For doing There's something to be said of criminal poster boys.
Your El Choppels, your John Gotties, your Frank Lucas, your
Lucky Luciano. Who makes them that? Are they really the
face of the problem poster boy for whom.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Dewey's plan of using an anti organized crime crusade to
get to power has been used many times since. Remember
Giuliani versus the Mob in the nineties. Dewey and his
subsequent imitators are able to gain traction because they're tapping
into an already existing rich current in America.
Speaker 7 (29:41):
White supremacy is absolutely central to organized crime. I don't
think you can discuss one without the other.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Lucky arriving into the squalor poverty and xenophobia of the
Lower East Side of New York is an ideal candidate.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Now, a lot of the mafia stuff is a reworking
of nativist idea as bad in America has to come
from somewhere else. It's foreign, it's the other.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
We still see this today, right, If.
Speaker 7 (30:07):
It is organized crime within America, it's by so called
immigrant groups, it's Mexican nacos, it's Russian mafia, it's the mafia.
You don't tend to think of organized crime as being American.
I think what happened in the nineteen twenties and nineteen
thirties was this drive to demonize people in a way
(30:31):
that really hadn't been attempted before.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Organized crime is totally and only to do with Italians
who've got the braun and Jews who've got the brain
using those ethnic stereotypes, which is essentially the analysis that
the US government followed, and certainly true crime writers.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
So you get this fertile ground for Dewey's projection of
Lucky as the mafia boogeyman, an evil puppet master responsible
for all of society's ills.
Speaker 7 (30:58):
If you create a super demon, you're more likely to
get funding, you're more likely to get political power, you're
more likely to remain in political power. And also if
you screw up, you can say, well, how on earth
do you expect us to be able to deal with this?
They're all over the place. They're far too big for us.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
There's a career opportunity for prosecutors in America that do
tend to use their trials and convictions to advance their
political prospects. And I'd argue the prosecution of Lucky Luciana was,
to use London terms, a fit up.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
In other words, Lucky's trial was rigged. So what is
the truth about Lucky Luciano? Was he truly the godfather
of the mafia?
Speaker 7 (31:46):
Categorically no, not at all.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
An important career criminal who now other career criminals became
rich enough during prohibition to be able to afford hotel
rooms in the ward Off historia. But the mythology stems
from Dewey calling the greatest gangster in America. He was
a career criminal, an extortionist in a city full of extortionists.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
It's not that doing in units had the wrong man.
It was that there never really was just one mafia
puppet master controlling all vice and organized crime. One thing
Lucky is guilty of, though, with his scarred face, sharp
clothes and ritzy address, is standing out.
Speaker 8 (32:26):
If you dressed better and had nicer cars than the governor,
people notice, And if you have a wow factor that
makes enemies ears perk up, you're going to become that
de facto face of everything those people are out to get.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Government liked to make the battle against organized crime good
versus evil. We are the good guys, they are the
bad guys. But there's so many different shades of great.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
This framing of Lucky as the boss of organized crime
is still the way we understand the mafia today. It
doesn't just come from Hollywood's portrayal of the mob. It
also comes from a deliberate manipulation of the public and
the law. It's a falsehood that originates as much from
our criminal justice system as it does from those la writers'
(33:23):
rooms Millie and Kokie Flow wanted to get into.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
I mean, The Godfather was a great film, but for me,
a great misrepresentation of the issue of organized crime in America,
based partly on the Luciana legend.
Speaker 7 (33:35):
Why is it that Luchana has this reputation that he
doesn't deserve. Well, the answer lies really with Thomas Dewey.
Dewey manipulated the press very successfully, and that mythology has
never really been challenged sufficiently, I don't think to this day.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
But what about Eunice Carter? How much is she on
the hook for this?
Speaker 7 (33:56):
Too?
Speaker 1 (34:00):
A team player, which is a good thing, but not
necessarily if you're in a team that is involved in
manipulating justice for political advancement, which it was in Dewey's case.
Speaker 8 (34:14):
Eunice Carter was probably a good fit for Thomas Dewey's
office because she too was career motivated. She had bigger
barriers and hurdles to jump just because of who she was.
I believe she was probably as determined, if not more
(34:38):
than Dewey to carry out their vision of justice.
Speaker 10 (34:46):
But for Unice Carter, Thomas Dewey would not have been
able to convict Lucky Luciano. I don't know that Luciano
would ever have been convicted of anything.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
I guess you could say Eunice Carter is the godmother
of the Godfather. But while this undercurrent of American life
is giving Dewey's career a seemingly unstoppable upwards trajectory, unsurprisingly,
(35:17):
it isn't having the same impact on Unice. And as
America enters the forties and Dewey's career continues to take off,
Eunice's professional life seems to languish. In nineteen thirty eight,
Eunice is named to Dewey's staff to lead something called
the Abandonment Bureau of Women's Courts. Here, her time is
(35:39):
spent on cases covering everything from divorce and marital issues
to custody and child support. She'd stay there until nineteen
forty five, with none of the upwards career trajectory she'd
hope for after Lucky's prosecution. I can't imagine Eunice's disappointment
as she watches her boss Dewey reached his professional dreams
(36:02):
based on the success of the case that could not
have happened without her. Actually, yes, I can imagine it. Sadly,
it's an old tale. If Thomas Dewey refuses to grab
drinks with his colleagues so he can keep working, he
may have been seen as dedicated and focused. If Eunice
(36:24):
Carter refuses, she's seen as not being a team player
or trying to show up her coworkers. And if she does,
she could be dinged as not taking her work seriously enough.
How is she supposed to know how to get ahead
if every step is used to hold her back. The
struggle of navigating a predominantly white, predominantly male field is
(36:47):
enough on its own, but add in the concerns of
your own black community. Why are you a prosecutor? Why
aren't you looking out for us? Unice's medal is probably
tested on a daily basis, and as a black woman,
she's expected to show uncommon resilience. She can't control what
people think of her, so it wouldn't surprise me if
(37:08):
she focused on what she could control her pursuit of
a judgeship. But in the nineteen forties, Unice is not
really seeing the rewards of her work, Unice has stayed
close to Dewey, and Dewey has his sight set on
a political win far higher than Governor. He's inching closer
to the White House. Surely it's just a matter of
(37:30):
time before he brings Unis along with him. Right, He's
become a bit like found family for Unice, brought together
by the intense, complicated loyalty of the mafia. But family
can also be a source of betrayal. If Unice hadn't
learned that yet, she was about to find out. That's
(37:52):
coming up in episode eight of The Godmother. On this
episode of a Godmother, you heard Hi.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
My name is Ellen Paulson. I research and I write
books about women who were involved with notorious gangsters in desperadoes.
Speaker 11 (38:22):
My name is Christopher Alfhelps and I worked for the
University of Exeter. I've published two books and several articles
on the organized crime in the United States. I tend
to specialize in a periage from eighteen sixty five to
nineteen forty one.
Speaker 8 (38:35):
My name is Christian SIBERLINI and I am an organized
crime historian and author.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
My name is Robert Whalen, and I'm an Emerathus Professor
of history at Queen's University of Charlotte here in Charlotte,
North Carolina.
Speaker 10 (38:50):
My name is Chuck Greeves. Before becoming a writer, I
spent twenty five years as a Los Angeles trial lawyer.
My fourth novel was basically fictionalization of the famous nineteen
thirty six vice trial.
Speaker 6 (39:05):
I'm Debbie Applegate. I'm a historian and biographer, and I
am the author of Madam, The Biography of Polyadler Icon
of the Jazz Age.
Speaker 9 (39:15):
I am Claire White, and I am the director of
Education at the Mob Museum in downtown Las Vegas.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
I'm Sarah J. Jackson.
Speaker 5 (39:23):
I am an Associate Professor of Communication at the Annenberg
School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and an
affiliate with the Africana and African American Studies Program Here.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
I'm Mike woodowis author of Organized Crime in American Power
and a teacher at the University of West of England.
And I think, with Christopher we are professionally story in
to look at the issue of organized crime in particular.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
The Godmother is produced by Novel for iHeartRadio. For more
from novel, visit novel dot Audio. The Godmother is host
and written by me Nicole Perkins. Our producer is Leona Hamid.
Additional production from Ajuajima Broumpong, Ronald Young Junior and Zaiana Yusuf.
(40:11):
Our editor is Ajua Jima Broompong. Additional story editing from
Max O'Brien and Mith Lee Raw, and our researcher is
Zaiana Yusuf. Additional research from Mohammed Ahmed. David Waters is
our executive producer. Field production by Tnito Romani and Pallas Shaw,
Sound design, mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempsen. Our score
(40:33):
was written, performed and recorded by Jeff Parker. Music supervision
by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Production management and endless
patients from Sharie Houston, Sarah Tobin and Charlotte Wolfe. Fact
checking by Fendell Fulton and Dania Suleiman. Story development by
Madeline Parr, Jess Swinburne and Zaiana Yusuf. Willard Foxton is
(40:57):
our creative director of Development. Special thanks to Leah Carter,
Stephen Carter, Angela J. Davis, Andrew Fernley, Marilyn Greenwald, Sondra Lebedy,
Katherine Godfrey, Nadia Maidie, Amalia Sortland, Shawn Glenn, Neil Krishnan,
(41:17):
Julia Bromberg, Katrina Norvelle, Carly Frankel, and all the team
at w Emmy Novel
Novel.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I read a lot of romance novels. People have a
tendency to make fun of them, mostly because it's a
genre largely targeted towards and written by women. Romance novels
are full of hope, humor, and yes, sometimes there's really
steamy sex. You like dragons and elves. You want to
(00:32):
know what it looks like when a whole hockey team
finds love. Maybe you'd like a fictionalized version of an
amish courtship, or what would it look like for a
rabbi to fall for a former sex worker. Romance has
it all, Pumpkin. There's even a world where Italian gangsters
learn there's more to life than money and violence. I'd
(00:56):
actually never read any mafia romances before I came across
you his story, so I figured i'd pick up a
few for research purposes. Of course, I asked my Twitter
followers what they liked about mafia stories and got a
variety of answers. People are fascinated by the strong sense
of loyalty, the found family narratives, and the protectiveness, plus
(01:20):
the secretive nature of the community. And there's much to
be said about size stepping government overreach. Everybody loves sticking
it to the man. Add in the mysts about Italian men,
their appreciation for good food, good living, and good loving,
and well, it can be hard to resist a good
mob romance. A lot of these images that feed into
(01:42):
the lore of gangsters were shaped by Eunice and Dewey's
conviction of Lucky Luciano.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Okay, a brief synopsis of America's fascination with the Italian mafia.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
If I may.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
In the nineteen thirties, when the Lucky Luciano trial first
started to hit the local papers, life imitated art and
aught imitated life.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
In those days.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Until the trial of Lucky there may have been rising
public panic about the seeping influence of crime and corruption
on American life, but the gangsters themselves.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
American people started to pick up sympathy for these guys.
You've got this crazy dichotomy between people fascinated with the
mob and people who hated and feared the mob. For
very good reason.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
We can thank Hollywood for that.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Those early gangster movies were based on real life crime figures.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
In the early thirties, Hollywood is turning out film after
film about anti hero gangsters. Whether it's Edward g Robinson
playing Rico in the nineteen thirty one movie Little.
Speaker 5 (02:54):
Caesar Allison Rico.
Speaker 6 (02:56):
I'm gonna talk to you, but you're not gonna hear
a word I say.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
That would have been al Capone.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
This is inside dope, and if it gets out, it'll
be just too bad for somebody.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Or Humphrey Bogart as Duke Manty in The Petrified Forest,
released in nineteen thirty six.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
If you'll think I was kitten when I said I'd
be glad to knock you up.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
People all love The Petrified Forest because that's Dilinger. You know,
Bogi really nailed it.
Speaker 6 (03:26):
You're all right, Paly, I got good ideas. I'll try
that picture soos that don't hurt.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
By the early thirties, it di was kissed that people
wanted to see the gangsters.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
The government, unsurprisingly doesn't like this.
Speaker 7 (03:46):
The gangster is being seen as the hero. We've got
to stop that. We've got to stop that.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
So the government starts promoting their own style of hero
in films.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Now we're going to make movies about g men, you know,
government men, the FBI agents.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I don't think the public ever really bought that. After all,
having the law as Heroes doesn't exactly fit with most
people's experiences.
Speaker 7 (04:08):
The general attitude towards criminality come nineteen thirty three as well.
The gangsters in fact that in many ways they're better
than the police. At least they're not being paid by
the state. They're not taking money and being paid by
the state, so they're cleaner than that.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Then there's Dewey, with his investigation into the Mob. This
mustachioled crusader works hard to frame Dutch Schultz and then
Lucky Luciano as public enemy number one. Dewey does start
to have some success here changing public attitudes. He begins
(04:43):
using radio broadcasts and newspaper headlines, and the hype of
Lucky's trial helps chase away any lingering doubts the public
may have about how bad the Mob is. By the
time of the guilty verdict, the legend of Lucky Luciano
and his downfall is being broadcast triumphantly across America. The
(05:04):
gangster who revolutionized the mob has been taken down the
boss of bosses laid Low, the original godfather. But even
as Lucky is led away from that courtroom in handcuffs,
people are already starting as to question the lines between
the truth and fiction.
Speaker 8 (05:26):
Lucky Luciano, who is this guy? Who was he for real?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
When it comes to unicon Dewey's prized mob conviction? Is
it possible the whole story of Lucky is a fraud?
From the teams at iHeartRadio and novel I'm Nicole Perkins
and this is the Godmother, Episode seven Disorganized Crime. On
(06:31):
June eighteenth, nineteen thirty six, twelve days after Lucky Luciano
was found guilty on charges of compulsory prostitution, he returns
to court for sentencing Dewey, Lucky, and the other co
defendants pushed past the crowds and step into the Manhattan courtroom.
(06:52):
There they all stand before Judge McCook, a judge you
might remember who had been specially appointed to take on
organis crime.
Speaker 8 (07:01):
They were set on putting these guys away for as
long as they could, particularly Luciano.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
A few weeks ago, Lucky had been all arrogance and
swagger as he took to the stand in that same courtroom.
But if he'd been surprised by the jury's eventual guilty verdict,
it was nothing compared to his slack jaw shock. As
Judge McCook reads his sentence aloud to the courtroom.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Holy Toledo for prostitution, you're giving me a life sentence.
Speaker 8 (07:36):
Lucky Luciano took the harshest term from Judge McCook.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Thirty to fifty years in prison. It was a life sentence.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Once all sentences have been handed out, Lucky and the
other defendants are taken away for processing.
Speaker 8 (07:54):
It was quickly determined they needed to be split up
and sent to different prisons so that they couldn't reorganize
this sex trafficking gang.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Lucky heads upstate to a prison on the Canadian border,
up the river.
Speaker 6 (08:09):
As they say, he wasn't taken down by taxes like
al Capone or Waxi Garden. He wasn't shot in the
head by arrival like Dutch Schalt. He was brought down
by a bunch of two bit hores. Most men in
the underworld insisted it could not be true.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
In the end, it's the women who bring Lucky low.
Lucky might be down, but he and his team of
expensive lawyers are far from done because, let's face it,
the prosecution's case hadn't exactly been watertight.
Speaker 7 (08:48):
At best, questionable, if not don't right illegal.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So as that summer of nineteen thirty six passes, Lucky's
team starts to work on their appeal in an attempt
to swiftly free Lucky from his new home up the river.
And while they're working on that, what is Eunice Carter
doing what she does?
Speaker 9 (09:07):
After Luciano's trial, Thomas Dewey's team continues to investigate organized crime.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
She and Dewey are back in their office on the
Woolworth Building's fourteenth floor. She was a relative rookie when
she joined Dewey's investigation, But Eunice Harbor's ambitions of becoming
a judge one day It's a lofty goal on any scale,
let alone for a black woman in the footheels of
a vast mountain of systemic racism and sexism in America.
(09:41):
But I wouldn't be surprised if Eunice thought why not?
Her career as a prosecutor was off to the best
possible start with a high profile Lucky conviction. It's easy
to imagine Unice back in her office desk, light burning
her eyes as she goes back over every piece of
evidence in preparation for Lucky so appeal. She has to
(10:02):
know everything will be called into question. It was her
original work that got the conviction in the first place.
She may not have received kudos in public, but if
Lucky won his appeal, the prosecution's loss will definitely have
her name all over it. By nineteen thirty seven, Lucky's
(10:22):
lawyers think a do over might be imminent. There was
one obvious weakness in his original conviction.
Speaker 6 (10:29):
The witnesses the Underworld had a strong self interest in
pressing the narrative that these women were unreliable witnesses.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
It wasn't just what the witnesses had said on the stand,
it's the way Eunice and Dewey had coaxed that testimony
out of them in the first place.
Speaker 10 (10:46):
So they were effectively held against their will in communicado
unlesson until they cooperate.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Lucky and his team are well aware of just how
shady the coercion of testimonies had been from the witnesses.
In fact, most of America is becoming aware. The public
has been reading a slow trickle of allegations that had
found their way into the newspapers. Some of the witnesses
who had cooperated with the prosecution are now talking to
(11:16):
reporters about their experiences. I wonder if Dewey's composure cracks
away from the courthouse as he reads the newspaper over
his breakfast each morning. Maybe he worries his mustache into disarray,
wondering who could be leaking all of this information. Readers
aren't just learning about brutal coercion. Eunice and Dewey may
(11:37):
have turned the bad cop dial up a little too high,
but they'd also been using the good cop routine.
Speaker 6 (11:44):
It is certainly true that the ones who were willing
to talk were given special treatment. They didn't have to
stay necessarily in the jails. In some cases, they were
put into secret apartments.
Speaker 10 (11:56):
Dewey's assistant prosecutors was taking the girls out the bar
and getting drunk with them.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I'm pretty sure Unis wasn't the assistant prosecutor taking the
girls out, but who knows.
Speaker 10 (12:07):
The idea of whining and dining the ones who were
released from jail was fairly outrageous.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
And the newspaper reports are now alleging that this coaxing
of the witnesses didn't stop with simple nights out on
the town. Apparently, certain promises were made to the witnesses
about rewards After a positive conviction, several.
Speaker 10 (12:25):
Of them received emoluments that were highly unusual. Two of
the women were sent on a cruise around the world,
paid for by doing as prosecutors.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
When the trial began, Judge McCook reminded the jurors of
the sex workers humanity, But maybe he should have delivered
that message to the prosecution as well. These witnesses had
been exploited at every turn by their customers, the mob,
the prosecution, the defense, and now the press. Yes, everyone
(13:01):
wants these little birdies to sing for their supper, with
promises of gilded cages for protection, but there's no real
safety after you read out the mob is there. The
good guys want you to be grateful as if they
saved you. The bad guys want you punished, and the
press wants you to keep singing. But all those gilded
(13:21):
cages flake and rust, So which one do you choose.
There's no way to be truly free, is there. Dewey
and his team are about to learn the hard way
that some of their key witnesses are falling back into
the hands of the mob. Koki Flow was one of
(14:00):
the prosecution's key witnesses. You remember Koki, She was going
through detox on the stand. Koch's testimony, like nearly all
the witnesses, had put her life in great danger. No
one likes a snitch, especially if they're pointing fingers at
the boss of bosses. But if Dewey was worried about
the safety of Kochi or any of the rest of
(14:23):
the women, he didn't show signs of it, at least
not in his media briefings.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
His press releases afterwards were more of a justification of
what had been done during the trial. He was very
mute on what steps were being taken to protect the women.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
After the trial, when Lucky is convicted, Cokey and Millie Harris,
one of the other trial witnesses, understandably decide to get
the hell out of Dodge. They flee upstate to Rochester,
New York, and whole up in a cheap hotel. Breathing
fresh air and looking over their shoulders.
Speaker 10 (15:06):
They began writing these stories that they were hired to
write for Liberty Magazine.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
They were offered the magazine deal in exchange for their
life stories.
Speaker 10 (15:18):
A series of stories was called Underworld Nights.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Liberty Magazine is a popular magazine that features stories from
people of all walks of life, including celebrities, politicians, and
former sex workers turned prosecution witnesses. The series of articles
is published.
Speaker 10 (15:38):
Once they finished that and they were paid for that,
they couldn't go back to New York to their old lives,
so they decided to go on a road trip and
they bought a car. They took the southern route out
to California, California.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Because Flow and Millie aren't just magazine writers now, in
the aftermath of the trial, they'd also been offered a
movie deal.
Speaker 10 (16:06):
They were under the impression that this film deal was
imminent and they wanted to be in LA when the
film deal went down.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
The ladies don't end up in Tinseltown right away. Maybe
they want to make their money stretch a little longer,
or try their hand at living straight. Because before long
they're living in Pomona, just outside of LA and they're
getting short of cash because they've spent their remaining money
on a kind of a strange new business.
Speaker 10 (16:37):
They decided to open a gas station and Pomona, of
all things, and the two of them opened a gas
station and they ran it for a while, and Koki
Flow is okay.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
With that, But for Millie Harris. It's not so simple.
Hollywood tends to take its time, and the film about
their lives still hasn't come about yet. And the gas
station Pomona life isn't quite what she'd anticipated. I'm sure
it lacked all the glitz and glam of New York City,
and she's a city girl. Plus she's carrying an emotional weight.
Speaker 10 (17:14):
She wanted to get back to New York.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
She missed her husband, a husband she had helped put
away alongside.
Speaker 10 (17:20):
Lucky who was in jail and sing sing.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Maybe the guilt is eating away at her.
Speaker 10 (17:25):
Because Millie Harris, without Kochie Flow's knowledge, started communicating with
the lawyers for Luciana who were handling his appeal, and
an investigator wanted to get her to recant her testimony,
which she did.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Eventually, both women returned to New York together, back to
their old lives. Cochie goes back on heroin, she became.
Speaker 10 (17:50):
An addict again. They both went into a sanitarium to
try to take the cure to get off of heroin,
and it was during that time that they signed these
affidavits recanting their testimony.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Sometimes the fear of something new is as much of
a prison as anything else. By March nineteen thirty seven,
all the prosecution's key witnesses have officially turned. Eunice and
Dewey have lost the very foundation of their case against Lucky,
(18:24):
and Lucky's defense is picking up steam. All they have
to do now is get these recanted statements in front
of an appeals court, get the conviction overturned, and then
Lucky will be a free man. Dewey is clearly worried
about this too. He re enlists Eunice as his assistant
for an April nineteen thirty seven hearing for a retrial.
(18:49):
But Eunice, Dewey, and Lucky haven't factored in Judge McCook,
that belligerent, dedicated, anti mob judge who had already come
up with his own plan for this turn and of events.
Speaker 10 (19:01):
McCook did something that was highly unusual.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
You see, back in June of nineteen thirty six, when
the Blue Ribbon jury had dropped the bombshell of Lucky
Luciano's conviction, When Dewey was striding triumphantly from the courtroom
and Eunice was well not there as the drama played out,
another scene was also taking place, this one behind closed doors.
(19:33):
Judge McCook, instead of taking a well earned break after
ruling over the trial of the Century, is in his
office surrounded by sex workers.
Speaker 10 (19:43):
After the verdict, and while the motion for new trial
was pending, he called all seventy some women who were
still in jail into his chambers.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
These seventy women are the sex workers and madams who
have been witnesses in the trial. And this isn't some
post trial party.
Speaker 10 (20:03):
And without any notice to the defense or without any
defense lawyer being present, on the record, with a prosecutor present,
he made them reassert their testimony.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
All seventy women are told to swear again that their
testimony was accurate.
Speaker 10 (20:19):
Highly unusual to do that, outrageous. Actually, the case really
reeks a prosgatorial misconduct, at least by today's standards.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
These women don't have a cushy life at the start
of Lucky's trial, and we know it took a lot
to persuade them to testify in the first place. Their
lives leading up to the trial had been severely uprooted,
and it probably didn't get any easier after their names
had been dragged through the press. Plus, I imagine the
mob and their defense attorneys probably weren't very sweet when
(20:53):
it came time to convince them to recant. It's been
one harrowing experience after another, and now recanting their testimony
means nothing. Lucky's defense team tries everything they have to
get the case invalidated. In fact, by October tenth, nineteen
thirty eight, they've taken this all the way to the
(21:15):
highest court in the land.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
The conviction was analyzed by the appellate and was denied
for an appeal. They denied a retrial, and they denied
a mistrial.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Thanks in part to Judge McCook's early intervention.
Speaker 8 (21:33):
Judge McCook, I'm not saying it was a crooked trial.
I'm just saying, in nineteen thirty six, don't be a
high profile criminal. They put him away in a manner
that today standards I would hope wouldn't hold water.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
It was not fair, but it was considered fair for
its time.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Dewey and Unice's triumph is now set in stone. It
looks like Charles Lucky Luciano is stuck in jail for
the foreseeable future, and as he languishes there while his
lawyers try and fail to win an appeal, Eunice and
Dewey are already busy again. They both continue their fight
(22:18):
against organized crime, although with very different results. Unice is
now diligently prosecuting Numbers runners in Harlem.
Speaker 9 (22:32):
She winds up taking down some numbers racket leaders in Harlem,
which is sort of met with mixed feelings within the
Harlem community.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Unice's success on this front isn't met with blanket approval.
Speaker 9 (22:47):
There's definitely a lot of people who are very happy
because they do not want there to be criminal activity
in their community. But then also when you look at
the newspapers, not only black owned papers in carl but
across the city, there's editorials that are like, why is
this woman targeting her own community?
Speaker 2 (23:10):
In order to get ahead in the predominantly white world
of law and justice, Unice has to prosecute people who
walk the same streets as she does. It's a fine line.
I imagine she has to prove to her white colleagues
she won't be biased in her work, while also trying
to prove her self trustworthy to her Harlem community.
Speaker 5 (23:30):
We talk frequently today about the constraints on black womanhood
in the public eye. Right we know that black women
are subjected to more critique, to more hate, to a
different set of standards than other people. These pressure from
within the black community to be a representative of the
(23:52):
race would also presumably have made Unice Carter fuel pressure
even when she wasn't in white spaces.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
During this time. Whenever Unice Carter opens the paper and
sees her name, it's not with professional accolades or recognition.
In the society pages, she reads judgments of her loyalty,
her character, and her image. The newspapers that used to
praise Unice now judge her as harshly as any jury. Meanwhile,
(24:28):
Dewey is receiving a much more positive reception in the media.
(24:50):
By the end of nineteen thirty seven, Thomas Dewey is
no longer a special prosecutor. He gets sworn in as
one of five New York District jorneys with a power
to decide who gets prosecuted. The law was only ever
a stepping stone. He wants to break into politics. The
following year, he's on the move again. He runs and
(25:13):
loses a gubernatorial race, but in nineteen forty two he
runs again and is successfully elected governor of New York.
His dreams of political office have come true. His rise
is by any standards, meteoric. He's ridden a wave of
popularity that followed Lucky's prosecution, far higher and faster than
(25:35):
many might have expected. How did he manage it?
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Not in cooperation with police and federal law enforcement departments throughout.
Speaker 10 (25:42):
The United States.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
The only national program that brings you authentic police case
history gain in Muster.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
In the immediate aftermath of Lucky's trial. Dewey is not
shy about trumpeting his performance.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
He gave his reports on WNYC radio. He also regularly
gave interviews. Dewey, by thirty seven thirty eight was in
the news. He was the guy who put Lucciano away.
He was the gangbuster.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Gangbusters is a law versus gangster fact based radio drama.
It first aired in nineteen thirty five. It's a program
that Dewey becomes associated with by nineteen thirty six. In
nineteen thirty nine, a book called ninety Times Guilty is published.
It tells a now familiar story of Lucky Luciano as
(26:43):
a shadowy mafia figure pulling the strings of the underworld,
a criminal mastermind. Hickman Powell, a former political reporter for
The New York Herald Tribune writes the book while working
for Thomas Dewey as a volunteer speechwriter and researcher.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Ninety Times Guilty came out with the idea that Luciano
had centralized, organized modernized the American mafia.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
It's a great pr strategy for Dewey to lean into.
Speaker 7 (27:11):
He knows that victory of a kingping boss is going
to be incredibly good publicity for him.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
The only problem is this book was largely fiction. It
combines some of the hype about Lucky that Dewey has
been feeding to the press with some new tar tales.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
The idea that Luciano organized crime in America because he'd
killed sixty to eighty Greeces as they were called old
style mafia gangsters. It gives credence to the idea that
he was a dominant figure in organized crime in America nationally.
Speaker 10 (27:41):
It was just a.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Completely made up story that true crime writers ran with.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
And it isn't just these scenes of vicious mob murders
this book has fictionalized. It's also cementing a bigger lie
about Lucky too.
Speaker 8 (28:00):
I'm not trying to be the cheerleader for Lucky Luciano.
But I realized the opposition had a self righteous, zealous
campaign going and they needed a poster boy.
Speaker 7 (28:15):
If you want to make your name, there's no point
in putting some small time hoodlum from downtown Manhattan in prison.
That's not going to make you famous. But you get
the boss of all bosses of the mafia, and suddenly
you were all over the papers.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Dewey needed to position Lucky as the one true face
of crime in America. It was vital for people to
think it had been Lucky pulling all the strings. And
now that he's been taken down, the war on crime
has been won.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
By the end of nineteen thirties, with Dewey's success as
well as Whover's success, American newspapers are saying, well, we've
beaten organized crime.
Speaker 10 (28:54):
Of course they hadn't.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
The book is part of a winning career political strategy.
Speaker 8 (28:59):
For doing There's something to be said of criminal poster boys.
Your El Choppels, your John Gotties, your Frank Lucas, your
Lucky Luciano. Who makes them that? Are they really the
face of the problem poster boy for whom.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Dewey's plan of using an anti organized crime crusade to
get to power has been used many times since. Remember
Giuliani versus the Mob in the nineties. Dewey and his
subsequent imitators are able to gain traction because they're tapping
into an already existing rich current in America.
Speaker 7 (29:41):
White supremacy is absolutely central to organized crime. I don't
think you can discuss one without the other.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Lucky arriving into the squalor poverty and xenophobia of the
Lower East Side of New York is an ideal candidate.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Now, a lot of the mafia stuff is a reworking
of nativist idea as bad in America has to come
from somewhere else. It's foreign, it's the other.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
We still see this today, right, If.
Speaker 7 (30:07):
It is organized crime within America, it's by so called
immigrant groups, it's Mexican nacos, it's Russian mafia, it's the mafia.
You don't tend to think of organized crime as being American.
I think what happened in the nineteen twenties and nineteen
thirties was this drive to demonize people in a way
(30:31):
that really hadn't been attempted before.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Organized crime is totally and only to do with Italians
who've got the braun and Jews who've got the brain
using those ethnic stereotypes, which is essentially the analysis that
the US government followed, and certainly true crime writers.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
So you get this fertile ground for Dewey's projection of
Lucky as the mafia boogeyman, an evil puppet master responsible
for all of society's ills.
Speaker 7 (30:58):
If you create a super demon, you're more likely to
get funding, you're more likely to get political power, you're
more likely to remain in political power. And also if
you screw up, you can say, well, how on earth
do you expect us to be able to deal with this?
They're all over the place. They're far too big for us.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
There's a career opportunity for prosecutors in America that do
tend to use their trials and convictions to advance their
political prospects. And I'd argue the prosecution of Lucky Luciana was,
to use London terms, a fit up.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
In other words, Lucky's trial was rigged. So what is
the truth about Lucky Luciano? Was he truly the godfather
of the mafia?
Speaker 7 (31:46):
Categorically no, not at all.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
An important career criminal who now other career criminals became
rich enough during prohibition to be able to afford hotel
rooms in the ward Off historia. But the mythology stems
from Dewey calling the greatest gangster in America. He was
a career criminal, an extortionist in a city full of extortionists.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
It's not that doing in units had the wrong man.
It was that there never really was just one mafia
puppet master controlling all vice and organized crime. One thing
Lucky is guilty of, though, with his scarred face, sharp
clothes and ritzy address, is standing out.
Speaker 8 (32:26):
If you dressed better and had nicer cars than the governor,
people notice, And if you have a wow factor that
makes enemies ears perk up, you're going to become that
de facto face of everything those people are out to get.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Government liked to make the battle against organized crime good
versus evil. We are the good guys, they are the
bad guys. But there's so many different shades of great.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
This framing of Lucky as the boss of organized crime
is still the way we understand the mafia today. It
doesn't just come from Hollywood's portrayal of the mob. It
also comes from a deliberate manipulation of the public and
the law. It's a falsehood that originates as much from
our criminal justice system as it does from those la writers'
(33:23):
rooms Millie and Kokie Flow wanted to get into.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
I mean, The Godfather was a great film, but for me,
a great misrepresentation of the issue of organized crime in America,
based partly on the Luciana legend.
Speaker 7 (33:35):
Why is it that Luchana has this reputation that he
doesn't deserve. Well, the answer lies really with Thomas Dewey.
Dewey manipulated the press very successfully, and that mythology has
never really been challenged sufficiently, I don't think to this day.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
But what about Eunice Carter? How much is she on
the hook for this?
Speaker 7 (33:56):
Too?
Speaker 1 (34:00):
A team player, which is a good thing, but not
necessarily if you're in a team that is involved in
manipulating justice for political advancement, which it was in Dewey's case.
Speaker 8 (34:14):
Eunice Carter was probably a good fit for Thomas Dewey's
office because she too was career motivated. She had bigger
barriers and hurdles to jump just because of who she was.
I believe she was probably as determined, if not more
(34:38):
than Dewey to carry out their vision of justice.
Speaker 10 (34:46):
But for Unice Carter, Thomas Dewey would not have been
able to convict Lucky Luciano. I don't know that Luciano
would ever have been convicted of anything.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
I guess you could say Eunice Carter is the godmother
of the Godfather. But while this undercurrent of American life
is giving Dewey's career a seemingly unstoppable upwards trajectory, unsurprisingly,
(35:17):
it isn't having the same impact on Unice. And as
America enters the forties and Dewey's career continues to take off,
Eunice's professional life seems to languish. In nineteen thirty eight,
Eunice is named to Dewey's staff to lead something called
the Abandonment Bureau of Women's Courts. Here, her time is
(35:39):
spent on cases covering everything from divorce and marital issues
to custody and child support. She'd stay there until nineteen
forty five, with none of the upwards career trajectory she'd
hope for after Lucky's prosecution. I can't imagine Eunice's disappointment
as she watches her boss Dewey reached his professional dreams
(36:02):
based on the success of the case that could not
have happened without her. Actually, yes, I can imagine it. Sadly,
it's an old tale. If Thomas Dewey refuses to grab
drinks with his colleagues so he can keep working, he
may have been seen as dedicated and focused. If Eunice
(36:24):
Carter refuses, she's seen as not being a team player
or trying to show up her coworkers. And if she does,
she could be dinged as not taking her work seriously enough.
How is she supposed to know how to get ahead
if every step is used to hold her back. The
struggle of navigating a predominantly white, predominantly male field is
(36:47):
enough on its own, but add in the concerns of
your own black community. Why are you a prosecutor? Why
aren't you looking out for us? Unice's medal is probably
tested on a daily basis, and as a black woman,
she's expected to show uncommon resilience. She can't control what
people think of her, so it wouldn't surprise me if
(37:08):
she focused on what she could control her pursuit of
a judgeship. But in the nineteen forties, Unice is not
really seeing the rewards of her work, Unice has stayed
close to Dewey, and Dewey has his sight set on
a political win far higher than Governor. He's inching closer
to the White House. Surely it's just a matter of
(37:30):
time before he brings Unis along with him. Right, He's
become a bit like found family for Unice, brought together
by the intense, complicated loyalty of the mafia. But family
can also be a source of betrayal. If Unice hadn't
learned that yet, she was about to find out. That's
(37:52):
coming up in episode eight of The Godmother. On this
episode of a Godmother, you heard Hi.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
My name is Ellen Paulson. I research and I write
books about women who were involved with notorious gangsters in desperadoes.
Speaker 11 (38:22):
My name is Christopher Alfhelps and I worked for the
University of Exeter. I've published two books and several articles
on the organized crime in the United States. I tend
to specialize in a periage from eighteen sixty five to
nineteen forty one.
Speaker 8 (38:35):
My name is Christian SIBERLINI and I am an organized
crime historian and author.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
My name is Robert Whalen, and I'm an Emerathus Professor
of history at Queen's University of Charlotte here in Charlotte,
North Carolina.
Speaker 10 (38:50):
My name is Chuck Greeves. Before becoming a writer, I
spent twenty five years as a Los Angeles trial lawyer.
My fourth novel was basically fictionalization of the famous nineteen
thirty six vice trial.
Speaker 6 (39:05):
I'm Debbie Applegate. I'm a historian and biographer, and I
am the author of Madam, The Biography of Polyadler Icon
of the Jazz Age.
Speaker 9 (39:15):
I am Claire White, and I am the director of
Education at the Mob Museum in downtown Las Vegas.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
I'm Sarah J. Jackson.
Speaker 5 (39:23):
I am an Associate Professor of Communication at the Annenberg
School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and an
affiliate with the Africana and African American Studies Program Here.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
I'm Mike woodowis author of Organized Crime in American Power
and a teacher at the University of West of England.
And I think, with Christopher we are professionally story in
to look at the issue of organized crime in particular.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
The Godmother is produced by Novel for iHeartRadio. For more
from novel, visit novel dot Audio. The Godmother is host
and written by me Nicole Perkins. Our producer is Leona Hamid.
Additional production from Ajuajima Broumpong, Ronald Young Junior and Zaiana Yusuf.
(40:11):
Our editor is Ajua Jima Broompong. Additional story editing from
Max O'Brien and Mith Lee Raw, and our researcher is
Zaiana Yusuf. Additional research from Mohammed Ahmed. David Waters is
our executive producer. Field production by Tnito Romani and Pallas Shaw,
Sound design, mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempsen. Our score
(40:33):
was written, performed and recorded by Jeff Parker. Music supervision
by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Production management and endless
patients from Sharie Houston, Sarah Tobin and Charlotte Wolfe. Fact
checking by Fendell Fulton and Dania Suleiman. Story development by
Madeline Parr, Jess Swinburne and Zaiana Yusuf. Willard Foxton is
(40:57):
our creative director of Development. Special thanks to Leah Carter,
Stephen Carter, Angela J. Davis, Andrew Fernley, Marilyn Greenwald, Sondra Lebedy,
Katherine Godfrey, Nadia Maidie, Amalia Sortland, Shawn Glenn, Neil Krishnan,
(41:17):
Julia Bromberg, Katrina Norvelle, Carly Frankel, and all the team
at w Emmy Novel
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