Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I was born and raised in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
From the time I was about four or five years old,
I was introduced to the American mob through an uncle
of mine.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
I go to Manhattan.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I meet this guy.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Say, listen, you know what Johnny Dio says, you alm
a favor. You gotta go to Miami. Here, here's an address,
and here's a name, and this is what he wants done.
And I look and I listened. I say, hey, no problem.
A couple of days later, I get a plane. I
fly down to Miami Beach. I meet another guy down there.
Guy says, come with me. I drive over to a
(00:33):
little garage. He says, here's a key to that truck.
That's what you're going to drive when you go to
this house. He opens up a draw and he says,
now take this with you. I look down and it's
a Sheffield knife, he says, and you know what you
gotta do.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The girl opens the door and I say, take me
to the back. He's at the pool. So young guy
like thirty, ish, okay, let's go get him.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
She goes to the back of the house, opens the door,
says John and my time to the pool table. And
I sit her down. I said, you gotta watch this.
She said, what are you gonna do? Took the Sheffield knife.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Stuck the knife under his testicles and sliced them.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
She screamed, he yelled, went back to New York and
never talked about it. And that's how wild and crazy
the mob was in the seventies.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I'm laughing. I mean, I'm sure the guy didn't die.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I'm sure we didn't sever his testicles, but there was
some blood on the pool table. And I left, and
that was the story.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
In Brooklyn, a low level mobster is put to rest,
shot dead in broad daylight. Days later, another reputed gangster
snuffed out execution style.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Your head and you sit down. Love that.
Speaker 5 (02:05):
It seems incredible. But not so long ago.
Speaker 6 (02:07):
In America, a hidden empire of crime, violence, and money
ruled large parts of this country. These men are witnesses,
stepping forward now to tell their story firsthand. If you
stay in the shadows for personal safety, fearful of an
organization that most Americans know only as legend, it's true name,
(02:33):
because in Austria.
Speaker 7 (02:35):
Life, how can you describe Amamia?
Speaker 3 (02:38):
What is the mom you know, what is the mafia?
La Cousin austras we call it here in America calls Austra.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
Is a cult.
Speaker 8 (02:46):
It's a secret society.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
It's a brotherhood among men.
Speaker 9 (02:49):
Everything that they do is about making money illegally.
Speaker 10 (02:53):
The mafia is much more like a pack of rats
that eat anything in their path, including each other.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
It is the most induce powerful and venal organized, prittle
organization to existence to continue in America.
Speaker 9 (03:06):
So in many ways you almost had a shadow government
that controlled huge amounts of economic activity in a totally
unaccountable way.
Speaker 11 (03:18):
The golden age of the mafia was the beginning of
the seventies, when they had the strongest grip on legitimate
business in the United States of America.
Speaker 6 (03:29):
In the nineteen seventies they controlled trucking, the ports, the
garbage business, and a lot of the meat produce and
fish markets. Much of the building trade is in their hands,
the carpenters and electrical unions. They have judges on their
payroll and police in their pockets.
Speaker 12 (03:46):
No criminal organization and the history of our country has
ever infiltrated legitimate institutions of society the way the mafia
was able to do.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
The bosses untouchable. It was sitting on thrones no one
could remove them. No one in law enforcement is going
to do anything to hurt them.
Speaker 11 (04:05):
The FBI did not have the tools to deal with
a major criminal enterprise like that.
Speaker 6 (04:11):
By nineteen seventy, law enforcement faces an overwhelming challenge. How
do you take down a secret criminal organization with such
deep roots, so much power, but so completely hidden from sight.
Speaker 11 (04:25):
We were faced with a mammoth challenge, and that was
how do you deal with this enterprise? How do you
actually have an impact on it?
Speaker 6 (04:33):
That enterprise is divided into five families, Geneviez, Luke, Casey, Gambino, Banano,
and Colombo.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Mister Colombo, are you a boss of the mafia?
Speaker 3 (04:45):
No, I am not.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Is there a mafia?
Speaker 6 (04:48):
There is not, But Joe Colombo is lying with the
confidence of a man who believes he's untouchable. There is
a mafia in nineteen seventy, and he is one of
its most powerful members, the boss of the most violent
of the five families, the Colombos, and the vicious killer
in his own right.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
In his twenties, he already was involved in the minimum
of fifteen hits.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
He was credited for at least eighteen or more murders,
so he did a lot of.
Speaker 13 (05:16):
Work for the family, A lot of work being killing people.
Speaker 6 (05:22):
And Colombo presides over an army of psychopathic killers. Chief
among them this man. One of his copos, crazy Joe Gallo.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
He was a predatory hood. He was good at breaking
leg shooting people. In the basement, he kept a chained
cub lion, and the idea was he brought people down
there to show them that if they got him angry,
he might feed them to the lions.
Speaker 6 (05:48):
But Gallo answers to the boss, and that boss makes
a big impression on everyone who meets him.
Speaker 7 (05:53):
How did you first meet Joe Colombo.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
I met Joe Colombo as your kid. He had a
farm state that we would go to, and I just
knew him as Joey. He was a dapper of kind
of dresser, and people respected him and he was just
a nice guy. So I met him at an early age,
you know, before I really realized who he was.
Speaker 6 (06:13):
Let me tell you something, Joe Colombo was a mixture
of old world end new Like other bosses of the
Five Families, he's a master of murder and corruption, but
unlike the rest, he's no immigrant. He's a second generation
Italian American born in the United States and comfortable in
the public eye.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
He sees himself as a new generation of boss, and
he believes he's being harassed unfairly. Of course, he's an
Italian American, and he also sees a great opportunity that
he can become sort of a civil rights leader.
Speaker 14 (06:49):
H thank god that I was born of Italian board.
Speaker 13 (06:55):
At nineteen seventy he started the Italian American League, which
was supposed to be an organization that showed that Italians
are being discriminated against, and in the temper of the
time of the nineteen seventies, he was fairly successful at that.
Speaker 15 (07:14):
Thailian American Civil Rights Lee only formulated because of the
harassment that this organization, the Justice Department, we're using against
our people. Bothering pregnant women, breaking down doors, annoying people,
intimidating people.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
He begins attracting attention TV interviews, magazine interviews.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
I had just come home from school. We got a
phone call. Joe Colombo's son, Joe Junior, got arrested. We're
going to be picketing the FBI building. I said, great,
I'll be there.
Speaker 13 (07:43):
Colombo it was so incensed that his son had been
arrested on a federal charge that they actually started picketing
the FBI office at sixty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Third in Manhattan.
Speaker 13 (07:54):
We'd walked out of the office there and they'd call
us names. I had a rock thrown at me and
we just missed my head and bounced off a firebox.
Speaker 6 (08:01):
Colombo and his legions take the fight to the very
doors of the enemy.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
I started walking line some guys drive buying a car
and they yelled out to me, you guinea whatever. They said,
you know something, and accomp was standing there and he said, hey,
shut him out and get across the street. And I
got arrogant with him. Before you know it, I've got
a bunch of cops on top of me and they
(08:26):
hit me with the sticks. They picked me up, they
put me in a patty way. Joey I remember, as
I'm leaving, he puts his head and he said, don't
worry about it. We got everything under control. He should
just go with them. We'll take care of it.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
It was a tremendous impression because I saw the power
that Joe Colombo had at that moment, which is a
good moment for me.
Speaker 16 (08:48):
You've had a number of successes, haven't you.
Speaker 17 (08:49):
For example, you managed to get the Justice to drop
the word mafia in town.
Speaker 16 (08:53):
It was that you were doing.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
It was the.
Speaker 15 (08:54):
Voice of all the Italian people.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Around that time. To produce sure. The Godfather came to
visit joe Colombo. He sent for him, and Joey actually
looked at the script of The Godfather back then and
he took any reference to the word mafia. He pulled
it out of the.
Speaker 12 (09:11):
Script, getting the Justice Department of the United States to
ban the use of the word mafia.
Speaker 16 (09:17):
That's pretty good political power. That is pretty good political power.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
The one thing that the bosses in the seventies did
not want was publicity.
Speaker 6 (09:29):
But against the tradition of the Five Families, Colombo loves
the attention and doesn't seem to know and to stop.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Joey started to get a little bit too out of hand.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
The old fashioned bosses don't like the spotlight.
Speaker 14 (09:43):
He's beginning to draw too much attention. These are people
who like to be in the shadows.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
I knew it was starting to become an issue.
Speaker 14 (09:51):
All that meant was trouble.
Speaker 11 (09:58):
Well.
Speaker 13 (09:58):
The second Unity rally Columbus Circle, somewhere around fifty thousand
people attended that rally, the usual hoop ale of the
vendors and people waving the banners and talking about how
great it was to be an Italian.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I had an argument with my mother that morning. She
did not want me to go, so she had a
dream that something bad was going to happen. And I said,
I'm going why.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I'm why.
Speaker 14 (10:21):
They got problem together.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
We arrived at Columbus Circle. They had a big stage
set up.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
There's police protection, the TV cameras are there. Thousands of
people are living around.
Speaker 18 (10:37):
We're in a van with a periscope taking pictures to
see who's who and what's what.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Would then want.
Speaker 13 (10:43):
Took pictures, saw enough people. I was on my way
back to the office.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
I remember Joe called me over and I walk up
the steps to the stage. He hands me some brochures
and he says, Michael, I want you to give these
out around Lincoln Center. And I said, okay, Joe, I
turn around and walk away. And as I approached the steps, suddenly.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
One cameraman gets close to him and instead of taking
a photo, fires a gun.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
I hear boom, boom boom. Place went crazy.
Speaker 6 (11:17):
Please do not please later than that's what's gonna happened.
Speaker 16 (11:22):
Oh honey, wait, wase like you're.
Speaker 7 (11:25):
For a fight?
Speaker 16 (11:26):
That please, Ladies of donmon the type of thing you
can't do that.
Speaker 6 (11:39):
In June of nineteen seventy one, my boss Joe Colombo
is shot at his own Italian American civil rights rally
in New York City and all hell breaks loose. Colombo
lies unconscious in the ambulance transporting him to the hospital,
while the big questions start to emerge, who would dare
to gun down one of the most powerful figures in
the mafia?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Kind of condition did he appear to be?
Speaker 4 (12:01):
He looked pretty bad.
Speaker 16 (12:03):
I mean, I don't know, I've.
Speaker 10 (12:04):
Never seen anybody shot before, but he was down on
the ground and there was a spot of red on
his right sheet.
Speaker 14 (12:10):
In Unity, we played.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
Till our Father.
Speaker 19 (12:15):
Joey Columbo makes it.
Speaker 6 (12:19):
Joe Colombo isn't dead, but he's in a coma and
shows no sign of waking up.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Everybody was at a state of shock.
Speaker 13 (12:26):
It didn't take as long to find out that a
black man by then with Jerome Johnson was the actual shooter,
who himself was killed there by members of the Columbo family.
Speaker 14 (12:37):
Give us a stay, I've got him great and forgiveness.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Our test busses at least.
Speaker 13 (12:44):
Has passed together, and our biggest concern then was who
did it?
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Someone had to give the orders and lead us not
into temptation, but the lenders Ego.
Speaker 14 (12:56):
Any Man, Joe Colombo's chief a.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
They knew right away with a finger of suspicion point
it pointed to Crazy Joe Gallop.
Speaker 6 (13:12):
Crazy Joe Gallo is a captain in a Colombo family.
He has a knack for violence and no sense of loyalty.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Do you know anything about a gangle war?
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Are you trying to protake this up? Yay day?
Speaker 5 (13:23):
Wait, what kind of gang war?
Speaker 19 (13:24):
There's no gangs, there's no wars, there's nothing.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Crazy Joe Gallo epitomized the predatory street thug of his era.
Speaker 14 (13:36):
He always shot for the top.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Joe Yallo was an enemy at Joe Colombos was resentful
of the fact that Colombo was a boss and he wasn't.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
Joey Gallo coming out of prison, but he's like a
lost soul. He has no real gang, he has no
real income. Joe Colombo has ignored him in his confidants.
He tells him, I'm going.
Speaker 14 (13:55):
To get even I'm more powerful than Joe Columbo's I'll show.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Him going to kill.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
My rife was gay.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
We're going hunting. I've belonged a hunting lodge. We're all
go hunting for deer.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
You're going hunting, won't you.
Speaker 6 (14:09):
Joe Colombo will lie in a coma for years and
eventually die of his wounds. But in the meantime, Joe
Gallo has his own problems.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Gallo had to clear it with the Commission because a
cardinal rule, which is a self protection which you can't
kill a boss.
Speaker 6 (14:31):
To understand what happens next, you have to understand how
the mafia began. The structure of the organization is the
brainchild of this man, Charles Lucky Luciano.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
He could be aptly described as the criminal version of
a Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.
Speaker 14 (14:48):
He was a genius.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
He wrote the constitution for the American Mafia, a bible
that still continues till today.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
He had a vision of what this life should be,
and he implemented that.
Speaker 20 (15:00):
Luciano's idea was to set up an organization nationwide, not
unlike the Roman legions of Italy.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
In nineteen thirty one, Lucky Luciano incorporates five New York
City street gangs into a single unit. These gangs become
the Five Families of the modern mafia we know today, Yambino, Colombo, Banano, Genovese,
and Luke Casey. They're governed by a gangster board of
(15:31):
executives known as the Commission. The Commission, the Five mob
Families board, gets to say who lives and who dies.
And that's where Joey Gallo comes in.
Speaker 14 (15:46):
No question about it.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
You don't kill a boys without permission and hope to
get away with it. Here's a contract out on Joe
Gallo's life and he knows it.
Speaker 14 (15:56):
His forty third birthday.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Comes around only ten months after Colombo is shot and paralyzed.
It's four am and they go into Little Lily and
there's only one place opened, a little lippy.
Speaker 11 (16:11):
There's a restaurant that's still there today called Umberdo's Clamhouse.
And Crazy Joe Gallo I was sitting there having a
spaghetti dinner.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
They were sitting at a rear table.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
When a.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Man walked in from the back door. We'll fired three shots.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
His face fell into the spaghetti.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
He manages to stagger out on the main street, falls
on his face and is dead.
Speaker 14 (16:49):
Revenge has been done.
Speaker 6 (16:54):
The shooting of mob boss Joe Colombo in nineteen seventy
one and the murder of Joe Gallo in retaliation in
nineteen seventy two marked the beginning of a new era
for law enforcement and the American Mob. A younger generation
of federal agents and gangsters.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
Are about to go head to head.
Speaker 6 (17:10):
Some of the cops are Italian Americans, and most of
the gangsters are, like Joe Colombo, born in the USA,
not immigrants like their fathers. Young guys like Michael Francis,
who is standing near Joe Colombo when he's shot.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
The shooting that day really impacted me, and when I said,
you know what, something's really going on here that I
don't quite understand.
Speaker 6 (17:33):
So Francis turns to the one man who can answer
his questions, his father, Sonny, one of the most notorious
figures in the entire history of the American Mob.
Speaker 21 (17:45):
Sunny Fancis is somebody who was a legendary figure in
the world of organized crime, very powerful.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
He's one hundred percent gangster. Everybody heard of him, everybody
knows him.
Speaker 5 (17:55):
There's not a person that don't know who Sonny fancies
he is.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
He lives the mob cold to the team. Law enforcement
said he's killed at least thirty people back then. Now
it's I think it's sixty, which I don't believe sixty people.
I mean, come on.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
Growing up, Michael worships his father and despises the cops
who shadow him.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
One day, I was playing ball in the street. I
think was eight or nine years old. Ball sailed over
my head and rolled down the street. The detective stopped
the ball with his foot, and when I got close
to him, he pulled over his jacket and he had
a gun in there, and he said this is for
your father. He's going to get it one day. And
(18:37):
I just looked up at him. I'll never forget, and
I said, you know, can I have my ball please?
He kicked the ball roughly past me, and boy, I
hated that guy at that moment. You know, I always
say if I was lost when I was a kid,
the last person I would go to would be a cop.
I always looked at my dad as the hero and
them as the enemy.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
At the time of Joe clumb I was shooting in
nineteen seventy one. Sonny is in prison serving ten years
for bank robbery. Michael pays him an urgent visit.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
It was that we first really had a discussion about
the life. First, he got angry with me. He said,
I told you not to be involunteer. You got to
go to school. I said, I'm not going to school.
It's over. I have no desire. I'm part of this.
I got to help you out. He said, is this
what you want to be part of? And I said,
(19:28):
whatever I got to do to help you out. I
don't even know what I'm really a part of. You
never sat down and explained anything to me. But it's time.
He says, if you had to kill somebody, could you
do it? I thought about it, and I said, you know,
if the circumstances were right, I think I could. And
he said to me, well that's the right answer. Somebody's
(19:49):
going to be.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
In touch with you.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
He said, you do what I'll be told. That was it,
and that was the extent of the discussion we had.
In asking me that question, he gave me a choice
and I made my decision right then. In air.
Speaker 6 (20:16):
Before mob boss Joe Colombo is shot at his own
rally in nineteen seventy one, he provides American law enforcement
with its first big break against the mafia.
Speaker 18 (20:24):
Joe Colombo organized a meeting in Columbus Circle for all
his Italian American cohorts, legit and illegitimate.
Speaker 6 (20:33):
He steps out of the shadows long enough for the
FBI to photograph him and his associates. It's a key
moment in the government's fight against the mafia's Five Families.
A new generation of FBI agents and mobsters.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
Are about to go head to head.
Speaker 13 (20:48):
We photographed everybody at that rally, and it enabled us
to identify a lot of the organized crime members, who
was close to Colombo, who was made in the Colombo family.
Speaker 11 (21:01):
The last thing Lekos Andoster needed is the type of
public disclosure that Joe Columbo did.
Speaker 6 (21:09):
But in the early nineteen seventies, the FBI still faced
a major obstacle in trying to nail the bosses of
the Five Families.
Speaker 19 (21:17):
Organized crime families have a code. It's called Omerta, and
basically it's the code of silence.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
And at that time Omerta really lived.
Speaker 7 (21:27):
The code really had some substance to it, and people
abided by it, which meant that if you were prosecuting
the mob, if you were investigating the mob, you really
didn't have access to anybody in the inside.
Speaker 13 (21:39):
Colombo as well as the other bosses. They knew they
were well insulated. They had all these soldiers and all
their underlings to do their criminal bidding, and they were
completely untouchable.
Speaker 19 (21:48):
Omerta has kept this gang hard to infiltrate, so it
was almost impossible.
Speaker 6 (21:54):
But just as there is a new generation inside the mob,
second generation Italians like Michael Francis, there's also a new
generation of agents joining the FBI, and they're Italian American
as well. One of them will change history, this guy,
Joe Pistone, who's about to go deeper inside the American
Mob than any FBI agent before him.
Speaker 7 (22:15):
How did you get into Ina?
Speaker 17 (22:17):
I always wanted to be a cop. I always wanted
to be a police officer. Really, I figured, if I'm
going to be in law enforcement, I might as well
be with the best that I applied to the Bureau
to the FBI got appointed as a special agent in
nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 6 (22:31):
Pistone and fellow agents like Steve sel Mary are the
FBI's secret weapons.
Speaker 5 (22:35):
In the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 8 (22:37):
We're all basically in the city kids, and we basically
made a career of being Italians from the inner city.
Speaker 17 (22:44):
Even though hung out on the corner with the mob guys.
Growing up, it all went back to your upbringing. I
can always remember my dad, you know, saying you never
take another man's money. You always be fair, and it's
always with me, and I think that's why. You know,
seeing these guys, seeing the flash and the cash, you're impressed.
Speaker 16 (23:06):
But it wasn't like geez, I want to be like that.
Speaker 6 (23:09):
Pistone and sel Mary joined the FBI at a low
point in its battle with the mob. Agents have a
hard time infiltrating mafia neighborhoods.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Viewing and watching agents on the street. They all dressed
the same. Everybody had the same hat, the same suit.
It was easy to start them.
Speaker 8 (23:26):
The organized crime knew what police could or couldn't do,
and at different agencies they knew like the FBI wasn't
working under cover, and back then it was a very
closed society.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
They could have won a breastplate or a sign that
said FBI agent and given their name.
Speaker 14 (23:46):
It was so simple to make them.
Speaker 6 (23:49):
So the FBI changes strategy. They send in the neighborhood
guys without a rule book.
Speaker 16 (23:56):
When I first started doing undercovering the FBI. There was
no training.
Speaker 17 (24:00):
It basically was guys that were street guys before they
came into bureau.
Speaker 8 (24:05):
We really didn't have guidelines. We had no training and
other than we knew that what was.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Right and what was wrong.
Speaker 6 (24:12):
Street guys like Pistone and Salmiery know that to be
credible in the mob you have to have a specialty.
Speaker 8 (24:18):
He and I were sent to a jewelry school.
Speaker 17 (24:20):
We took the same course together and I learned all
about diamonds precious gems.
Speaker 5 (24:25):
But the newly meant to jeweler now needs a solid cover.
Speaker 17 (24:29):
When you're going into the cover, you need to have
an identity back. Then you pick a name the government
was able to provide you with averse certificate.
Speaker 16 (24:37):
Took a driving test like anybody else and got a
driver's license and named Donny Brasco.
Speaker 8 (24:43):
We made up social security numbers. You didn't give me
a real name.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
He knows how they operate, and he knows what the
dangers are with Pistone's allits established operation, Donny Brasco slowly begins.
The Bureau targets mob hijackers as Pistone's way in and
Donnie Brasco hits the New York streets.
Speaker 17 (25:03):
When I first hit the streets in the operation, we
had restaurants and bars picked out where I would go
and get my face seen and hopefully get into conversations
with people. What probably six months not having any illegal
conversations with anybody.
Speaker 8 (25:22):
The bureaus spent a lot of time and gave them
time to actually infiltrate, which is was the key because
they were so used to something fast.
Speaker 17 (25:30):
To build your persona, your best betest being yourself, you
have to convince these guys that you are who you
say you are.
Speaker 16 (25:39):
After about six.
Speaker 17 (25:40):
Months, I'm in there. One night, this young lady gets up,
goes to the ladies room. On our way back to
the ladies room, she says hello, and I say hello.
The bartender catches this. I called the bartender over and
I said, I want.
Speaker 16 (25:57):
To go on record, Well it's a mop term. I
want to go on record. I did not initiate conversation
with that young lady.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
There was three basic reasons to get killed in the mafia.
It's either a you were an informant, be you disobeyed
your boss, or the third possibility was that you slept
with a maiden member's wife or daughter.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
That would get you killed, for sure.
Speaker 16 (26:20):
He just nods his head.
Speaker 17 (26:21):
If you want to talk to her, talk to her.
Her friend went bye bye. He didn't go to Disneyland.
Speaker 16 (26:30):
That minute, you know. But now the guy knows that
I'm a street guy.
Speaker 5 (26:36):
His credibility established.
Speaker 6 (26:38):
All Pistone needs now is the right invitation, and he
gets one from the bartender.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
When he asks him if he likes to gamble, he.
Speaker 17 (26:45):
Said, after I close up, he said, you want to
come out? He said, I'm going to a couple after
hours joints.
Speaker 16 (26:51):
So I said, yeah, it's.
Speaker 17 (26:58):
A gambling joint by all the families. It's bartender and
introduced me to different mob guys from different families. It's
the breakthrough.
Speaker 6 (27:07):
Pistone's been waiting for a chance to get right into
the gambling dens of Cozinostra.
Speaker 5 (27:12):
We no FBI agent has ever penetrated before.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
They've never had somebody inside the mafia listening to them.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
Now they do.
Speaker 6 (27:31):
The nineteen seventies of the Golden Age of the Mob,
and the five Families of the New York Mafia operate
with impunity and rake in millions.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
But things are starting to change.
Speaker 6 (27:42):
Undercover agent Joe Pistone, under the alias Donnie Brasco, has
infiltrated the Mob for the first time ever. It's an
operation so secret most in the FBI don't even know
what's happening.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Very few agents knew what he was doing.
Speaker 13 (27:57):
He answered only to one or two guys and that
was it and everybody else there was no discussion of
it whatsoever.
Speaker 11 (28:03):
I mean I had to be informed, and the people
that were covering had to be informed, but there certainly
wasn't general knowledge in the FBI office.
Speaker 16 (28:10):
You have to know who you're infiltrate. You have to
wait for the right you know, the right moment.
Speaker 5 (28:17):
Joe Pistone starts at the bottom run.
Speaker 16 (28:21):
In the mob.
Speaker 17 (28:22):
Everybody starts out as an associate. Now, associate is a crook,
a guy that has the ability to make money, and
how do you do that by showing that you have
the ability to be an earner?
Speaker 20 (28:35):
Traditionally to get involved in the moth, I mean, you
would be an associated at first, you'd be a made.
Guy would use you in the beginning.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Maybe you're a goal forer.
Speaker 20 (28:43):
Maybe you're running errands, maybe you're picking up some money,
taking money here to there. Maybe you're collecting sports bets.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
We did the grunt work for the mob bosses or
the upper echelon mob guys.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
If they gave you an assignment, you couldn't refuse and
you had to do it.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
You could tell by being around the guys who had
that you know, for lack of a better word, who
was intelligent. In other words, some guys were there to
do the work. They were kind of the thug guys,
and other guys are more looked up to to, you know,
bring the family forward.
Speaker 17 (29:15):
My background helped a lot, because I know, you don't
walk into a place that you noted mob guys and
they walk up to the mob guy and say, hey,
I'm Donnie Brasco with jewels deef.
Speaker 16 (29:24):
I want to you know, I want to start running
with you guys.
Speaker 18 (29:26):
It's like.
Speaker 16 (29:28):
This doesn't happen.
Speaker 8 (29:30):
And you got to remember the god of organized crime
is money just got older in Italian and if you
had something that they were interested in that they could
use your at well that's what it is, what are
they looking for? And then you furnish it.
Speaker 16 (29:42):
We figured that being a jewel thief was a going
because you you could do it alone.
Speaker 17 (29:50):
So I got a pack of diamonds, and I put
the envelope on a bar and I say, charge it.
Speaker 16 (29:57):
I need X amount of money for this package. Him
what's in it? He takes it. A couple of weeks
go by. One night I come in and then he says,
somebody left this envelope for you.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Sorry.
Speaker 17 (30:10):
I said, okay, put in my pocket. We go out
and get back and what I asked for is in there.
So now the guy knows that you know, I'm a
little shady.
Speaker 6 (30:19):
But the deeper Pistone goes, the more dangerous the operation gets,
especially when he wears a wire.
Speaker 11 (30:25):
There were times when we felt that we had to
have close protection for him. We dedicated one particular surveillance
team that became very familiar with Joe and they developed
all kinds of signals and modus operandi.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
Agent Joe Pistone is gaining credibility as a criminal on
the street, while Mob descended. Michael Francis is about to
begin his own career and cousin Nostra, one of.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
My dad's soldiers called me and said meet me at
the JB Lounge, which was on Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn.
We go see Tom de Bella. Tom was acting boss
for Persago at the time, we're taking control of the
family and Tom says to me, I got a message
from your father. He said, you want to become a
member of our life. Is that true? And I remember saying, yeah,
(31:10):
if that's what my dad wants, that's what I want.
And he said, I didn't ask you that. I said,
is this what you want? And I said, yes, that's
what I want. Michael. He said, well, here's the deal.
From now on, twenty four hours a day, seven days
a week, you're on call to serve this family. If
your mother is sick and she's dying and we call
(31:31):
you to serve this family, you leave your mother's side
and you come and serve us. From now on, we're
number one in your life, before anything and everything. I'm
putting you with Andrew Russo he's your captain. You do
whatever Andrew tells you. He said, okay. Andrew looks at me.
He says, you're going to be busy from now on.
He says, meet me tomorrow night on Carroll Street and
wear a suit. That was it.
Speaker 6 (31:53):
Michael Francis is now a Columbo Family associate. His education
begins and ends with one lesson how to make money
for the boss of the family.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
As an associate.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
If you made a score off, you had to make
sure you send something up to the boss, a couple
hundred dollars in a novelop Most guys that are associates
not made members. They always have to kick up to
their boss.
Speaker 20 (32:13):
If you get involved and you become an earner, somebody
who can be trusted, you become a higher associate.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
I had to be a good earner. I wanted to
be the best possible mob guy could be. I made
a score. At one point, some guy came to me
with a load of meat. If I remember six or
seven thousand dollars worth of meat, I'm sure, so, I said, Andrew,
I got this load of meat. He says, make sure
when you get the money, you turn it in. Great.
(32:41):
So I bring it, I turn it in. It's like
seven grand and he takes it and after a day
or so, he gives me back six hundred bucks. I said,
wait a second, I say, I'm seven thousand. I get
six hundred back. I said, I don't like the math here,
you know. I saw my father the next time and
he said to me, what did you turn it all
in for? He said, rule of thumb, twenty five percent
(33:02):
goes to them. He said, you keep the rest. It's
really on the job training. I mean, nobody prepares you
for this stuff.
Speaker 6 (33:09):
Francis soon finds a much bigger way to earn a
gigantic scam in overseas shipping for cut of the take.
A friend who works for a shipping company sends Francis
fake work orders to repair his containers. Francis doesn't actually
repair the containers, but builds the company anyway.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
And they would prop me a check. We were doing
twenty thirty thousand dollars a month, and all he did
was submitted a work order and submitted a bill, and
that was a scam.
Speaker 21 (33:36):
He became the biggest earner, not only in the Columbo family,
but probably on an individual basis, among all the made
guys in the five families.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
It was only a handful of us that were making
real money.
Speaker 6 (33:48):
He's so successful at earning that the highest honor in
the mafia is within his grasp.
Speaker 5 (33:53):
He's on the verge of becoming.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
A made man. Even though I didn't know the time
of the play, so when the event would happen, I
knew that things starting to eat up because a couple
of guys were all of a sudden being made, so
I kind of knew my time was coming.
Speaker 6 (34:19):
It's nineteen seventy five and Michael Francis, an associate in
New York City's infamous Columbo family, is on the verge
of achieving the highest honor in the mafia, becoming a
made man.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
My dad never told me about his particular induction.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
You know.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
He said, you're not going to know when it happens,
but when it happens, you're going to feel good about it.
It's a very serious situation and you're going to get
on a high afterwards. And he was right. I'm in
bed one morning, it was early and I get a
call from Andrew and he said, meet me on Carroll
Street or such a time you should dress up. Happened
(35:00):
to be Halloween night and it was nineteen seventy five,
and I obviously can't forget. We end up in Brooklyn
at Anthony Colombo's catering home, and then I started to
realize this is it. You know, this is my time.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
To become the mad guy. You have to participate in
the murder.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
You were undred percent Italian, and you were sponsored by
two official members. You qualified, and you had to go
in and take this oath that you were never supposed
to reveal the secrets of the organization.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
You can refuse it all you want.
Speaker 11 (35:33):
If they want you to become a may guy, they're
going to force you to become a may guy.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
It is a lifetime contract. Respect and honor is the
whole life.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
The only way out would be death.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
It was very dark.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
It was a couple of candles lit. I walk down
the aisle and I stand in front of Tom Deblla.
Tom was acting boss for Percco at the time, were
taking control of the family. And this initiation starts and
it's very intense and Tom looks at me and he says,
(36:13):
are you ready? I says, I am. And then we
went through the ritual. Andrew had a little knife and
he cuts my finger and some blood drops on the floor,
and I remember him gripping my hand very firmly, and
I remember looking down and seeing blood spots there. So
this was a place I knew that had been used before.
(36:39):
He took a picture of a saint, put it in
my hands and lit it a flame, and then Tom
started to say to me, tonight, Michael Francisia being born again.
I'll never forget those words. He said, You're being born
again into a new life, our life. Cousin Oskra, you
swear to give you life to this, to a causin Arsterra.
(37:01):
I said, yes, I do. If you violate what you
know about this life, betray any of your brothers, you
will die and burn in hell like this saint is
burning in your hands. And he said, you're a friend
of ours. And he hugged me, Andrew hugs me, and
(37:23):
then all the captains line up and they all give
me a hug and welcome me kiss on the cheek.
As Tom said, from now on, wherever you go in
the world, you'll have a brother there. Don't ever worry
about your mother, your sister, your daughter. We're gonna protect them.
And you know I got your back, you got mine.
That was exhilarating for me. You know that. Okay, I
(37:44):
made it. I'm here and now it's up to me
to really prove that I'm worthy of the life. As
Tom said, let this be a lesson to all you.
We don't earn for you, You're going to earn for us.
It's all about earning for the family. And doing for us,
and he looked at me, I want you guys at
Earners to get out there and earn. And then we
ate and we had a celebration, and then that was it,
(38:08):
and it was I went home that night after we talked,
and I was very exhilarated, and I understood that once
you're part of that life, you're a new creation within
that life.
Speaker 6 (38:22):
Michael Fancies is now a made man in the Colombo family,
moving up from associate to soldier, but undercover FBI agent
Joe Pistone is still knocking on the same door, trying
to get in under the alias Donnybrasco. He gets his
first invitation from a Colombo hijacker named Jilly.
Speaker 16 (38:41):
He had a club up in Brooklyn. So I go
up there and I start hanging out with Jilly.
Speaker 17 (38:48):
When you're with a particular mafia crewe, they go to
their social club every day, and you hang out with
your crew every day.
Speaker 5 (38:56):
He walks a line front with danger playing cards.
Speaker 17 (39:01):
They're talking about if they got a book making operation going.
They're talking about, if they got a club, a bar,
a go go joint, all their illegal activities that they
have going on.
Speaker 16 (39:14):
They're talking about problems.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
Within the family.
Speaker 16 (39:16):
How are we going to make more money?
Speaker 17 (39:19):
Be a good investigator, to be a good agent, that's
one of the things that street smarts.
Speaker 16 (39:23):
You have to be convincing.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
He's got to be able to carry out the acts
that they want him, the proof that he's a loyal,
dedicated member and that he'll do what he's told. Because
one mistake, the slightest error, mob guys suspect that you're
an undercover agent, or you might be an informer.
Speaker 14 (39:48):
You're through. They never hesitate to kill.
Speaker 6 (39:58):
Undercover FBI agent Choke his Stone has finally penetrated the
Columbo family ranks. Under the alias Donnie Brasco, he gets
his first break with the Colombo hijacker named Jilly.
Speaker 16 (40:09):
When I was with Jilly, I had to learn about
how to steal cars.
Speaker 17 (40:17):
I had to learn how to get under the car,
disarmed the alarm system, punch a door lock, punch.
Speaker 16 (40:24):
An denition key, and we'd actually go on lots and
take the cars. This was the first time that I stole.
Speaker 17 (40:35):
Anything of high value where I actually stole it myself.
Speaker 6 (40:39):
But not everyone in Jillie's crew likes or trusts the
newcomer Donny Brasco and his attempt to become an associate
within the Columbo family hits a roadblock.
Speaker 17 (40:48):
I got into a beef with two of these guys,
Frankie and Patsy. They came out of the can. They
wanted to start making money, being that I was a
jewel thief. They wanted some information on different things. They
come up with some crazy schemes of rob places. All right,
(41:11):
tell look, you got an alarm system in this place
that you can't defeat, or how do you expect to
crack that safe and be a negative? I'm telling them, no,
you can't do it like that. You can't do this,
and just kind of ticked them off. Patsy was a
made guy and Frankie wasn't. Patsy puts a gun on
(41:32):
the table, and basically what he says to me said, Donnie,
if you don't convince me you're as good as these
guys say you are, the only way you're going out
of here is rolled up in that rug.
Speaker 14 (41:47):
Your job is stone and you're wise enough to know that.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
On any moment, any mistake, the slightest error could be
a death sentence for you.
Speaker 16 (41:58):
He said, Donnie, tell us where you were before in
New York, tell us who you robbed with down at Miami.
Speaker 14 (42:04):
These guys you're dealing with a stone cold killers, and
they don't want to take any chance.
Speaker 17 (42:13):
As a street guy, you don't give up other guys
that you did supposedly did scores with.
Speaker 19 (42:18):
You.
Speaker 17 (42:18):
Try to turn the conversation around, how do I know
that you didn't become an informant in jail?
Speaker 5 (42:23):
You're a lot of dope.
Speaker 17 (42:27):
Finally, after about five hours, it's all over. As a
street guy. If I go to shake his hand and say, look,
you know, I understand that you know you had a concern,
but let's forget about it, that's a red flag in
somebody's mind because why isn't Donnie mad? We just basically
called him out. The only thing they understand in this
(42:47):
situation is forced I turn around and I hit Frankie.
Speaker 16 (42:53):
Why he's not a mate guy.
Speaker 14 (42:56):
I can't hit Patsy.
Speaker 17 (42:57):
Now, Patsy's punching the hell out of me, But I
can't do anything. You lay your hands on a main guy,
that's cause it get killed. So that's another notch of
my creditbility, because if I was bad, you know.
Speaker 5 (43:11):
I want to do that.
Speaker 6 (43:13):
So Pistone survives to sit down and successfully proves himself
to the Colombo family, and for the first time, an
FBI agent has been fully accepted into the world of
the American mob.
Speaker 12 (43:24):
Law enforcement work requires infiltration. The Pistone case was a big,
big breakthrough because it filled in a lot of the blankes.
It identified a lot of the people that's absolutely vital
to any kind of successful effort to deal with any
kind of organized criminal enterprise.
Speaker 6 (43:41):
But it's only the beginning of this extraordinary effort by
Joe Pistone to get inside the American mob.
Speaker 17 (43:47):
This undercover case was the beginning of the unraveling of
the mafia in America.
Speaker 5 (43:54):
As we know it.
Speaker 6 (43:56):
Now, as he gets even further inside, the job is
about to get far more dangerous. Even though he's established
himself inside the Columbo family, an even greater opportunity opens
up in the most vicious ball of five families, the Bananas.
Speaker 21 (44:10):
The Banana family controlled gambling and loan sharking back in
the day, but those days were over and they had
to find other ways of making money.
Speaker 10 (44:17):
The Banana Family can be fairly characterized as groundbreakers. Want
to keep to drug trafficking.
Speaker 6 (44:23):
They would smoke drugs, rob drug dealers, and they were
wild guys.
Speaker 10 (44:28):
Bananas were really at this period of time the worst.
Speaker 6 (44:33):
The nineteen seventies will see the historic rise of two
men within two of the mob's key families. Undercover agent
Joe Pistone with the Bananas.
Speaker 17 (44:42):
When I was told you got the contract to kill Bruno,
it is okay, Sonny, what do you think he is?
Speaker 5 (44:48):
And newly made men Michael fran sees among the Columbos.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Right a jack Plane had a helicopter. I had all
the money I wanted, I did whatever I wanted to do.
Speaker 5 (44:56):
An usher in a vicious new era of bloodshed.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
My own father and put a contract on me.
Speaker 6 (45:09):
Yes yes, yes, yes, yes
Speaker 5 (45:18):
Yes
I was born and raised in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
From the time I was about four or five years old,
I was introduced to the American mob through an uncle
of mine.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
I go to Manhattan.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I meet this guy.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Say, listen, you know what Johnny Dio says, you alm
a favor. You gotta go to Miami. Here, here's an address,
and here's a name, and this is what he wants done.
And I look and I listened. I say, hey, no problem.
A couple of days later, I get a plane. I
fly down to Miami Beach. I meet another guy down there.
Guy says, come with me. I drive over to a
(00:33):
little garage. He says, here's a key to that truck.
That's what you're going to drive when you go to
this house. He opens up a draw and he says,
now take this with you. I look down and it's
a Sheffield knife, he says, and you know what you
gotta do.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The girl opens the door and I say, take me
to the back. He's at the pool. So young guy
like thirty, ish, okay, let's go get him.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
She goes to the back of the house, opens the door,
says John and my time to the pool table. And
I sit her down. I said, you gotta watch this.
She said, what are you gonna do? Took the Sheffield knife.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Stuck the knife under his testicles and sliced them.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
She screamed, he yelled, went back to New York and
never talked about it. And that's how wild and crazy
the mob was in the seventies.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I'm laughing. I mean, I'm sure the guy didn't die.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I'm sure we didn't sever his testicles, but there was
some blood on the pool table. And I left, and
that was the story.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
In Brooklyn, a low level mobster is put to rest,
shot dead in broad daylight. Days later, another reputed gangster
snuffed out execution style.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Your head and you sit down. Love that.
Speaker 5 (02:05):
It seems incredible. But not so long ago.
Speaker 6 (02:07):
In America, a hidden empire of crime, violence, and money
ruled large parts of this country. These men are witnesses,
stepping forward now to tell their story firsthand. If you
stay in the shadows for personal safety, fearful of an
organization that most Americans know only as legend, it's true name,
(02:33):
because in Austria.
Speaker 7 (02:35):
Life, how can you describe Amamia?
Speaker 3 (02:38):
What is the mom you know, what is the mafia?
La Cousin austras we call it here in America calls Austra.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
Is a cult.
Speaker 8 (02:46):
It's a secret society.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
It's a brotherhood among men.
Speaker 9 (02:49):
Everything that they do is about making money illegally.
Speaker 10 (02:53):
The mafia is much more like a pack of rats
that eat anything in their path, including each other.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
It is the most induce powerful and venal organized, prittle
organization to existence to continue in America.
Speaker 9 (03:06):
So in many ways you almost had a shadow government
that controlled huge amounts of economic activity in a totally
unaccountable way.
Speaker 11 (03:18):
The golden age of the mafia was the beginning of
the seventies, when they had the strongest grip on legitimate
business in the United States of America.
Speaker 6 (03:29):
In the nineteen seventies they controlled trucking, the ports, the
garbage business, and a lot of the meat produce and
fish markets. Much of the building trade is in their hands,
the carpenters and electrical unions. They have judges on their
payroll and police in their pockets.
Speaker 12 (03:46):
No criminal organization and the history of our country has
ever infiltrated legitimate institutions of society the way the mafia
was able to do.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
The bosses untouchable. It was sitting on thrones no one
could remove them. No one in law enforcement is going
to do anything to hurt them.
Speaker 11 (04:05):
The FBI did not have the tools to deal with
a major criminal enterprise like that.
Speaker 6 (04:11):
By nineteen seventy, law enforcement faces an overwhelming challenge. How
do you take down a secret criminal organization with such
deep roots, so much power, but so completely hidden from sight.
Speaker 11 (04:25):
We were faced with a mammoth challenge, and that was
how do you deal with this enterprise? How do you
actually have an impact on it?
Speaker 6 (04:33):
That enterprise is divided into five families, Geneviez, Luke, Casey, Gambino, Banano,
and Colombo.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Mister Colombo, are you a boss of the mafia?
Speaker 3 (04:45):
No, I am not.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Is there a mafia?
Speaker 6 (04:48):
There is not, But Joe Colombo is lying with the
confidence of a man who believes he's untouchable. There is
a mafia in nineteen seventy, and he is one of
its most powerful members, the boss of the most violent
of the five families, the Colombos, and the vicious killer
in his own right.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
In his twenties, he already was involved in the minimum
of fifteen hits.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
He was credited for at least eighteen or more murders,
so he did a lot of.
Speaker 13 (05:16):
Work for the family, A lot of work being killing people.
Speaker 6 (05:22):
And Colombo presides over an army of psychopathic killers. Chief
among them this man. One of his copos, crazy Joe Gallo.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
He was a predatory hood. He was good at breaking
leg shooting people. In the basement, he kept a chained
cub lion, and the idea was he brought people down
there to show them that if they got him angry,
he might feed them to the lions.
Speaker 6 (05:48):
But Gallo answers to the boss, and that boss makes
a big impression on everyone who meets him.
Speaker 7 (05:53):
How did you first meet Joe Colombo.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
I met Joe Colombo as your kid. He had a
farm state that we would go to, and I just
knew him as Joey. He was a dapper of kind
of dresser, and people respected him and he was just
a nice guy. So I met him at an early age,
you know, before I really realized who he was.
Speaker 6 (06:13):
Let me tell you something, Joe Colombo was a mixture
of old world end new Like other bosses of the
Five Families, he's a master of murder and corruption, but
unlike the rest, he's no immigrant. He's a second generation
Italian American born in the United States and comfortable in
the public eye.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
He sees himself as a new generation of boss, and
he believes he's being harassed unfairly. Of course, he's an
Italian American, and he also sees a great opportunity that
he can become sort of a civil rights leader.
Speaker 14 (06:49):
H thank god that I was born of Italian board.
Speaker 13 (06:55):
At nineteen seventy he started the Italian American League, which
was supposed to be an organization that showed that Italians
are being discriminated against, and in the temper of the
time of the nineteen seventies, he was fairly successful at that.
Speaker 15 (07:14):
Thailian American Civil Rights Lee only formulated because of the
harassment that this organization, the Justice Department, we're using against
our people. Bothering pregnant women, breaking down doors, annoying people,
intimidating people.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
He begins attracting attention TV interviews, magazine interviews.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
I had just come home from school. We got a
phone call. Joe Colombo's son, Joe Junior, got arrested. We're
going to be picketing the FBI building. I said, great,
I'll be there.
Speaker 13 (07:43):
Colombo it was so incensed that his son had been
arrested on a federal charge that they actually started picketing
the FBI office at sixty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Third in Manhattan.
Speaker 13 (07:54):
We'd walked out of the office there and they'd call
us names. I had a rock thrown at me and
we just missed my head and bounced off a firebox.
Speaker 6 (08:01):
Colombo and his legions take the fight to the very
doors of the enemy.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
I started walking line some guys drive buying a car
and they yelled out to me, you guinea whatever. They said,
you know something, and accomp was standing there and he said, hey,
shut him out and get across the street. And I
got arrogant with him. Before you know it, I've got
a bunch of cops on top of me and they
(08:26):
hit me with the sticks. They picked me up, they
put me in a patty way. Joey I remember, as
I'm leaving, he puts his head and he said, don't
worry about it. We got everything under control. He should
just go with them. We'll take care of it.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
It was a tremendous impression because I saw the power
that Joe Colombo had at that moment, which is a
good moment for me.
Speaker 16 (08:48):
You've had a number of successes, haven't you.
Speaker 17 (08:49):
For example, you managed to get the Justice to drop
the word mafia in town.
Speaker 16 (08:53):
It was that you were doing.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
It was the.
Speaker 15 (08:54):
Voice of all the Italian people.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Around that time. To produce sure. The Godfather came to
visit joe Colombo. He sent for him, and Joey actually
looked at the script of The Godfather back then and
he took any reference to the word mafia. He pulled
it out of the.
Speaker 12 (09:11):
Script, getting the Justice Department of the United States to
ban the use of the word mafia.
Speaker 16 (09:17):
That's pretty good political power. That is pretty good political power.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
The one thing that the bosses in the seventies did
not want was publicity.
Speaker 6 (09:29):
But against the tradition of the Five Families, Colombo loves
the attention and doesn't seem to know and to stop.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Joey started to get a little bit too out of hand.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
The old fashioned bosses don't like the spotlight.
Speaker 14 (09:43):
He's beginning to draw too much attention. These are people
who like to be in the shadows.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
I knew it was starting to become an issue.
Speaker 14 (09:51):
All that meant was trouble.
Speaker 11 (09:58):
Well.
Speaker 13 (09:58):
The second Unity rally Columbus Circle, somewhere around fifty thousand
people attended that rally, the usual hoop ale of the
vendors and people waving the banners and talking about how
great it was to be an Italian.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I had an argument with my mother that morning. She
did not want me to go, so she had a
dream that something bad was going to happen. And I said,
I'm going why.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I'm why.
Speaker 14 (10:21):
They got problem together.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
We arrived at Columbus Circle. They had a big stage
set up.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
There's police protection, the TV cameras are there. Thousands of
people are living around.
Speaker 18 (10:37):
We're in a van with a periscope taking pictures to
see who's who and what's what.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Would then want.
Speaker 13 (10:43):
Took pictures, saw enough people. I was on my way
back to the office.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
I remember Joe called me over and I walk up
the steps to the stage. He hands me some brochures
and he says, Michael, I want you to give these
out around Lincoln Center. And I said, okay, Joe, I
turn around and walk away. And as I approached the steps, suddenly.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
One cameraman gets close to him and instead of taking
a photo, fires a gun.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
I hear boom, boom boom. Place went crazy.
Speaker 6 (11:17):
Please do not please later than that's what's gonna happened.
Speaker 16 (11:22):
Oh honey, wait, wase like you're.
Speaker 7 (11:25):
For a fight?
Speaker 16 (11:26):
That please, Ladies of donmon the type of thing you
can't do that.
Speaker 6 (11:39):
In June of nineteen seventy one, my boss Joe Colombo
is shot at his own Italian American civil rights rally
in New York City and all hell breaks loose. Colombo
lies unconscious in the ambulance transporting him to the hospital,
while the big questions start to emerge, who would dare
to gun down one of the most powerful figures in
the mafia?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Kind of condition did he appear to be?
Speaker 4 (12:01):
He looked pretty bad.
Speaker 16 (12:03):
I mean, I don't know, I've.
Speaker 10 (12:04):
Never seen anybody shot before, but he was down on
the ground and there was a spot of red on
his right sheet.
Speaker 14 (12:10):
In Unity, we played.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
Till our Father.
Speaker 19 (12:15):
Joey Columbo makes it.
Speaker 6 (12:19):
Joe Colombo isn't dead, but he's in a coma and
shows no sign of waking up.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Everybody was at a state of shock.
Speaker 13 (12:26):
It didn't take as long to find out that a
black man by then with Jerome Johnson was the actual shooter,
who himself was killed there by members of the Columbo family.
Speaker 14 (12:37):
Give us a stay, I've got him great and forgiveness.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Our test busses at least.
Speaker 13 (12:44):
Has passed together, and our biggest concern then was who
did it?
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Someone had to give the orders and lead us not
into temptation, but the lenders Ego.
Speaker 14 (12:56):
Any Man, Joe Colombo's chief a.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
They knew right away with a finger of suspicion point
it pointed to Crazy Joe Gallop.
Speaker 6 (13:12):
Crazy Joe Gallo is a captain in a Colombo family.
He has a knack for violence and no sense of loyalty.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Do you know anything about a gangle war?
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Are you trying to protake this up? Yay day?
Speaker 5 (13:23):
Wait, what kind of gang war?
Speaker 19 (13:24):
There's no gangs, there's no wars, there's nothing.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Crazy Joe Gallo epitomized the predatory street thug of his era.
Speaker 14 (13:36):
He always shot for the top.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Joe Yallo was an enemy at Joe Colombos was resentful
of the fact that Colombo was a boss and he wasn't.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
Joey Gallo coming out of prison, but he's like a
lost soul. He has no real gang, he has no
real income. Joe Colombo has ignored him in his confidants.
He tells him, I'm going.
Speaker 14 (13:55):
To get even I'm more powerful than Joe Columbo's I'll show.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Him going to kill.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
My rife was gay.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
We're going hunting. I've belonged a hunting lodge. We're all
go hunting for deer.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
You're going hunting, won't you.
Speaker 6 (14:09):
Joe Colombo will lie in a coma for years and
eventually die of his wounds. But in the meantime, Joe
Gallo has his own problems.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Gallo had to clear it with the Commission because a
cardinal rule, which is a self protection which you can't
kill a boss.
Speaker 6 (14:31):
To understand what happens next, you have to understand how
the mafia began. The structure of the organization is the
brainchild of this man, Charles Lucky Luciano.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
He could be aptly described as the criminal version of
a Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.
Speaker 14 (14:48):
He was a genius.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
He wrote the constitution for the American Mafia, a bible
that still continues till today.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
He had a vision of what this life should be,
and he implemented that.
Speaker 20 (15:00):
Luciano's idea was to set up an organization nationwide, not
unlike the Roman legions of Italy.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
In nineteen thirty one, Lucky Luciano incorporates five New York
City street gangs into a single unit. These gangs become
the Five Families of the modern mafia we know today, Yambino, Colombo, Banano, Genovese,
and Luke Casey. They're governed by a gangster board of
(15:31):
executives known as the Commission. The Commission, the Five mob
Families board, gets to say who lives and who dies.
And that's where Joey Gallo comes in.
Speaker 14 (15:46):
No question about it.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
You don't kill a boys without permission and hope to
get away with it. Here's a contract out on Joe
Gallo's life and he knows it.
Speaker 14 (15:56):
His forty third birthday.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Comes around only ten months after Colombo is shot and paralyzed.
It's four am and they go into Little Lily and
there's only one place opened, a little lippy.
Speaker 11 (16:11):
There's a restaurant that's still there today called Umberdo's Clamhouse.
And Crazy Joe Gallo I was sitting there having a
spaghetti dinner.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
They were sitting at a rear table.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
When a.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Man walked in from the back door. We'll fired three shots.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
His face fell into the spaghetti.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
He manages to stagger out on the main street, falls
on his face and is dead.
Speaker 14 (16:49):
Revenge has been done.
Speaker 6 (16:54):
The shooting of mob boss Joe Colombo in nineteen seventy
one and the murder of Joe Gallo in retaliation in
nineteen seventy two marked the beginning of a new era
for law enforcement and the American Mob. A younger generation
of federal agents and gangsters.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
Are about to go head to head.
Speaker 6 (17:10):
Some of the cops are Italian Americans, and most of
the gangsters are, like Joe Colombo, born in the USA,
not immigrants like their fathers. Young guys like Michael Francis,
who is standing near Joe Colombo when he's shot.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
The shooting that day really impacted me, and when I said,
you know what, something's really going on here that I
don't quite understand.
Speaker 6 (17:33):
So Francis turns to the one man who can answer
his questions, his father, Sonny, one of the most notorious
figures in the entire history of the American Mob.
Speaker 21 (17:45):
Sunny Fancis is somebody who was a legendary figure in
the world of organized crime, very powerful.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
He's one hundred percent gangster. Everybody heard of him, everybody
knows him.
Speaker 5 (17:55):
There's not a person that don't know who Sonny fancies
he is.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
He lives the mob cold to the team. Law enforcement
said he's killed at least thirty people back then. Now
it's I think it's sixty, which I don't believe sixty people.
I mean, come on.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
Growing up, Michael worships his father and despises the cops
who shadow him.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
One day, I was playing ball in the street. I
think was eight or nine years old. Ball sailed over
my head and rolled down the street. The detective stopped
the ball with his foot, and when I got close
to him, he pulled over his jacket and he had
a gun in there, and he said this is for
your father. He's going to get it one day. And
(18:37):
I just looked up at him. I'll never forget, and
I said, you know, can I have my ball please?
He kicked the ball roughly past me, and boy, I
hated that guy at that moment. You know, I always
say if I was lost when I was a kid,
the last person I would go to would be a cop.
I always looked at my dad as the hero and
them as the enemy.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
At the time of Joe clumb I was shooting in
nineteen seventy one. Sonny is in prison serving ten years
for bank robbery. Michael pays him an urgent visit.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
It was that we first really had a discussion about
the life. First, he got angry with me. He said,
I told you not to be involunteer. You got to
go to school. I said, I'm not going to school.
It's over. I have no desire. I'm part of this.
I got to help you out. He said, is this
what you want to be part of? And I said,
(19:28):
whatever I got to do to help you out. I
don't even know what I'm really a part of. You
never sat down and explained anything to me. But it's time.
He says, if you had to kill somebody, could you
do it? I thought about it, and I said, you know,
if the circumstances were right, I think I could. And
he said to me, well that's the right answer. Somebody's
(19:49):
going to be.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
In touch with you.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
He said, you do what I'll be told. That was it,
and that was the extent of the discussion we had.
In asking me that question, he gave me a choice
and I made my decision right then. In air.
Speaker 6 (20:16):
Before mob boss Joe Colombo is shot at his own
rally in nineteen seventy one, he provides American law enforcement
with its first big break against the mafia.
Speaker 18 (20:24):
Joe Colombo organized a meeting in Columbus Circle for all
his Italian American cohorts, legit and illegitimate.
Speaker 6 (20:33):
He steps out of the shadows long enough for the
FBI to photograph him and his associates. It's a key
moment in the government's fight against the mafia's Five Families.
A new generation of FBI agents and mobsters.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
Are about to go head to head.
Speaker 13 (20:48):
We photographed everybody at that rally, and it enabled us
to identify a lot of the organized crime members, who
was close to Colombo, who was made in the Colombo family.
Speaker 11 (21:01):
The last thing Lekos Andoster needed is the type of
public disclosure that Joe Columbo did.
Speaker 6 (21:09):
But in the early nineteen seventies, the FBI still faced
a major obstacle in trying to nail the bosses of
the Five Families.
Speaker 19 (21:17):
Organized crime families have a code. It's called Omerta, and
basically it's the code of silence.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
And at that time Omerta really lived.
Speaker 7 (21:27):
The code really had some substance to it, and people
abided by it, which meant that if you were prosecuting
the mob, if you were investigating the mob, you really
didn't have access to anybody in the inside.
Speaker 13 (21:39):
Colombo as well as the other bosses. They knew they
were well insulated. They had all these soldiers and all
their underlings to do their criminal bidding, and they were
completely untouchable.
Speaker 19 (21:48):
Omerta has kept this gang hard to infiltrate, so it
was almost impossible.
Speaker 6 (21:54):
But just as there is a new generation inside the mob,
second generation Italians like Michael Francis, there's also a new
generation of agents joining the FBI, and they're Italian American
as well. One of them will change history, this guy,
Joe Pistone, who's about to go deeper inside the American
Mob than any FBI agent before him.
Speaker 7 (22:15):
How did you get into Ina?
Speaker 17 (22:17):
I always wanted to be a cop. I always wanted
to be a police officer. Really, I figured, if I'm
going to be in law enforcement, I might as well
be with the best that I applied to the Bureau
to the FBI got appointed as a special agent in
nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 6 (22:31):
Pistone and fellow agents like Steve sel Mary are the
FBI's secret weapons.
Speaker 5 (22:35):
In the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 8 (22:37):
We're all basically in the city kids, and we basically
made a career of being Italians from the inner city.
Speaker 17 (22:44):
Even though hung out on the corner with the mob guys.
Growing up, it all went back to your upbringing. I
can always remember my dad, you know, saying you never
take another man's money. You always be fair, and it's
always with me, and I think that's why. You know,
seeing these guys, seeing the flash and the cash, you're impressed.
Speaker 16 (23:06):
But it wasn't like geez, I want to be like that.
Speaker 6 (23:09):
Pistone and sel Mary joined the FBI at a low
point in its battle with the mob. Agents have a
hard time infiltrating mafia neighborhoods.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Viewing and watching agents on the street. They all dressed
the same. Everybody had the same hat, the same suit.
It was easy to start them.
Speaker 8 (23:26):
The organized crime knew what police could or couldn't do,
and at different agencies they knew like the FBI wasn't
working under cover, and back then it was a very
closed society.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
They could have won a breastplate or a sign that
said FBI agent and given their name.
Speaker 14 (23:46):
It was so simple to make them.
Speaker 6 (23:49):
So the FBI changes strategy. They send in the neighborhood
guys without a rule book.
Speaker 16 (23:56):
When I first started doing undercovering the FBI. There was
no training.
Speaker 17 (24:00):
It basically was guys that were street guys before they
came into bureau.
Speaker 8 (24:05):
We really didn't have guidelines. We had no training and
other than we knew that what was.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Right and what was wrong.
Speaker 6 (24:12):
Street guys like Pistone and Salmiery know that to be
credible in the mob you have to have a specialty.
Speaker 8 (24:18):
He and I were sent to a jewelry school.
Speaker 17 (24:20):
We took the same course together and I learned all
about diamonds precious gems.
Speaker 5 (24:25):
But the newly meant to jeweler now needs a solid cover.
Speaker 17 (24:29):
When you're going into the cover, you need to have
an identity back. Then you pick a name the government
was able to provide you with averse certificate.
Speaker 16 (24:37):
Took a driving test like anybody else and got a
driver's license and named Donny Brasco.
Speaker 8 (24:43):
We made up social security numbers. You didn't give me
a real name.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
He knows how they operate, and he knows what the
dangers are with Pistone's allits established operation, Donny Brasco slowly begins.
The Bureau targets mob hijackers as Pistone's way in and
Donnie Brasco hits the New York streets.
Speaker 17 (25:03):
When I first hit the streets in the operation, we
had restaurants and bars picked out where I would go
and get my face seen and hopefully get into conversations
with people. What probably six months not having any illegal
conversations with anybody.
Speaker 8 (25:22):
The bureaus spent a lot of time and gave them
time to actually infiltrate, which is was the key because
they were so used to something fast.
Speaker 17 (25:30):
To build your persona, your best betest being yourself, you
have to convince these guys that you are who you
say you are.
Speaker 16 (25:39):
After about six.
Speaker 17 (25:40):
Months, I'm in there. One night, this young lady gets up,
goes to the ladies room. On our way back to
the ladies room, she says hello, and I say hello.
The bartender catches this. I called the bartender over and
I said, I want.
Speaker 16 (25:57):
To go on record, Well it's a mop term. I
want to go on record. I did not initiate conversation
with that young lady.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
There was three basic reasons to get killed in the mafia.
It's either a you were an informant, be you disobeyed
your boss, or the third possibility was that you slept
with a maiden member's wife or daughter.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
That would get you killed, for sure.
Speaker 16 (26:20):
He just nods his head.
Speaker 17 (26:21):
If you want to talk to her, talk to her.
Her friend went bye bye. He didn't go to Disneyland.
Speaker 16 (26:30):
That minute, you know. But now the guy knows that
I'm a street guy.
Speaker 5 (26:36):
His credibility established.
Speaker 6 (26:38):
All Pistone needs now is the right invitation, and he
gets one from the bartender.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
When he asks him if he likes to gamble, he.
Speaker 17 (26:45):
Said, after I close up, he said, you want to
come out? He said, I'm going to a couple after
hours joints.
Speaker 16 (26:51):
So I said, yeah, it's.
Speaker 17 (26:58):
A gambling joint by all the families. It's bartender and
introduced me to different mob guys from different families. It's
the breakthrough.
Speaker 6 (27:07):
Pistone's been waiting for a chance to get right into
the gambling dens of Cozinostra.
Speaker 5 (27:12):
We no FBI agent has ever penetrated before.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
They've never had somebody inside the mafia listening to them.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
Now they do.
Speaker 6 (27:31):
The nineteen seventies of the Golden Age of the Mob,
and the five Families of the New York Mafia operate
with impunity and rake in millions.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
But things are starting to change.
Speaker 6 (27:42):
Undercover agent Joe Pistone, under the alias Donnie Brasco, has
infiltrated the Mob for the first time ever. It's an
operation so secret most in the FBI don't even know
what's happening.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Very few agents knew what he was doing.
Speaker 13 (27:57):
He answered only to one or two guys and that
was it and everybody else there was no discussion of
it whatsoever.
Speaker 11 (28:03):
I mean I had to be informed, and the people
that were covering had to be informed, but there certainly
wasn't general knowledge in the FBI office.
Speaker 16 (28:10):
You have to know who you're infiltrate. You have to
wait for the right you know, the right moment.
Speaker 5 (28:17):
Joe Pistone starts at the bottom run.
Speaker 16 (28:21):
In the mob.
Speaker 17 (28:22):
Everybody starts out as an associate. Now, associate is a crook,
a guy that has the ability to make money, and
how do you do that by showing that you have
the ability to be an earner?
Speaker 20 (28:35):
Traditionally to get involved in the moth, I mean, you
would be an associated at first, you'd be a made.
Guy would use you in the beginning.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Maybe you're a goal forer.
Speaker 20 (28:43):
Maybe you're running errands, maybe you're picking up some money,
taking money here to there. Maybe you're collecting sports bets.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
We did the grunt work for the mob bosses or
the upper echelon mob guys.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
If they gave you an assignment, you couldn't refuse and
you had to do it.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
You could tell by being around the guys who had
that you know, for lack of a better word, who
was intelligent. In other words, some guys were there to
do the work. They were kind of the thug guys,
and other guys are more looked up to to, you know,
bring the family forward.
Speaker 17 (29:15):
My background helped a lot, because I know, you don't
walk into a place that you noted mob guys and
they walk up to the mob guy and say, hey,
I'm Donnie Brasco with jewels deef.
Speaker 16 (29:24):
I want to you know, I want to start running
with you guys.
Speaker 18 (29:26):
It's like.
Speaker 16 (29:28):
This doesn't happen.
Speaker 8 (29:30):
And you got to remember the god of organized crime
is money just got older in Italian and if you
had something that they were interested in that they could
use your at well that's what it is, what are
they looking for? And then you furnish it.
Speaker 16 (29:42):
We figured that being a jewel thief was a going
because you you could do it alone.
Speaker 17 (29:50):
So I got a pack of diamonds, and I put
the envelope on a bar and I say, charge it.
Speaker 16 (29:57):
I need X amount of money for this package. Him
what's in it? He takes it. A couple of weeks
go by. One night I come in and then he says,
somebody left this envelope for you.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Sorry.
Speaker 17 (30:10):
I said, okay, put in my pocket. We go out
and get back and what I asked for is in there.
So now the guy knows that you know, I'm a
little shady.
Speaker 6 (30:19):
But the deeper Pistone goes, the more dangerous the operation gets,
especially when he wears a wire.
Speaker 11 (30:25):
There were times when we felt that we had to
have close protection for him. We dedicated one particular surveillance
team that became very familiar with Joe and they developed
all kinds of signals and modus operandi.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
Agent Joe Pistone is gaining credibility as a criminal on
the street, while Mob descended. Michael Francis is about to
begin his own career and cousin Nostra, one of.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
My dad's soldiers called me and said meet me at
the JB Lounge, which was on Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn.
We go see Tom de Bella. Tom was acting boss
for Persago at the time, we're taking control of the
family and Tom says to me, I got a message
from your father. He said, you want to become a
member of our life. Is that true? And I remember saying, yeah,
(31:10):
if that's what my dad wants, that's what I want.
And he said, I didn't ask you that. I said,
is this what you want? And I said, yes, that's
what I want. Michael. He said, well, here's the deal.
From now on, twenty four hours a day, seven days
a week, you're on call to serve this family. If
your mother is sick and she's dying and we call
(31:31):
you to serve this family, you leave your mother's side
and you come and serve us. From now on, we're
number one in your life, before anything and everything. I'm
putting you with Andrew Russo he's your captain. You do
whatever Andrew tells you. He said, okay. Andrew looks at me.
He says, you're going to be busy from now on.
He says, meet me tomorrow night on Carroll Street and
wear a suit. That was it.
Speaker 6 (31:53):
Michael Francis is now a Columbo Family associate. His education
begins and ends with one lesson how to make money
for the boss of the family.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
As an associate.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
If you made a score off, you had to make
sure you send something up to the boss, a couple
hundred dollars in a novelop Most guys that are associates
not made members. They always have to kick up to
their boss.
Speaker 20 (32:13):
If you get involved and you become an earner, somebody
who can be trusted, you become a higher associate.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
I had to be a good earner. I wanted to
be the best possible mob guy could be. I made
a score. At one point, some guy came to me
with a load of meat. If I remember six or
seven thousand dollars worth of meat, I'm sure, so, I said, Andrew,
I got this load of meat. He says, make sure
when you get the money, you turn it in. Great.
(32:41):
So I bring it, I turn it in. It's like
seven grand and he takes it and after a day
or so, he gives me back six hundred bucks. I said,
wait a second, I say, I'm seven thousand. I get
six hundred back. I said, I don't like the math here,
you know. I saw my father the next time and
he said to me, what did you turn it all
in for? He said, rule of thumb, twenty five percent
(33:02):
goes to them. He said, you keep the rest. It's
really on the job training. I mean, nobody prepares you
for this stuff.
Speaker 6 (33:09):
Francis soon finds a much bigger way to earn a
gigantic scam in overseas shipping for cut of the take.
A friend who works for a shipping company sends Francis
fake work orders to repair his containers. Francis doesn't actually
repair the containers, but builds the company anyway.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
And they would prop me a check. We were doing
twenty thirty thousand dollars a month, and all he did
was submitted a work order and submitted a bill, and
that was a scam.
Speaker 21 (33:36):
He became the biggest earner, not only in the Columbo family,
but probably on an individual basis, among all the made
guys in the five families.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
It was only a handful of us that were making
real money.
Speaker 6 (33:48):
He's so successful at earning that the highest honor in
the mafia is within his grasp.
Speaker 5 (33:53):
He's on the verge of becoming.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
A made man. Even though I didn't know the time
of the play, so when the event would happen, I
knew that things starting to eat up because a couple
of guys were all of a sudden being made, so
I kind of knew my time was coming.
Speaker 6 (34:19):
It's nineteen seventy five and Michael Francis, an associate in
New York City's infamous Columbo family, is on the verge
of achieving the highest honor in the mafia, becoming a
made man.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
My dad never told me about his particular induction.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
You know.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
He said, you're not going to know when it happens,
but when it happens, you're going to feel good about it.
It's a very serious situation and you're going to get
on a high afterwards. And he was right. I'm in
bed one morning, it was early and I get a
call from Andrew and he said, meet me on Carroll
Street or such a time you should dress up. Happened
(35:00):
to be Halloween night and it was nineteen seventy five,
and I obviously can't forget. We end up in Brooklyn
at Anthony Colombo's catering home, and then I started to
realize this is it. You know, this is my time.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
To become the mad guy. You have to participate in
the murder.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
You were undred percent Italian, and you were sponsored by
two official members. You qualified, and you had to go
in and take this oath that you were never supposed
to reveal the secrets of the organization.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
You can refuse it all you want.
Speaker 11 (35:33):
If they want you to become a may guy, they're
going to force you to become a may guy.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
It is a lifetime contract. Respect and honor is the
whole life.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
The only way out would be death.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
It was very dark.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
It was a couple of candles lit. I walk down
the aisle and I stand in front of Tom Deblla.
Tom was acting boss for Percco at the time, were
taking control of the family. And this initiation starts and
it's very intense and Tom looks at me and he says,
(36:13):
are you ready? I says, I am. And then we
went through the ritual. Andrew had a little knife and
he cuts my finger and some blood drops on the floor,
and I remember him gripping my hand very firmly, and
I remember looking down and seeing blood spots there. So
this was a place I knew that had been used before.
(36:39):
He took a picture of a saint, put it in
my hands and lit it a flame, and then Tom
started to say to me, tonight, Michael Francisia being born again.
I'll never forget those words. He said, You're being born
again into a new life, our life. Cousin Oskra, you
swear to give you life to this, to a causin Arsterra.
(37:01):
I said, yes, I do. If you violate what you
know about this life, betray any of your brothers, you
will die and burn in hell like this saint is
burning in your hands. And he said, you're a friend
of ours. And he hugged me, Andrew hugs me, and
(37:23):
then all the captains line up and they all give
me a hug and welcome me kiss on the cheek.
As Tom said, from now on, wherever you go in
the world, you'll have a brother there. Don't ever worry
about your mother, your sister, your daughter. We're gonna protect them.
And you know I got your back, you got mine.
That was exhilarating for me. You know that. Okay, I
(37:44):
made it. I'm here and now it's up to me
to really prove that I'm worthy of the life. As
Tom said, let this be a lesson to all you.
We don't earn for you, You're going to earn for us.
It's all about earning for the family. And doing for us,
and he looked at me, I want you guys at
Earners to get out there and earn. And then we
ate and we had a celebration, and then that was it,
(38:08):
and it was I went home that night after we talked,
and I was very exhilarated, and I understood that once
you're part of that life, you're a new creation within
that life.
Speaker 6 (38:22):
Michael Fancies is now a made man in the Colombo family,
moving up from associate to soldier, but undercover FBI agent
Joe Pistone is still knocking on the same door, trying
to get in under the alias Donnybrasco. He gets his
first invitation from a Colombo hijacker named Jilly.
Speaker 16 (38:41):
He had a club up in Brooklyn. So I go
up there and I start hanging out with Jilly.
Speaker 17 (38:48):
When you're with a particular mafia crewe, they go to
their social club every day, and you hang out with
your crew every day.
Speaker 5 (38:56):
He walks a line front with danger playing cards.
Speaker 17 (39:01):
They're talking about if they got a book making operation going.
They're talking about, if they got a club, a bar,
a go go joint, all their illegal activities that they
have going on.
Speaker 16 (39:14):
They're talking about problems.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
Within the family.
Speaker 16 (39:16):
How are we going to make more money?
Speaker 17 (39:19):
Be a good investigator, to be a good agent, that's
one of the things that street smarts.
Speaker 16 (39:23):
You have to be convincing.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
He's got to be able to carry out the acts
that they want him, the proof that he's a loyal,
dedicated member and that he'll do what he's told. Because
one mistake, the slightest error, mob guys suspect that you're
an undercover agent, or you might be an informer.
Speaker 14 (39:48):
You're through. They never hesitate to kill.
Speaker 6 (39:58):
Undercover FBI agent Choke his Stone has finally penetrated the
Columbo family ranks. Under the alias Donnie Brasco, he gets
his first break with the Colombo hijacker named Jilly.
Speaker 16 (40:09):
When I was with Jilly, I had to learn about
how to steal cars.
Speaker 17 (40:17):
I had to learn how to get under the car,
disarmed the alarm system, punch a door lock, punch.
Speaker 16 (40:24):
An denition key, and we'd actually go on lots and
take the cars. This was the first time that I stole.
Speaker 17 (40:35):
Anything of high value where I actually stole it myself.
Speaker 6 (40:39):
But not everyone in Jillie's crew likes or trusts the
newcomer Donny Brasco and his attempt to become an associate
within the Columbo family hits a roadblock.
Speaker 17 (40:48):
I got into a beef with two of these guys,
Frankie and Patsy. They came out of the can. They
wanted to start making money, being that I was a
jewel thief. They wanted some information on different things. They
come up with some crazy schemes of rob places. All right,
(41:11):
tell look, you got an alarm system in this place
that you can't defeat, or how do you expect to
crack that safe and be a negative? I'm telling them, no,
you can't do it like that. You can't do this,
and just kind of ticked them off. Patsy was a
made guy and Frankie wasn't. Patsy puts a gun on
(41:32):
the table, and basically what he says to me said, Donnie,
if you don't convince me you're as good as these
guys say you are, the only way you're going out
of here is rolled up in that rug.
Speaker 14 (41:47):
Your job is stone and you're wise enough to know that.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
On any moment, any mistake, the slightest error could be
a death sentence for you.
Speaker 16 (41:58):
He said, Donnie, tell us where you were before in
New York, tell us who you robbed with down at Miami.
Speaker 14 (42:04):
These guys you're dealing with a stone cold killers, and
they don't want to take any chance.
Speaker 17 (42:13):
As a street guy, you don't give up other guys
that you did supposedly did scores with.
Speaker 19 (42:18):
You.
Speaker 17 (42:18):
Try to turn the conversation around, how do I know
that you didn't become an informant in jail?
Speaker 5 (42:23):
You're a lot of dope.
Speaker 17 (42:27):
Finally, after about five hours, it's all over. As a
street guy. If I go to shake his hand and say, look,
you know, I understand that you know you had a concern,
but let's forget about it, that's a red flag in
somebody's mind because why isn't Donnie mad? We just basically
called him out. The only thing they understand in this
(42:47):
situation is forced I turn around and I hit Frankie.
Speaker 16 (42:53):
Why he's not a mate guy.
Speaker 14 (42:56):
I can't hit Patsy.
Speaker 17 (42:57):
Now, Patsy's punching the hell out of me, But I
can't do anything. You lay your hands on a main guy,
that's cause it get killed. So that's another notch of
my creditbility, because if I was bad, you know.
Speaker 5 (43:11):
I want to do that.
Speaker 6 (43:13):
So Pistone survives to sit down and successfully proves himself
to the Colombo family, and for the first time, an
FBI agent has been fully accepted into the world of
the American mob.
Speaker 12 (43:24):
Law enforcement work requires infiltration. The Pistone case was a big,
big breakthrough because it filled in a lot of the blankes.
It identified a lot of the people that's absolutely vital
to any kind of successful effort to deal with any
kind of organized criminal enterprise.
Speaker 6 (43:41):
But it's only the beginning of this extraordinary effort by
Joe Pistone to get inside the American mob.
Speaker 17 (43:47):
This undercover case was the beginning of the unraveling of
the mafia in America.
Speaker 5 (43:54):
As we know it.
Speaker 6 (43:56):
Now, as he gets even further inside, the job is
about to get far more dangerous. Even though he's established
himself inside the Columbo family, an even greater opportunity opens
up in the most vicious ball of five families, the Bananas.
Speaker 21 (44:10):
The Banana family controlled gambling and loan sharking back in
the day, but those days were over and they had
to find other ways of making money.
Speaker 10 (44:17):
The Banana Family can be fairly characterized as groundbreakers. Want
to keep to drug trafficking.
Speaker 6 (44:23):
They would smoke drugs, rob drug dealers, and they were
wild guys.
Speaker 10 (44:28):
Bananas were really at this period of time the worst.
Speaker 6 (44:33):
The nineteen seventies will see the historic rise of two
men within two of the mob's key families. Undercover agent
Joe Pistone with the Bananas.
Speaker 17 (44:42):
When I was told you got the contract to kill Bruno,
it is okay, Sonny, what do you think he is?
Speaker 5 (44:48):
And newly made men Michael fran sees among the Columbos.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Right a jack Plane had a helicopter. I had all
the money I wanted, I did whatever I wanted to do.
Speaker 5 (44:56):
An usher in a vicious new era of bloodshed.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
My own father and put a contract on me.
Speaker 6 (45:09):
Yes yes, yes, yes, yes
Speaker 5 (45:18):
Yes
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