December 2, 2025 • 24 mins
John “Johnny Joe” Sciortino, the soft-spoken don who guided the Kansas City mob through one of its most challenging eras. Discover how a man who avoided the spotlight became one of the most respected underworld figures in the Midwest. Quiet power, steady leadership, and a legacy built on subtleness—this is the story of a modern-era mob boss who chose strategy over swagger.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
When you picture a mob boss, what's the first image
that comes to your mind. I bet for a lot
of you, it's the showman.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Oh absolutely, the expensive suits, the swagger, walking into a
court room like it's a movie premiere.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Exactly. It's the John Gotti type, right, the celebrity gangster.
And I mean Hollywood loves that image. It makes for
incredible drama.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
It makes for great drama. But you know, history really
shows us that in the underworld, that kind of spotlight
is almost always a death sentence. Strategically, it's a disaster.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
It's a magnet for the FEDS, a huge one.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Secrecy is the absolute lifeblood of any criminal enterprise that
wants to last more than a few years.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
And that contrast, that exact idea brings us right to
the subject of today's deep dive, Johnny Joe Ciertino. He
was the longtime boss of the Kansas City crime.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Family, and crucially a low profile boss.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
The ultimate strategic survivor. This is a man who operated
so deep in the shadows that for most people he's
basically invisible. And he was doing this while leading an
organization that really, by all accounts, should have been completely
wiped out by the end of the twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, this isn't just another gangster story. What we're looking
at here is I think a case study in understated leadership.
It's about the power of discretion as a deliberate protective strategy.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
So our mission today is to really get into how
seared Heo managed to keep the Kansas City organization not
just alive, but functional, stable, even.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
And cohesive, which is maybe the hardest part. He did
this long after their national reputation was gone and their
flashy rivals were either dead or in prison for life.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So the big question we're trying to unpack is, well,
how how did this quiet man operate so effectively from
the shadows? How did he avoid the media storm, the
legal onslaught that just destroyed his contemporary and not.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Just avoid it, but lead effectively the patients with a
kind of quiet authority that commanded real loyalty.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Right, We're going to dig into his methods, his methods
of preservation, because they tell you a lot about survival
in these incredibly high pressure worlds. Satina wasn't playing for tomorrow.
He was playing a game of decades. So to really
get a handle on what Skirtino accomplished. We have to
start with the world he came from, the world he inherited,
and that story starts in Kansas City's North End, right.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
And you have to understand the North End wasn't just
a collection of streets or houses. It was something more.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
It was the heart of the community.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
The historical, cultural, and spiritual heart of the Italian American
community there, and specifically it was a Sicilian stronghold. This
wasn't a place where crime was like an occasional problem baked.
It was completely intertwined. The culture, the family structures, the underworld.
They were all threads in the same fabric. It was seamless.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
I thought one of the sources printed so well. It
made this distinction that boys growing up there didn't, you know,
dream of becoming mobsters.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
No, there was no aspiration to it.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
They just absorbed it. It was total immersion from the
day they were born. The rhythms of organized crime were
just in the air exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Siatino didn't need to be recruited. He grew up through osmosis.
His whole world was the social clubs, the family connections,
the businesses on the corner, all of it was touched
subtly or not so subtly by the local mafia.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
So the rules of life, the code of silence, Omertah,
the hierarchies. He would have learned that stuff just by watching,
long before anyone had to actually explain it to.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Him, long before. And he had a huge advantage from
the start his name, the Cirtino name. In that world,
your name carried weight. It was like an inheritance of credibility.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So he wasn't an outsider who had to prove how
tough he was with some reckless act.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Not at all. He had an immediate network, a foundation
of respect. He was, you know, strategically speaking, born on
third base.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
And that world, the Kansas City organization, prized a very
specific set of values. It wasn't just about being tough.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
No, it was about three things above all else. Loyalty, discretion,
and consistency. These weren't just like nice personality traits. They
were survived vile mechanisms in a world where everyone is
watching and betrayal is always a possibility.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
And Crtino demonstrated all three from a very young age.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Which is why he was trusted. It's why he rose,
you see it, and how he started it was so humble.
He began with bookmaking collections, the nuts and bolts, the
absolute nuts and bolts of the gambling operations. He didn't
rise because he was a brawler or a loudmouth. The
sources are very clear he was neither. He rose because
he was a quiet, reliable worker. He learned the business
(04:29):
from the ground up by watching the old guys, the
successful ones.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
He was a student of the game.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
A very good one. And to understand the game he
was learning and the mess he would eventually have to
clean up, you have to look at the peak, the
Golden Age, the Savella era, the legacy of Nick and
Carl Savella. We're talking roughly the nineteen sixties through the
early eighties. This was when the Kansas City Mob wasn't
just a local crew. There were a national powerhouse and.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Their influence went far beyond Missouri. Right. Kansas City was
central to that massive operation that became famous or infamous,
the Las Vegas Skim.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
The skim, and we should probably spend a minute on
the sheer scale of that operation because it explains everything.
It explains why the FEDS came down on them so
hard later.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Okay, so break it down. What was the skim exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
It was this huge, decades long conspiracy. They were skimming
millions of dollars directly from Las Vegas casinos, manipulating slot
machine revenues, fudging the numbers in the counting rooms.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
And these were casinos that the mobs secretly funded in
the first.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Place, a lot of them, yes, through the Teamsters Union
pension funds. Kansas City, along with the Chicago outfit, was
basically the regional bank for this operation. The cash would
flow out of Vegas.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And suitcases right the hole in the wall gang that's right.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
The money would travel to case, it would be counted
and split up, and then shares would be sent out
to other families Cleveland, Milwaukee. It was a nationwide network.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
And we're talking about a staggering amount.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Of money, tens of millions of dollars over the years, untaxed.
This one operation put Kansas City on the map. It
made them influential way beyond their size.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
But their power wasn't just from gambling cash. The sources
detail how deep their tentacles went.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Oh yeah, it was multifaceted. They had a death grip
on the Teamsters union controlling pension funds, influencing who got
what job. They were involved in casino financing, political influence
through bribes and favors, and.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
They had massive book making networks, labor racketeering, especially in construction. Right.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
So during this peak, they weren't just a gang. They
were woven into the economic and political fabric of the
entire region. The Savellas had built a true empire.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
But that level of success, that much money, it makes
you a.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Target, an impossible target to ignore. They got too big,
too rich, and ultimately too visible, and that's when the
federal government decided to declare war.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
This is where everything changes. That peak in the seventies
leads directly to the federal crackdown of the late seventies
and early eighties. And this was just a few arrests.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Now, this was a full scale offensive, and they had
a new weapon, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
And for anyone listening, you have to understand why REIKO
was so devastating. Before Reiko, prosecutors had to prove specific
individual crimes.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Like one count of extortion, one count of bribery.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Exactly, Reiko let them target the entire organization as a
single criminal enterprise. They could connect a loan sharking operation
from nineteen seventy five with a political payoff from nineteen
eighty and say, see it's a pattern.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
So it wasn't about jailing one guy for one crime anymore.
It was about taking down the entire leadership structure and
seizing all the assets. It changed the game completely.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
It was a death blow. Yeah, and the government used everything,
sophisticated wiretaps, undercover agents, and then they brought down the
hammer with these massive Riicho indictments and.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
The result for Kansas City was catastrophic.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
It was the top guys, the ones who ran the
skim including Carl Savel himself, they went to prison for decades.
They died in prison or were just forced out completely.
The organization was shattered and.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
The whole mindset had to shift. The era of the
big score of skimming millions was just over. It was
replaced by an era of puer survival.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
The organization was smaller, weaker, and under constant intense FBI surveillance.
The cash cow was gone, the leaders were gone. It
was wreckage.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
And this is the world's Tirtino inherits. By the time
he's stepping into that top leadership role, The family doesn't
need a risk taker.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
They need the exact opposite. They need a steady hand,
someone who saw the whole Savella empire collapse, who understood
the lessons from those wiretaps, and who could adapt to
this new world of constant surveillance and smaller profits.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So it's not really organized crime anymore, is it? Its
organized risk management?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
That is a perfect way to put it. Their main
business was no longer generating wealth, it was managing threat.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
So Siertino takes over this, this broken company. Basically, it's demoralized, understaffed,
and the feds are watching every move. He can't use
the old Savella playbook.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, playbook was dead and buried. He needed a new strategy,
one that let them operate quietly, make enough money to
keep the lights on, and above all, avoid another one
of those massive archo cases.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
So how did he rise to the top in the
first place. It sounds like it was a very different
path than most bosses.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
It was a classic case of just organic authority. He
was nothing like the headline grabbing bosses and other cities.
He didn't demand power, There was no coupe.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
He didn't seize it.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
He accumulated it. Slowly over decades. He became the natural
choice because everyone knew he was rock solid, reliable, trustworthy.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
But isn't the job of a mob boss about fear?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
I mean, how do you lead an organization full of
violent men just by being reliable?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
That's a great question, and it's a crucial point. He
definitely commanded respect, but it wasn't built on just, you know,
brute force. The sources are so consistent on this. He
was valued for these specific qualities. He was calm under pressure,
especially around money. He was seen as fare in disputes,
which is a huge deal. He was completely loyal to
his bosses. He was reliable with the money, and he
(10:01):
was just quiet, discreet.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
That role as a mediator, being fair in disputes, that
sounds like it was his real superpower.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
It was vital. Think about it. In that world, arguments
over money and ego are like poison. They can tear
an organization apart. If Siirtino could settle a beef over
a loan or a cut of a bet and do
it with reasoned judgment, not just intimidation.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Then he's creating stability.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Incredible stability. If the boss just sides with the stronger guy,
you get resentment, you get bitterness, and eventually you get informants.
If he actually listens and makes a fair call, he
earns long term loyalty in a world of chaos. He
was the steady.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Hand and he had the history to back it up.
He wasn't some new guy. He was there during the
Savilla peak. He saw it all.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
He saw the rise, the money, and the spectacular fall.
He absorbed that old school approach, patience, strategy, and the
understanding that attention is the most dangerous thing you can have.
He learned that silence wasn't weakness, it was armor.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So when the time came for new leadership, he was
the only logical choice. He had the memory, the respect,
and the right temperament to stabilize a ship that was
taking on water.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, he took over in what the sources call a
delicate era, and his focus was entirely on just maintaining
order and avoiding anything, no matter how profitable, that might
bring the Feds down on them again.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Which brings us to the core of his entire leadership
style leading from the shadows, the commitment to being low profile.
He was, in every single way the anti Gotti.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
The contrast is just it's night and day. John Gotti
the Dabor Dawn. He loved the media, he wanted the fame.
He held court in public at his social club. He
treated his trials like a performance exactly, and that style
worked for a little while until the constant surveillance and
the bugs finally caught up with him.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Shoutino, on the other hand, chose to be a ghost.
What did that actually look like in practice? Did he
live like a poor man?
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Not poor, but certainly modest compared to the high rollers.
He avoided flashy cars, big houses, anything that screened mob money.
His daily routines were designed to be boring, mundane.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
To be uninteresting to law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Which is the highest compliment in that world. He just
blended into the background of Kansas City. To an outsider,
he was just some older guy running a small business,
not the head of the mafia.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
And we have to hammer this home. This wasn't just
his personality. This was a deliberate, calculated strategy for the
entire organization.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Oh and the benefits were huge. Think about what that
quietness buys you. It means the FBI is less likely
to form a special task force just for you. It
keeps you out of the newspapers, which means less public pressure.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
And less jealousy inside your own organization.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Exactly, if you're not flashing your wealth, you're not making
your own guys envious, which is a major cause of informants.
It just reduced risk across the board.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
The lesson he learned from watching the Savellas go down
was simple. Loud gangsters die fast, Quiet gangsters live long.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
He was all about the long game. He understood that
the Veiggas enemy wasn't a rival gang anymore. It was
the federal government, and the government is attracted to noise,
so he made sure they were quiet.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
And under that philosophy, the whole operation had to change.
They moved away from the high risk violence of the past.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
And moved toward a business first model. It became about efficiency,
not bloodshed. Violence was now a last resort, not the
first move.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
It sounds like he was managing it like a CEO
of a struggling company. What were his priorities?
Speaker 2 (13:25):
They were very clear, and they were all about minimizing risk. First,
keep the peace internally, manage the egos. Second, maintain reliable
even if smaller revenue streams. To keep everyone paid third,
and this is the big one. Avoid the Feds at
all costs, and finally, just preserve what little influence they
had left.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
But wouldn't some of the younger guys see that as weakness.
How did he keep his authority without cracking heads all
the time.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
He backed up his quietness with competence. Everyone knew his history,
they knew he had the respect of the old guard.
He controlled the money, and look, when violence was absolutely necessary,
and it sometimes was, he made sure it was done surgically, quietly,
no fanfare. The goal was correction, not spectacle.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
So it wasn't about reinventing the mob. It was about
protecting what was left. He was a caretaker, basically guiding
the family through its decline and making sure it survived.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
He was making sure the structure itself survived, even if
it was just a shadow of its former self.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Okay, so it's one thing to have a strategy of caution,
but it's another thing to actually implement it day in
and day out with guys who are used to a
certain way of life. Let's look at the actual operations
under Cirtino, right.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Because the world was changing fast the two thousands and
two h onees. You have the rise of the internet,
digital communications, sophisticated surveillance.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
All things that are terrible for organized crimes.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Exactly. Now, Scertino wasn't some kind of tech genius, but
he's smart enough to see that the digital world was
a minefield.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
He just had to know that a text message is evidence.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Precisely, so it was a return to old school methods,
face to face meetings, relying on guys you've known for
forty years, and a strict rule about not discussing business
on the phone. They kept it low tech and secure, and.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
This caution extended into the kind of rackets they were running.
No more big, flashy.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Scores, No, absolutely not. He focused on things that were
controllable and had deep roots. So they kept their book
making operations, but they were smaller, more controlled, limited to
trusted circles.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Manageable.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Manageable is the perfect word. Same with loan sharking, smaller loans,
steady interest. They weren't looking for the kind of aggressive
debt collection that gets people hurt and brings police attention.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
But the real steady money was still in the old
school suff right construction and labor.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yes, that influence was much harder for the government to
root out. They still had subtle leverage in certain unions
and construction supply chains. It wasn't huge money, but it
was steady, low risk.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Cash flow, and they used legitimate businesses as a buffer.
Talk about that. How does that work as a shield?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Well, think about a restaurant or a small construction company.
It serves a few purposes. First, it gives guys like
Ciertino a plausible, legitimate source of income. It helps against
tax evasion charges, and it.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Gives them a place to meet that isn't a dark alley.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Right, It's a non incriminating location, and it can be
used to launder smaller amounts of money, keeping the cash
flow below the radar of federal banking regulations. It's a
financial and physical buffer.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
But even those traditional rackets were drying up. By the
twenty tens. Technology was changing, gambling unions were weaker. It
sounds like he was fighting a losing battle.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
He was. The world was shrinking for them, so the
focus had to shift again. It wasn't about getting rich anymore.
It was about just maintaining the organization, keeping loyalty intact,
and not giving the FBI a single thread to pull
on for a new argo case.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
You mentioned before that internal collapse is a huge danger egos, rivalries, informants.
That's how the FBI breaks these groups. Cirtino's management of
that seems key.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Quiet authority was everything here. He ruled with a steady hand.
He' diffused tensions before they could explode. You look at
other families that just descended into bloody civil wars when
their leadership went to prison. That didn't happen in.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Casey because he listened.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
He listened, and that's the difference between forcing someone to
comply and earning their respect. His guys believe that even
if a decision went against them, they got a fair hearing.
That kind of fairness is so rare, and it built
a level of internal cohesion that money can't buy.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
And this diplomacy wasn't just internal talk about the Midwest diplomacy.
His relationships with other crime families.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Right in this era of decline, cooperation was way more
valuable than competition. Maintaining good, quiet relationships with the Chicago
outfit or guys in Saint Louis or Milwaukee was crucial.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Why where did they get them?
Speaker 2 (17:47):
A few things? First, logistics, It kept doors open for
shared betting information or moving things around. Second, it was
about respect. If the powerful Chicago outfit still treated the
case leadership as relevant, it reinforced Cirtino's status at home.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
So it was about creating a stable region. Everybody agrees
to stay in their lane, manage their own problems, and
not bring a huge federal crackdown on the whole Midwest.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
That's it, exactly. A quiet Midwest was a safe Midwest.
He kept those lines of communication open, respectful and strictly business.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Now, let's be clear, the FBI knew exactly who Siertino was.
He wasn't hiding from them.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
No, not at all. He was on their radar constantly.
The goal wasn't to be invisible to the FBI. The
goal was to make it impossible for them to build
a prosecutable case against him.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
He was playing a careful dance, a.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Very careful one, and he learned all the steps by
watching the Savellas fail. He basically spent his whole career
avoiding what you could call the savilla traps.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So what were the biggest lessons he applied.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Number one was the wire tap disaster. These Savellas were
destroyed by what they said on tape. So for Sirtino
the rule was absolute, no sensitive business on the phone period.
If it's important, you say it face to face in
a safe location.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
He also avoided any high risk ventures that would put
them in the spotlight. But there were two really big
strategic no gos for him.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
The first and maybe the most important was his absolute
refusal to get involved in drug.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Trafficking, which is where the big money.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Was huge money, but it was a red line for Certino.
Drug cases bring in the DEA. They have mandatory minimum
sentences that are just brutal. He saw it as organizational suicide.
A lot of other families got greedy, chased the drug
profits and got wiped out with fifty year sentences. He
wouldn't touch it.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
And the second thing, avoiding any.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Big displays of wealth the exact opposite of Gotti.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Because that brings the irs.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
It brings the irs, which is often the easiest way
for the government to get you, and it signals to
law enforcement that you're successful, which makes you a priority target.
He and his guys kept a low financial profile to
match their low operational.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Profile, and it worked. I mean, the sources show that
while he was always under pressure. He never got hit
with one of the life destroying Urciso's sentences that took
down everyone else.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
And that wasn't luck. That was the direct result of
decades of discipline, strategy, and caution. In their world. That's
a massive victory.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
So we've laid out the strategy, the discipline. Let's talk
about the man himself. What was he actually like?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Everyone who described him, from law enforcement to associates used
similar words. Calm, soft spoken, intelligent. He didn't have that
typical hot headed mobster temperament. He commanded respect through competence
and loyalty, not by.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yelling authority without volume.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah, and that idea of fairness we keep coming back to.
It was a strategic tool.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
How so in a world of pure self interest, how
is being fair strategic?
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Because fairness is the best way to reduce your internal risk.
If your guys feel the boss is fair, they're much
less likely to go outside the family to solve a.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Problem, meaning they're less likely to talk to the cops.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Or start a war. By listening and mediating, Skirtino created
a stable system, knew the rules. It prevents friction, and
more than anything, it prevents informants.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
His method made him not just respected, but actually liked.
That fosters a kind of loyalty that you.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Just can't buy absolutely, and you see that restraint in
his approach to violence too. He wasn't an enforcer himself,
but he understood violence was part of the toolkit. He
just insisted it be used sparingly, surgically, only when absolutely necessary,
and that scarcity dramatically reduced the heat on the Casey organization.
The less violence you use, the fewer murder investigations you trigger,
(21:31):
the longer you survive.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
It's the ultimate cost benefit analysis. He realized the cost
of federal attention was way higher than the benefit of
a quick violent solution.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
And maybe his greatest, quietest achievement was his last one.
The transition of power was a messy not at all.
So many bosses leave behind a power vacuum, a bloodbath.
Sirtino's exit was quiet, orderly, disciplined, Just like his leadership.
The structure he built remained.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
And intact, which is incredibly rare in the American mafia.
That orderly transition speaks volumes about the stability. He created,
no big public fight that would bring the Feds running.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
He spent decades building a functional chain of command based
on his principles, so the next generation didn't inherit chaos.
They inherited a structure, a network, and a set of
survival rules for the modern era.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
He really was one of the last of the old
school guys who never gave up that core principle of
discretion even as the world changed around him.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
And in the end, his story is the ultimate counter
argument to the Hollywood stereotype we started with. He's probably
the single biggest reason the Kansas City mob survived at all,
while bigger, richer families just completely fell apart.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
It's proof that quiet power is still power. He chose
the slow burn of restraint over the brief, flashy fame
of the gott He types. His strength was defined by
the spotlights he avoided.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah and the fights he didn't pick, and the money
he controlled without anyone noticing. And that quiet authority was
respected far beyond Kansas City across the Midwest. He was
seen as a smart, low risk operator who valued diplomacy
over war.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
So the final takeaway is that not all downs were
flashy sociopaths. Some like Spiirtino, were just effective, understated managers,
hair takers, who kept their organization alive long after its
glory days were a distant memory.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
He proved that sometimes the guys who have the longest
careers are the ones who are willing to say the least.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Johnny Joe Chiertino might not be a household name like
the bosses on magazine covers, but his impact on the
Kansas City crime family was arguably more profound. He guided
them through an age of absolute existential threat.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
And he did it with steady leadership, quiet authority, and
just this unwavering discipline. The lesson he leaves behind is
so valuable for understanding any high risk group when you're
under extreme external pressure. Quiet strategic leadership based on discretion
and loyalty is the only thing that works for long
term survival. It beats ego and visibility every single time.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
His legacy is that he stabilized and preserved a crime
family when the entire US government was trying to tear
it down, and he did it by becoming the dawn
who didn't need to roar.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Which leads us to a final thought for you to
take away, Satino's entire life was an exercise in extreme
risk management. So if the goal of any organization, criminal
or legitimate, is just to survive in a world with
intense scrutiny. Does his example offer some real lessons this
choice to seek stability over attention, efficiency over ego. Does
that tell us something powerful about managing risk in any
(24:28):
complex environment?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
It seems Kuratino proved that the leaders who say the
least are often the ones who guide the longest.
When you picture a mob boss, what's the first image
that comes to your mind. I bet for a lot
of you, it's the showman.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Oh absolutely, the expensive suits, the swagger, walking into a
court room like it's a movie premiere.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Exactly. It's the John Gotti type, right, the celebrity gangster.
And I mean Hollywood loves that image. It makes for
incredible drama.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
It makes for great drama. But you know, history really
shows us that in the underworld, that kind of spotlight
is almost always a death sentence. Strategically, it's a disaster.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
It's a magnet for the FEDS, a huge one.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Secrecy is the absolute lifeblood of any criminal enterprise that
wants to last more than a few years.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
And that contrast, that exact idea brings us right to
the subject of today's deep dive, Johnny Joe Ciertino. He
was the longtime boss of the Kansas City crime.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Family, and crucially a low profile boss.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
The ultimate strategic survivor. This is a man who operated
so deep in the shadows that for most people he's
basically invisible. And he was doing this while leading an
organization that really, by all accounts, should have been completely
wiped out by the end of the twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, this isn't just another gangster story. What we're looking
at here is I think a case study in understated leadership.
It's about the power of discretion as a deliberate protective strategy.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
So our mission today is to really get into how
seared Heo managed to keep the Kansas City organization not
just alive, but functional, stable, even.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
And cohesive, which is maybe the hardest part. He did
this long after their national reputation was gone and their
flashy rivals were either dead or in prison for life.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So the big question we're trying to unpack is, well,
how how did this quiet man operate so effectively from
the shadows? How did he avoid the media storm, the
legal onslaught that just destroyed his contemporary and not.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Just avoid it, but lead effectively the patients with a
kind of quiet authority that commanded real loyalty.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Right, We're going to dig into his methods, his methods
of preservation, because they tell you a lot about survival
in these incredibly high pressure worlds. Satina wasn't playing for tomorrow.
He was playing a game of decades. So to really
get a handle on what Skirtino accomplished. We have to
start with the world he came from, the world he inherited,
and that story starts in Kansas City's North End, right.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
And you have to understand the North End wasn't just
a collection of streets or houses. It was something more.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
It was the heart of the community.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
The historical, cultural, and spiritual heart of the Italian American
community there, and specifically it was a Sicilian stronghold. This
wasn't a place where crime was like an occasional problem baked.
It was completely intertwined. The culture, the family structures, the underworld.
They were all threads in the same fabric. It was seamless.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
I thought one of the sources printed so well. It
made this distinction that boys growing up there didn't, you know,
dream of becoming mobsters.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
No, there was no aspiration to it.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
They just absorbed it. It was total immersion from the
day they were born. The rhythms of organized crime were
just in the air exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Siatino didn't need to be recruited. He grew up through osmosis.
His whole world was the social clubs, the family connections,
the businesses on the corner, all of it was touched
subtly or not so subtly by the local mafia.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
So the rules of life, the code of silence, Omertah,
the hierarchies. He would have learned that stuff just by watching,
long before anyone had to actually explain it to.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Him, long before. And he had a huge advantage from
the start his name, the Cirtino name. In that world,
your name carried weight. It was like an inheritance of credibility.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So he wasn't an outsider who had to prove how
tough he was with some reckless act.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Not at all. He had an immediate network, a foundation
of respect. He was, you know, strategically speaking, born on
third base.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
And that world, the Kansas City organization, prized a very
specific set of values. It wasn't just about being tough.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
No, it was about three things above all else. Loyalty, discretion,
and consistency. These weren't just like nice personality traits. They
were survived vile mechanisms in a world where everyone is
watching and betrayal is always a possibility.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
And Crtino demonstrated all three from a very young age.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Which is why he was trusted. It's why he rose,
you see it, and how he started it was so humble.
He began with bookmaking collections, the nuts and bolts, the
absolute nuts and bolts of the gambling operations. He didn't
rise because he was a brawler or a loudmouth. The
sources are very clear he was neither. He rose because
he was a quiet, reliable worker. He learned the business
(04:29):
from the ground up by watching the old guys, the
successful ones.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
He was a student of the game.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
A very good one. And to understand the game he
was learning and the mess he would eventually have to
clean up, you have to look at the peak, the
Golden Age, the Savella era, the legacy of Nick and
Carl Savella. We're talking roughly the nineteen sixties through the
early eighties. This was when the Kansas City Mob wasn't
just a local crew. There were a national powerhouse and.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Their influence went far beyond Missouri. Right. Kansas City was
central to that massive operation that became famous or infamous,
the Las Vegas Skim.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
The skim, and we should probably spend a minute on
the sheer scale of that operation because it explains everything.
It explains why the FEDS came down on them so
hard later.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Okay, so break it down. What was the skim exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
It was this huge, decades long conspiracy. They were skimming
millions of dollars directly from Las Vegas casinos, manipulating slot
machine revenues, fudging the numbers in the counting rooms.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
And these were casinos that the mobs secretly funded in
the first.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Place, a lot of them, yes, through the Teamsters Union
pension funds. Kansas City, along with the Chicago outfit, was
basically the regional bank for this operation. The cash would
flow out of Vegas.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And suitcases right the hole in the wall gang that's right.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
The money would travel to case, it would be counted
and split up, and then shares would be sent out
to other families Cleveland, Milwaukee. It was a nationwide network.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
And we're talking about a staggering amount.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Of money, tens of millions of dollars over the years, untaxed.
This one operation put Kansas City on the map. It
made them influential way beyond their size.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
But their power wasn't just from gambling cash. The sources
detail how deep their tentacles went.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Oh yeah, it was multifaceted. They had a death grip
on the Teamsters union controlling pension funds, influencing who got
what job. They were involved in casino financing, political influence
through bribes and favors, and.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
They had massive book making networks, labor racketeering, especially in construction. Right.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
So during this peak, they weren't just a gang. They
were woven into the economic and political fabric of the
entire region. The Savellas had built a true empire.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
But that level of success, that much money, it makes
you a.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Target, an impossible target to ignore. They got too big,
too rich, and ultimately too visible, and that's when the
federal government decided to declare war.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
This is where everything changes. That peak in the seventies
leads directly to the federal crackdown of the late seventies
and early eighties. And this was just a few arrests.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Now, this was a full scale offensive, and they had
a new weapon, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
And for anyone listening, you have to understand why REIKO
was so devastating. Before Reiko, prosecutors had to prove specific
individual crimes.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Like one count of extortion, one count of bribery.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Exactly, Reiko let them target the entire organization as a
single criminal enterprise. They could connect a loan sharking operation
from nineteen seventy five with a political payoff from nineteen
eighty and say, see it's a pattern.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
So it wasn't about jailing one guy for one crime anymore.
It was about taking down the entire leadership structure and
seizing all the assets. It changed the game completely.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
It was a death blow. Yeah, and the government used everything,
sophisticated wiretaps, undercover agents, and then they brought down the
hammer with these massive Riicho indictments and.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
The result for Kansas City was catastrophic.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
It was the top guys, the ones who ran the
skim including Carl Savel himself, they went to prison for decades.
They died in prison or were just forced out completely.
The organization was shattered and.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
The whole mindset had to shift. The era of the
big score of skimming millions was just over. It was
replaced by an era of puer survival.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
The organization was smaller, weaker, and under constant intense FBI surveillance.
The cash cow was gone, the leaders were gone. It
was wreckage.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
And this is the world's Tirtino inherits. By the time
he's stepping into that top leadership role, The family doesn't
need a risk taker.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
They need the exact opposite. They need a steady hand,
someone who saw the whole Savella empire collapse, who understood
the lessons from those wiretaps, and who could adapt to
this new world of constant surveillance and smaller profits.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So it's not really organized crime anymore, is it? Its
organized risk management?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
That is a perfect way to put it. Their main
business was no longer generating wealth, it was managing threat.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
So Siertino takes over this, this broken company. Basically, it's demoralized, understaffed,
and the feds are watching every move. He can't use
the old Savella playbook.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, playbook was dead and buried. He needed a new strategy,
one that let them operate quietly, make enough money to
keep the lights on, and above all, avoid another one
of those massive archo cases.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
So how did he rise to the top in the
first place. It sounds like it was a very different
path than most bosses.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
It was a classic case of just organic authority. He
was nothing like the headline grabbing bosses and other cities.
He didn't demand power, There was no coupe.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
He didn't seize it.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
He accumulated it. Slowly over decades. He became the natural
choice because everyone knew he was rock solid, reliable, trustworthy.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
But isn't the job of a mob boss about fear?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
I mean, how do you lead an organization full of
violent men just by being reliable?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
That's a great question, and it's a crucial point. He
definitely commanded respect, but it wasn't built on just, you know,
brute force. The sources are so consistent on this. He
was valued for these specific qualities. He was calm under pressure,
especially around money. He was seen as fare in disputes,
which is a huge deal. He was completely loyal to
his bosses. He was reliable with the money, and he
(10:01):
was just quiet, discreet.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
That role as a mediator, being fair in disputes, that
sounds like it was his real superpower.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
It was vital. Think about it. In that world, arguments
over money and ego are like poison. They can tear
an organization apart. If Siirtino could settle a beef over
a loan or a cut of a bet and do
it with reasoned judgment, not just intimidation.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Then he's creating stability.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Incredible stability. If the boss just sides with the stronger guy,
you get resentment, you get bitterness, and eventually you get informants.
If he actually listens and makes a fair call, he
earns long term loyalty in a world of chaos. He
was the steady.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Hand and he had the history to back it up.
He wasn't some new guy. He was there during the
Savilla peak. He saw it all.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
He saw the rise, the money, and the spectacular fall.
He absorbed that old school approach, patience, strategy, and the
understanding that attention is the most dangerous thing you can have.
He learned that silence wasn't weakness, it was armor.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So when the time came for new leadership, he was
the only logical choice. He had the memory, the respect,
and the right temperament to stabilize a ship that was
taking on water.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, he took over in what the sources call a
delicate era, and his focus was entirely on just maintaining
order and avoiding anything, no matter how profitable, that might
bring the Feds down on them again.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Which brings us to the core of his entire leadership
style leading from the shadows, the commitment to being low profile.
He was, in every single way the anti Gotti.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
The contrast is just it's night and day. John Gotti
the Dabor Dawn. He loved the media, he wanted the fame.
He held court in public at his social club. He
treated his trials like a performance exactly, and that style
worked for a little while until the constant surveillance and
the bugs finally caught up with him.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Shoutino, on the other hand, chose to be a ghost.
What did that actually look like in practice? Did he
live like a poor man?
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Not poor, but certainly modest compared to the high rollers.
He avoided flashy cars, big houses, anything that screened mob money.
His daily routines were designed to be boring, mundane.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
To be uninteresting to law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Which is the highest compliment in that world. He just
blended into the background of Kansas City. To an outsider,
he was just some older guy running a small business,
not the head of the mafia.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
And we have to hammer this home. This wasn't just
his personality. This was a deliberate, calculated strategy for the
entire organization.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Oh and the benefits were huge. Think about what that
quietness buys you. It means the FBI is less likely
to form a special task force just for you. It
keeps you out of the newspapers, which means less public pressure.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
And less jealousy inside your own organization.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Exactly, if you're not flashing your wealth, you're not making
your own guys envious, which is a major cause of informants.
It just reduced risk across the board.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
The lesson he learned from watching the Savellas go down
was simple. Loud gangsters die fast, Quiet gangsters live long.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
He was all about the long game. He understood that
the Veiggas enemy wasn't a rival gang anymore. It was
the federal government, and the government is attracted to noise,
so he made sure they were quiet.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
And under that philosophy, the whole operation had to change.
They moved away from the high risk violence of the past.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
And moved toward a business first model. It became about efficiency,
not bloodshed. Violence was now a last resort, not the
first move.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
It sounds like he was managing it like a CEO
of a struggling company. What were his priorities?
Speaker 2 (13:25):
They were very clear, and they were all about minimizing risk. First,
keep the peace internally, manage the egos. Second, maintain reliable
even if smaller revenue streams. To keep everyone paid third,
and this is the big one. Avoid the Feds at
all costs, and finally, just preserve what little influence they
had left.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
But wouldn't some of the younger guys see that as weakness.
How did he keep his authority without cracking heads all
the time.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
He backed up his quietness with competence. Everyone knew his history,
they knew he had the respect of the old guard.
He controlled the money, and look, when violence was absolutely necessary,
and it sometimes was, he made sure it was done surgically, quietly,
no fanfare. The goal was correction, not spectacle.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
So it wasn't about reinventing the mob. It was about
protecting what was left. He was a caretaker, basically guiding
the family through its decline and making sure it survived.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
He was making sure the structure itself survived, even if
it was just a shadow of its former self.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Okay, so it's one thing to have a strategy of caution,
but it's another thing to actually implement it day in
and day out with guys who are used to a
certain way of life. Let's look at the actual operations
under Cirtino, right.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Because the world was changing fast the two thousands and
two h onees. You have the rise of the internet,
digital communications, sophisticated surveillance.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
All things that are terrible for organized crimes.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Exactly. Now, Scertino wasn't some kind of tech genius, but
he's smart enough to see that the digital world was
a minefield.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
He just had to know that a text message is evidence.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Precisely, so it was a return to old school methods,
face to face meetings, relying on guys you've known for
forty years, and a strict rule about not discussing business
on the phone. They kept it low tech and secure, and.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
This caution extended into the kind of rackets they were running.
No more big, flashy.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Scores, No, absolutely not. He focused on things that were
controllable and had deep roots. So they kept their book
making operations, but they were smaller, more controlled, limited to
trusted circles.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Manageable.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Manageable is the perfect word. Same with loan sharking, smaller loans,
steady interest. They weren't looking for the kind of aggressive
debt collection that gets people hurt and brings police attention.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
But the real steady money was still in the old
school suff right construction and labor.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yes, that influence was much harder for the government to
root out. They still had subtle leverage in certain unions
and construction supply chains. It wasn't huge money, but it
was steady, low risk.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Cash flow, and they used legitimate businesses as a buffer.
Talk about that. How does that work as a shield?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Well, think about a restaurant or a small construction company.
It serves a few purposes. First, it gives guys like
Ciertino a plausible, legitimate source of income. It helps against
tax evasion charges, and it.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Gives them a place to meet that isn't a dark alley.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Right, It's a non incriminating location, and it can be
used to launder smaller amounts of money, keeping the cash
flow below the radar of federal banking regulations. It's a
financial and physical buffer.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
But even those traditional rackets were drying up. By the
twenty tens. Technology was changing, gambling unions were weaker. It
sounds like he was fighting a losing battle.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
He was. The world was shrinking for them, so the
focus had to shift again. It wasn't about getting rich anymore.
It was about just maintaining the organization, keeping loyalty intact,
and not giving the FBI a single thread to pull
on for a new argo case.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
You mentioned before that internal collapse is a huge danger egos, rivalries, informants.
That's how the FBI breaks these groups. Cirtino's management of
that seems key.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Quiet authority was everything here. He ruled with a steady hand.
He' diffused tensions before they could explode. You look at
other families that just descended into bloody civil wars when
their leadership went to prison. That didn't happen in.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Casey because he listened.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
He listened, and that's the difference between forcing someone to
comply and earning their respect. His guys believe that even
if a decision went against them, they got a fair hearing.
That kind of fairness is so rare, and it built
a level of internal cohesion that money can't buy.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
And this diplomacy wasn't just internal talk about the Midwest diplomacy.
His relationships with other crime families.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Right in this era of decline, cooperation was way more
valuable than competition. Maintaining good, quiet relationships with the Chicago
outfit or guys in Saint Louis or Milwaukee was crucial.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Why where did they get them?
Speaker 2 (17:47):
A few things? First, logistics, It kept doors open for
shared betting information or moving things around. Second, it was
about respect. If the powerful Chicago outfit still treated the
case leadership as relevant, it reinforced Cirtino's status at home.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
So it was about creating a stable region. Everybody agrees
to stay in their lane, manage their own problems, and
not bring a huge federal crackdown on the whole Midwest.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
That's it, exactly. A quiet Midwest was a safe Midwest.
He kept those lines of communication open, respectful and strictly business.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Now, let's be clear, the FBI knew exactly who Siertino was.
He wasn't hiding from them.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
No, not at all. He was on their radar constantly.
The goal wasn't to be invisible to the FBI. The
goal was to make it impossible for them to build
a prosecutable case against him.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
He was playing a careful dance, a.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Very careful one, and he learned all the steps by
watching the Savellas fail. He basically spent his whole career
avoiding what you could call the savilla traps.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So what were the biggest lessons he applied.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Number one was the wire tap disaster. These Savellas were
destroyed by what they said on tape. So for Sirtino
the rule was absolute, no sensitive business on the phone period.
If it's important, you say it face to face in
a safe location.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
He also avoided any high risk ventures that would put
them in the spotlight. But there were two really big
strategic no gos for him.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
The first and maybe the most important was his absolute
refusal to get involved in drug.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Trafficking, which is where the big money.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Was huge money, but it was a red line for Certino.
Drug cases bring in the DEA. They have mandatory minimum
sentences that are just brutal. He saw it as organizational suicide.
A lot of other families got greedy, chased the drug
profits and got wiped out with fifty year sentences. He
wouldn't touch it.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
And the second thing, avoiding any.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Big displays of wealth the exact opposite of Gotti.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Because that brings the irs.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
It brings the irs, which is often the easiest way
for the government to get you, and it signals to
law enforcement that you're successful, which makes you a priority target.
He and his guys kept a low financial profile to
match their low operational.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Profile, and it worked. I mean, the sources show that
while he was always under pressure. He never got hit
with one of the life destroying Urciso's sentences that took
down everyone else.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
And that wasn't luck. That was the direct result of
decades of discipline, strategy, and caution. In their world. That's
a massive victory.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
So we've laid out the strategy, the discipline. Let's talk
about the man himself. What was he actually like?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Everyone who described him, from law enforcement to associates used
similar words. Calm, soft spoken, intelligent. He didn't have that
typical hot headed mobster temperament. He commanded respect through competence
and loyalty, not by.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yelling authority without volume.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah, and that idea of fairness we keep coming back to.
It was a strategic tool.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
How so in a world of pure self interest, how
is being fair strategic?
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Because fairness is the best way to reduce your internal risk.
If your guys feel the boss is fair, they're much
less likely to go outside the family to solve a.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Problem, meaning they're less likely to talk to the cops.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Or start a war. By listening and mediating, Skirtino created
a stable system, knew the rules. It prevents friction, and
more than anything, it prevents informants.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
His method made him not just respected, but actually liked.
That fosters a kind of loyalty that you.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Just can't buy absolutely, and you see that restraint in
his approach to violence too. He wasn't an enforcer himself,
but he understood violence was part of the toolkit. He
just insisted it be used sparingly, surgically, only when absolutely necessary,
and that scarcity dramatically reduced the heat on the Casey organization.
The less violence you use, the fewer murder investigations you trigger,
(21:31):
the longer you survive.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
It's the ultimate cost benefit analysis. He realized the cost
of federal attention was way higher than the benefit of
a quick violent solution.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
And maybe his greatest, quietest achievement was his last one.
The transition of power was a messy not at all.
So many bosses leave behind a power vacuum, a bloodbath.
Sirtino's exit was quiet, orderly, disciplined, Just like his leadership.
The structure he built remained.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
And intact, which is incredibly rare in the American mafia.
That orderly transition speaks volumes about the stability. He created,
no big public fight that would bring the Feds running.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
He spent decades building a functional chain of command based
on his principles, so the next generation didn't inherit chaos.
They inherited a structure, a network, and a set of
survival rules for the modern era.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
He really was one of the last of the old
school guys who never gave up that core principle of
discretion even as the world changed around him.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
And in the end, his story is the ultimate counter
argument to the Hollywood stereotype we started with. He's probably
the single biggest reason the Kansas City mob survived at all,
while bigger, richer families just completely fell apart.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
It's proof that quiet power is still power. He chose
the slow burn of restraint over the brief, flashy fame
of the gott He types. His strength was defined by
the spotlights he avoided.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah and the fights he didn't pick, and the money
he controlled without anyone noticing. And that quiet authority was
respected far beyond Kansas City across the Midwest. He was
seen as a smart, low risk operator who valued diplomacy
over war.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
So the final takeaway is that not all downs were
flashy sociopaths. Some like Spiirtino, were just effective, understated managers,
hair takers, who kept their organization alive long after its
glory days were a distant memory.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
He proved that sometimes the guys who have the longest
careers are the ones who are willing to say the least.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Johnny Joe Chiertino might not be a household name like
the bosses on magazine covers, but his impact on the
Kansas City crime family was arguably more profound. He guided
them through an age of absolute existential threat.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
And he did it with steady leadership, quiet authority, and
just this unwavering discipline. The lesson he leaves behind is
so valuable for understanding any high risk group when you're
under extreme external pressure. Quiet strategic leadership based on discretion
and loyalty is the only thing that works for long
term survival. It beats ego and visibility every single time.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
His legacy is that he stabilized and preserved a crime
family when the entire US government was trying to tear
it down, and he did it by becoming the dawn
who didn't need to roar.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Which leads us to a final thought for you to
take away, Satino's entire life was an exercise in extreme
risk management. So if the goal of any organization, criminal
or legitimate, is just to survive in a world with
intense scrutiny. Does his example offer some real lessons this
choice to seek stability over attention, efficiency over ego. Does
that tell us something powerful about managing risk in any
(24:28):
complex environment?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
It seems Kuratino proved that the leaders who say the
least are often the ones who guide the longest.
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