Garden State Gangland: The Rise of the Mob in New Jersey

Garden State Gangland: The Rise of the Mob in New Jersey
https://amzn.to/47eXkGp

The Mafia in the United States might be a shadow of its former self, but in the New York/New Jersey metro area, there are still wiseguys and wannabes working scams, extorting businesses, running gambling, selling drugs, and branching out into white collar crimes. And they are continuing a tradition that’s over 100 years old. Some of the most powerful mobsters on a national level were from New Jersey, and they spread their tentacles down to Florida, across the Atlantic, and out to California. And many of the stories have never been told. Deitche weaves his narrative through significant, as well as some lesser-known, mob figures who were vital components in the underworld machine.
New Jersey’s organized crime history has been one of the most colorful in the country, serving as the home of some of the most powerful, as well as below-the-radar, mobsters in the Country. And though overshadowed by the emphasis on New York City, the mob and New Jersey have, over the years, become synonymous, in both pop culture and in law enforcement. But for all the press that has been dedicated to the mob and New Jersey, for all the law enforcement activity against the mob, and for all the pop culture references, there has never truly been an examination of the rise of the mob in New Jersey from a historical perspective. Until now.
In Garden State Gangland, Scott M. Deitche sets the historical record straight by providing the first overall history of the mob in New Jersey, from the early turn of the century Black Hand gangs to the present, and looks at how influential they were was, not only to goings-on the Garden State but across the New York metro region and the country as a whole.
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's the Opperman Report. Join digital forensic investigator and PI
Ed Opperman for an in depth discussion of conspiracy theories,
strategy of New World Order resistance, hi profile court cases
in the news, and interviews with expert guests and authors
on these topics and more. It's the Opperman Report, and

(00:26):
now here is Investigator Ed Opperman.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Okay, welcome to the Opperman Report. I am your host,
Private Investigator Ed Opperman, and the show is brought to
you by email revealer dot com. You can go to
email revealer dot com get an autograph copy of my
book How to Become a Successful Private Investigator. Also too,
there's all different kinds of services on their online infidelity investigation.
If you think your spouse is cheating on you, you give

(00:55):
us their email address. We trace it back to online
dating websites and personal ads, adoption investigations, background reports, all
kinds of fun stuff. Email revealer dot com. All right,
we've got a great guest for you today, Scott Ditchy,
and his latest book is called Garden State, Garden State, Gangland,

(01:16):
The Rise of the Mob in New Jersey. But Scott's
written a whole bunch of books here, all on organized Crime.
You can find him on Amazon. Let's see here Cigar
City Mafia, Complete History of the Tampa Underworld, The Silent Dawn,
The Criminal Underworld of Santa Trafficanti Jr. Cocktail Noir. From

(01:36):
Gangsters and gin Joints to gum Shoes and Gimlets Balls,
The True Life of Eddie Treasure, Gentleman Gangster. A whole
bunch of books here, and you can find who's gonna
be here in Vegas coming up? Take a look at
this In March March fifteenth, seven pm. He's gonna be
at the Mob Museum and then the next day, March sixteenth,

(01:58):
from one to three PM's me back signing books in
the bookstore. So two appearances, one at seven pm March fifteenth,
another one March sixteenth from one to three pm. So Scott,
are you there?

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yes, I am, Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Thank you so much. Scott. Tell us about yourself? Who
is Scott and Digi?

Speaker 3 (02:18):
Well by day, I'm an environmental scientist and manager who
works for an engineering a consulting company in Saint Petersburg, Florida.
Very lucky enough to be doing what I love to do.
Have a degree marine biology and that's my day job
and by night I kind of uncovered the strange, the
cool side of history, if you will, the darker parts

(02:40):
for the past. But almost twenty years now, I've been
writing articles for newspapers, magazines, websites on organized crime, and
I've written seven books. My most recent, as you mentioned,
Garden State Ganglian, just came out about a month and
a half ago.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Okay, and that fine is fascinating. Okay. You're an environmental scientist,
so you kind of have that kind of a you know,
you know what I mean, like kind of a scientist
an engineer type mind, right, but you got into a
studying organized crime. How did that come about?

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah? Well people joke they say, you know, have the
mobster sleep with the fishes? Well, I can identify the fish.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Okay, that's pretty good. Yeah, what made you get?

Speaker 4 (03:22):
You know?

Speaker 3 (03:22):
It was yeah, one of those things I well, you
know the stock answer to that when people ask me
how I got interested in the mob, and I said, well,
I grew up in New Jersey, so you know, that
should explain it. But I you know, I started reading
about the Mob in the early nineties after seeing Goodfellows
in the movies. I was kind of fascinated by it.
My mom was always you know, into mob stuff and

(03:42):
mob movies. And I started doing reading some of the
books out there, like Pellegi's book, Wise Guy and Back
in the Bed. And I'd say it was late ninety
four early ninety five, right when the web was starting
to emerge. I met a mod historian from England, David Critchley,
who had sent me some material on the Mob in Tampa,

(04:04):
and I kind of piqued my interests because I had
moved to Saint Petersburg, Flard at that time, and that
kind of started the obsession, if you will, and started
doing a lot of my own research. And then somewhere
along the line, I'm like, oh, you know what, I'm
going to start writing about this and maybe I'll write
a book. And that's kind of how things start in
a kind of snowball from there.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
And what about growing up in New Jersey? Like what
part of New Jersey was it?

Speaker 3 (04:29):
So I grew up. I was born in Perth d Amboy,
and I grew up in Fords, which is part of
Woodbridge Township, so close to Staten Island, and you know,
great New Jersey suburban childhood, went into the city a lot.
When I started getting into this in the mid nineties,
my paternal grandfather, I started hearing stories about him. He

(04:52):
was a bookmaker in perth Amboy for many years and
was actually arrested not soon after my birth for book making,
ended up doing a few months in jail, and then
that was kind of the end of his book making career.
So I think there might be a genetic component called us.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
But yeah, absolutely, because I grew up in Staten Island
and I actually had my beeper company was in Woodbridge
Mall so for a little while there.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
Bah.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, sure, Yet did you have any friends that were
like connected and stuff like that? You always hear these stories.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
No, but you know, it's funny. For a while after
I graduated, I worked two summers this is in summer
of ninety three, no, summer ninety four into early port
of ninety five, at Jenkinson's Aquarium on Point Pleasant Beach,
which the whole aquarium boardwalk there was owned by the
Stirino family and at the time that I was working

(05:45):
there that summer, there were members of the lu Casey
family that were on trial for killing the Strino's uncle,
Jimmy Sinatra, and it was kind of funny. I'm like,
you know, here I am pursuing my marine biology, you know,
passion working in a place still you're still tied to
them all there. So that was kind of interesting. But

(06:05):
you know, I never saw a lot of it, but
there was definitely a lot of it around.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
The latest book is Garden State Gangland, The Rise of
the Mob in New Jersey. So this is a book
about Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
No, I don't talk about Donald If I was talking
about Manhattan real estate and the mob influence. Yeah, I
mean that's you know, it's funny you mentioned Trump though
in relations to Atlantic City that certainly I do delve
into Atlantic City though. There was certainly a lot of
mob influence there. And I think when people when people
think of New Jersey and the mob, they'll think of

(06:42):
either the North Jersey Sopranos Land, if you will, in
the Atlantic City and the certainly those are two kind
of like the epicenters of organized crime activity in the state.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
What about Port Newark? Isn't that a big Genevieza family.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
Oh yeah, you know, I think a lot of people
had this image of kind of mob infiltration at the
port was from on the waterfront, the Brandow movie, of course,
you know, one of the great movies of all time.
And going back even through their early nineteen hundreds, organized
crime groups, whether they were the Irish gangs or the

(07:23):
emerging mafia groups at that time, staked out the port
in terms of infiltration of union, shaking down the workers.
They are controlling workers, and this has become a huge
problem over the course of the twentieth century. When the
mob started really moving into the ports and Port Newark,
Port Elizabeth, that whole area there became a big hotbed.

(07:46):
So you had, like you said, the Geneviese family really
one of the major mafia families out of New York
that staked their claim to the ports. One of the
interesting things is, you know, as technology has improved over
the years, and certainly now with these large container ships
coming in, you don't need a sea of you know,
five hundred stevedors and labors about the ships. You just

(08:08):
need a couple of guys operating the cranes. But there
was an article in the New York Times last year
that even even people now in such a reduced workforce,
members of the union are still tied to organized crime.
And you have like grandsons and grandchildren of these old
monsters that were active in the fifties that are still
involved with the port. So even though there's been years

(08:30):
of heavy law enforcement scrutiny and federal over said a
lot of the waterfront unions, there's definitely still some mob
influence there in the ports in New Jersey.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
And it doesn't matter that you only need one guide
to operate the crane that you think got ten guys
on the payroll to do it. The other guys that
holding the cup, the other guy, you know. Yeah, it's
fascinating New York, especially back in the eighties and the
early nineties, and it was such a different world, you know.
And I've been gone for so long. I left in
two thousand and I still see some stuff in the

(09:03):
paper and stuff old friends of mine. They caught up
trying to sell a union card. They caught up in
these big roundups and stuff like that. It's kind of
what is your impression of these guys, because it kind
of breaks my heart. I see guys that have known
for a long time and they're my age. I'm fifty
five years old, and you read about them in the
paper and they's still running around hustling. They hold in

(09:25):
ten meetings to sell some four thousand dollars union card
that they got to split up with three guys, You
know what I mean, Like, what's your opinion of the
real lifestyle of these characters and as opposed to how
they're portrayed in Goodfellows and Wise Guys and all these
wonderful movies.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
But I think he kind of hit the nail on
the head there for a lot of it. And I
have a friend of mine who's involved with the mob
in Jersey in the seventies and eighties. He got out
in the early nineties, but he would tell me stories
and taking a step back, I think the great pop
culture representation of that they're just seeing in Goodfellas when
they walk into the Social Club and Al Pacino as

(10:04):
left Ugie are sitting there hammering and parking meter a hammer,
just trying to get the coins out, And I think
you got to write a lot of this is hustling
for scraps, you know, the days of you know that
it was in the fifties and sixties and seventies, to
some extent, all that money coming in and out has
been diminished for those traditional rackets, So you're buying and

(10:27):
selling stolen property, loan sharking, gambling. I think where you're
seeing the money. Where those wise guys that can adapt
to technology, white collar crime, identity theft, you're seeing, you're
seeing some organized crime. Traditional mode of famis get involved
in healthcare, food and other stuff like that. But for
the low level street guys, it is it's hustling to

(10:49):
make a thousand here and a thousand there, an analm
save it. They're either gambling it away or spending it.
You know, they don't have a four to long k
or health insurance, so it's just money and money out,
and it's it could be a grind from people I've
talked to, you know, there's a certain grind to it.
It's like a twelve hour days, just it's not quite

(11:09):
as glamorous. I suspect it could be glamorous at times
when they when they're flushed with cash, but you know,
in other times it could be as mundane as a
regular job.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, no, worse. Yeah. So, what what kind of famous
names would we expect to hear about in Garden State
gangland like names? What you know about.

Speaker 3 (11:28):
Well, I think one of the interesting things by New
Jerseys has some pretty significant crime figures that might not
be quite as well known to the populace. But one
right off the bat.

Speaker 4 (11:37):
Is is Nukie Johnson, who controlled Atlantic City, and he's
probably best represented in popular culture by the move the
show Boardwalk Empire, which was a successful show on HBO.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
They talked about Atlantic City the possion era Nukie Johnson,
He's called Nokie Thompson in the TV show. It was
kind of like a political boss who got into probition,
ended up partnering with mobsters to bring illicit booze into
Atlantic City and controlled a lot of the other vices there.

(12:13):
But in terms of sheer power, you know, he was
well known in Atlantic City. He hosted Al Capone for
a Meetianaire in nineteen twenty eight. But his star kind
of starts to fall in the forties and get a
few other guys that become more successful in terms of
their influence in the underworld. One of them was Abner's Willman.

(12:35):
He is known as long He's Willman, and he was
out of the Newark Third Ward, which was heavily Jewish
area at the time. He was kind of a folk
hero in the local community. But he became a very
successful racketeer partner with Meyer Lanski. And one of the
interesting things is he invested a lot of money into

(12:55):
a lot of various legitimate businesses that ended up becoming
quite successfu So in another life he could have been
a serial entrepreneur or a successful ceo. He just, you know,
by circumstances at the time he was born, in the
place he was born, he took a little bit of
a different path. And then you have guys like Jip DeCarlo,

(13:16):
who was a Genoviez capo Beyon Joe Zicarelli, who was
a member of the Banano family who operated out of
New Jersey. And then guys who most people probably haven't
heard of, like Jerry Katina, who was a powerful Genoviez
capo in New Jersey and really held a lot of
sway throughout organized crime throughout the country, even out to

(13:38):
Las Vegas.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
So your book really gets into the history too, and
way backing in the twenties and stuff. Huh.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
Yeah, you know, there there had not been kind of
an overall historical look at the Mob in New Jersey.
There's been, you know, many written about the Mob in
New York, but New Jersey always kind of played second fiddle. Well,
so I want to kind of a book that will
cover from the nineteen twenties to current some of the
better known characters, the lesser known, and each chapter kind

(14:09):
of focuses on a different area, so that kind of
drives the narrative and the chronology ahead, both from the
side of the underworld and also looking at how the
state of New Jersey law enforcement adapted to combat organized
crime and then starting in the nineteen.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
Seventies, that's a good question, how much was law enforcement
compromised in New Jersey by organized rights.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
Well, you know, one of the yeah, and one of
the ways that organized crime becomes as powerful as they
are is that there is a level of corruption of
the police, the judiciary, the politicians, and it becomes a
it becomes a necessary part of business, it becomes a

(14:53):
necessary expense. And in New Jersey you had everyone from
like small town police chiefs to congressmen in DC that
represented New Jersey at various times were on the payroll
or part of the you know, part of the political
corruption machine in New Jersey. And whereas people kind of
view that as being a big city thing, in New Jersey,

(15:15):
it was both the cities and the smaller municipalities and
townships that that occurred in.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, growing up in Stanton, Alan, I can remember because
stant I was so corrupt, you know, it was like
a club. They called it the club, you know. But
it always seems like the Jersey was even worse, you know,
had the reputation, especially like the local politicians. I can
remember as a kid, like seventeen years old, I was
always into politics and watching a local election in a

(15:41):
small town in Jersey and they actually had this construction
company had taken his bulldozers and his trucks in his
his heavy equipment and they were driving it around the
block in front of his opponent's campaign headquarters to cause
a traffic jam. You know, like it was just right
in your face, this blatant muscle being used to muscle
your way into an office. You know what about the

(16:04):
in Jersey, you got guys like Chris Christy and stuff
like that. The influence of organized crime on the local politics,
it's more than average.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
Right, Yeah, I think so that'd be an interesting like
study per capita, but certainly, and one of the things
that I think is different about Jersey. Whereas like the
mob in New York. You think of the mob in
New York, and they were really centered in New York
City ensure their technacles spread elsewhere, but their main base
of operations was a tight metro area Chicago, Detroit, Saint Louis, Denver,

(16:38):
anywhere where the mafia active there was really kind of
a tight center or a tight metro area where they
really operated. In terms of New Jersey, it was it
was across the state, so it wasn't as geographically centered,
so it was spread out more so you had more
opportunities for that. I think maybe the only other state
that where you sow that was Florida, because South Florida

(17:02):
especially was considered open territory for crime families to come
down and operate. But certainly because of the way Jerseys
you had seven families there. You had the Philly family,
you had the five New York families. Then you had
the de Calvalcante family, which was a small homegrown mob
group that operated out of Elizabeth, New Jersey. So with

(17:22):
all these guys spread out, you definitely had a wider
swath of you know, political corruption going on there than
you did in a lot of the other cities.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
And I guess the Philly family was the whole little
Nicky Scarfold kind of crew.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Yeah. Yeah, they So they were mostly in South Jersey
and then they had an outpost in Newark in the
in the down Neck neighborhood of Newark.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
And what can you tell us about? And what was
that family called Nicky Scarfold and family? How do they know?

Speaker 3 (17:55):
They're generally called the Bruno family after the boss before
him and Jelo Bruno, or the Bruno Scarfaux family, one
of the two, or the Philly mop But in terms
of boss name, usually the Bruno or the Bruno Scarfaux family.
You'll see this.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
Because I can remember growing up that was in the
news all the time too, because there was actually a
war going on and they were shooting people in front
of their houses, in front of their kids and stuff.
That got pretty intensive.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
Oh yeah yeah. In fact, one of the things I
talked about in the book and I talked about in
the presentation in New Jersey last week, there's a great
Bruce Springsteen song called Atlantic City and the opening line
is they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night.
And I think anyone that didn't grow up in the
area probably wouldn't know what that meant, but it was

(18:38):
that the bombing of Phil Chickenman Testa, the boss of
the Philly mop outside his.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
House, and to Calvalcanti, that's the one that was based
The Sopranos were based on the Cavalcanti family.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Right, Yeah, So the Calvalcanti family, like the Sopranos, was
this close knit, small New York or New Jersey based
family that was constantly having to fend off the New
York families and kind of fighting for respect. And one
of the interesting things is there was there was a
pretty significant investigation into the Calvialcanti's, like ninety eight or

(19:14):
nineteen ninety nine two thousand timeframe, and there were the
Calvialcanti mobsters caught on wiretap. Comparing themselves to characters in
the Sopranos are kind of argument over who's who. Is
a perfect thing of you know, real life influencing pop culture,
which in turn is back influencing real life.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
But there were some very because there was a gay
guy in an openly gay guy in the di Cavialcanti
family that was based in you know, one of the
characters in Sopranos was kind of based on it. There
was some real heavy influences, weren't there.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
Oh yeah, for sure. I think the way that Tony
Soprano kind of ascends the throne, it kind of mirrors
some of the internal workings of the Calvicanti's that the
Veto character or Joe Geniscoli's character who is gay and
killed for being gay, mirrors a mobster named John Tomato
who may have been gay, and the urban legend was

(20:12):
that he was killed for being gay, but actually it
turns out that he was killed because they felt he
was getting too close to the New York families, and
then they kind of put this on the street that
they killed him for that. But it did influence certainly
the sopranos in some of those characters, and the way
they worked with New York. This constant, you know, bickering

(20:34):
with New York or kind of under New York's thumb.
That was a long kind of simmering resentment for the Calvacantes,
for some of the mobsters in the family.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
And that is sort of a difficulty because normally the
way that whole New York Staten Island New Jersey thing
is a lot of people who have their business their
organized crime business in Manhattan. They may running a club
or something in Manhattan, will have a house in New Jersey,
which I don't think you have that in other states.
That kind of you know, I'm talking about like where
you live in amongst another controlled family, but your family's

(21:10):
in New York City, right? Is that what causes so
much friction?

Speaker 3 (21:16):
Yeah, I think that, But I think it's maybe a
little something deeper. You know, New York City is the
center of the New York City metro area. It's the
biggest city in the United States. It's the center of fashion,
of entertainment, of culture. And you know, for a mobster
kind of in Manhattan or growing up or living and

(21:38):
working in that community, it's almost a tendency to look
down on Jersey. You know, you're out in the boondocks.
In fact, there's a line in the Sopranos which goes
a line that was leveled against it. The Calvalcanti as
they call them, like the farm League. You know, you're
out in the farm and the booniest of the you're
out of the action, if you will. So I think
I think that also played kind of a part of that.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
That's interesting because then how does that jive with Stan
Allen because you had the guys like, uh uh, who
was that guy O'Neill, Mister O'Neill, Dianelle Elk, the double
Crochy right who uh was huge and Costelan huge guys.
But they had houses out in the sticks out in
Staten Island, you know.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
But stan Island still, you know, officially part of New
York City.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, yeah, I know. But back when I was a kid, Yeah,
you know, when I was a kid on State Allen,
it was like called woods and stuff like that. You'd
ride your bike, you know, fishing every day. It was
like very oh yeah, very very rural type area. Now,
David Chase because if you even look back at his
David Chase is the creator and the guy behind the Sopranos.
If you look at the work he did on the
old Rockford Files, he has a couple of characters in there,

(22:45):
their wise guys from New Jersey. Did did you look
into how much his life with connections with stuff and
in organized crime and how does he know about what's
going on in Jersey like that?

Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yeah? I didn't do too much research into death, but
I read a few interviews with him, and I know
you know, like the name of the Sopranos was, you know,
Tony Soprano was a guy he knew were based on
the guy he knew growing up, and in that, you know,
he references growing up in that environment of that always
being around, of taking things that he had heard over
the years or or seen and incorporating that into the Sopranos. So,

(23:20):
you know, I think the circumstances where he grew up
and the interactions he had with some of these guys
definitely informed the way he portrayed them on screen.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, it always seemed interesting to me too that the
Sopranos seemed to be like in present daytime, but so
much of the their behavior was really from the eighties,
you know what the Guido tuxedos, you know, with the
sweatsuits and stuff like that, you know, and a lot
of their behavior, Yeah, it was more like eighties behavior
than it really was in present time in the nineties

(23:51):
and two thousands when the Sopranos was.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
On, or even older than that. They're one of the
great Lions. Is Tony's yelling at his son and you
said something like that, you know, it might be two
thousand's out there about its nineteen fifties in here.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
Right right, I'd tell you it was a great series,
you know, you know it also call me. You know
what was funny about that? What the Sopranos always struck
me odd is that so many people who I know
who look up to organize crime and have fantasize about
these guys and look up and idolize these characters watching

(24:25):
the Sopranos. They're watching it like, well this is I
idolize these guys, where really most people are watching them thinking, boy,
what a bunch of clowns, What a bunch of what
a bunch of gavons, you know, baboons?

Speaker 4 (24:37):
Heah.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
You know that always struck me as ode. What else
can we find in your book? At Garden State, gangl
and the Rise of the Mob in New Jersey.

Speaker 3 (24:48):
One of the things you mentioned before is or you know,
we talked about, you know, how law enforcement starts paying
attention to them. So I have a chapter on the
formation of the State Commission of Investigation in New Jersey,
which it was four in nineteen sixty nine, still exists
to this day, and they're an investigatory body that looks
at a variety of different criminal aspects. Of the state

(25:10):
and organized crime that has and continues to be a
significant focus of their efforts. They're probably best known for
subpoenain subpoena in Frank Sinatra around nineteen seventy I think
early seventies to appear before the State Commission of Investigation
to testify, and his testimony was actually sealed and it's

(25:32):
still sealed to this day. I kind of tried to
look in to see if I can get some of that. So,
you know, Frank Sinatra has been dogged by allegations of
mathea tiese for his entire career, and the State Commission
Investigation was looking at ties with him with Jersey based

(25:52):
organized crime figure. So one day, hopefully they will unseal
that testimony so we can really see what he says.
I thought that was interesting, and you know, I know
what we had talked previously. You being out in Vegas
and you're having some audience out there as well. There
is there actually is a tie with Vegas. I have

(26:14):
a chapter I talked to Oscar Goodman interviewed him about
the Jolly Trolley casino, which used to be with the
Big Bonanza Gift shop is OK was owned by a
guy named Little Pussy. Anthony Russo's nickname was Little Pussy
Russo at a Long Branch, New Jersey, and he was
actually looking to establish a beach head out there in

(26:36):
Las Vegas. And I talked a little bit about that
in a chapter and how that eventually ended up with
his demise in New Jersey.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
So they killed him in New Jersey over something he
was doing here in Vegas.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
Yeah, it kind of indirectly led into him being killed
in New Jersey. And you know, some of the other
Jersey guys, like Longie's will named Jerry Katina, also had
had interest in some of the bigger casine you knows.
You know, a lot of people think that the influence
in Las Vegas is primarily the Midwest, Chicago, Kansas City families,

(27:09):
or in New York, but there were some Jersey wise
guys who had interests in casinos both on the Strip
and downtown.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
What I find amazing I moved out here in two
thousand and the number of people from Staten Island, because
Staten Islands a small town. You know, I think there
was a three hundred thousand people living there when I left,
or there was like one hundred thousand families four hundred
and half million. But there a number of people from
Staten Island who moved to Las Vegas. Did you run
into him here all the time? When I came out here,

(27:40):
my next door neighbor, there was a brand new community.
They had just built it. The guy who moved to me,
next door to me was from the same town in Annadale,
Staten Island, where I grew up. You know, we would
have went to the state.

Speaker 4 (27:51):
Hi.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah, why God, What kind of coincidence is that a
lot of guys from Jersey move out here too?

Speaker 3 (27:58):
Yeah? Some of them from Jersey absolutely, either there or
South Florida.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
You know, you go to a I want to Yeah,
right day seemed to be down to Florida too, You
and I want to get back to Frank Sinatra though,
because he came out of Hoboken, Hoboken, New Jersey, that
was his Jersey connection.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
Well, there are a few, probably one of the best
known stories, and it's immortalized in The Godfather. So the
character Johnny Fontaine and The Godfather is supposedly based on
Frank Sinatra, and the story went that in real life,
Frank Sinatra was under contract with Tommy Dorsey a pretty
restrictive contract and he wanted to get out of it,

(28:36):
and when he was unable to do it himself, he
reached out to a mob guy named Willie Moretti who
supposedly put a gun in Tommy Dorsey's mouth. And then
you know, Frank Sinatra is allowed to go on with
his career, and that the mob also played a role
in influencing him getting the lead or not the lead,

(28:58):
but they're roll in from here to return, which kind
of resurrected his career, which plays into the scene in
The Godfather were Tom Hagen and Johnny Fontaine to go
out to meet this Hollywood producer NaN's up with the
horsehead in the bed, and that was kind of the
start of those allegations. And there were sightings of Sinatra

(29:21):
with guys like the Faschetti brothers from Chicago in Miami.
One of the great stories that I have actually deals
with Trafficante, but kind of shows these ties with Sinatra.
So Nancy Rigano, who is the wife of traffic Coane's attorney,
Frank Gregano, was her twenty first birthday and they were
down in Miami and they were invited to the Fountain

(29:42):
Blue Frank Sinatra was performing, and she said it was
like the scene in Goodfellas. The place was packed and
they put a special table up front. So it was
Frank Sinatra, or excuse me, it was Santa Trafficante, Frank
Gregano and then Nancy and Frank starts singing his song
and he takes a little break and he walks down

(30:02):
and he gives Santo two kisses on the cheek, and
it comes over to Nancy and wishes her a happy birthday.
And she said, I think it was at that point
I realized that mister traffic Connie was a little bit
more than a dress salesman.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
Right.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
But these, you know, these ties with with Sinatra were
certainly you know, all throughout his career you would see
these things. And there's the famous picture I'm sure you've
seen it of of Frank backstage at the Westchester Theater
with his arms around you know, Carlo Gambino there, Paul
Castelano from from Staten Island was there, and Jimmy Fratiano,

(30:38):
all these other mob guys.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
Yeah, one of those famous famous names. There was also
a connection, he had a connect maybe you know about this,
his connection to Bernie Bernie Brown, a Baltimore mobster.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
No, I don't know that one.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Oh, you got to get this book. It's called Sinatra
and the Mall. This young girl, Diana mceue, she's photographed
when she's like fifteen years old. Fourteen years old dating
Frank Sinatra. She's here that I don't know. I kind
of lost touch with him, but she came out of Baltimore.
She was dating at the same time Bernie got of
the block Brown and Frank Sinatra at the same time

(31:17):
when she was fifteen years old. Okay, yeah, you gotta
get that book, Sinatra and the Mall. Okay, let's take
a little commercial break. Yeah, that's fascinating stuff. Yeah. And
I ran into her because she applied for a job
with me and I was doing a little background check
on it to see and I found out she was
in this book, and she told me the whole story.
She's never come on a radio with me though. But

(31:39):
let's take a little commercial break here. Scott Scott Ditchy
and is the author of Garden State, Gangland, The Rise
of the Mob in New Jersey. And when we get
him back on here, I'm gonna ask you some questions
about Santos Traficanti and the Cuba Kennedy assassination and all
that kind of good stuff. You can catch him March fifteenth,

(32:01):
seven pm at the Mob Museum down here, and also
to the next day, March sixteenth, from one to three pm.
He's going to be signing books in the gift store
down there at the Mob Museum. We'll be right back
with more Scott Ditchi right after these messages. And now

(32:22):
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(34:08):
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(35:12):
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(35:33):
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or you can contact me at Oppermaninvestigations at gmail dot com. Okay,

(36:40):
welcome back to the Opperman Report. I'm your host, private
investigator at Opperman. The show's brought to you by email
revealer dot com. We're here today with Scott Ditchy. We've
been talking about the book Garden State, Gangland, The Rise
of the Mob in New Jersey. Scott's gonna be in town.
Here's coming up March fifteenth, seven pm at the Mob

(37:05):
Museum down there right for Freemont Street, Free Month Street
Experience and that stupid canopy they put up. March sixteenth
is gonna be back one to three pm down here
at the Mob Museum in fabulous Las Vegas. And when
you come to ten you're gonna meet what elsa goodman
and any locals.

Speaker 3 (37:22):
But yeah, I tell you one of the best times
last time I was there, spent about an hour and
a half with Oscar interview on him what a Fountain
with him from there. And I'm a huge fan of
Vegas anyway, so I had a ton of questions about
old Las Vegas. It was great. And yeah, hopefully either
this time I'll be back out in Vegas in April.
I'm on the advisory board of the mob Museum, so
we're having a meeting out there then, so hopefully we'll

(37:43):
be able to catch up with him at some point.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Okay, very cool, very cool. Maybe you can get me
some free tickets to get in there, get your museum
something you smuggle the I've actually smuggled hard. That's a
good one. I've actually never been there, believe it or not.
I've intiviewed so many people. Really, I just never got
around to it. I never get around to it, you know,
I'm always so busy. Yeah, so you wrote another book

(38:06):
about Santos traffic. CONTI right, and I'm guessing it's this
one here, The Silent and Don the Criminal underworld of
Sancho Santo Trafficanti Junior. Is that the one?

Speaker 3 (38:17):
Yeah, that and the first one Cigar City Matthew about
the Tampa underworlds where I first kind of introduced him
and with Silent Don, I wanted to really get more
into him and spend more time talking about not only
him and his ties, but the world around him in
terms of like Cuba and some of that more conspiracy
minded stuff, but really kind of how he fit into

(38:38):
to a lot of these events that happened.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Well, well, then gives an idea, tells who traffic Santos
Traffic COUNTI was and how I was involved on these
Cuban JFKAN stuff.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
So, so Santo Traffic County was a second son of
Santo traffic Coanti Senior, and Santo Senior came from Sicily
and relocated through Ellis Island went out to tamp And
the reason Tampa was kind of a magnet at that
time for Cuban Spanish Italian Jewish immigrants was the cigar industry.
So in the early nineteen hundreds there was a section

(39:12):
of Tampa called Eber City, still the historic section of
town where the cigar industry was headquarter. And kind of bloomed,
and Tampa became known as cigar city. So Santo Trafficante
Senior came down here, worked as a cigar worker for
many years and became involved with the local mafia family here,

(39:33):
the little Sicilian mafia family who were kind of in
a water control of the underworld throughout the nineteen thirties.
So Santo Junior kind of comes on the scene in
the nineteen forties, and by nineteen fifty his father's in
middle health kind of hands the reins over to Santo Junior.
There's another round of killing, some internal house cleaning, but

(39:55):
by that time Santa Junior becomes a little bit more
well known on the national scene too, And a lot
of that has to do with Cuba now, because of
the ties between Tampa, which has a much older Cuban
community than Miami, and the island of Cuba. At that time,
there were you know, flights two three times a day

(40:16):
going to Havana. You're going to for a weekend in Havana.
It was like going to for a weekend in Vegas.
If you lived in Los Angeles kind of the same,
you know, it'd be a bit parallel. So people go
down there on these hour flights out of Tampa party
for the weekend comeback, and Santo Trafficante kind of capitalized
on some of those connections, and by the early nineteen fifties,

(40:37):
along with Mya Lansky, he's probably one of the most
most well known casino and hotel owners and certainly from
an underworld perspective, one of the most influential mobsters. And
part of that is a real pragmatic reason why he's
so ingrained in Cuba. He spoke Spanish. He grew up
in a community where people spoke English, Spanishish, Italian, this

(41:01):
Tampa mix of all three. In fact, there's a newspaper,
like I said it that's still published through the date.
It's the only trilingual a newspaper in the US. It's English,
Spanish and Italian. And because he speaks Spanish, he's able
to ingrain himself with the political establishment. You know, Meyer
Lansky is still kind of the big dog there because
of the New York connections, but Santo fits right in

(41:24):
and becomes a by the mid nineteen fifties, very influential
on the island of Cuba in the hotel and gaming industry.
What's also happens in the mid nineteen fifties, he starts
kind of making his rounds, so you see him at
weddings of major New York mob figures. They are kids.
He's at the Park Sheridan Hotel the day that Albert

(41:46):
Anastasia is killed in nineteen fifty seven, and then traffic
Conte gets picked up at the infamous Apple Acan conference
in nineteen fifty seven. So by that time the cats
out of the bag in Santo has become well known.
Is the mob chieftain of not only Tampa but one
of the dominant figures in Q about that time.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
Wait, so he was involved in that Sheridan Hotel shooting.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Well, I don't think he was involved in it. I
think the Anastasia killing was some internal Gambino family business.
But Anastasia didn't meet with Trafficante a couple of days before,
and traffic Coanti was conveniently staying at the same hotel
under Nalius and left the morning of the shooting, So

(42:32):
there are a lot of suspicions that there and Anastasia
wanted a bigger piece of Havana because he was kind
of shut out of it. So I don't think he
was directly involved in the shooting. But I'm sure if
he was asked, he certainly gave his nod for its approval.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
But he left the hotel. He checked out of the
hotel before the shooting.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
And then if he was playing a weird coincidence, yeah yeah, right,
But if you're right, if he was planning on doing
a murder there that day, I'm sure you wouldn't chick
into the hotel. What I mean, Yeah, he's even under
effect name that always. That shooting fascinates me because I
used to get my I used to go to that
barbershop in the in the eighties all the time. Oh really,
they still had the same chairs. It looks to me

(43:12):
like it's the same freaking chairs thirty years earlier. But
he's got my beards down there, my nails limited at
the Sheridan Hotel. Tell the story all the time many
year and then what happens with traffic can now he
gets involved in the overthrowing Castro and stuff like that,
and then winds up at the base. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
So you know in a year, so about the time
ninety fifty seven, you have Fidel Castro and his guerrilla
war starting against Legency Batista, And what a lot of
people don't realize, I think is that the monsters were
not only supporting Batista, but we're also supporting Castro to
some extent. And the traffic Contes knew Castro because in
his younger years, Hodel actually came to Tampa number of

(43:52):
times for fundraising and this was before he was declaire
Communist and met with the traffic Contes here in Tampa. So,
you know, being a businessman, you're playing both sides, so hey,
whoever wins will do business with. So when Castro takes
over Cuba, you know, he kind of le nigs on
that and promptly kicks all the mobsters out. Trafficante decides

(44:13):
to stay in Havana, thinking that because of his ties
and some of these support they gave Castro, that he
would be allowed to stay and operate. But because of
Castro picking all the gangsters out and kind of nationalizing everything,
the casino industry falls apart. He also jails Trafficante in
a detention center there for about a year, which that's

(44:37):
a little bit of a rabbit hole too, is exactly
why he was attained and why he was released. So
Trafficcante gets released the following year relocates to Miami, and
then he starts showing up with involvement in some of
the CIA supposed CIA plots against Castro. I had the

(44:57):
pleasure of interviewing Robert Mayhew a few times b in
the late nineties when I was writing Cigar City Mafia,
you know, and he re recounted his leadings at the
Fountain Blue with Sam g and Conna and Johnny Roselli
and Santo Trafficante and giving money to traffic Conte because
Santa said he still had a lot of connections on

(45:17):
the island and he was he lost a lot of
money in Cuba. Obviously, you know. Castro just died not
too long ago, So there there was a persistent rumor
in the underworld that traffic Conte never intended to kill Castro,
that he simply pocketed the money that the CIA gave him.
You know. That's that's kind of underworld more over the years,

(45:38):
which kind of sounds like the wise guy thing to do.
It's just take the money and run, you know. Yeah.
And one of the interesting things too, I think is
that there's so much information and disinformation around that time.
So reading CIA intelligence files from that time, you know,
traffic Conte is involved with the anti castrode movement, you know,

(46:00):
training Bay of Pigs guys because some of the people
in the Bay of Pigs were Cuban gamblers that Traffic
kind of worked with on the island. But then there's
also people that are saying he's at the bele Asian
for Castro. So it's it's it's an early sixty's noxious
mix at that time of the CIA, the Castro pro castro,
anti castro movement in the US, which you know, was

(46:22):
fodder for a few hour long discussion. But Traffcutt, he
finds himself in the middle of a lot of.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
This, and what about his connection to guys like Frank
Sturgis and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
Yeah, so Frank Sturgis obviously was working with the Cuban
police and I'm just drawn a total blank on his
real name, but Frank Sturgis wasn't his real Frank, And
and you know, he's working for the Cuban police and
he actually comes to Miami, which is interesting to found
us in the Daycany archives to look for information on
American gangsters that were operating in Cuba. But by the

(46:59):
time he which asides and comes to the US working
the anti Castro movement. He finds himself in the same
circle as a lot of these other Cuban anti Castro activists,
some of whom were part of a loosely affiliated mob
that traffic Conti was overseeing. So some of these guys
at the CIA were training to go in against Castro,

(47:20):
also working running bleed in illegal gambling and other activities
in Miami, both to finance themselves and also to plug
some money back into these anti Castro operations. So guys
like Frank Strogist who were involved in this you see
files mentioned in you know hit meeting with traffic Conti
or close ties between Sturgis and traffic Conte. And then

(47:42):
you know Johnny Rosselli who's down there at the same time,
and other bobsters like Raoul Herez Evaristos Garcia, these names
that gamblers and gangsters from the Onto Cuba that are
now counter revolutionaries operating out of Miami in South Florida.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
How much wait, do you give the theory that Trafficante
was and all these guys were involved with the assassination
of JFK.

Speaker 3 (48:09):
You know, I took care in the book not to
advance a theory, because when you do that, you have
to back it up. And well, what I did is
I think I outlined what Robert Blake he said to me,
is you know, you probably could convict him on circumstantial evidence.
So in all these different conspiracy theories, there are a
lot of different names that come up, and almost all

(48:31):
of them have some legitimate, real tie to Trafficante and
his kind of circle of influence, whether it's Carlos Marcelo
in New Orleans or David Ferry Jack Ruby who supposedly
visited Trafficante in Cuba with another individual, Lewis McWillie, while
Trafficante was detained at the detention center in Cuba. So

(48:55):
there's a very small circle of associations that traffic Coanti
is in the center, and that all tie into various
different conspiracy theories. Probably one of the most interesting things
I interviewed a number of people that saw Trafficante in
the day of in the days just after the assassination

(49:16):
of Kennedy, making toasts at local restaurants with some of
his wise guy friends. And then of course there's the
confession that he allegedly made to his drive or excuse
me to his lawyer Frank Grogano during a drive right
before Trafficani's death in nineteen eighty seven, where he admitted
that him and Carlos Marcello planned the assassination of Kennedy.

(49:38):
It's you know, there's some controversy about that. Frank Gregano's son,
Chris I know very well, says his dad swhereas it
was true and said it was in line with what
he had always believed about Trafficani and his role in
the assassination. I think what's fascinating to me is is
taking the assassination out of that just all these figures

(50:03):
that were involved in these CIA plots and American intelligence
that were all, you know, circled around traffic Conte. He
definitely was was in nexus for some very interesting things
going on in the from a geopolitical perspective in the
early nineteen sixties.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Yeah, there was an incredible overlap between the CIA operations
and organized crime operations down there in Florida. Yeah. I
had Frank Sturgis's nephew on the show here. Jim Hunt
was a law professor down in Texas now, and he
talks about how Frank Sturgis had his own b twenty
five bomber. The guy had his own bomber jet. Yeah,
and at one point he flew it. Yeah, he flew

(50:39):
it over Haiti and dropped bombs on the palace to
collect on a gambling debt. Just these guys are like, yeah,
and that's from the Sun, who's a law professor. He's
not a joke, you know, he's a yeah, and we're
out of time. My friend, just tell us that first
of all, what do you want to leave us with?
And then let the audience know how they could find you.
Had to find your books where they can find you
on Twitter and faceboo cool, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
You know. One question I get asked is, you know,
why is there this fascinational mob Why do you like
researching so much? I think there's just a general fascination
with talking about that darker side of human nature. But also,
like we just talked about Trafficanie, there's a lot of ties.
If you really want to understand the history of a
city or or the United States or everything, there's a

(51:24):
good portion of that that's tied to the underworld, and
I think often that gets overlooked. So I like writing
about it. I hope people like reading about it, and
you can find me. I have a Facebook author page,
Twitter at scott Ywise. My website is Scottpitchy dot com
and my books are valve on Amazon, Barnes and Noble
and hopefully in your local independent bookstores.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
Yeah. I wanted to answer one last question really quick.
You see how in the movies is more of Omerta,
you know, the silence, this code of silence. In your
experience investigating these guys, how much do you find that
to be true or how much have you found to
be that these guys are just constantly informing on each
other and having these free talks with the cops. And

(52:07):
what'd you find?

Speaker 3 (52:08):
Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both. I
think the early guys certainly had the America and I
think that was from a distrust of law enforcement and
that real close knit immigrant ethnic community. And I think
you see with ethnic gangs now in their respective communities.
I think that erode it sooner than a lot of
people fought. And I think if you look back, you'll
see some pretty significant crime figures who were always given

(52:30):
the cops tips, whether it was to raid their competition's book,
make and establishment or just to you know, to curry
favor with the cops. So I think there was always
a two way street there, certainly, you know, starting like
in the thirties and forties, where we're wise guys, we're
probably a little bit more loose lift than people would.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Like to think. Absolutely, Scott Dishy, thank you so much. Okay,
and everybody check him out there at the Mob Museum
coming up in March, both the the fifteenth and the sixteenth.
You can catch them down at the Mob Museum. Thank
you so much, as Scott can I.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
All right, I enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
Thanks, thank you. Ha's Scott Ditchy Garden State, Gangland, the
Rise of the Mob in New Jersey. And that's funny,
you know, it's some one of these things he talks about.
One is this thing about these cops, these organized crime guys,
O Marta. You know they oh the code of silence.

(53:24):
You never turned in. I could tell you living on
Stanton Allan because people who don't know me, if you
listen to have a news station somebody. I was in
the nightclub business in Manhattan in the eighties, okay, and
I also as a young private investigator, I worked on
the Commission trial I worked on the Carmine Persco case,
the Pizza Connection case, somebod of the biggest organized crime
cases you got out there. You know, I don't like

(53:46):
to burden the guests with my life story and stuff
like that, so acually don't bring up touring an interview.
Certain things I'll bring up, you know, like this stuff
by Frank Sturgis and Frank Fier reading this stuff that
I know, and this this story about the garden, what
is this mall with? What is her name?

Speaker 3 (54:01):
Is?

Speaker 2 (54:01):
Sinatra? And the mall Diana McHugh. Check out that book. Man.
I don't know what's happened in Diana McHugh, but she
applied for a job with my PI business as a
personal assistant. And she was well involved with the Ron
Paul campaign. So this is back when Ron Paul was
run for president. And I sat down with her and
we talked about this story, and there's no doubt in

(54:22):
my mind it's true. And I just looked it up.
She was fourteen years old when she ran away from
home and got hooked up with Sinatra and his mob boss,
Bernie God of the Block Brown, Okay, And that's a
f There's no doubt in my mind. And she talked
about having contact with the Sinatra's lawyers and stuff like that,
so there's no doubt in my mind that her story

(54:43):
is accurate. He talks about talking to Bob Mayhew. I
ran it to Bob mehough I was taken to meet
Bob may who when I first came here to Las Vegas,
was one of the first people who I was taking
a meet about possibly business dealings with Bob Mayhew. But
the whole thing about this Omerta, I can tell you

(55:05):
that these guys the FBI would come show opening at
their house. Let's go for a ride, and they get
in a car with them. They sit around have thisthing
called free talks where they drive around and gossip about
their friends and their enemies and all kind of shenanigans.
And we also talked about the Sheridan Hotel I talked
about so many times. So I was sitting in at
the and I barber share back in the eighties many
many times. I tell a story about how I was

(55:26):
older Preston hot and they massage my head and kept
me from a suicide. I was but blow my own
brains out at the old Sheridan Hotel. A lot of
adventures there. If you enjoy today's show, and I hope
you did, we got it. We got into some good stuff.
I think good Old Scott, Ditchy, Garden State, Gangland, the
Rise of the Mob, and New Jersey. Check out my

(55:53):
membership website which is called Operamanreport dot com and you
check that out. There's a lot of excluime usive content
in there that you don't find on the on the air,
on the radio, or on YouTube, or on spreaker or iHeartRadio,
all the places we can catch a show. This is
exclusive content that we only put in the member section.

(56:15):
My investigation into McMartin preschool, my interview I did with
the about Steve Bannon's porn and meth house is exclusive reporting.
And a lot of these stories that we have up
there at Operamanreport dot com you can only find there.
There's documents in there. We have all stuff about the
Donald Trump lawsuit, Trump University. The guy who used to

(56:41):
run Court TV send me sent me all copies of
the documents and wasn't available. Then it's the old place
I'll find it. As a matter of fact that I
had Charles Ortel on this show, who's done all this
work about the Clinton Foundation, all this research. Guy's done
incredible work. And I said to him, hey, do you
have the twenty four page letter where Trump pale and

(57:04):
convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, billionaire, says that he helped found
the Clinton Foundation. He says, no, I've looked at it
that letter. I can't find it. I said, well, I
have it. I have the full twenty four page letter
at Oppermanreport dot com at our member section. I have
the video of the search warrant execution of Jeffrey Epstein's house.

(57:26):
So there's a lot of content in there that you're
not gonna find anywhere else. I think we're doing a
lot of good worker and when you become a member
at Oppermanreport dot com, it helps support the show, the
live shows that we do here for you. And we're
just about to pick up some new stations. So if
you're interested in advertising, get a hold of me at
Opperman Report at gmail dot com and I'll say I'll
give you our low, low low advertising rates. Coming up,

(57:48):
I'm gonna be interviewing Gretchen Bonaducci, the ex wife of
Danny Bonaducci from the Partridge Family, who had a very
fascinating life. You know, this guy grew up with Michael
Jackson and Christian Brando. This guy has been around a
lot of stuff. Good old Danny Bunnet. She had an
ex girlfriend who dated Hi Beck in high They shouldn't
date Hm, but she knew him in high school. They
were friends. Used to smoke pot together at four. They

(58:10):
call it fort twenty today, but Beck in Hoday smoke pot.
We have coming up a guy who was listening to
this man. This guy was hunted down across the country
by a satanic cult based out of Chico, California. I'm
gonna be talking to him Monday Thursday. I'm going to
be talking to I'm taping with the Falcon and the Snowman,

(58:30):
the wife of the Falcon who helped write the book
about the Falcon and the Snowman. Fascinating story there that
There's a lot more that went on with that story
than you see on the movie on TV. You know,
there was after this guy got out of he broke
out of jail, you know, broke out of prison under
odd circumstances, went on a spri of bank robberies. Fascinating stuff. Uh,

(58:53):
there's another one coming up. I can't remember who I
booked up for next week.

Speaker 3 (58:56):
We haven't.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
We're booked out for a good, good, good piece of
time here. I have coming back, Khalil Amani coming back.
Everybody enjoyed him and his storytelling capabilities. He's coming back
on to talk about Afrigo Bambara from the Black Spades
in the Bronx, who's on a big controversy of molesting children,
now being involved in a Channel Less station. Coming up

(59:16):
after this or before this, I should say, I'm taping
with Mark Ebner Hollywood Interrupted. I'm gonna be talking about
the David Blaine and Mel Gibson. He's got a lot
of good content that we're gonna be sharing with the