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Description: Join us again, as we talk Friend of Ours, Joe Pascone of the Turning Tides History Podcast about the Molly Maguires. In this episode, we will wrap up the story of the Mollys and the transition of labor relations and unions in the Gilded Age into the Industrial Era.

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime. With your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

Now that we've gone through that whole story with the, the Molly Maguires, and we've gone through so much of it with the Civil War, what was, Joe, what was the aftermath of the Civil War? How did that play out for this group of labor organizers and people and, you know, culture and everything? So, the Civil War, far from it being like this time of like, you know, there's this idea that after the Civil War, the country, everyone got [00:01:00] together, all the bad blood was kind of shed already, and only John Wilkes Booth really had a problem with what was going on and his conspirators.

It's not really the case. In reality. There were huge, violent ramifications throughout the entire nation, not just with the start of Reconstruction. You saw the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the Knight Riders in places like the South. Uh, and in the Anthracite region, you see serious reaction and hostility.

These people, they argued for years that the Constitution should stay the same as it was, and the Union should stay the same as it was. That was no longer the case. Everything was turned on its head. And the entire economy basically contracted, uh, not just in America, across the entire planet. I cover Puerto Rico.

The economy there completely falls off a cliff because for a long time, Puerto Rico was supplementing the cotton that was not being grown and exported from the [00:02:00] United States, or the Southern United States. Uh, so you see this huge contraction and it affects these miners specifically because with the leaving of these federal troops, uh, with the nosedive of, of needs to market, uh, the entire economy sputters and a bunch of people are left out on the streets.

Uh, this, that means that a lot of people turn to highway robbery. They turn to things like, uh, bushwhackings of miners and stuff. And they turn to labor unrest, uh, some of the more moderate of them, I suppose, or the least violent. They turn to labor unrest, they try to start strikes. These strikes are usually not successful.

There's a very long one in 1865, where coal executives planned a 33 percent pay cut. Uh, and so to dispatch this, uh, or to end this labor unrest, the government [00:03:00] dispatches troops, like, right away, almost immediately following the Civil War, May 1865. Uh, so the troops are there. They do such a good job that co executives come up with a new excuse for another Pennsylvania militia unit to be stationed there.

The rest of the summer of 1865, um, in one of the more hilarious, uh, newspaper articles of all time, the Lebanon advertisers talking about the supposed uprising, and this is very tongue in cheek. They say several thousand have been killed. The Irish are murdering everybody. The country in general, and the streets of Pottsville in particular are crowded with blood thirsty miners who kill all but Irishmen.

So at this point. A lot of this, I think that goes to show that newspaper clipping right there. A lot of this, these arguments against labor uprisings have become kind of hashed out and people are experiencing a [00:04:00] general sort of weariness against labor agitation. And, but the, but the bosses. Don't seem to mind this.

This is how this guy, Franklin Gowan, comes into the picture. Gowan was, uh, I spoke about him in the first few parts here. He was born an Ulsterman, a Protestant Ulsterman. He was sent to a Catholic college because his father was incredibly, uh, he was for religious tolerance and liberation. And he's brought in as a lawyer for these coal executives because they need a legal excuse to bring in troops.

Uh, this starts his involvement in the coal region, and this starts his involvement with the railroads and, and with the whole. Um, the whole economy in the area in general, and he's ends up being 1 of the biggest players in the story to come. Uh, so almost right away. The, the fury [00:05:00] over these troops. pretty substantial.

A bunch of people get killed. There's a guy, Peter Monaghan. He's killed in a fight with, er, sorry, uh, Peter Monaghan gets into a fight with this guy, Tom Barrett. Barrett gets thrown in jail and he gets killed by guards, supposedly. Uh, thanks to the military occupation, the strike pretty much peters out. So, uh, the miners were saying, we'll accept 10 to 15 percent pay cut, not the 33.

Just just let us go back to work. We're all starving. You know, our families are going hungry. Co executives. They say, no, we're going to see this out to the end. Uh, the strike collapses people begrudgingly go back to work. Families are evicted. Uh. They're forced to move, they're forced to go all over the place.

In one of the most famous examples, a lot of these people who we consider Molly Maguires are part of the larger Irish community in Pennsylvania. They actually drift north to Canada and they take part in the Fenian raids. Uh, [00:06:00] Chris, I don't, I don't know if you want to talk about that. No, no, it's such a weird, crazy part of history.

These were Irish Americans who invaded Canada to protest, uh, the treatment of Ireland in, in, in the British empire is a hilarious scene. There's something like 400 different, um, you know, Irish militant nationalists who were full on invading Canada, and both countries had to get together to try and put down this, this strange movement.

It's one of the craziest parts of history. I read about it. I was like, what? Canada was still under the British Empire at that point. Now that you mention it, I, yeah, we didn't declare our independence until like, uh, much later. Um, yeah, now that you mention it, I do. Vaguely remember it. So this kind of reminds, I don't, you guys probably wouldn't know this, but this was like, 10 years ago.

It was a long time ago. I can't remember. And there were Tamils were [00:07:00] protesting what was going on in Sri Lanka, and they shut down a bunch of highways and then they People up here in Canada are like, what's going on here? Like, I don't understand. Like, do you know what, like, why would a Canadian need to know what's, you know, about the conflict that's going on in Sri Lanka, right?

And that's just one of those moments where you go like, I don't understand why they're shutting down the highways. Yeah, this, in this case, it's even. More egregious than that, these people are arming themselves and, and, you know, they kill something like 50 British soldiers in the whole war. It's a really, it's a really crazy thing that happened.

And by the end, there's only like 70. They were hardcore veterans, Civil War veterans, a lot of them. Like, it wasn't just a joke, a couple of mummers. Walk across the border and start, you know, shooting at people. That was a real thing. And wasn't it initially the U. S. government was kind of like, wink, wink.

And then, like, they realized they had to get on [00:08:00] it. I'm sure there must have been something like that. Because at the same time Because they allow it to happen. Yeah, you let 400 armed Irishmen walk across the border. I understand that border security probably wasn't on par is what it is today. But still, that's a pretty egregious thing.

I mean, they wouldn't let 400 people, they wouldn't let 400 armed Irishmen, you know, walk down the street in, in, in Philadelphia in the same time period. Well, what made it crazier is that they, uh, I think they staged off of an island in, um, the Niagara River, if I'm not mistaken. So they were allowed enough to, like you say, 400 Irishman stage and an island.

So they had to have had a lot of boats to get there and then a lot of boats to get to the other side. So there was a, there must've been somebody who was like, you know, let's take a little pot shot at the British, you know, now that the war's over. That's hilarious. Yeah, it's such a crazy part of history.

Uh, and Chris, you wanted to say something? [00:09:00] No, it's just like, I find like, just from reading a little bit of this story, it's a lot of like, oh, like how, like mistreated the Irish were, and there's a lot of that, right? But you see stuff like this and say you're like Anglo Protestant stock, your family's lived here a couple of generations and you see this and you're just like, we didn't have these problems.

And so, you know what I mean? Like, it's understandable, Regal. Like, is this, I don't know, is this something that we really want and, um, we're doing a series on, like, Italian immigration and stuff like that. And when people like Madison, like, Madison Grant was like a, was a super hardcore racist, right? Like, he had, like, racialist arguments for it, but I could understand a general perspective going, like.

Maybe we can just slow it down. Yeah. And I mean, you can make the same argument against like American revolutionaries in the 1770s. You're like, what? Cause you're paying, you're not, you're paying too many taxes. What are you talking about? You don't even pay that much compared to the rest of the British empire.

I mean, and the same [00:10:00] thing in Puerto Rico too. They were like, you can't tax us. How dare you? It was like, but. We're just taxing you the same amount that we're taxing everyone else in our country. So it's that strange dichotomy. I mean, it's, it's the upper versus the lower, and that's the, that's a constant struggle between the two.

And I think that really applies with the Molly Maguires because you think about it. After the civil war, there was a lot of, well, the, during the war, there was inflation and so they had to raise the end because of all the need for the more coal and more stuff like that. So the wages went up, but then when deflationary pressures come in.

Wages should naturally go down. So they had to fight to get the wages to go up during the inflationary times. And then, well, now our wages are like this, who wants to take a cut, even though the, you know, like the macroeconomic situation saying that price. This should go down. I mean, we're going through that same thing.

Now, wages aren't [00:11:00] keeping up with inflation and people want raises to keep up with inflation. But eventually inflation will settle down and who wants to have their, their wages go down once they're at a certain level to keep up with that. I mean, that's like classic Keynesian sticky wages, but it's more than just a theory when it's happening to you.

So you can really see how these. You know, these, uh, workers, you know, they're getting basically screwed on both ends of that. Yeah. Even today. Uh, I mean, I'll talk about this later, the coal mining situation in America. It's a pretty egregious the way the company or the country deals with with coal miners.

Uh, uh, I'm thinking of, I've just I'm researching right now about the, the Harlan county wars in the 1930s in this country. Basically, short story short, uh, miners in Kentucky were trying to unionize. It was [00:12:00] resisted violently by coal operators and local police forces. Uh, and by the end, we're talking like, 2011.

Um, the union succeeds, but Barack Obama passes a bunch of, uh, environmental legislation to counteract the effects of dirty coal, because coal is the dirtiest, uh, beyond anything that you can burn. It's the dirtiest. So there were. Logical steps taken to prevent, uh, coal mining to continue production. But this left the coal miners completely out in the snow.

I think, I mean, there's so much work being done toward marijuana legalization and the first people who get the first crack at a lot of these marijuana postings or jobs or whatever are people who were formerly incarcerated for marijuana charges. So I think it would be a good idea if. When any of this new green legislation comes forward, the first people who really benefit from it should be these coal miners who are completely [00:13:00] left in the dark.

It's not like, uh, their company just has to declare bankruptcy and they can go back, you know, they can go back to their moderately well off lives. The coal miners completely left in the dark. They're left with no money. And in some cases, they were actually forced, were forced to mine for no pay. And they, they stood on the tracks like these Sri Lankans did in Canada of the, of the railroad.

So the, the. Coal that they picked, which was basically using enslaved labor wouldn't be sent away. They wanted to be paid for the, the things that they did. And this is the same thing here. I mean, uh, as far as we've come, there's always farther we can go. And this just shows the level of egregiousness that it could be at first where it is now.

Not that there aren't problems. I just. I think I showed one right there. Coal miners who haven't done anything wrong. They're not trying to destroy the planet. They're not trying to raise sea levels. Not actively, they're just trying to bring home food for their kids and family. [00:14:00] But because of the situation they find themselves in, they're given the short end of the stick, like you were saying, Stephen.

But what do you guys think of that? Do you think that that's a pretty fair assessment with every environmental You know, in environment, green, new deal, whatever that gets passed. Uh, the 1st people who benefit, I think, should be these coal miners and the people who are getting the short end of the stick.

And in all these cases, it was like, when they did the industrialization and Canada and the United States, um, I mean, we can argue whether that was a good idea or not a good idea to switch over to more of a service economy. And, uh. I have my own opinions on that problem is like a lot of the so when they closed a lot of these factories down, I mean, you can pull up the articles.

It's a meme now, but literally a lot of these people thought, like, the people that were working in these factories, we're going to learn how to use computers, or they're going to be coders, or they were going to do this or that. And like, Yeah, if you're in a think tank and you're talking about [00:15:00] people like they're interchangeable, it sounds like a good idea, but the reality is, like, I am assuming a lot of these guys that are working in coal mines, yeah, maybe the managers and stuff like that, slightly different, but the guys that are actually, you know, mining the coal.

They're not going to be working on computers and stuff like that. And I mean, in a humane way, you have to find them something else to do. You just, you have to, right? Otherwise you have what happened in Pittsburgh. You have what happened in all these towns that, uh, became deindustrialized. They, they become hell on earth.

I mean, look at Detroit. It's going to be interesting to see what this trend, because I mean, yeah, it's been since like the, since the seventies and the deindustrialization has hurt really, uh, I mean, I guess you would say more unskilled labor, but now like we're getting into chat GPT and all these things that you can write code in chat GPT that would take 20 coders.

A week to [00:16:00] do, and these AI programs are doing it better and an hour or less. I mean, it's so now that it's creeping into the, like the next rung of skilled labor that has not, that has not been affected by these, these trends. I wonder what's going to happen with that. I mean, so many fields are going to be disrupted through.

AI and things like that in HR and in accounting where they're just not going to need people, you know, armies of people. And it's going to be interesting to see when it creeps into the, to zoomers getting affected by, by all of these trends, you know, what's going to happen to the, to that, to people who, I mean, arguably probably for one reason or another, I have a lot more voice in society.

You know, what's going to happen when they're, I mean, we're, we're starting to see the trends, like job numbers. Most of the, the [00:17:00] increase in jobs has been in the service economy on the lower end of the pay scale. But the, the number of people who are in the 100, 000 job range that are getting laid off, it's like 30%.

It's huge. Wow. Yeah. It's definitely a problem because I mean, I don't need to tell anyone. The historical, uh, parallels to the situation that we're in where people are making or being employed at at bad jobs, and they're forced to get more jobs to make ends meet and, uh, either they run to the far left or the far right.

There's there's really no in between, and they sort of the government sort of forcing the situation on on people. And that's really that's really not okay. I think that before anything, more democracy is what's needed. Uh, in the government and in the workplace and in everyday life. I don't think that there's really a point where democracy can really fail.

If anyone, if [00:18:00] everyone has an opinion, everyone should be allowed to express it. That's just me. Yeah, that definitely opens up a huge, a huge, uh, discussion. Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like Richard Lim's This American President and other great shows.

Go to ParthenonPodcast. com to learn more, and here is a quick word from our sponsors. Yeah, you guys are, you guys are talking about AI and like, you know, like robotics and stuff like that slowly taking away a lot of these jobs. I mean, another repercussion, I think people, um aren't taking into account is physical labor.

I'm not talking about the stuff that the time period that we're talking about in terms of the minors, you know, like the black cloth and the horrible working conditions. And I mean, that was not right, obviously, right? It was extremely bad, but physical labor in terms of just, you know, physically working a [00:19:00] job.

Now, I'm not saying that, uh, people have to do this, uh, for their entire lives. This is. I don't know. It's kind of basically what I do for work, but I think once that's kind of not there, it's not going to be good, especially for men, to be quite honest with you. I think they should, every man should have to work a physical job at one point in their life, just to kind of understand, um, if you think you have it bad at your job, you know, it beats throwing coal in the crate and lugging it up a hill.

You know, like, it really does. I think it has like kind of a leveling effect. It's either you can do the job or you can't do the job. Right? Um, I just think that's something that's, I don't know, people aren't talking about and I don't know, people say it, I don't know, they see it as a liberation and go, I'm liberated from the, uh, you know, the toils of hard labor, but a hard, hard labor in and of itself, I think is a good quality.

And I was thinking too, like that, that connects back to the Molly Maguire's and like this, uh, [00:20:00] conflict between labor and management, like, think about it to the, you know, over the past, the, the de industrialization of the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, and even to the two thousands, like all the people who lost their jobs, are they going to really.

That now the, the managerial class and the coders and the, the accountants and the HR that they're losing their jobs now, like that class distinction has been set up now and they're not going to really care and there's not going to be a lot of room for, uh, forming alliances because they're going to be like, yeah, you made, uh, you know, six figures for all these times while I was, uh, you know, For a gen, two generations now, people have had no jobs, you know, so I think a lot of conflict is going to be coming up and a lot of that conflict really played out in the 1870s where there was such a massive change in the [00:21:00] way the economy worked.

Yeah, definitely. And speaking of the 1870s, uh. Uh, the thing like the Paris Commune just happened, 1870. The Communards rose in Paris, and something like 20, 000 to 100, 000 Parisians were butchered in the street by a reactionary French government. Uh, and this became The the synonymous calling card for all forms of agitation.

They blame the great fire in Chicago on on communards. They, they, they compared the, the Sioux nation, which was fighting their last rebellion in the, in the plains of Dakota and, and, and stuff to, to the reds. They were like, these were the first and that's, it works out that they were literally red men.

That's what the, the, at least journalists and everything called them. Uh, and they were like, this is red society in America, and we need to stop this out. So Americanism can start to flourish again. And that was how this whole, [00:22:00] uh, uh, scenario was sort of, uh, Uh, placed in and and throughout the late 1860s, uh, early 1870s, the Molly Maguires were very active.

So there's a guy, David Muir. He's killed. He shot through the heart and he stabbed repeatedly. There's this guy, William Pollack. He's on the road with his kid. Uh, he gets bushwhacked, uh, uh, he gets shot in the back, but somehow he's managed to, he manages to turn on his attacker and during their hand to hand struggle, his son is just like pummeling this dude over the face with a horse whip, uh, who's only 14 years old.

So, so good on that kid. He was, uh, seemingly raised pretty well that he was able to defend him and his father in that situation. Um, so following that, yeah. There was a period of calm. This is because there were no major peasant holidays in between. So the 2nd, December starts up. Boom. There's another killing.

Uh, a company store was ransacked. Uh, Philip Warren's [00:23:00] his house was ransacked to his wife was held at gunpoint terrorized. 1866, same exact thing. It's more of the same. The, uh, on April 2nd, two strangers, complete strangers arrive in Mahoy Township, and they shoot a mine owner's son in the face. This kid, uh, or I assume young adult.

I'm not sure how old he was. He manages to stay alive. And he, he fights off these two and one of them gets killed in the, in the melee. Uh, this shows pretty clearly that Mali's were working across county lines. They would travel north and south across county, uh, territory and commit hits based on, you know, what this guy said about this mine operator or what this member said about this company store.

Uh, and this is how things happen for a lot. So, to counteract this, the Pennsylvania state legislature goes to an unprecedented, uh, uh, uh, new level. They give [00:24:00] private military powers to the coal executives and they create the coal and iron police. This, um, as you might expect, uh, was not a very, uh, good institution.

They mostly targeted people for labor agitation of any kind. I mean, maybe some of the people they arrested were genuinely. Awful people, and that's definitely possible. Uh, but for the most part, a good portion of the people they went for were, you know, community men about town who had a voice who weren't going to be cowed by, you know, the coal executives and what they wanted.

Um, uh, this was compared at the time to feudal retainers. So who, who, I mean, today, who knows what it would have been compared to? I mean, it probably would have been compared to is the Wagner group, which is what we talked about a little bit before, and it goes a step further. The guy, uh, what Mark Bullock, he says, basically.[00:25:00]

That there was a colonized island in the midst of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth. So, uh, they've given up all forms of control. Um, so for months, as these strikes go on, the, the companies just keep the mines open. They're like, we're going to keep the mines open. We're going to get rid of the worst. And we're going to bring in new people.

We're going to bring in people from England and Wales. When they bring in these miners, they're also complaining about, you know, rigorous work schedule, lack of pay, you know, no pay for putting up beams of protection, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and they're like, what's the problem? So, eventually the coal operators just go broke.

They run out of money. And this sort of opens the door for this guy Gowan to come in, uh, before he's able to come in and take over everything, a union rises. This is one of the first, uh, major mining unions, especially in the state of Pennsylvania. This was the WBA or the Workmen's Benevolence [00:26:00] Association.

Um, it was headed by an Irish miner named John Siney. He only recently moved to America. He immigrated from England, uh, born in, in, in County Leash. He was, he immigrated to England and then he immigrated once more to America in 1863. And this was a clear sign that things were changing for the Irish community in Pennsylvania and the country at large.

It wasn't just some Irish thing anymore. The WBA was, uh, incredible in the fact that it allowed all nationalities to participate. Uh, any kind of person can join this, uh, Workmen's Society and, and receive, um, benefits through it or support. Um, with the rise of the WBA, you see immediately Molly Maguire killings fall off a cliff.

In four years, there were two. Uh, that's almost unheard of. Every other year we've talked about so far, there's been at least 10, uh, if not more, [00:27:00] uh, uh, uh, uh, MALDI related killings. So what does this say? I think this says, and uh, when we talked earlier in, in our first part, uh, Chris was asking, what's the point of all this?

I don't, I don't get it. I don't know. I don't know where to, what to make of this. I think what to make of it is that when, when this union came, violence fell off a cliff. And when unions spring up in anywhere across the planet, violence, especially labor related violence, falls off a cliff. That's not to say there aren't, uh, places where corruption can sneak in and organized crime can take over.

I mean, my grandfather was a teamster under Hoffa. So he, I know full well about the many abuses that could take place when unions are given too much power. But if you treat them as equal. Uh, equal institutions, equal associations. You see, uh, violence fall off a cliff. Uh, any country, you can name it. Uh, [00:28:00] violence has fallen off dramatically once union rights are preeminent in the, the state's thinking.

Talk about a place like Italy. In the 1890s, the, the Fasci movement was huge and they were these violent agitators, much like the Molly Maguire movement. Um. And what happens after they're crushed violently by this guy? Crispy, uh, new prime minister comes in. He allows the right to strike. He allows unions the right to organize.

He allows collective bargaining and instantaneously wages go up. The livelihoods of people go up and the economy flourishes, not just flourishes. I'm talking about Italy has the second highest growth rate prior to World War I than Japan. Every other country, it outpaces. It outpaces Great Britain, it outpaces France, even the United States.

Uh, there's not a more powerful, uh, economy besides Japan who's going through the Meiji Restoration at this time. So this to me is the [00:29:00] point. I think union rights, when they're introduced, They mitigate violence on a huge scale, but what do you guys think? Oh, I was going to say, like, you brought up, I mean, the problems with the unions.

I mean, one big part of our show, really, uh, Organized Crime and Punishment, is talking about organized crime and unions and the corruption that it can breed, right? Um But you, but at the same time, like, if you know you're dealing with, say, characters, say, from the mafia, I'm just going to use this as an example, you're less likely to screw around.

Are you not? I don't, that's, uh, because you don't know who's going to be knocking on your door, right? Um, but in terms of like, say, like the owners and say, union reps being able to communicate with one another, um, better if, uh, the unions have a bit, uh, more power. Yeah. I would generally agree with that. I mean, I'm not, I'm not the, I don't know, like, I didn't grow up with, like, the Teamsters Union and stuff like that.

[00:30:00] Right? So, like, I have, like, an interesting, I don't know. I don't know how exactly how to feel about unions because, like, I hear sometimes, like, You know, somebody joins the union and then I hear what they're getting paid in terms of what, uh, he's like somebody at work mentioned their, their husband's like a carpenter or something, or he's doing, I don't know, something.

He's in the union and they're paying, um, I think it's like 70 an hour. And I go, I don't think that's sustainable. You know what I mean? Like, I just, I don't think that's, you know what I mean? Like, long term, I don't think that wage is sustainable. I know up here in Oshawa, where I currently am right now, there's a big GM plant, and they basically shut the entire plant down for, I believe it was 2 years to basically get all the old workers out.

And then they brought it back up. Then they opened it up again, and I think they're making a truck and 1 other vehicle out of there and they brought all new workers. And I mean, 1 of the reasons that they got rid of all the old workers, you had guys that have been working there for, you know, 30 [00:31:00] years, right?

And literally their job is to, like, say, put the tires on the car when it's going through the assembly line. And some of these guys were making close to 50 an hour. And I go, I don't know. You can't. Run a profitable pro plant at those wages, only a few dollars, not more than three or four dollars a day. And they weren't even paid based on like rate age or wages or anything.

They were paid on tonnage. So it depended on how much coal you literally. Mind and of course, every single dynamite charge you use to displace call that was taken out of your paycheck. You broke a piece of equipment that was taken out of your paycheck. You, you, you know, your thing went off on your headlamp.

You had to replace that. That's coming out of your paycheck at the end of the week. And this is in the movie, this is one of the best scenes in the entire movie. Uh, he's getting his paycheck. And the guy in the nice suit is saying, You used three things of, uh, dynamite. You had to replace, [00:32:00] uh, a wick on your thing.

And you have, um, you had to replace a bunch of boards. Here's 23 cents for the whole week. And that was literally all the money he made and and Richard Harris is just there staring at him like stunned. Like, what are you talking about? And this was a whole lineup of people that have to just sit there and bear all these expenses that they shouldn't have even been charged.

I mean, realistically, this should have come out of the company's paycheck at least. I think that's at least a little bit fair. They're forced to come home with 23 cents or in some cases. Oh, I don't know. The place that they work at. Well, yeah, I mean, it's it's circumstances like that, where you look at it and go, like, organized labor in terms of fighting against some of these injustices.

It makes sense, right? Um, it more so my commentary is kind of like how modern unions are kind of running. And I just use the wages as an example. And people, I don't know, people will say, like, push [00:33:00] back and say, well, you're like a bootlicker or something like that. But I think they just think objectively, you know, like, you can't.

Yeah. It's not sustainable to be paying a guy, you know, 55 an hour just because he happened to work there for 30 years to put a tire on a car. It's just not, the company can't be profitable. And at the end of the day, like it, it has to be like a symbiotic relationship, right? They can't be just all about the workers and it can't be all just about the owners.

It really has to work together because if the owners are not making a profit. Right? How can they justify keeping the workers and vice versa, right? This is what happened in England with the, uh, the miners there and Margaret Thatcher, right? People can say whatever they want about Margaret Thatcher, but the, um, coal miners in England at the time, these were not profitable endeavors.

They just weren't. And regardless of whether you think what she did was right or not right, you know. Because I have a lot of respect for her because she decided on a course of action and she stuck to it, you know, and that's [00:34:00] an example of where it becomes way too much in one direction. Really at the end of the day, and people talked a lot about this throughout history, right?

You want to have like a symbiotic relationship kind of where like the owners are respecting the workers and the workers are respecting the company. Yeah, I really, it really boils down to it when there's an imbalance in the labor market, those people, the, the workers in those Pennsylvania coal towns, there's nowhere for them to go.

It's not like they could pick up and go to the next company. So the company really did have them over the barrel. But then when it, like Chris was saying, when things get out of balance in the other way. And labor has so much power over the companies, then the companies wind up folding because they can't pay those, those wages, do those imbalances just have to work them out and they suck at the time that it's either going to, it's going to be bad for.

Everybody at some [00:35:00] point when those labor, when labor versus management breaks down, but eventually it's going to work itself out. Like, I think almost we want, like, we want everything to run smoothly, but sometimes it just doesn't. And I mean, I keep bringing it back to how things now with the industrialization.

Yeah, it's 40 years and it's, it's really crushed, like in a lot of places, two generations, but in the grand scope of things is 40 years, a long time. As far as historical trends go, it's really, really bad for individuals on the micro scale, but in the macro scale, that's just how these things work out. Yeah, but, and that's obviously no consolation for someone who's just working and it's like, wow, I, I have to work three jobs just to get my kids into like a decent school or something, you know, uh, uh.

Like you were saying today, huge change in the market, huge change in the way America makes money. Now we're mostly a service, [00:36:00] uh, uh, service style economy where previously we were industrialized. Uh, I'm in the process of actually researching vociferously for, um, uh, uh, the ninth, my 1930s episode. It's going to cover the thirties, forties.

Um, and there is exactly like what you were talking about, Steve, where labor is given too much power, not out of, you know, like a shifty sort of double dealing kind of way, but genuinely, they were trying to give workers power. But what ended up happening, and FDR readily admitted to this, uh, America became a cartel economy.

These unions became cartels. And the companies that served them became sort of like, uh, the drug fiends. So the, the drug fiends would do anything possible to keep the cartels happy. Which left the government happy, but this led to the massive recession of 1937, which was, which was a huge deal. I mean, [00:37:00] there were questions if FDR was even going to get reelected for his third term.

Uh, we don't think about it now, but it's a, it's a huge part of American history. And there was actually a very, uh, uh, well known, uh, uh, Sort of report a statistical analysis done. Uh, I'm just trying to remember who did it. I think it's UCLA, but he basically, this guy basically puts forward the argument that FDR prolonged the Great Depression through his interventionists economic policies.

That might be the case. I'm not arguing that that's either here or there. I'd suggest reading. The, the, the study, because it goes into way more detail than just that. Obviously, there's more than that. He makes a point to point out that toward the end of his presidency, FDR changed his mind on a lot of these things.

And a lot of these same, uh, ideas were shifted and, and, and changed to a more even middle keel sort of place. Um, but basically what ended up happening is, is like what I was saying, it [00:38:00] became a, a, a cartel and that's obviously not good. But it's obviously not good when, you know, private industry is given complete control over their employer.

Uh, and I think it helps to explain how organized labor and organized crime weren't actually the strange bedfellows. They actually, it actually made perfect sense. Just like how organized crime and law enforcement aren't strange bedfellows. It makes perfect sense. They work with each other. Constantly. I mean, it's a, it's a basic relationship.

It can be symbiotic. It can be incredibly detrimental. Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like James Early's Key Battles of American History Podcast and many other great shows. Go over to ParthenonPodcast. com to learn more. And here is a quick word from our sponsors.[00:39:00]

You really do lay out, Joe, those two dichotomies of where, in the 1870s and in the earlier, earlier than that, where these corporations had so much control, and then it swings in the other direction. And I think that you really have to think about, like, hopefully people are looking at these things and trying to figure out, you know, what can we do?

To stop it from swinging so much because then when things do swing to such a degree, that's where, how you were saying earlier is that people either go to the extreme left or the extreme right or some sort of extreme that doesn't end well for everybody. Yeah, exactly. It's all about balance. It's all about middle ground.

I mean. Even the argument like, oh, I want a complete socialist economy. I want a complete capitalist economy. Those are completely unfeasible, uh, uh, uh, structures. You can't, I mean, even when Adam Smith was writing Wealth of Nations, he was writing it at, right at the start of, of the [00:40:00] Industrial Revolution in England.

So he needed, he was writing about something that was already passing him by. Same thing with Marx. He was writing about socialism from an early industrialized perspective. He wasn't writing about it in the future where, oh, the AI is going to take over people's jobs. He wasn't thinking about this. He was thinking about, like, sewing machines taking over people's jobs.

I mean, it, it's literally, that's literally the, this. Yeah, no, it's the truth. All right, people. I mean, it's good to read the original thinkers, obviously, right? Like, especially there's like a lot of people will claim like, oh, I'm a socialist or, you know, like, I'm a fascist or something. You're using, like, the, the 2 extreme rights and then you talk to these people and like, have you, did you.

Have you actually read Benito Mussolini's book? Like, did you actually read Karl Marx? I know for sure a lot of the times they're lying, because if you actually tried to sit and read Das Kapital, God bless you, I've tried. I got through some of [00:41:00] it. But it's, it's not a fun read at all. Look, Joe, now that we're moving into the 1870s, tell us a little bit more what was going on at that, uh, at that time.

So, through the whole early 1870s, you have this guy, Franklin Gowen. He's buying up everything. He's buying up the canal, which was the main, uh, exporter of coal previous to this. He's already been placed in charge of the, the Reading Pennsylvania Railroad. Um, and he's starting the process of buying out the legislature.

Super easy to do, you know, no problem. That this isn't the issue he's having. The issues he's having is with the union, the WBA, uh, which is now basically a statewide institution, has a lot of power, has a lot of, uh, I guess, progressive congressmen who are on their side, pro labor congressmen, whatever you want to call them.

Um, and he's buying up all this stuff. He's also trying to buy up all these [00:42:00] individually owned small, um, uh, businesses, but right before the 1870s, I should just mention this. There's this massive disaster, uh, massive mining disaster for the time. It was the deadliest in United States history. It's in 1869 at a place called Avondale in, uh, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, uh, 110.

Uh, miners were trapped when a single shaft mine collapsed on them. Uh, they basically suffocated in the, in the collapse, like whole townships came to try and save the people still inside, but there was no hope. Um, uh, in, in response. Or, well, right before that, there was actually a safety bill in Pennsylvania state legislature that would have, uh, demanded a 2nd exit to your mind.

It would have demanded a safety instructor for your mind. It would have, uh, another 1 would have demanded, [00:43:00] uh. Fencing around an empty hole, for example, all of these were rejected by the state legislature. The guy who rejected it is this guy, Samuel G. Turner, who said, I can't only remember, but 1 instance where fire damp explosion has hurt a single minor.

So, because he can only remember the 1 time when it happened, he decided to, uh, Vote against this bill. Uh, basically his words are recounted. His life is in danger. Um, and he ends up passing a safety bill through the house. He loses right away. So at least democracy works a little bit, I guess. Um, at this time, the Mali's are basically underground.

I mean, they're letting the union do their thing. Their main face is the ancient order of hibernians. So that's what they're mainly doing. They're helping out Irish people in town. They're helping out, you know, Irish people in local politics because the Irish, they latch on to local politics, uh, very easily.

I mean, [00:44:00] they become sheriffs, they become mayors, they become. You know, state senators, et cetera, et cetera. And they have a huge avid base because Irishmen will always vote for fellow Irishmen, um, almost exclusively. Even this guy, Gowen, he's voted for exclusively by Irishmen during the Civil War. So, uh, 1870, Gowen, he's forced to sign a contract with the Union because rail unions are, uh, striking or, or threatening to strike in solidarity with the WBA.

He signs another one. And, but in the north anthracite fields, they're, um, they're still, uh, they're still under control of separate mining institutions. And these mining institutions are saying we're going to need to cut wages. So they strike against John Siney's wishes. Um, it was very effective, but this is when Gowan puts the hammer down.

He, he raises freight rates [00:45:00] 100%. He closes down the canal he just bought, and he starts buying up even more territory with these dummy companies. Um, by the end of 1874, he has 100, 000 acres of, of prime coal mining real estate. Uh, and, and this was basically in a single movement, he became like the kingpin.

Uh, and this basically crushes the strike. They agree to arbitration and they all begrudgingly, everyone begrudgingly returns to work. So, by 1873. Gowen is meeting with, he meets with Alan Pinkerton. Uh, I assume everyone knows the Pinkertons famous private detective agency. Uh, he he's famously also this guy, Alan Pinkerton, he delivered, um, information to the union on like military movements.

He claimed that like the Confederate army was like 200, 000 strong outside of Richmond and, and. This is what made George McClellan pee his pants [00:46:00] and, and run as fast as he could away from there. Uh, but he be, he's like this incredibly conservative, like, tough on crime. Like, he would get visibly, like, he would visibly shake when he heard about certain crimes.

Like, if he heard about, like, a, a really bad break in or something, he would become visibly angry and, like, red in the face. He was a real, like, crusader. Here's about this from Gowan almost right away. He's like, yes, let's stop this movement. We need to we need to end it where it's that where it where it is right now before it gets even worse.

He fingers, uh, uh, 1 of his detectives guy named, uh, James McParland. He, um, this guy is an Irish Catholic from Ulster, so he fits the part perfectly. Uh, and his job is to go undercover into school, kill county infiltrate the Molly McGuire movement. Uh, report on any crimes or anything committed and and through this investigation, uh, he will end up bringing [00:47:00] down the Molly Maguires.

So he arrives in October 27th, 1873. He showed up. He said he was an itinerant Irish worker. He was just on the lamb and he was accused of murder. Supposedly got into a fight with this guy and that was his cover story. He's almost discovered like right away. The second he shows up in, in, in school, kill.

He's almost discovered by, uh, uh, uh, a barman who I assume knew him, uh, from, uh, you know, time previous, he gets off Scott free there. He meets up with the body master of, uh, I forget what County it is. But he, he meets up with this guy Lawler, who makes him a part of the HOA, and then the Molly Maguire movement.

Uh, he is then made the note taker, because he can read and write. No one seemed to question this. They just were like, okay, you can read and write. Sure. Uh, take all the notes. This made it incredibly easy for him to, you know, dig up dirt and, and keep [00:48:00] track of everything that was going on. And it made him an integral part of every meeting.

I mean, he was there when they decided when to give out blood money for, for, for a hit and when to, to do this and to do that. And he kept notes on all this stuff. Now, he wrote a book following this, actually, about the whole situation. Now, a lot of people claim he was actually, like, an agent provocateur.

Like, he was working to sully the good name of the HOA and the Molly Maguire movement. Which, previous to this, genuinely wasn't very violent anymore. I mean, this was, they put on their public face. And the Molly Maguires was, you know, something they brought out if they really needed to threaten someone. Um.

But through this whole time, they weren't really necessary, the Molly Maguires. I don't know, what's your opinion? Was he there to be an agent provocateur, or was he just legitimately investigating what was going on? I think it's a little bit of both. I think that it was this and that. I don't think [00:49:00] that there was one clear answer there.

Because, I mean, if you look at a picture of this guy, he's like, he's steely, determined stare. He seems like the kind of guy. I mean, I don't know him personally, uh, but he seems like the kind of guy to, to go to any length to advance his station. And, and this is sort of how he's portrayed by Richard Harris in the movie.

He's this guy will go to any length to just get a little bit ahead because he's been, he's been stepped on his whole life. And that's sort of what he, he, um, he looks like genuinely and, and, and just following him. The, the Molly Maguire's, uh, he would use the same archetype to bring down other movements.

Like, he's made, uh, in the early 1900s, he's made the head investigator for this bombing in Nebraska, I think. And he uses this bombing of this disgruntled employee against his boss. Um, to to pin it on the entire international workers of the world movement, the IWW [00:50:00] and he accuses the head of the IWW as a part of this conspiracy.

He accuses, you know, it's the same. It's the same, you know, strategy. Basically, he's there's this labor movement. That's radical. It's sometimes violent. Uh, so he went in, he accused them of this and that. In that case, it didn't work. All the people accused got off. But in this case, it works to the nines. And that's because of how violent things become, uh, following the long strike of the 18, of the 1870s.

So this strike lasts like 5 months. It's a 5 month long strike. Um, throughout it. I mean, people get more and more disheartened as time goes on, uh, and, and the strike is basically brought on by Gowen. He's been hoarding coal this whole time, even though he owes tens of millions of dollars to, you know, loaners and banks and stuff for all the, all the [00:51:00] land he's purchased.

Um, He's been hoarding coal this whole time. And this is the, this is the final nail on the coffin for the WBA. The WBA, it falls into lesser hands. It falls into the second in command of the, the movement because John Siney is elected the head of the, uh, the, the 1st president of a national. Miners union, which represents, which represented all minors, uh, at the time, or at least attempted to, but I, so I'm not sure.

Yeah, I mean, there, there was other, um, corners on the market that had happened at roughly that time. It was a golden fist with gold at, um, more or less that time. Like that was a going. Yes. Yes. That's around that same time. Yeah. You know, and it was almost like a game of chicken with themselves to if they can.

Do it like if they can hold off everybody long enough to make it work at the end before everything like can just colossally blew up in their face. [00:52:00] Yeah, it was basically a very long game. What did you say a game of chicken? That's that's perfect. It was like, who's gonna who's gonna flinch 1st? Who's gonna who's gonna let slip the their hand?

Who's going to give it all up? You know, I think that was that's a very good analogy. I think it's interesting, too, with that guy who's basically going undercover, it's different when it's being done, I think, by the companies and through this private company of the Pinkertons, they have a different goal at the end of the day than say, the police or the FBI, the FBI has to do things in a certain way with like Joe Pistone, that you need to get convictions at the end and the way Gather evidence throughout that process is going to, we're really at the goal of the companies is just to end the strikes so they can operate in a different way.

So, like the, is it, is he an agent provocateur or is he not? It's kind of the same different sides of the [00:53:00] same coin, I would think. What do you think of that? Yeah. Which side are you on? I mean, that's really what it comes down to. If you're on the side of the company, it makes perfect sense for, for this guy to be going through and he's doing, he's doing the Lord's work.

I mean, these people agreed to, to work for this amount of money for this amount of tonnage rate. And now they're trying to go against an agreement that was made between a company and, uh, uh, an individual. Uh, I guess from their perspective, they would say. Well, this agreement was made under duress, if anything, I mean, we have just as much a right to associate with ourselves as you have a right to decide coal prices for the whole market or gas prices or, or whatever.

Yeah, and you make an agreement. Does that agreement last forever that we have to basically take it? You know, I think that's the next, the next step to it. Probably the most bizarre thing for Anyone listening to this podcast or researching this is just all these private entities doing all this stuff.

Like, it's a private, [00:54:00] uh, detective company that's doing this and the company has its own private police force. It's, you know what I mean? Like, the company's like, it's. I mean, we just don't, I mean, we're starting to see that a little bit offline. We talked to me, I think I mentioned Blackwater and we mentioned like the Wagner group, which was like, I don't know, like these semi private armies.

I mean, I think it's something that we're going to start seeing a little more often, probably not within our lifetimes, like Amazon having like an army or something like that. But we're seeing kind of shadows of that with private security. And I can't think of the name of it. And I probably don't want to say it to get on the wrong side of them, but the government is even using them as security instead of police, because police have do things a certain way, you know, they can't violate your rights completely openly where these companies, even though they're.

Working for the government. It's kind of like a layer because, because these [00:55:00] companies are working for the government, they're supposed to follow the rules in a certain way of like, you know, not, uh, uh, trampling on people's constitutional rights, but because they're a private company, you have to sue the company.

And then if you. You have to like go through the company before you can sue the government. A lot of companies are starting to use these companies because it incites them from a lot of liability and the company is, is insulated. It's, you know, it's not full blown where the, the private security is basically.

The police for a county like Carbon County or Lucerne County, but you can definitely see that there's some, some similarities. History isn't repeating itself, but it's singing a similar tune. So what happens as we get to the pretty much the end of the Molly Maguires? So the long strike's over. It is 1875.

Uh, it's been it's been [00:56:00] defeated. Everyone goes back to work. They have to accept whatever Gowan agrees to pay them. People are blacklisted. You have 2 choices. Now you leave change your name or you starve. I mean, those are really the 2 options in front of people, uh, in the 2 months after the long strike.

There are 6 Molly McGuire assassinations. So, I mean, if this isn't a clear example of we've lost, you know, the, the little bit we were given, or we were allowed, we had to take, uh, now we have to, we have to go back to the old ways. We have to go back to the hard men who, who wait in the night. And, and this is one of the, I think this illustrates the point perfectly.

This was a notice left on a, I think a mineshaft or something, and it's written in Irish Brogue, so it says, I am against shooting as much as ye are, but the Union is broke up, and we have got nothing to defend ourselves with but our revolvers, and if we don't [00:57:00] use them, we shall have to work for fifty cents a day.

So this was a very stark choice for the people, um, who, who, who were living there. I mean, they're, they're living in this supposedly new world where, um, you know, things were supposed to be different where, you know, we, we fought to make men holy. Now we're fighting to make men free. That's supposed to have happened already.

Uh, and now they're subjecting people to basically Amount of money you would pay to refurbish tools or something. I mean, 50 cents is nothing. Uh, on top of this, there was anti Irish mob violence as well. So you see vigilantism and start to creep back into the Irish community where. Uh, Protestant Irish people or, uh, different ethnicities altogether are actively violently attacking Irish people.

In the worst case, Jack Kehoe, who is the [00:58:00] new head of the Molly Maguires, is, um, his, uh, brother in law is murdered. He's shot 15 times, dragged out of his house, shot 15 times. His, uh, sister in law, or his sister. Is murdered as she's pregnant. She has a, uh, a baby. She's shot in the chest and, uh, his, his wife.

Um, his mother in law is pistol whipped. Uh, so she, I guess, got off relatively scot free, but this was a really horrifying event in the movie. It's it's basically tame, uh, what happens? I mean, they're both asleep and they both get shot while they're sleeping and the baby already exists in this. The, the, the, the baby is still Inside the, the sister.

Uh, so the Mali's and the AOH, they begin to fall apart after this. This was the last act of violence that we can point toward or against the Mali's before the situation just becomes, uh, [00:59:00] impossible. And this has to do with McParland. He returns from exile, from being undercover for 3 plus years, collecting all this evidence.

Uh. And charges are brought plenty of people. I mean, 20 plus people are charged with connection to the Malini movement or conspiracy to commit murder. Uh, Gowan actually serves as the lead prosecutor. So this was at a time when you could still, uh, uh, serve as a prosecuting attorney, even if you were a private citizen.

And he says during this, um, during this trial, this trial. really sham of a trial. I mean, it was packed with, uh, conservative Dutchmen and, and Quakers from, from the, from different parts of Pennsylvania. Uh, he says, this very organization that we are now for the first time exposing to the light of day. Has hung like a pall over the people of this country.

Behind it stalked darkness and despair. Brooding like grim [01:00:00] shadows over the desolated hearth and the ruined home. And throughout the length and breadth of this fair land was heard the voice of wailing and lamentation. Nor is it alone those whose names that I have mentioned. But it is hundreds of unknown victims whose bones lie moldering over the face of this country.

So this was a very, like, powerful statement. I mean, his whole, like, diatribe was actually turned into a very popular pamphlet following this, Ga Gowen's diatribe, because it is very much fire and brimstone, you know, like Chris was saying, I can't, you can't help but think that he's kind of cool, right? I mean, I, I'm doing one about, I just did a, uh, an episode on, on Blair Mountain.

And there's this guy in the, during the Battle of Blair Mountain, this is the largest labor uprising in American history, uh, this guy, Don Chaffin, he's the sheriff slash, you know, uh, medieval baron of this [01:01:00] county in West Virginia. And he is the single worst human being I think I've ever read about. I mean, racist, violent, a drunk, everything that you can think of this guy is, but you can't help but be like, God damn it.

You're kind of cool. I, I, I don't like that. I don't like that that's the case. But just for example, this guy, a minor walks into his office, pulls a gun on him. He says, Don Chafin, I'm going to shoot you dead. And Don Chafin, he pulls out his own pistol, cool as anything, and he says, Go ahead, we'll hop into hell together.

Like, this is the kind of guy, That's cool, I can't, I can't help it, I'm sorry. I, I, But this is the kind of guy that Gowen is too, They share a lot of similarities. Um, so the first, They're all found guilty, obviously. There's no question. It takes like 20 minutes for the jury to deliberate. Um, the first round of hangings is set for, uh, uh, the Day of the Rope.

This is Black Thursday, June 21st, [01:02:00] 1877. Ten Molly Maguires, supposed Molly Maguires, a lot of these were just AOH members and union guys and stuff. They all hang together. Uh, among their number Uh, is not Kehoe Kehoe hangs, uh, individually. He is charged with an age old murder that happened during the Civil War or something.

Uh, that was like a bar fight that ended in in someone getting, like, stabbed to death or something, but he was charged with this in connection with being the head of the Molly McGuire movement. Um, he tries to argue for years, uh, against his, uh, against his. Hanging. It doesn't work. He gets killed in 1878 and there are about 10 more following that 2 of the worst.

Uh, it were these 2 guys, they were both accused Molly's, uh, they had their sentences reprieved for, I don't know, like, a day or a few months or whatever by the governor at, like, 1037 at [01:03:00] 1035, they were led to the gallows. So there's this. Time in between where this messenger is furiously banging on the door to try and be let in before this execution can happen and and basically they hear this guy banging.

They assume it's a distraught relative who missed the who missed the time, you know, and they don't answer it until they already are dropped. And so these 2 people are hanging switching because both of their necks don't break. So they're both twitching on the end of a line like fish, and as they finally let this messenger in, and the sheriff reads it, and instead of cutting him down, he takes his time, he's reading the whole thing out, he's like, I just received this, and then the guy stopped twitching, he turned over, he's like, I'm as sorry as anyone, and then he blames the priest.

He blamed the priest for, um, speeding up the execution process. So that was a pretty horrifying end to the Molly Maguire movement. So as this is happening, all these Mollies are [01:04:00] being executed together. The entire country is in a state of upheaval, the likes of which has never been seen before. I mean, this is the great railroad strike of 1877.

Something like 100 plus workers are killed, and they're in a lot of these industrialized places where we talked about today. Pittsburgh is a huge spot for revolutionary violence during 1877 to the point where like a National Guard unit is like literally barricaded inside a big, like, uh, I think it's like a train station or something like a big brick train station building and protesters actually like wheel a burning, uh, a wagon.

Full of stuff. So it catches this whole building on fire and the National Guard need to run for their lives as they're getting shot at by the citizenry of Pittsburgh. In Chicago, there's a burgeoning socialist movement, an American socialist movement that's led almost exclusively by immigrants, [01:05:00] German immigrants, but it's also led by one of the most interesting couples in history.

This is the couple of Albert and Lucy Parsons. Albert Parsons was a civil war, a veteran. He fought for the Confederacy. So following the Confederacy, he disowned the whole idea. He disowned, um, um, racism. He became a radical Republican and then he became an anarchist socialist. His wife was a formerly enslaved woman named Lucy Parsons, who was maybe more radical than he was.

And these two basically foment a gigantic uprising in Chicago that kills maybe like 40 people. There's this massive battle called the Battle of the Viaduct between state and civilian forces with sticks and stones and all kinds of weaponry. Uh And in St. Louis, the 1st ever commune in American history is declared, uh, maybe the only 1.

This was started [01:06:00] during the 1st general strike in the United States. Uh, and it was held up and mostly kept alive through German immigration. And German immigration was a huge part of keeping a place like Missouri, a part of the Union during the Civil War. You don't think about it, but, uh, Germans for whatever reason, they said, we need a place that looks exactly like home and it's exactly in the middle.

So they all moved to Missouri and they're like, this is the same. This is. And that's why the Midwest has so many breweries and stuff because of this German influence. Uh, but yeah, the Molly Maguires, 20 of them would be dead in total. Uh, in a final, like, quotation, this is sort of what you were talking about before, Chris, with the private influence.

It just reminded me of this quote. I needed to find it. So, the Molly Maguire trials. We're a surrender of state sovereignty, a private corporation initiated the investigation through a private detective agency, a [01:07:00] private police force arrested the alleged offenders and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them.

The state provided only the courtroom and the gallows. Any objective study of the tenure of the times and the entire record must conclude that the Mollies did not have a fair and impartial jury. They were therefore denied one of the most fundamental rights that William Penn guaranteed to all Pennsylvania's citizens.

And as if to emphasize this point, uh, even clearer, one of the most famous final events Or final acts, I suppose, of of anyone, uh, occurs before he's hung Alexander Campbell or maybe a guy named Tom Fisher. I'm not sure exactly who did it. There's a bunch of controversy over who was actually the one who did this, but he dug his hand.

Above, high above his cell wall, and he said, There is proof of [01:08:00] my words. That mark of mine will never be wiped out. There it will remain forever. To shame the country that is hanging an innocent man. And, as far as we know, that handprint is still there. Uh, a sheriff eventually, or a warden or something, uh, eventually plastered over the handprint.

Uh, but it was very visible well until the 1820 or 1920s, 1930s, when it was finally plastered, I can attest I've seen the hand, the hand. I don't know what this is. I've gone to that jail. It's a museum now, private museum, and he's the curator and he's the curator. I talked to him for like an hour because nobody, I think everybody else was kind of on the ghost tour.

And he was like, anybody who wanted to hear the history, you better take a seat because he was going to tell it to you. The hand cut came back. And so you can take that for what it's worth, but [01:09:00] they plastered over it. Like Plaster, not just painted over it. They plastered over it and anything that they did the hand.

And I guess the Catholic church, either they investigated it or they're still investigating it, that it's like a bonafide miracle, like relic type thing. Wow. So this guy might be Patrick Campbell is he might be on the way to canonization. Yeah, you can go to, uh, Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, and see the hand to this day.

Yeah, this is definitely the thing that got me most interested in the story, because I had no idea that this even existed. I, I, there was a, it's a really terrible reality show, I guess. It's like a ghost hunter show. It's called Ghost Adventures, and there's this This guy, Zach Bagan, who's just this complete meathead.

I mean, he's like, Bro, are there ghosts in here, bro? Are there ghosts? Like, this is, this is how he, like, confronts these ghosts. I'm like, yeah, no wonder nothing has ever happened on one of [01:10:00] your shows. I, yeah, it's, uh, but that's how I first heard about it. I didn't understand the labor context behind it, but then once I started researching it, I was like, oh my god, that's, that's this.

And, and, and, oh my, but yeah, it's an incredible story. I definitely suggest people go to visit that museum because the, the curator, and I wish I could remember his name. He, um, I mean, he will take the time to discuss it with you. And he was great with kids, like very personal one on one in the town of Jim Thorpe is amazing.

It's really like a little jewel inside of Pennsylvania. You can learn so much about. All of this, if you go. Yeah, I guess one last thing I would like to ask is, so the Molly Maguire's, this is kind of the impression that I get is, I'm pretty sure like the ancient order of Hibernia and the labor union, they knew that this was like, kind of like a group that they could use.[01:11:00]

if they needed to. So it's kind of like this, this, the logic of like, you, you guys have brought it up, like the extreme left and the extreme right, where on both sides of the spectrum, they all have this talking point is that you don't punch left or you don't punch right. Do you understand? Do you understand where I'm going here with this?

Where these guys were useful. When you need them, the problem is they weren't a lot of the times they would cause more problems than they, uh, than they were worth sometimes. So you have to find ways to be able to clamp down on them, but you didn't want to get rid of them completely because. They're willing to do things that say other people aren't willing to do.

Would that be, am I far off in thinking that? That's the impression I get.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors.

I don't think so. I don't think so at all. Yeah, you're, you're a hundred percent spot on and I think it goes even further than that. I [01:12:00] think the union and the AOH and the Molly Maguires, they were all the same people. Uh, maybe not in the same level or the same numbers, uh, but the Molly Maguires were A A O H and the A O H definitely had union members as a part of it too.

So, it's like a big giant circle and it, it was a, it was a, an alliance of necessity, uh, I, I doubt that this progressive labor union really wanted to work with, uh, you know, this, this weird racist localist thing that the Molly Maguires were. Uh. But they did it nonetheless, just like labor unions have done throughout history with organized crime or syndicates or, or just street gangs in general.

I mean, throughout this whole period in place like New York City, you saw, like, street gangs vying for, like, the highest bidder and they would show up on the strike day. Uh, either supporting or being against the union, depending on who had the most money, if it was the companies or [01:13:00] if it was the union heads, or if you had a rival gang, they would join the other side at a little less of a rate so that they could get in on, on the, on the fight that was about to happen.

So this isn't some, I mean, it wasn't like a conspiracy. I, I, I, or like, uh, some sort of. Nefarious thing that was unintentional, you know, if they don't listen to us, we're going to send this guy in blackface to his house and he's going to blow his head off. I don't think it was like that. I think it was, um, they were all the same.

It was all 1 in the same. And I think. Irish people realized toward the second and sort of the second half of the 1860s and the early 1870s that they got farther with unions with unionizing and with local politics than they did with shooting people in the face. And that seems to, I mean, no matter how right or wrong you thought they were, uh, uh, it just, it wasn't going to work for them doing that policy.

And that's just for anything. I mean, no matter how right [01:14:00] your opinion is, or wrong your opinion is, if you you're Use violence to justify it, no matter how much violence is used against you or your people. It's not going to get anywhere, especially not in a society like we have where the rule of law, you know, regardless on how much it changes or.

How much it varies from person to person. It still is applicable and people still believe in it. And until that happens and outward violence like this is not going to get you anywhere, especially in a place toward more rights. Yeah, you know, like, I mean, you can use examples where. The violence works, but in this particular circumstance, like exactly what you pointed out, like people have a sense of the rule of law.

It's just not going to work. I mean, you can use, say, Russia as an example, like on the, uh, the socialist revolution, the communist revolution. I mean, the violence obviously worked in that circumstance, right? But that was a failed state for the most part, or I mean, they didn't even really have a [01:15:00] tradition of rule of law.

I think, though, that, like, the rule of law, like this idea that the U. S. has been such a paragon of the rule of law, the rule of law entirely failed in this situation because those minor, the minors and the corporations and the private itch. Police services would have never have been able to do half of what they had done if the, the sheriffs of those towns and the counties that they had just, they allowed it all to happen.

And I mean, it also makes. Oh, sorry. I just, people wonder why like Teddy Roosevelt went so hard against like, say, the robber barons or whatever words you want to use for them, right? I mean, I mean, he saw this stuff, right? Like, you know, you know what I mean? Like, uh, you, you see, like, there's a literally a private company that's prosecuting, uh, minors.

Uh, you know, did murders happen? Yeah. Were they? Yeah, at least that guy. That the, uh, the state, well, [01:16:00] it's not even the state, the private company claim that they did. I don't know. It's a little bit up in the air, whether they did or not. I mean, the handprint seems to. Seems to seems to show that they didn't, um.

But it does make sense, like, later on when they, you know, they start implementing antitrust laws and are worried about these giant, uh, corporate monopolies, um, effectively taking over the legal, like, taking over the country, really, um, the opposite. The opposite end of the spectrum is you mentioned the Teamsters Union early in the podcast.

I mean, that was really the government's biggest concern with the Teamsters Union is it was so powerful and it has so much, uh, influence, uh, in terms of transportation in the country. Then, I mean, they really could have shut down the country if they wanted to easily. And that's not good. It's just not, you just can't have it.

Um, because it takes like a couple of nefarious characters, uh, you [01:17:00] know, maybe with a communistic type bent to get into leadership roles in a union like that. And all of a sudden you're having a full, full blown revolution happening, which was a concern still at the time, right? And even with, like, something like the Teamsters, I would not even worry about, like, a communist taking over.

It'd be more dangerous if one of these super corrupt, you know, uh, I guess conservative union bosses took over. I mean, this is what happened to the IBT, uh, literally. There were Numerous like back to back leaders who are just completely corrupt and stealing from the workers that they were supposed to be the leaders of.

I mean, it really disgusting, uh, uh, horrible stuff that these union heads were involved in, especially part of the Teamsters union. But I guess on the other hand, if you were a Teamster, you would say, Hey, this guy is about as crooked as Nixon. I mean, what's the difference? Uh, that, that, that's probably what a Teamster would say.

I think [01:18:00] there's something naturally baked into unions as well, is that because they're representing the interests, the divergent interest, I mean, basically, if you have a union, every single worker, they don't really have a united, they have a, a theoretical united interest, but really each worker has their own individual wants and needs and the union bosses have to, uh, yeah.

Put all those individual needs together to get a corporate need out of all of those corporate in the, in the sense of a need, uh, a vision that encapsulates all of those needs. But in that individuals are going to get. What they want in some ways, and they're not going to get what they want. I mean, I worked for unions for 15 years and in those negotiations, sometimes it's like, what is this union even doing for me?

Because I'm getting shafted [01:19:00] on this personally, because my own, uh, section. They had to, we were small and the union had to give in for given something to make the bigger deal go through and so they had to give in on some of our individual interests to get the bigger plan through. Yeah. And that that's, it's like a, it's a deal with the devil either way.

I mean, however you want to do it. Uh, but for me, at least, I think union rights are preferable to, to any other sort of, um, even like a, a company union, uh, that those haven't particularly worked very well for the people who've been a part of them, especially when it comes to when the rubber meets the road and it's time to argue.

It's time to really stand up for the people you represent. Uh, that sometimes just doesn't happen, and it sounds like that's what happened, uh, with you there, Steve. I think with the unions, it really depends on, um, [01:20:00] on the circumstance. Like if you are in an, in a job and in a geography where there's a really fluid, uh, labor market where if it sucks, you can jump over to the next company, then the union is really not your friend.

But if you're in a situation where your job isn't fluid and the, the geography doesn't lend itself to being able to move freely from one job, either it's because of the, the nature of your work or the industry or whatever, then unions are helpful for you. It's such an American way of looking at work, too, though.

Like, we're, just the way you're describing, it's like, oh, I'll just move to another state or I'll just get to move to another job, right? But I mean, like, you say you live in a place like Romania or Hungary. That's just not, you just can't do it. Like, there's not, where are you going to move? I mean, I guess you could move to another country, but then there's like a whole process, and it's a different [01:21:00] language.

And, um, I just thought of that, right? Like, uh, I don't know, it's just something, it's the same up here in Canada too, right? People are like, oh, I'm just gonna, up here, it's always like, I'm gonna move further up north to get away from the city. Progressively, just like further up north. It's like the equivalent of you guys, like, I don't know, Gaia, yeah, or something, right?

It's the equivalent, right? Like, I'm just gonna. Keep on going up north and I mean and by just you know, but we're massive countries, right? So that's it's very easy to just move around right and you're in a totally different circumstance or say something like smaller country like Hungary or Romania. It's it's it's not as Quite as easy.

Well, I think too, that in the U S and in probably maybe in the West in general, there was never this idea that in a lot of companies, like in Japan and Korea, where the company had a loyalty to the workers and the workers therefore had, you know, there was a [01:22:00] loyalty between the two. If we hired you, you're going to.

Be treated fairly. And that made the workers feel loyal to the company where you have a company men who worked for the company for 40 years. And that is not a Western ideal. I don't think, I think that the much more corporate mindset, again, using corporate in the group sense that I owe fealty to you and you show fealty to me, maybe more of a.

Feudal thing that really died in the Enlightenment with individual, individuality that just does not exist in modern Western societies. I mean, that's a perfect example. I'm going to bring up the chain of being, I mean, me and you offline, I've talked about this many times in terms of the employee worker type of relationship.

You know, obviously, there's problems with it, but if there's an understanding that the bosses have certain obligations and duties to the [01:23:00] workers, and the workers have an understanding that there are certain obligations and duties to their boss, and it's like a chain, right? That keeps them goes further and further and further down.

And I know it's not popular to look at, say, pre enlightenment thinking, but I think there's. In terms of running like a healthy community or healthy society, it's really not a bad way of looking at it. Um, but it's, it's almost next to impossible for even people to kind of think that way because we grew our country was literally found.

Both of our countries were literally founded on enlightenment ideas. And it's very difficult to think outside of that context. It's very difficult to think outside of the enlightenment and people think like, well, like, you're talking about, like, medieval thought in terms of, like, having better labor relations.

And it's like, yeah, I am legitimately saying that. And I don't know, people think it's crazy, but it's, it's really not. There's a lot of, uh, thinkers, especially, uh, I guess you call them like neo reactionary [01:24:00] type thinkers. But if you look at, uh, stuff like, uh, I believe it's called the NRX, Nick Land, and some of these guys, uh.

They talk about this, uh, this, the chain of being and, uh, and implying some medieval type thought, uh, to the modern world. Uh, I don't know if your audience is actually interested. They're interesting. They're controversial type thinkers, obviously, right? They're going to ruffle some feathers, but They're definitely worth reading, I think, um, and I had another thing to just throw in the mix.

There is, um, how, and especially Joe, since you've dug so much into this, how do you think this applies to today? Can we make, use the Molly Maguire's as a learning tool for what's going on today? Or is it really so different that there really is no way to apply it? I think that the only way you look at history is with a modern lens.

So I think, yes, that this is definitely [01:25:00] a relevant story to today. This shows the absolute extent of how bad it can be, uh, when people Uh, either don't care or are forced into doing something against their will and against their benefit, uh, for the benefit exclusively of a, of a nameless 1, 000, 000 dollar institution.

Uh, I think when you look at things like today, there's a massive push against things. We've talked about AI today against AI and especially you look at the actors, uh, actors equity strike. Uh, or that's happening right now, the, the writers guilt strike that's happening right now. They're arguing for the same stuff.

They want better pay. They want better conditions. And they, they want to know that their jobs are going to be protected against a I, which can easily be turned into what any, whatever number of thing you wanted to, um, uh, back then they wouldn't use a I, they would use, uh, imported [01:26:00] workers or. Uh, they would, they would, um, you know, they would spring 1 group against the other using religion or ethnicity, anything like this.

Um, this is what could happen if if things, uh, are are regressed to this point, not just to this point, but, um, you know, it could it could devolve to this. In a very easy, easy way, I think, uh, violence is very much a part of not just Irish history, but American history. And I think this helps explain at least a part of the violence that both have experienced because whether they were in America or they were in Great Britain, Irish people were treated generally the same for a very long time.

I mean, um, um, Even the idea of Irish people being white is a is a relatively new concept. Even the idea of whiteness is a new concept or blackness. [01:27:00] These are all new terms that are just another, uh, further division point, uh, that we have to get over before you would be a Polack or you would be a Boheme or, uh, you know, or whatever, uh, a Johnny or, uh.

Align me or something. These are the words that they were used or I would have been like, uh, I would have been a day ago. Meet me and Steve. We would have been day goes. Um, so I think this, this goes to show how not only close this is to us, but how the government and corporations at large. It seemed to, uh, uh, when you have a job that is very important to the way the country functions, like, for example, a coal miner, uh, who literally generates.

Energy every single day. I mean, how many people can literally say they generate energy? Maybe if you have like, uh, solar power or something, then you could say you generate a little bit of energy, [01:28:00] but coal miners would generate tons of of coal energy every single day. Uh, and they were treated like some of the worst workers, even in things like media.

They're not represented. I mean, how many, how many coal mining movies can you seriously name right now? I've, I've just watched the Molly Maguire's, but that's maybe the only 1 and that that seriously goes in depth on how coal mining operates. Besides that, I can't really think. I mean, most of the time, think of, like, something like the old West.

We guys thought we talked about that a little bit. Uh. Yeah. Uh, you know, there's cowboy movies, there's farmer movies, there's, there's movies about Desperados and, and Pistoleros and everything. There's no real, uh, portrayals in today's media, uh, this totally important job, this all encompassing, uh, job that literally created the United States as we know it today.

Uh, and I, I've always, personally, just Felt at [01:29:00] home with Ireland. I've always really loved Ireland. I am myself Sicilian and Puerto Rican. So my being is of 2 islands that are still under the thumb of of some superior force. Uh, but Ireland. At least for the most part is, has been rid of British yoke for 100 plus years now.

And that I think is impressive. It goes to show the perseverance of the Irish people, the way they've managed to, you know, uh, flex their culture into such ways to make life even bearable, uh, uh, is pretty impressive. And it's something that it shouldn't be, um, discounted or overlooked or, yeah, Or, you know, Irish people shouldn't just be considered when they first immigrated here is just like, you know, subhuman, uh, you know, uh, because because even after, um, even after this period in Ireland for a long time, the Irish were.

Considered, uh, [01:30:00] basically subhuman. People couldn't understand how the literacy rates were so low in Ireland as compared to the rest of Western Europe. Uh, but what happened? They were given freedom. They were given the right to choose their own destiny and the right to, uh, argue for themselves and. Image quickly rebounded.

They became the Celtic Tiger when they were given their independence because their economy was so fluid and so powerful. Uh, and they dispelled almost immediately all these insinuations about their, you know, uh. Proneness to violence and their, uh, intellectual level and, and literacy rates and stuff.

These all went away basically overnight when they were truly given, uh, you know, self determination and, and that word can mean a lot to a lot of different people. Uh, and, uh, it just goes to show how. how much we have to juggle. We have to juggle these things. We have to juggle all this together. [01:31:00] Uh, it's not just one thing, and it's not just the other, it's about everything.

And it's not just about everything, it's about nothing, which is sort of what the Molly Maguires are, are about. I, I related to you the Hindu proverb at the beginning of the, our talk here, and I think it's just perfect. Uh, it's, it's all the things and none of the things at the same time, but it's not, not the things.

Well, I want to, uh, speaking of labor management relations, I got called into work today. So I think we're going to wrap it up this whole series. I want to thank Joe. He's a friend of mine. He's a friend of ours. And now thank you so much for coming on the show. Uh, you know, just to reiterate, how can people find your podcast?

So my podcast is available wherever good podcasts are downloaded. Um, if you download it on Spotify, uh, each episode has its own individual, uh, series art, [01:32:00] which my partner Melissa, uh, meticulously does. It makes it look very nice. It's very clean. Uh, but yeah, it's Spotify, iTunes, uh, Google podcasts. So look for Turning Tides History Podcast everywhere where you can find podcasts.

Thanks again, uh, Mustache Chris, who joined us in this series. We will definitely be hearing if he's willing to come back on. Uh, I hope that Joe will come back on again because this is a great series right here and I know there'll be more. I'm glad you guys appreciated it. Yeah, it's a fun, it's a fun little part of history that not a lot of people know about, but I think it's pretty important to explain the sort of world we live in.

If you enjoyed what you hear and you, uh, want to spread the message, tell your friends about us so that your friends can become friends of ours. Oh, forget about it, guys. Forget about it.

[01:33:00] You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, a history and crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today. Find links to social media and how to support the show, go to our website, a to z history page. com. Become a friend of ours by sending us an email to crime at a to z history page.

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime. With your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

Welcome back everybody. Today, I am joined as usual by Mustache Chris. We're blessed to have our, another member of our crew, Joe Pascone. You'll recognize his voice from other episodes, but you'll also recognize his voice as he is the voice of the. Organized crime and punishment commercial. So thank you so much for joining us today, Joe.

[00:01:00] Uh, I guess to come up with a term, forget about it. No problem. Forget about it. Hey. Joe is going to join us today to talk about a really interesting aspect that brings together different shades of law enforcement, different shades of crime and organized crime, and all of this kind of blurs the line between organized crime and crime.

Crime and the legal system, everything sort of gets blurred together. And that is in the story of the Molly Maguires. It might be a topic that people have heard of or heard a little bit of, but maybe don't know a lot about it, but it's a really critical aspect, but it's kind of nestled inside of many aspects of American history.

And let's, I think the best way to get into this is, let's just get right into it. Uh, Joe, what got you interested in thinking about these Molly Maguires? So the Molly Maguires [00:02:00] first came to my attention. I'm doing a massive series currently on the American labor movement, rise of trade unions, labor unions, and they were sort of the first, they're considered the first labor martyrs in American history.

Um, whether they deserve that distinction, we can get into it for sure. They were, their trial, they were railroaded, it was railroaded through, at the end of it, 20 people hung, uh, in, in, in America. Simply because they were a part of this thing called the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Uh, but, so how do you get into this?

How do you talk about something so complicated with so many levels? Uh, especially about an Irish American secret society with labor union and political organizations a part of it and all the rest. The best way to do that, I think, is with a Hindu proverb from, from India, uh, obviously. So, of course, so I got this proverb from the Mark Bullock book, The Sons of [00:03:00] Molly Maguire, The Irish Roots of America's First Labor War.

In it, the Indian king is Faced with calamity, the prime minister comes to him, says, we need to make a decision on, you know, disease, ravaging the land, catastrophe, whatever war doesn't matter. Uh, he says, okay, sure. Fine. But first I need three blind men and an elephant. Uh, so the prime minister is like, okay, I don't really see the point of this, but let's go through with this.

The three blind men and the elephant are brought before the King and the King asked the three blind men. To describe the elephant for him. So one is trying to put one of the blind men is trying to put his arms around the waist of the elephant. And he says, the, the, the elephant's like a barrel. Another one is trying to measure how high, how tall the elephant is.

He says, no, the elephant's like a tree. The last one is feeling the elephant's tusks. And he says, no, you're both wrong. The elephant is like a spear. So just like the Molly Maguire's and the elephant. [00:04:00] They are all of these things and none of them at the same time, uh, bear with me, . So they were in a sense, a barrel because they insulated and protected the Irish community that they were a part of.

They were a tree because they had branches that extended to neighboring communities and, and neighboring Irish, uh, Irish people around them in coal country and in Ireland originally. Uh, and they were like a spear, because they acted, at least in their eyes, on the community's behest. They committed crimes, they robbed people, they murdered, with the quote unquote blessing of the community.

So that's where we should start here. We could start with the Irish roots, and this is one of the main of three characters I like to describe in this story. The first character is Ireland. The next is America, specifically Schuylkill County and the anthracite region. Uh, and the final character is coal itself and the coal [00:05:00] mining trade practice.

Yeah, so it's really interesting when you dig into each of those, it really is the three characters, and it's kind of hard to believe that Cole is a character, but it really is. Cole is such a huge, huge part of the founding of American industry, and the founding of the America as we know it today, the industrial giant that the North became during the Civil War.

is directly related to coal. Uh, in my previous episode, I cover the coal wars in Colorado, which led to the Ludlow massacre, the battle of Ludlow, however you want to look at it. Uh, but in there, uh, Thomas G. Andrews, I believe is the writer's name. He makes a, uh, incredible point. The cowboy might've quote unquote, tamed the West, but the coal miner won the West more than any other profession.

They provided the cowboy with the gun, the bullets, the The knife, the hammer, uh, you know, the tools of his trade without that, uh, America would still be pretty much a desolate place [00:06:00] where a few thousand people are able to survive. But thanks to coal and the advent of steam and things like this, America exploded, not only in population and in migrant labor, but also in, um, you know, power.

But, yeah, to start this story, first place you have to start, I think, is Ireland, because this is where the the Mollie Maguires first pop their head up. And they don't do it in the traditional coal regions. They do it in the borderlands of Ulster. Uh, those who don't know, Ulster is today, or at least most of Ulster is today, Northern Ireland.

Huge tension, division still between, uh, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Uh, one of the main defining features of Ulster is a thing called the Black Pig's Dyke. This is in myth mythology, or in local legend, the Irish believe that a massive black pig created the dyke with its tusks, ramming it through the the earth.

Uh, scientists now think that these, that this dyke is actually a [00:07:00] long gone series of fortifications. It belonged to the Red Branch Warrior Brotherhood, which is a super cool name. Uh, at a, yeah, at a place called the Balinamuk, or it's, it's spelled Ball in a Muk, but I believe it's pronounced Ball in a Muk.

Local legend says that this same pig, he was stopped as he was doing his thing. By, uh, a man, who I guess was angry that he was tearing up his field, threw a rock at him, and it stopped the pig in its tracks. And that's why there's this big defile at around this same area. Ulster was originally founded during a mythological legendary race between the O'Neill clan and a rival clan.

The idea was whoever touched Ulster land first won the entire territory. So O'Neill is racing this guy on a boat. They take off from Northern England or Scotland. He realizes pretty quickly he's going to lose. This guy is making way more ground than he is on his, on his ship. [00:08:00] So does O'Neill do the sensible thing and turn around, say, you know, I'll try and get it again.

Uh, no, he chops off his own hand and he chucks it at the beach of Ulster. It touches land first, he's awarded Ulster, and that's how the flag of Ulster became the Red Hand. That's where that's from. So as the O'Neills first arrive and followed, they are followed by a huge minority population of Scott Irish and Anglo Irish.

The closest thing you can compare it to is colonization. They dominated Ulster specifically on a completely economic level. Uh, this domination didn't mean that people in Southern Ireland or Catholics in Ireland didn't hold to their culture. Unless you're like really familiar with history. I mean, Ireland was really Britain's first colony, right?

And unlike like some of the other colonies, or I say, like use India as an example, like they never really tried to replace. [00:09:00] In like Indians or Indian culture where in Ireland, they, there was an honest to God attempt to just replace the Irish. It didn't work, but it's, um, I just think that's interesting.

It's incredible. And no one talks about it, especially people who are proponents of this idea that British colonization was an overall good for the people it happened to. I don't necessarily buy that. Obviously, they did something for the people there. I'm not saying that's not the case, but the fact that something like Irish river dancing has to exist.

For those who don't know, Irish river dancing is done completely with your hands at your side. Because if you were to dance in the traditional Irish style in British Ireland at this time, you would be considered disturbing this, the peace and you'd be thrown in jail. So this was the kind of authoritarian rule that was going on throughout Ireland.

That's why the same customs had to exist. Uh, Ireland also is just completely fundamentally different from England. The way that people work, the way that [00:10:00] people believe, the way that people, um, exist, I'll give you an example in Fermanagh. Uh, the phrase to join work means to start work because you can never, they believe in Fermanagh that you can never truly start work.

You always have to join it eventually. Uh, the people were controlled in Ireland through a thing called the Conacre system. And there's plenty talked about, about absentee landlord ism in Great Britain at this time. And you can definitely find more information about that in countless other sources. One of the first main times that the Irish people try to stand up for themselves is, well, there's countless uprisings throughout history.

I shouldn't say this is one of the main ones, but this is one of the big rebellions led by a guy named Wolf Cone in 1798, also a really cool name. Uh, Basically, what happened, this was a part of the French Revolutionary War. The French sent a few thousand men to Southern Ireland to help with this rebellion.

Now, the, at the [00:11:00] Battle of Bali and Balinamuk, uh, the French are trounced and they're able to surrender. They're given full military honors, but the Irish are completely devastated. They're just wiped off the field. And this is a quote from the, uh, writing after the fact. Terrorists thousands died shaking side that cannon.

They buried us without shroud or coffin. And in August, the barley grew up out of the grave because the peasants, they would have pieces of barley. In their pocket. I don't know, for food to, to plant later, maybe in total 30 to 50,000 people died. Uh, comparatively. The Doti Mayo, um, the uprising in Madrid that's famously talked about, which was brutally put down by Napoleon, that cost the death of few hundred.

You know, the 300 people were executed. That's horrifying. But 50, 000 is, is, is, is a truly staggering [00:12:00] number. So it makes perfect sense that the original Molly Maguire's, the Irish version of this gang, secret society, whatever you want to call them, uh, were founded around the same area in Kavan and Leitrim.

They were, or they at least believe, in essence, they were these reincarnated spirits of the dead at Balinamuk. Around this same area, if you guys are familiar with the show Game of Thrones, um, this is probably where the character Craster is based on, Craster's Keep. How he had all the daughters as his wives, and he would, uh, give the firstborn males to the White Walkers.

This is based on a place called Magslecht. I don't know if that's the right pronunciation. It's called the Plain of Adoration. Apparently, this legendary Irish king, Tígur na mhás, he would ensure that his fields were, were fertile by sacrificing goats, pigs, and in some cases, the firstborn of all the family.

All the families that lived under his [00:13:00] domain. So this is where that scene in or where that setting in Game of Thrones, I believe, is based on. Um, this, this violence is just more to show that Ireland has had anything but a peaceful history. It's been a very violent place since its founding. And even before the English arrived, there were like Danish Vikings and all kinds of people, hundreds of different.

Kings and kingdoms and petty kings that were all vying for control of this island. Um, one of the big things that the Irish were super against was military conscription. They could not stand military conscription, much like the Sicilians down in Italy. That was the big deal breaker. You were not going to conscript Irish people to go fight.

Other Catholics, usually that was usually a big part of it. Um, in 1798, the same rebellion I've talked about, it was led in part by the defenders, which I'm going to talk about later as a secret, another secret society and the ribbon men, [00:14:00] uh, which grew out of the defenders and in turn, they grew into the or the ancient order of hibernians who were also Molly Maguire's.

Uh, if this is confusing, okay. Don't worry, uh, it's Ireland. In Ireland, Karl Marx famously said that, uh, secret societies grow there like mushrooms in a forest. Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like Richard Lim's This American President and other great shows.

Go to ParthenonPodcast. com to learn more, and here is a quick word from our sponsors. It's interesting, uh, the similarities between Southern, uh, Italy and Ireland in some ways, where, you know, Ireland was an occupied country, give or take, for a good chunk of its his like, modern history. Southern Italy, the same thing, and they both have these [00:15:00] Secret societies basically come out of it as, uh, a reaction to the ruling authorities, right?

You have the ancient order, the, uh, Hibernians. And then in Italy, you have, uh, you know, the various different types of mafias, but probably most famously, famously, uh, La Cosa Nostra, right? Which was a secret society. And with the Hibernians, you have, like, the Mollenreguiers, which are, you And depending on how you read it, it sounds like it was like a secret society within a secret society, or the, uh, the Androngita, right?

The Androngita right now in Calabria is, the Androngita itself is a secret society, but within the Androngita So at least from the information that we have, there's a, like a secret society within that secret society. The Adrogata is usually typically known as like probably the most secretive out of all the, uh, out of all the three big mafias in Southern Italy.

Yeah, I completely agree with you. There are definitely a lot of similarities and I think it goes to show how [00:16:00] universal the strain and the oppression of colonization is to the people that it occurs to. And this is, uh, across the Across the globe. I mean, I know you spoke about India, but there were Indian secret societies that were all about getting rid of the British.

That's how the Indian National Army rose to prominence and gained thousands of members in the 1940s because so many people were fed up with British, uh, civilization and their, uh, oppression and the murder of hundreds and hundreds of of Indian people. Yeah, so it's really interesting. You're, um, you're really painting, uh, uh, painting a canvas of what's going on in Ireland.

Uh, let's start to wrap up what's happening into Ireland and then get into the really fascinating story of how that transitions into America. Sure. So, so the first reports of Molly Maguire ism. Is around the 1840s, the end of 1844, uh, also not coincidentally, I [00:17:00] believe right in tandem to start the potato blight, which killed millions and displaced another million or two.

Uh, and the first murder that they actually committed was on January 29th. 1845, they killed a guy named McLeod, and this was such a well known killing that the Molly Maguires came up with their own song for it, which goes, There was McLeod, so big and proud, I think it fit to mention, to put men in jail and take no bail, it was his whole intention.

So there's the motive for the killing right there. To liberty, as you may see, some persons did inspire, to lay him down, the dirty hound, they say, it was Molly Maguire. Uh, then in later in May, another person walking home, they get murdered. Boom. What did the locals do? They blame it on the local IRS agent, as you do.

Um, then again, June 22nd, another guy gets murdered in Kavon. A [00:18:00] magistrate was killed in Halloween in 1845. July 1845 was the real, the first real public outing of the Molly Maguire movement. This guy was arrested supposedly as a Molly Maguire hitman and he, he defamed the, the movement to the detectives.

Another guy named Philip O'Reilly claims to be a part of this movement and he actually wrote a whole manifesto where it explained the, the group's intentions and, and what their, their, their reasoning was. Behind what they were doing and why they were seeking violence against people who were, in, in their opinion, oppressing them.

So, at the same time, as all this is going on, the potato blight is, is terrible for everyone. I mean, Molly Maguire's are getting affected as much as, uh, as much as anyone else. So they're just as hard up. One of the main, the biggest murder that the MO'S committed in Ireland was against Dennis Mahan. He was a landlord for Bally Kill Klein.

[00:19:00] He forcibly deported 400 Catholic Irish people who were in his town, simply because he wanted to replace them with, with new, with new people, with new men, you know, uh, good Protestant stock, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, when these 400 people were on the way to Liverpool, their boat capsized killing hundreds. So he was deemed responsible for this whole thing.

He was killed on the road. Also, uh, to sort of wrap up this whole thing, Thomas Pakenham, who's actually a distant relative of this guy. Mahan, he says, quote, and he's writing about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. He says, quote, the British discriminated against them at every level, making them outsiders in their own country.

But the grievance that touched them most widely was the land. So Irish. Irish Molly Maguire ism was all about the land question. It was all about tenant rights, it was all about farmers. It was about, you know, resisting unlawful convictions [00:20:00] or, unlawful convictions or evictions. Uh, so they have to escape.

They need to go somewhere. It's 23 to boat ride from Ireland to America in this day. So millions jump on the boat, on the boat, and they head not only for America, but they go to English cities like Liverpool, Manchester, et cetera, and to new Spanish territory. I do a series on Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rico is just filled with Irish, um, Irish people.

Policymakers and lawmakers, but that's really the end of the I, uh, the Irish Molly Maguires. They stay around for a few more years after that, but they never gain the same prominence that they did at the height of the potato famine. They find new life in America, which we'll get into. Yeah, you really see that, uh, you don't get groups like the Molly Maguires if everything's going awesome, but you really, uh, we're, we're [00:21:00] kind of keep setting the stage that the Molly Maguires are really a reaction to what's going on and these secret societies.

Reaction is definitely a great term for it because these people, they weren't like, you know, they weren't like bleeding heart liberals or socialists or something. They were, they were socially very conservative, but they were fighting for the same rights that they felt that they had a right to enjoy.

Same thing in southern Italy, the peasants who were fighting against the national Italian army in southern Italy weren't particularly progressive or anything, but they had state rights that were taken away from them, uh, by an invading force to either their, their detriment or. To their, to their benefit.

Um, but yeah, it's the same, it's the same difference. Personally for modern, like, audiences, I think they kind of really forget that, I mean, regardless of what your politics are, like, nowadays or what have you, like, the labor [00:22:00] movement is It is what it is, right? It's particularly liberal, especially when it comes to, like, social issues and things of that nature.

But if you kind of look at these early labor movements, and I don't know if you would really consider the Molly Maguire's a labor movement. They just saw kind of injustice and decided that they were going to do something about it, uh, for their fellow Irishman. A lot of these people weren't like, they weren't like social liberals.

Like, a lot of these people were like, you know, um, Traditionalist, like, conservatives, like, you know, you get married young, you have a big family, you know, you go to church, you, it's just, I think it's something that a lot of, I don't know, it gets like misconstrued, a lot of these, like, early, uh, labor organizers, you can call them, or, I don't know, labor fighters, there's, I don't know, there's a bunch of different words you could use for them, right?

But a lot of these guys were socially conservative, and I think a lot of, uh, modern, Both conservative and left failed to, [00:23:00] uh, I don't know, to fail to realize that. I think, yeah. They failed to realize it, and they, they failed to appreciate the, the really, you know, the, the roots of, of the whole struggle. The, the, uh, I mean the labor movement back then was strictly Democrat.

It is that now, but. I know a lot of people argue that the parties have changed. I think it's hard to look at a map from 1900, an electoral map from 1900 and today, and say that there hasn't been any change, uh, but I think it's even fairer to say that almost every single decade in American history, the parties have been completely different, or there have been new parties, or they've flip flopped on some issue, or they've jumped on a bandwagon.

This has been the history of America, and especially This early American time when no one knows what the, what's going on. Oh, yeah, we'll get into it a little bit, like, especially like leading up to the Civil War and even during the Civil War, there's all these parties I bet you people have never even heard of, you know, like the, the Know Nothing Party, the Southern Blades.[00:24:00]

Yeah, which is, and the Wagga Wumps. Yeah. Yeah. And if you take a look at like the revolutions of 1848, those were in a way a very, in many ways a left wing, uh, revolutions, but the U S which was. Very conservative in many ways supported a lot of those revolutions because they felt that there was the revolutionary spirit there.

Yeah, and it goes to show that America doesn't really know which way is up. I mean, they'll change positions depending on what's going on throughout history. I mean, at one point, they're saying no new colonizers, and then another time they're invading Haiti 15 different times. Getting into where you've used this term Molly Maguire, was there an actual historical Molly Maguire?

Who is Molly Maguire? Was this a real person? Is this all make them ups? [00:25:00] Uh, so Molly Maguire was a character in Mummery. And we'll get into memory, uh, like right after this, because it's a huge part of the Molly Maguire movement. It's, it's like their modus operandi for, for their killings, at least in the early period.

So, Molly Maguire. was one of these characters. She would call the dead back to life after receiving a donation. In a mummer's play, two people fight, one person dies, you give donations, the person rises from the grave. Um, this goes a little deeper once you understand that an Irish translation to jester is magair.

And Maguire was one of the names of the famous Fermanagh chiefs. So there was a famous set of chieftains who were called Maguire. Uh, it gets even more convoluted once you start to understand that Molly Maguire wasn't always or strictly called Molly. She was originally Mary Ann Maguire. Uh, and they used this name actually until like [00:26:00] the 18, early 1850s when it finally fell out of vogue.

Makes sense. Molly Maguire makes, is a lot better of a name than Molly Ann Maguire in my opinion. Um. Another character in Mummer Plays was called Molly Maskett, so here's another layer to the, to the Mummery thing. And this helps explain, basically, a transcontinental game of telephone that took place. You know the game telephone, you played as a kid, one person said something to another, and then by the end it sounded completely different than what it was originally intended.

That's probably where the term Molly Maguire comes from. But the legendary Molly Maguire was either the mother of two dead Irish patriots who was evicted by, uh, you know, an evil English landlord, uh, or she was a completely deranged, uh, lunatic woman who, who raved that she was the leader of a new Ireland, that she's going to lead these armies and free, free Ireland from British dominion.

Uh, once you [00:27:00] understand something like Celtic myths, Uh, this starts to make more sense that people would can associate themselves with this, uh, insane version of Molly Maguire because in Celtic myth, quote, the country is a woman, the spouse of the king before her marriage. She is a quote, unquote, hag. Or a woman whose mind is deranged.

So these people who are calling themselves Molly Maguires believe that they were literally the sons of Mother Ireland. I mean, in just as many terms. But what's a mummery? I say that word a bunch. I've just mentioned it a few times. So think of Halloween trick or treating. Instead of Halloween trick or treaters, there's grown men who come to your door and they perform a combat play in your living room or in your kitchen.

Uh, this always ended in the death of one of the combatants. And, like I was saying, someone would step forward, ask for a donation of money, food, drink, whatever, and, uh, [00:28:00] from those donations, they would throw an end of the year party. Uh, in these plays, men would dress Uh, in traditionally women's clothing, they would dress in black or white face.

They would wear straw throughout their body, uh, and this is understandable once you understand that mummery comes from the French word, which means to mask oneself, uh, And these mummers usually worked exclusively with the Molly Maguires. Sometimes they were mummers, and the other half of the time they were Molly Maguires.

So there must have been a, uh, a heck of a lot of confusion if you were one of these just like poor farmers and a bunch of people show up at your house. Are they gonna kill me? Or are they gonna, are they gonna, you know, have a, uh, a good old time and I'm gonna give them some money so we can throw a party at the end of the day.

So this became a huge point of contention for the, the Irish, uh, and Irish secret societies. It was [00:29:00] definitely a love hate relationship between the peasants. I, um, I've spent a lot of time in, uh, Northeastern Pennsylvania, where a lot of this stuff will eventually happen and in Philadelphia, and they still do mummers parades in Philadelphia.

We went to the mummers parade in the early 2000s, so not that long ago, and they still did blackface at that time. I think they got rid of it with within a few years of there, but within. Memory, they were still doing that sort of thing. And they had, it wasn't I strictly Irish anymore. There were people of all different backgrounds, but they still did a lot of that stuff.

But memory was a lot more common amongst Irish. I think when they first came over, but it's, and it's condensed a lot now, but it still is going on to this very day. Yeah, just off camera, like, me and you, Steve, like, arguing about, like, how much [00:30:00] paganism is still part of, like, European culture, and, like, I've argued it's like this, it's obviously not a huge part of it now, but it's still there, right?

And I, I've argued that, like, European culture in a lot of ways is this, is this battle between, um, paganism and paganism. The Christianity that came in later, and I mean, and you can see it with this type of ritual, right? Like, there's no, this isn't in Christianity. This is straight out of paganism. And this, these traditions that probably got passed down, you know, and changed over time, but for, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

Definitely. And, and mummery was actually one of the few things that translated from England to Ireland. So that, I think, just adds weight to your argument there, Chris. Uh, I agree 100 percent that paganism is still a huge part of Judeo Christian values. I mean, look at how many saints there are. Why are there so many saints if, if there isn't some sort of polytheism?

That's just something I think about a lot. [00:31:00] Uh, but yeah, like you were saying, it was a huge part, uh, like Steve was saying, I mean, It was a huge part of the community, still is, even though a lot of the population, uh, the Irish population was supplanted within like a generation. But it just shows how lasting the old country and the old country scars.

Remain and that how they actually transfer to the new world, mostly because some of the same practices were still going on talk a little bit about the secret societies in Ireland, which will set us up to the how they translate over to the U. S. Okay, everyone strap him. So there were the straw boys. These were, uh, uh, these were usually unmarried men.

They'd show up at your house in the middle of the night, snatch your daughter. Yeah. force her into marriage. Uh, almost always the father was of a higher social strata. So if you were a tenant farmer, this might be your landowner. You snatch your daughter and [00:32:00] now you've got your foot in the door, so to speak.

They were Ren boys. These were, um, these were also unmarried people. Whenever I say boys, by the way, boys in Ireland means unmarried men, just so we're clear. Uh, I'm not talking about a bunch of little children. They'd show to your house. They show up at your house after Christmas, like boxing day. They'd go door to door with dead birds asking for donations.

If you didn't donate, uh, they would bury this dead bird in your front yard, which is very bad luck. I mean, it would ruin your whole family's luck for the whole year. At least that's what people in Ireland believed. Um, one of the first rekindlings of secret societies after the 1798 rebellion was in around 1816, right after the Napoleonic wars.

These guys called Ribbon Men set fire to the Wild Goose Lodge and they roasted alive eight people. Uh, famously some woman was inside and she said, Please let me out, I have nothing to do with this. And the answer from outside was, You didn't heed the [00:33:00] warning in time. And they just watched it burn. Really savage stuff.

These Ribbon Men were mostly nationalistic, very interested in politics, interested in sectarianism. interested in, in, in nationalism, uh, they were most defined by the tassels they wore, the ribbons on their lapels. Uh, they were white boys. They were called the white boys because of the starch white shirts they would wear.

They were more interested in the Uh, land question. They operated mostly in Southern Ireland. They believed in a form of localism. It wasn't exactly socialism. It wasn't exactly right wing populism. It was some sort of mix of the two. It's described in, uh, the book Molly, The Sons of Molly Maguire as a localism.

Everything was about your locality. Your local community was everything. Uh, and one way they would promote local communities is through subtle threats. So a white boy gang would show up at your house. It'd be like [00:34:00] they, they pull you aside, they'd be like, it would be a real shame if, um, you know, you took this grain to market without first selling it to your neighbor at a fair price.

And that would be the, and then they just leave. And that would be the, and you'd have to like, just mull it over if you really want to, you know, risk making a little bit more money, sending your, your grain to international markets or, uh, uh, risk the ire of your entire community. So that's the white boys.

Um, so it explains, again, the transition from white boy to ribbon men to Molly Maguire slash, uh, ancient order of hibernians it throughout this entire period to massive riots and unrest against technology itself. I mean, people are destroying sewing machines in England and stuff. This is where the term Luddite comes from this guy called.

Yeah. legendary guy called Commander Ludd went about the English countryside and destroyed, uh, destroyed milling equipment and, and machinery. [00:35:00] These all usually ended up being against, or at least in Ireland, it ended up being a sort of a undeclared war between Protestant secret societies and Catholic secret societies.

I'm not even going to get into the Protestant secret societies, because it's a whole other A group of names and, and, and, uh, objectives, uh, uh, and it's just, it would just be here forever. But that's how, um, the secret societies sort of molded in Ireland. And they did so at a, as a direct response to the problems going on in their countryside.

I mean, beyond just the potato blight. Elections were, were incredibly violent. Every single election in Ireland was just devolved into rioting. And, you know, countless died just trying to go vote. It was a really intense situation. So it made all the more sense to leave that place and to leave. So in, in such vast numbers that.

Is Ireland still recovered, [00:36:00] ever recovered from the potato blight yet? Have they reached the pre blight population? I don't think so. No, I don't even think it's close. Yeah, it's like millions away still. So, I mean, that just goes to show how absolutely devastating. The potato blight was for this, for this, uh, island.

No, I think there's like only a couple of examples or I think there's more Irish, like more Irish live outside of Ireland than actually in Ireland. I think Jamaica, Jamaicans is another one. Those are two off the top of my head, but I can't really think of too many other ethnicities where that's the case.

Yeah, it was, it was a serious, I mean, Uh, some people have used the word genocide. I, I think that that's, if that's not fair, then it's, it's, it's right up against the line. I mean, it was, uh, and it's not like they were intentionally trying to starve people. It was, you know, uncaring, unfeeling government led to this massive atrocity, but one of the few things that actually ended up, uh, you know, one [00:37:00] thing that stayed the same was the, the coal mines.

Yeah. Coal is, is plentifully found in both Ireland and Pennsylvania. So it made a perfect sort of transition to people who are coal miners or people who experienced mining culture, uh, when they moved to the anthracite region of Pennsylvania. Yeah, isn't it? Um, I'll steal, we're going to talk about coal and I'll steal a little bit of your thunder, Joe, uh, Pennsylvania, that region of Northeastern Pennsylvania.

I don't think it's too far to go to say it has beautiful coal. It's almost, it's a, it's pure. It's one of the, I think, yeah. Best call in the entire world. And as a matter of fact, we're, uh, we'll get into this, but, uh, there's a chunk of call. I have a picture of my kids in front of it and their friends.

There's a piece of 1 piece of call in 1 of these towns. That's the size of our F 1 50 [00:38:00] pickup truck. And it's just yeah. It's pure, perfect coal, and that's what they were, that's what they were there for. Yeah, I've seen it where, um, some of the colleges, they make, like, complete, uh, like, football trophies out of coal.

Uh, a lot of these, uh, state colleges in, in this part of Pennsylvania, I've seen a few pictures like that, and they're just gorgeous. And coal is a really incredible material and rock. They're still mining it to this day. Are they not? Um, I'm not sure if they're mining it in the anthracite region anymore.

They might still be, uh, here and there. Definitely not at the same scale. Most of the mining in America is done in, in West Virginia now, I believe. But so what is coal? I mean, uh, we use, uh, people have used coal for thousands of years, the earliest. mention of coal is the ancient Chinese in like 3000 BC or something.

So this has not been some like new revelation only with the [00:39:00] advent of steam did it really gain traction and popularity. But coal is a decomposed plant matter. It's that has been denied any form of sunlight. Therefore, it can't break down properly. Um, this is usually found in places that used to be. Huge giant marshes, for example, along the Allegheny's.

In modern day, Pennsylvania, in Colorado, the huge seams of anthracite coal, uh, that used to be an entire gigantic swamp land. Um, so what kind of coal is there? There's. Several different kinds. There's lignite and jet, which is a derivative of lignite. Lignite is the poorest quality coal you can find. It's called the brown coal.

Jet is a gemstone that's derivative of this, uh, of this coal. Mesoamericans, they made absolutely exquisite artwork with this stuff. I mean, ancient Aztecs, they would make beautiful, um, like, uh, eagle head [00:40:00] with, uh, jet. If you know the term jet black, that's where this, that's where this comes from. Yeah. Yeah.

You never think about that. I've never thought one second where the term jet black comes from. I just always assumed what it just meant that, but it comes from jet. Next is bituminous, subbituminous coal. This is like the middling quality coal. It's called soft coal sometimes. They use this in coke fuel.

That's the big thing that this stuff is used in. This is done, any sort of smithing work, uh, ever has used coke fuel. That is probably derivative. From, uh, the, the bituminous and sub bituminous coal anthracite mentioned the word a lot. This is the, this is the grand poobah of all the coal. It's called hard coal.

It's sometimes called kill Kenny coal because of where it's found in Ireland. It burns the longest and the hottest and it's definitely the most valuable. Uh, anthracites usually found it's found all over the place. [00:41:00] Today. Yeah. China, it like outpaces every other country combined, basically. If you look at a map of Chinese coal mining, it's absolutely ludicrous to see it because it's like looking at like U.

1. defense spending or something. It's like, well, what? Like, um, so how do these mines work? There are a bunch of different ways you can mine. Um, The most famous way, at least during this period, the most traditional ways called the room and pillar mining, uh, room and pillar, as it, uh, says is all about having a single room.

1 or 2 miners would work in it. There'd be broad avenues and streets connecting each of these rooms. It's like a city, uh. And they'd work in these mines to for hours at a time. Uh, usually they'd make their own hours. They'd have equipment. This was very individualistic kind of work. Um, another form is long wall mining.

Long wall mining, as it [00:42:00] implies, is done against a single long wall with multiple people working on it. at once. It sort of behooved you to be on shift every single day. If you missed a single day in longwall mining, you would screw not yourself, but also all the people who work beside you, because they'll be getting a lesser amount of coal.

So in spite of the individualism that was festered through longwall mining, uh, miners found camaraderie right away. Considering they're the only other living things under the earth, besides the few animals they work with, uh, camaraderie was essential. I mean, a single mistake, single careless mistake or issue could completely kill everybody in the mine, uh, and it could do so very easily.

Uh, mutual aid was like Absolute necessity in all kinds of minds and the experienced miners, the, the, the most, uh, uh, longest working miners, they would always [00:43:00] be the 1st, the line of, uh, the responders, they would be the 1st ones there. If there was ever a mind disaster. And they would work ferociously to try and save anybody that they could.

So skin color, ethnicity, religious views, political views, they did not matter one bit in the mines. Once you got out of the mine and you went to the saloon, all bets were off. Then, okay, that might matter. When you worked underground, it was a complete brotherhood of men who worked side by side for the betterment of each other and for the safety of each other.

Uh, there's plenty of issues. They had to deal with plenty of, plenty of problems. Obviously it's, uh, one of the main ones were any number of gases that could be released. So there's stink damp. This smells like rotten eggs. It's hydrogen sulfide. This could be overpowering. You could imagine that it could if you were alone in a room and you were just bombarded with the smell of rotten eggs and you had no ventilation.[00:44:00]

You would probably become sick pretty quickly. Then there was black damp. This was named because the, the, the flames that they would have to light their way would flicker black. So they would call it black damp. This was a buildup of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide chokes the oxygen. Out of any room it's in, so this could cause, uh, asphyxiation and you could die.

The worst one out of all of these, all the ones I'm going to talk about is after death. So this is carbon monoxide and coal dust. Absolutely, like, uh, uh, blown together. The carbon monoxide killed most people during any sort of explosion. This explosion was caused by fire damp, which is the buildup of methane in between the literal coal seams.

Uh, and this, once a single spark hit this stuff, it would just blow everything sky high. The worst, uh, mining disaster in American history was in West Virginia, around [00:45:00] 360 people died. Most of them were asphyxiated, but the worst one in world history happened at the height of World War II in Chinese occupied, or in Japanese occupied China, something like 1500 miners suffocated to death after Japanese, uh, soldiers who were running the mine and using these Chinese people as basically slaves, uh, they, they shut off the, they shut off all the exits to the mine, which probably asphyxiated most of them.

I mean, the explosion probably caused, way fewer casualties than the actual asphyxiation following the, the blockading of the mine, which is pretty horrifying. Um, but yeah, I, I, just for a personal story, my own great uncle, he worked for years in the sulfur mines of Sicily. For those who don't know, Sicily sulfur mines produced maybe half of the world's sulfur for a good part of the, you know, [00:46:00] early centuries.

Uh, he was crushed to death, uh, by a rock. And the person, uh, Mark Bullock, the guy who wrote the book, The Sons of Molly Maguire, his great grandpa, who he never met, was impaled by a stalactite when he was 13. So this was not work for the faint of heart. I mean, I couldn't imagine a worse place to work in my life.

I, maybe that's just like familial trauma. Yeah, and I mean, even nowadays that there's a lot more health and safety standards and it still, for a lack of a better word, sucks to work in a mine. Like, I can even speak for myself, like, my personal, like, I do a lot of For my for work, I do, uh, it's like physical labor, right?

And even with all safety mechanisms in place and stuff like that, you know, I just look around sometimes and be like, Oh, there's probably 100 things here that could kill me. If something goes wrong, it probably wouldn't happen. But it's, you know, it's only magnified when you're on top of it were. In these minds, I think it's very [00:47:00] difficult for modern people to really understand just how like ridiculously dangerous these places were.

And you mentioned you mentioned your great grandfather was sulfur. He worked on a sulfur mine, right? Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say to the audience, uh, just, um. Look at pictures of sulfur mines, uh, on, just typing it on Google, you'd be, uh, shocked just how, uh, beautiful they look. They smell terrible, but, you know, from a distance, they look beautiful.

Yeah, I, I mean, it was a, and like Steve was saying, coal is, is beautiful. I, if you look at, uh, a chunk of coal, it's an absolutely gorgeous rock. Same thing with sulfur, but sulfur was even deadlier because sulfur could burn. So I imagine there were very few flames alive down in those mines in Sicily. You were working in the virtual dark.

That must have been truly horrifying. Especially if you were one of these little kids, like you were a breaker boy or something who [00:48:00] went through the coal and the shale and you had to keep, they showed this in the Molly Maguire movement, the movie, the kids had to keep moving their feet or else it would get sucked under by the conveyor belt and they would lose their legs.

This was a, just a regular thing that they just had to adjust to. You don't think about having to do something like that, but this is something that children had to do. And, and, once you graduated from there, you became a driver. So you drove mules. And mules, for their reputation, are incredibly stubborn animals.

They could bite you, and kick you, and, and easily kill a human being. Especially a human being who's only 15 years old.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. As we move forward, we're, uh, we have to kind of step out of the, uh, Irish for a minute and start to set up the civil war because that's, that's, [00:49:00] uh, coming and that's going to really, uh, impact this whole story of the Molly Maguires, because you can see where all these things are starting to come, coal is the, uh, essentially the lifeblood, uh, Of, uh, industry at that time.

And Cole's got to come out of the ground in some way. And you're, you have the Irish who are the ones who are pulling it out of the ground, and then you have the civil war who, in a lot of ways, the Irish are going to be, uh, one of the, almost the backbone of these armies. So in a fight, that's almost not their own.

How does that all start to come together? So it comes together. Before America is even a country, before America is even a country, hundreds of thousands of Protestant Ulster men, uh, depart for Pennsylvania. Now, in Pennsylvania, they were a part of the militant backbone for Pontiac's War, Pontiac's Rebellion, which is a pre [00:50:00] revolutionary war, rebellion of native peoples.

Uh, and they, they came because They needed, they were so talented at putting down native rebellions, but in this case, they put down Irish native rebellions. They didn't put down native of American rebellions. Uh, they came at the behest of this guy named Benjamin Bannon. He was sort of this, like, overlord of the whole area.

He ran a newspaper. Uh, so we had massive influence there. Um, he was also made 1 of the draft, um. The draft commissioners for the entire area, and he would bring tens of thousands of Irish Catholics into Pennsylvania only to hate them once they arrived need for the Irish Catholics. They must have felt like, oh, my God, this is more of the same.

We showed up in this new country. And we're still being lorded over by Protestants from Ulster. This is really, this is really something else. Uh, one of the, [00:51:00] and alongside him, there's a guy named Franklin Gowen. He comes into the story in the 1870s. He was raised a hardcore Democrat. And, uh, basically he was, um, he was to go to the, he was, he was supposed to be drafted, but he paid 300 for his replacement.

Uh, his father was an incredibly religiously, uh, liberal man, so much so that he had his son taught in a Catholic school in Maryland. So, uh, this put a, a check in his box toward the Irish community, the, and in, in time he would end up being elected. Uh, and, and seen as like a community sort of organizer, he would do it in such a way that would end up in his monopolization of the entire, uh, railroad and coal industry of the area.

Uh, the 1st mention of the Molly Maguires happens in around the 1850s and they come in [00:52:00] tandem with these things called the fantasticals. The Fantasticals were this uber racist group of Irish, uh, ne'er do wells. I mean, they would get rip roaring drunk and have, like, faux parades in the middle of town.

They called themselves, one group called themselves the Santa Ana Lifeguard, and their slogan was, oh, get out. They were named after the, the, the victor of, of the Alamo, uh, of General Santa Ana, the dictator and general in Mexico. Uh, another crew called themselves the Crowboys after Jim Crow, so this adds a whole new level.

Now there's the race element. People in Ireland probably didn't have to confront back home, and they were responsible for many a race riot in, throughout Pennsylvania, but in Philadelphia especially. The first reports of the Mollies came in the late 1850s. These might have been sensationalized, uh, [00:53:00] but their public face was, like I said, the ancient order of Hibernians.

This is a benevolent society. They would provide foodstuffs, money, etc. for injured or hurt Irishmen on the job. Not exactly a union, not exactly a secret society, completely legal, uh, for the most part, save for the subsect of super militant Molly Maguire's and their movement. By 1860, uh, about 70 percent of the workers in the mines were Irish.

So you have a complete, almost a homogeneous, uh, uh, movement that's being insulated underground, that's being fed. Uh, it's being fed, uh, you know, terrible, terrible suffering through like the company shop system, the company housing system, uh, all these things that led to an intense amount of distrust between miners and their operators.

And I think for obvious reasons, once you start to understand how terrifying the. [00:54:00] The company store system was, well, I was going to say, I kind of use like a modern example is, uh, you hear these stories about Amazon building these giant factories that are going to be having like apartments above the factories, uh, and, uh, and no, but in the States for a long.

For a good chunk of it's, well, I wouldn't say like a big chunk, but there's a period there, especially like around the robber baron time, which is kind of, it's not exactly at this time period, but it's leading up to it where a lot of these workers like lived in towns that the companies themselves would build.

And, you know, it had grocery stores and everything, but people go, Oh, that's convenient. But it. It's a scary situation to be in where you're completely dependent upon a company that's not elected, obviously, right? And it's ran by, for the most part, one individual and simply, like, if you, I don't know, make a fuss about, say, a cut back in pay or [00:55:00] anything of that nature, you know, you're cut off and then where do you go?

This is how much of a lot of these early industries ran in the States. I don't think, you know, unless you're a little bit familiar with the subject. I don't I don't think most people really understand that. Yeah. And just to just to give an example of how horrifying this system was. This is from the 1840s, so in case anyone was thinking this was just the product of the Civil War, it wasn't.

This was happening in the area for years and years beforehand. So, quote, A wife or child may be very sick, and the storekeeper has no medicine. A physician may be required, who cannot be paid in store goods, and cannot be expected to attend without being paid. The storekeeper may have no flour, no meat, no butter, and if he has, he may refuse to let the workman have either of them on the order, for these are cash articles.

The poor man must take what there is, at such prices [00:56:00] as the merchant shall dictate. The result of all this is that the poor man has found himself in debt to his employer. to a large amount. Unquote. Another one, this is uh, this was like a poem written during the time. All I drew for the year was a dollar or three.

Those company store thieves made a pauper of me. And this was the daily life of, of people now. And like you were saying, if you, if you raise a fuss, if you try to start a union, which was called a combination back then, or a conspiracy back then, you would be, you would be not only fired, you'd be blacklisted from the entire trade.

You'd be evicted from your home. You'd be left literally penniless. You'd have the clothes on your back. If that, I mean, uh, for an example of another, uh, really crazy example is the Pullman town, uh, in like a generation after this George Pullman would charge for like the blinds, he would charge you for an extra window.[00:57:00]

He charged you for the good door knocker. He charged you for. You know, uh, it was a furniture. He charged you if you were on like a higher floor than someone else, and this would all come out in your pay at the end of the month, and this guy's making hand over foot millions and millions of dollars adjusted for inflation.

It's it's hundreds of millions of dollars. And this was just the norm, and this was taken from Britain. Uh, Americans like to think that we don't take a lot of things except maybe our language from Great Britain, but our whole attitude toward labor unions and things like that were, were completely based on British law.

And some of the first, uh, pro labor movements were saying, we aren't, we aren't oppressed by the British anymore, we're Americans. This is not how things work here. And this is where it was couched. And this is how something like the Molly Maguires can rear their, their head and, and do so very effectively.

Uh, all they needed was the spark. And you [00:58:00] can see how insipid that becomes where it maybe starts off, maybe or maybe not, but the company town starts off with the best of intentions that it really is to provide housing because the mine is way out away from a place that might not have a town and you start building it from there, but then it just.

It slowly like an, uh, like an octopus grows into every single aspect of a person's life. And I think today, like Chris mentioned, where Amazon's building housing and like almost recreating the, the company towns, a system, uh, the, it's not even just the private sector is doing it here in Austin, the city school district.

Is building housing because for the teachers, because the housing prices are so, uh, out of control, but you can see how like that could, how you don't even have to [00:59:00] imagine how that can turn out. Oh, well, you know, you're living in our, uh, apartment now, or you're living in our house. So you're going to work a couple extra hours a week to pay for that.

I mean, we're giving you a house and a, you know, for almost nothing compared to what market prices are. It totally skews the whole employee employer relationship. Yeah, and exactly like you were saying, this relationship is supposed to be time honored. I mean, the whole idea and the whole argument against labor unions is that they breach liberty of contract, not understanding that liberty of contract should apply to individuals making a contract together.

I mean, obviously you work at a small business. That there's no need for a labor union because the liberty of contract still exists. There's one person agreeing with another person on X amount of dollars, and that's that. But when it becomes giant conglomerates who, who, you know, the, the, the [01:00:00] health of the, the national economy is on the line, it becomes completely skewed.

And, and the authority and the power dynamics are completely off. You cannot expect some sort of equal treatment across the board for For, you know, the same thing. And, and there were, you know, there were people who owned mines who were, uh, genuinely, they genuinely cared about their workers. I'm not saying that's not the case.

But they lived in a system where exploitation was the norm. And when exploitation is the norm, that's all you really are accustomed to. You don't want to rock the boat. You don't want to, you don't want to give way to something that you consider revolutionary, like a trade union. Uh, which, uh, must've been really wild and it was, uh, incredibly brutal, the reaction to trade unionism throughout this whole era.

Yeah, because it's, it's that push and that pull of the, the corporations, which in a large part have the government behind them, [01:01:00] have pulled things in such a one way and to try and pull it back the other way with the trade unions, of course, there's going to be a huge amount of conflict. You almost, you, you couldn't, it would be outrageous to think that there wouldn't be conflict.

Mm hmm. Yeah, and, and, and most operators felt that way. They were completely divorced from reality and, and the reality that their workers were, were living through. They thought that they were being paid plenty. I mean, yeah, you have to get your rent taken out in the, in the, at, at, from your check at the end of the month.

You're getting paid a very reasonable price for the work you're doing. That's the argument at least. And in reality, I mean, people ended up owing their employers. Like I was saying, uh, people ended up going hungry. People ended up starving. People ended up being evicted if they didn't agree with whatever policy the, the, the, their boss put in place.

Uh. This all really sparked with the civil war, the civil [01:02:00] war created a labor shortage and with the massive influx of Irish migrants willing to work for a little bit less, uh, companies exploited it to the nines. They would. employ Irish people specifically because of their ability to work for less or their, their, their, um, you know, they didn't have a problem with it.

Uh, with the boom of Northern industry, this fed the workers movements. The workers movements in fed, in turn, fed labor unrest. So, almost at the start of the, the, the Civil War, 1862, there's a big strike in the coal mines. Um, almost a, a gunfight erupts between the two sides, but, you know, cooler heads prevail, et cetera, et cetera.

Bannon, uh, our old friend Bannon, he writes in the newspapers, this was because of confederates and traitors. Contrary to what Bannon was saying, the, the people of Schuylkill County volunteered en masse for the Civil War. There was [01:03:00] not a, I mean, it's very hard to convince anyone that they were literally traders when you look at the numbers.

I mean, way more than in, in other counties across the country where it's supposed to be like a Republican majority, you know, keep the union the way it is, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, so they had a massive, massive, um, uh, recruitment in this area, but that wasn't enough for The people who are running the country, they saw this as a largely democratic, uh, traitorous area.

So they pass the militia act a year later, they pass the enlistment act. This suspends habeas corpus thousands of Democrats who are deemed disloyal were thrown in jail, no charges, nothing, no, no right to legal counsel, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, Bannon is made the draft commissioner. He's going to use the draft to target Democrats specifically.

Uh, because at this time, soldiers were not actually given the vote. If you were, uh, if you returned from duty, I believe you were able to vote. And I know [01:04:00] Lincoln and the Democrat, or Lincoln and the Republicans exploited this during election time, they would send whole units back to back home. So they would vote Republican.

Uh, and I think it actually flipped Kentucky for, for Lincoln during the 1864 election. So he's, he's sweeping through the coal mines, he's, he's got this guy called Charlemagne Towers, awesome name, terrible person, uh, to lead the whole roundup, and he basically, this guy Towers, he hands in whole employment lists, and he says draft all these guys.

Not wondering are these people still working here? Are they dead? You know, uh, do they live in a different county or a different state? Are they a foreign citizen? Because this was the case too. A lot of these people were Irish nationals. So each of these Irish people that tries to get drafted, they go to the British constabulary.

Or they go to the British embassy and many, uh, diplomatic incidents break out every single [01:05:00] time this happens, but it doesn't matter. Uh, he just sort of, uh, deals with it in stride. Uh, the first killing of the Molly Maguires comes on January 2nd, 1863. There were rumors and, and, and shouts of Molly Maguire in the streets the year previous, but no serious violence.

It only really started the day. After New Year's here, the victim was James Berg. This guy was, uh, a union veteran. So far from Molly's targeting, you know, mine operators or the bosses or, you know, middlemen, they're targeting people who they consider. To be not Irish anymore. These people are traitors to the Irish cause because they fought for Lincoln's army, who's a tyrant in their eyes.

So he shot, uh, then 40 men attacked this guy, James McDonald's home. He hid in the, he hid in a mine shaft, but his wife was terrorized for hours and threatened to be shot and said that his, his husband, her husband was marked for death. And then two [01:06:00] days later. On the road, uh, two other union men were, were attacked.

When I say union men, I mean for the union, they were pro union sympathizers. One was a militia man. The other was an ardent Republican. So these people are being attacked because of what they believe. It's a very. interesting and, and, and not talked about part, I think of the Molly Maguire movement, because it's very hard to, uh, to turn these guys into, to, to good people when they're, you know, attacking, uh, army veterans in the night and, and murdering them.

So this part is definitely super, super questionable. I mean, I don't understand. Where this would even begin, I stand obvious had serious problems with, you know, the union and the way they were being repressed. And this comes to fruition when once troops start showing up and start seriously, um, infringing on the, on the rights of these people.

So, [01:07:00] in June, or sorry, in the middle of July, 1863 is the New York City draft riots. These are depicted in the gangs in New York movie by Martin Scorsese. Uh, they were distinctly racial and they were distinctly anti-Republican. This, the, these were, these people would've been considered mollies if they did this in Pennsylvania.

Uh, probably so in the anthracite, supposedly there's 15,000 armed mollies and minors waiting for like Lee's army to invade a game so they can join up. Uh, this guy gets robbed, the sergeant, uh, he gets robbed, this guy, General Whipple comes in, he holds seven men as hostages. You'd hold hostages. The fact that he held the hostages in a northern state that was fighting for the Union was pretty, uh, provocative.

Uh, and in the end, they just ended up overhauling the population throughout 1863 and the drafts went off pretty much without a hitch. Whenever you talk about this whole episode and this whole [01:08:00] aspect of the Civil War, I think it blows people's minds. I know it blew my mind. Like, Abraham Lincoln is not the sainted figure that he's turned into.

He Was a political animal and he understood politics and he did some pretty bruising politics. I think you almost sell him short by just turning him into the sainted Abe Lincoln. And you ignore that the things that he did for better or for worse to keep the union together. Oh yeah, a hundred percent. He was a decisive.

Cold and calculating man, but you can be that and also be a caring, loving, you know, father and and all around honest person and genuinely decent president. I mean, you can be all these things at once because he was just a human being. I think a lot of thing that a part that gets lost to in [01:09:00] that whole conflict that you just described is a lot of these like really hardcore Republicans slash like emancipationists at the time and you can even just reading about how kind of bizarre some of these people were like even at the time they must have been like really bizarre like these people were like by every definition of the word like Radicals, um, and, you know, as we know, with most politics, most people kind of fall in the middle or somewhat moderate.

Right? So people get this impression that, like, um, the, like, the northern states were, like, gung ho, like, Republican, and it's just not really the case. There were still a lot of Democrats, and there were still a lot of Democrats that Opposed the war throughout the entirety of it. They called them copperheads.

Uh, Republican sympathizers did, but it's not necessarily like these people were like bad people were traitors. They just, they didn't see that this war was entirely necessary. [01:10:00] Yeah, I, I think that was definitely a huge part of it. I mean, even in, with these, with these guys, the Molly McGuires, they wanted the union as it was in the constitution as it was, they wanted no radical change.

Like you were saying, the Republicans for their time and, and for the place and the ideas they held, they were the radicals. I'm not sure if either of you have heard of Harry Turtledove. He's a famous, uh, alt history writer. Oh yeah, I've read his stuff, yeah. Yeah, but he basically, in his books, uh, Lincoln becomes the head of the Socialist Party of America, the first socialist party.

And he ends up challenging, like, Teddy Roosevelt, who's this hard right, uh, you know, friends with the, the central, uh, central allies in World War I character now. I think in a lot of ways, uh, that, that view is, is not unjustifiable. If you look at some of the things Lincoln said, they would be radical today.

I mean, the things he talked about [01:11:00] with labor, things he talked about with unions, he said some pretty wild stuff. He was one of the, I mean, he's probably, The first and maybe the last president to acknowledge that the, the main source of capital is actually labor. Labor creates the capital. He was, he was one of the first people to, to say that.

And Karl Marx loved him. He loved, he loved him to Maeve Lincoln. Well, yeah, to me, that's what makes Lincoln really interesting. Everyone kind of focuses on The wrong, I don't, I want to say the wrong things, but if you look at what the Republican party was trying to do in terms of modernizing America and like their general outlook on how the economy should work, it's, it, I don't think people really get, um, in a lot of ways, like they were trying to create an autocrity, um, believe I pronounced that name correctly, where like America would be self sufficient.

To not having to be dependent on European nations or other nations for, um, its economy. And they [01:12:00] generally, they did accomplish that, you know, they were, you know, big on tariffs. They weren't like free trade people are, which is almost the exact opposite of what goes on. Well, I mean, maybe it's a little bit different now, but for the longest time, the Republican party.

You know, in our lifetime, and especially for young people, it's been like the Free Trade Party. But if you look at Lincoln's, uh, Republican Party, they had a very, uh, different view of how the economy should run in the country, for better or worse. But I tend to agree with what Lincoln said a lot in terms of how the economy should run.

Yeah, I agree with the two. I think, I mean, this is a whole other conversation, but I agree with protectionism. That's probably, that's one of like the two things that Trump did while he was in office that I actually, I actually supported. I was like, oh, okay. Um. So, yeah, to take it back to the 1860s here, uh, the middle, it's the middle of the Civil War for a really long time.

The Molly Maguire's [01:13:00] kind of go quiet throughout the summer, early fall. They kind of do anything. I think this has a lot to do with the. The, the practice of memory because they would strike it around the same time and mummers usually participated in their plays around the Christmas season. So, around this time, everyone has a little bit more free time.

They're not growing, you know, their or their barley or anything. Uh, they have a minute, uh, you know, go shoot a few mind bosses. So, uh, in late October, uh, or sorry, October 10th. This guy, Patrick Shannon, he's beaten within an inch of his life at home. He can barely use his legs ever again. Uh, same night, three other people are attacked.

So right out of the way, bang, there's, there's a whole bunch of attacks right away. A few days before Halloween, officially, the, the troops called the Invalid Corps, these were, uh, uh, this was a group of, um, soldiers who were injured and they couldn't serve on the front lines anymore, but they were used, [01:14:00] uh, in this case for labor suppression.

So they arrived to demand conscripts. So when they showed up, they were expecting 183 people to be ready outside the courthouse, you know, to receive their uniforms, et cetera, et cetera. A grand total of three people show up. So the next day, the, the cavalry clears the street of Jeansville and they, they saber, uh, a buckshot and the buckshots were another name for the Molly Maguire's, um, This guy E.

Greenlau Scott, he was a lawyer. He, he penned an, uh, a really angry letter to Abraham Lincoln. And in it, he, he includes the following exchange. He's talking to a lieutenant. The lieutenant says, we slashed four or five this morning. And he goes, slashed? What's that? The lieutenant responds, why we cut them with sabers.

Uh, Greenlau says, did they resist? Lieutenant finishes, no, but they might've been. You can't trust these fellows. And [01:15:00] from there, uh, they actually almost run down and, and murder like a 16 year old boy. He goes on to describe that. And then early in November, uh, Yorktown was served its draft notices. Um, after they were served their notices, this town, uh, the unit went to George K.

Smith's company store. And then they left. They left them high and dry. Like, you're gonna be fine. Uh, little did they know, a few nights before, They knew that this guy Smith was working with the army, so they pass a secret resolution to kill him, the Molly Maguires do, in the swamps. So this must have been a very intense meeting in the, in the swamps at the dead of night, deciding to kill a man.

And so, on November 5th, uh, George K. Smith has his house broken into by 20 odd people. They're all in blackface or they're wearing whiskers, and he gets, he gets shot one time in the head. And everyone runs as fast as they can out of the place, yelling and hollering. So this was actually [01:16:00] the first mine official, but this was, this was going to be the start of a long line of mine officials who were killed.

So, um, as a way of, of retribution toward this, uh, killing. The army shows up again. They arrest 70 people. Uh, all of them were community leaders. They were union leaders, uh, well known workers of the area. Uh, most of the charges were in fact dropped, but almost, but 13 of them were indicted for any number of things, disloyalty, treason, et cetera, et cetera.

And they were held incommunicado. Uh, alongside thousands of of confederate prisons of prisoners of war in, um, in northern Pennsylvania. So, among them was Peter Dylan. He was, like, the most well known labor organizer of this whole era and in this, uh, uh, specific place. He was well known for like, beating the heck out of people come election time, he would use his fists a lot.

In 1864, the draft was [01:17:00] initiated once more, there were some bushwhackings, but really everything went straight forward. The military was now in complete control of the coal fields there. Uh, the 13 in Philly. They served alongside, like I was saying, the POWs, but they were eventually released after the war.

And one of the great stories that I've ever read, and I hope to God that it's true, uh, John Donlan's wife, he walked the entire, she walked the entire distance from Pennsylvania coal country. Washington D. C. camped outside the White House and spoke directly with President Lincoln to get her husband released.

Uh, supposedly, Lincoln was very nice. He invited her in. They had breakfast. He paid for her. Her train ride home. Uh, from that day forth, Margaret Donlan always kept a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, uh, at like the mantelpiece in her living room and to anyone who would ask, this one was a lifelong Democrat, by the [01:18:00] way, she would say he was the greatest man who ever lived.

And the kindest, I mean, that's just that's just so powerful right there. There's no obvious proof that this happened, but with the way the White House, um, you know, visitation laws were back then, it's very possible that it could have, uh, once you, uh, and. Once you know that, uh, this guy Donlan was actually released by special order of the president, it becomes even, uh, more possible that I think this is true.

Uh, with 1864's end, the Molly Maguires kind of go to sleep for a little bit. They kind of wait until after the war. Uh, because this guy, Charlemagne Towers, resigns, uh, once he leaves and the troops leave, the miners, the mining operators left with, uh, a lot of the troops because they were like, there's going to be violence again.

I'm not, I'm not dealing with this, but that's the end of the civil war era. And that leads [01:19:00] us right into. The late 1860s, the 1870s, and the eventual end of the Molly Maguires as a, at a official capacity. We're going to leave it at that for today. I just want to mention, though, the best thing you can do to help us in this podcast is if you enjoy what you're hearing.

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Description: Former Spokane Police Captain Frank Scalise takes us on a cinematic journey in our latest episode, sharing his top picks for cop movies. Tune in as he delves into these thrilling tales and discusses the impact these films have had on law enforcement. From classics to modern gems, get ready for an inside look at the silver screen's portrayal of policing. #CopMovies #PodcastEpisode #LawEnforcementCinema

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email: crime@atozhistorypage.com

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https://facebook.com/atozhistorypage

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Begin Transcript:

I'd like to welcome back Frank, now officially a made member of the Organized Crime and Punishment crew. I'd also like to spend out special thanks in this episode to another member of our crew, Joe Pascone of the Turning Tides. History podcast for providing the voiceover for the new Organized Crime and Punish promotional audio.

You'll be hearing more from Joe in the future. To find out more about Joe, Frank, and our crew, look for links in the show notes. Uh, Frank, maybe, I don't know if we've gotten into this too much, but maybe you could, uh, this might be a good time to drop if there's any plugs you want to do, uh, now that you're a made man on to some of your other projects.

The action I got going on on the side there, is that you mean I don't know if I want to tell you that I'll have to kick up a little more. Um, well, I mean, I, I think the reason that, that, that you invited me to come on the show [00:01:00] occasionally is my law enforcement background, which we talked about before, uh, 20 years of, of, of being a police officer, about half of it on the street and about half of it in leadership roles.

And then, uh, about 4 years teaching leadership in the U. S., all over the U. S. and Canada after that. And, and so that gave me a pretty wide perspective that, that I think at times can be valuable. Other times I don't know anything. But, um, in addition to that, I also write crime fiction. I write greedy crime fiction from both sides of the badge, as Frank Zaffiro.

And so, uh, I've written about 40 books, some are police procedurals, some are hard boiled, some are private detective novels. Uh, pretty much unless it's a cozy, if you like mystery, I've got it for you. Um, and people can check out frank safiro. com and learn more if they're interested. Awesome. Frank mustache.

Chris and I are today are going to tap into and lean into Frank's cop background with a show today of our [00:02:00] favorite police movies, cop movies. And these movies we really get, we get crime, we get punishment, we get drama and really everything else you want from entertainment out of these great movies. And I think we will eventually discuss the corollary of the Cop movie, the corollary to the cop movie genre, the cop television procedural, that's a different episode for a different day.

Before we dive into it, I'll share a little, uh, anecdote I had about police movies. I was sitting in a, I was at a party with a friend of mine, and he had all of his cop buddies there. And I just asked, I was like, what do you think about cop movies? And they all kind of, like, groaned, because. They didn't, they did cop stuff all day.

They didn't really want to go and watch it as entertainment. And I wonder, what did you, what do you feel about that? When you watch them, are you able to watch them and kind of separate the professional side of you and just enjoy them? Yeah, I always was. I [00:03:00] mean, I used to joke that. You know, when you're trying to get on the job and then your 1st year on the job, you would watch the TV show cops all the time when you were off duty.

And then by the time you've been on the job for about a year, you never watch it again in your life. Unless it's a training video at the academy or something that they use because it's a busman's holiday. But it's not, the same is not true with, uh, with good television shows and definitely not with good movies.

I always enjoyed a good police related movie. I mean, I got to be particular about mistakes at times, although, you know, you can overlook that if the story's good and all that. Um, but just like any profession, you pick out the things that aren't, aren't real. Uh, but I, yeah, it wasn't ruined for me at all. I, I still enjoyed good police movies.

I think I hated bad movies. That were police related more after I came on the job than I did before, but I still loved good cop movies. So we're going to start right with [00:04:00] you, Frank. What are your top cop movies? Well, I only picked two for the purposes of this discussion, just to, to keep things. From going on for six hours, uh, because we all love this topic so much.

And, and so just picking two is, I mean, picking 20 would be easier. Um, but I decided to go with, uh, the two coasts of corruption. I went with Copland, which is set in, uh, New York and New Jersey. And I went with training day, which is set in Los Angeles. So completely over on the other side of the country. So why don't you start off with which I could talk about Copland all day and eventually we'll have an even an episode that Chris and I did on Copland.

Let it rip with which one you want to go with. Well, I mean, before I get into either one, I think pointing out that both of them have some similar themes. Um. Is, is interesting to me. I mean, both of them feature corruption, both at [00:05:00] the individual and the systemic level, you know, level, um, you know, all of these cops are, are working within a broken system.

Um, and then at the same time, they also have cops within the system who are trying to play within the rules and, or bring down the bad guys. I mean, in, in Copland, you've got. Obviously, Freddy, the character played by Stallone, he's trying to do the right thing, and he idolizes all those other cops, you know, and he's trying to, to be a good cop.

And then, uh, in Training Day, you've got, uh, uh, Officer Hoyt, played by Ethan Hawke, who is trying like hell to impress. This, you know, narcotics sergeant, so he can make the team and, and take the next step in his career. Uh, but when he figures out what's actually going on, he, he rejects it and he tries to do the right thing.

So even though they explore corruption and, and as a police officer, uh, and, and having been around cops, like I said, I mean, all over the U S and Canada, it was always the same [00:06:00] thing. They hated to hear about, you know, corruption and they didn't like to see it in movies and stuff. Um, but you know, When you have some balance in it, you know, I think it makes for a much better film.

I mean we did a podcast on copland right and uh to be honest when we did record that podcast I hadn't watched in a really long time and so long to be honest with you was uh I just knew it's like oh this was like the stallone doing the serious movie type thing or doing like the role that he typically doesn't do and then When we watched it for the podcast, I watched it several times and um Yeah.

Like I was blown away by just how well done it was. And in particular his acting and then training day I find is it's weird because at the beginning of the movie, you kind of, kind of liked Denzel Washington's character to a degree. Kind of, come on. You fell in love with him. You wanted to have his children at the beginning of the movie.

And then you see [00:07:00] though, like you kind of see. Slowly, like, it's like a peeling of an onion, right? Like, which is kind of how corruption itself actually works, right? Like, it's like the surface level of it, and it's, oh, you don't, you don't think much of it. It's like, oh, it's something you can just kind of overlook, right?

Like, oh, you know, like, um, my girlfriend doesn't like folding the laundry or something like that. You know, it's not, it's not a big deal, right? But then you peel another piece and it's like, oh, okay, this is making me question a little bit, right? And then you peel another piece. And then by the time you get to it, you see, okay, Or at the end of it, just how disgustingly corrupt Denzel Washington is.

And even within like a community that pretty much functions on criminality, they're like, we just, we can't even deal with this guy anymore. That's how corrupt he was. And in a lot of ways it shows, shows like how corruption affects A, the individual, but it also affects the entire community, um, um, that it's being perpetrated on.

And then [00:08:00] Copland, I mean with Copland, I think that the, one of the themes that keeps Coming through with me is, Freddy always felt like he won the, the, not even the second place prize, he thought he won the third place prize, that he was in the minor leagues, that he could only define himself as if he was a New York City cop, because a All those other people in the, in all the other New York City cops, I mean, he was like, he didn't even exist because he wasn't on on the force.

And that, that whole thing that he could be who he was in his role. I mean, it's almost a, uh, For a police procedural movie. I don't know. It's on. You can almost can't leave that movie without a tear in your eye. Oh, for sure. For sure. For, for several characters. And the interesting thing about the character of Freddie that Stallone plays, I think you hit it right on the head.

He sees the major league as being a New York. An NYPD officer, [00:09:00] and because he did the right thing, he saved a woman's life, you know, at jumping into the water and rescuing her and had his, his eardrum busted permanently as a result. And now he can't be an NYPD police officer. Uh, you know, he sees that. You know, as the pinnacle and he's been, yeah, he's in the minors.

He's a double a player at best in his mind. And they prey on that. These, these, these few officers who are corrupt. I mean, I'm not going to tell you, oh, it's just NYPD. Hell no. Of course it's not. But these officers are corrupt in this movie. And, and, you know, uh, Harvey Keitel and, you know, and all of them, he's kind of the ring later.

They prey on his, Psychosis, they prey on the psychology that he's going through and give him what he wants, even though it's, you know, only a shadow of what he wants. And I think that that kind of, uh, manipulative behavior. I mean, that's very mob like, isn't it guys? I mean, isn't that what you see [00:10:00] in that?

Setting as well, I think that things exactly what they were going for that movie. It was pretty it was a mob like a mafia of cops, right within their own version of America where nobody talked. And if you were going to talk to, you know, they were going to kill you, which is what happened to Ray Liotta's.

Partner, it's not made, I don't, I can't remember if it was made explicit in the movie, but it was hinted at that that's what Harvey Keitel's character did is, you know, took care of him before he talked, right? The interesting thing about Copland 2, and you mentioned Freddy's character, is, yeah, he's a small town cop, like, in a sheriff, in a small town, but In terms of fighting corruption, it really does start at that level.

It starts with just your regular everyday Joe saying, like, we're not doing this anymore. And people say, like, oh, like, you know, what's that going to do? It's just like one person, but like, one person kind of setting an example inspires other. People who do things too. And then before you know it, it, it's not just a couple of people doing [00:11:00] it.

It's a bunch of people doing it. And once it's a bunch of people talking about it, then something has to be done about it. You know, are you going to solve police corruption by doing that? No, you're not going to solve it, but you can stop. You can stop it with it. Maybe in that circumstance and. It's a never ending battle.

It sounds cliche, but you know, you know, liberty is not free. Like, it's constantly, you have to constantly fight for it. And in terms of, uh, fighting corruption in the police force or in our government agencies, you can't just, you have to constantly fight against it because otherwise you have what happens in, um, Cop land where you have this little cadre of mafia cops is basically what I would call them.

Um, running the show and doing just horrible things to like fellow cops and the community around them. Ironically, that sort of participation and vigilance and shining some light on on behavior. Uh, it's the exact same formula formula for trying to stop crime, uh, you [00:12:00] know, community involvement and people willing to testify and shining a light on it and so forth.

And it's also a never ending battle. I mean, you're never going to as a police officer. You're never going to show up at work and see the chief lock in the front door and say, what's going on? Uh, we're done. Crime's done. We're finished. Go find a new job. You know, I mean, that's never going to happen. Right?

So it's interesting that. Right. To hear you describe that and that that's what's going through my mind is yeah, that's exactly the same formula for for fighting crime. It's a persistence and and an ethical awareness and people being willing to to make a difference. Quickly, though, let's not dump and I know we neither of you were intending to, but let's not dump on small town cops at all.

I mean, the reality is, is the majority of police are on a medium to small size police department, um, in the U. S. Anyway, the majority of cops serve on a department that's medium sized or less. I don't remember what number defines that, but we're not talking about hundreds of people. [00:13:00] In that size of an agency, and there is a different form of policing that takes place.

That might be a different discussion for a different day. But when you're a county detective with backup 30 minutes out, it's a little bit different style of policing than what we saw in Copland, where when the guy's fighting on the roof, there's 12 guys coming in squad cars. You know, a minute and a half away, so just something to think about out there and the folks, it's a different sort of world, depending on where and how you end up policing to bounce off of that.

I think that that's what Copland set the dichotomy so well of that. The city is always in the background. And as far as I know, there's no place in New Jersey. That's a small Right. Right. Village essentially right across the street or right across the river from the city, but they got that so well that the small town versus the big city, even if it doesn't actually [00:14:00] exist in reality to, to draw that really stark dichotomy.

It, you know, it wouldn't have been the same if they lived three hours away in Pennsylvania, where it would really have been that way to show. This is their town. That's all that's right on the river. And you can see the city in the backdrop. I think that was one of the most clever things of the movie is it always kept it in your mind.

Yeah, it did. And he always knew that dichotomy was very starkly drawn and, and constantly reinforced. And I thought they did a pretty tremendous job of that. Um, it, it does, uh, well, I'll talk about this more when we get to, to, to training day, but it does bring up the issue of, um, how like those cops from, from New York, in addition to how Freddie saw them, they kind of saw themselves.

As elite and for being part of NYPD and a certain amount of, of entitlement came with that. And, [00:15:00] and, uh, I think some of that was bred from the corruption that they were enjoying, uh, and also, of course, like I said, for being part of the a team, essentially, um, and, and of course that's, you know, that's not a good trait, right?

That's not something that we admire. But these same guys are dealing with stuff in the city every day, uh, you know, that is horrible, right? They're in the, in the trenches up to their knees, battling through the muck and the mire of, of that job. And it's not like that every day. It's not like that all day long every day, but it's like that most days, some of the day, if that makes sense.

And, and when you experience that day after day, after day, after day. Even if you work in a decent city, it's still you're dealing with the under world of that city. Essentially, the under parts of it, people at their worst or the worst people depending. So, what do you end up wanting as as an [00:16:00] individual?

You want your family to not experience that. And 1 way that you don't experience that. Is if you don't live in the same place, and so a lot of cops live out in the suburbs, they live somewhere else. Like these cops, they lived in Garrison, New Jersey, which I assume is a made up town, or at least the was depicted fictionally, um, you know, a nice town where people can, you know, not lock their doors and all that.

And, you know, and all that kind of stuff. Um, and that's great. Everybody wants something better. Their family for their families, and I'm all for it, but it has an interesting side effect. And. Yeah. And I don't know if this really came out so much in Copland, but, but the, the danger of it was, was right there.

And that is when you don't live where you police and where you live is dramatically different than where you police, then there is a loss of. Connectivity with your community that you're policing. There's a lot loss of of understanding. There's a [00:17:00] detachment that takes place and and and that can lead to more distance.

And anytime there's distance between the police and the community that they serve. Um, it's never good. It's not necessarily, it doesn't cause corruption necessarily, but it, it does make policing more difficult. Uh, if you disconnect from the community, the community disconnects from you. And suddenly people aren't calling when things happen.

They're not testifying. They're not getting, you know, willing to, to go as far in terms of being a witness. Um, You know, programs that you might try to start to make things better, get lukewarm reception and maybe not the greatest level of involvement. Um, you know, I mean, everybody's been in a relationship where the other person checked out and you can figure out that we're not going to be friends anymore.

We're not going to date anymore pretty soon because they're already gone. Right? I mean, there's even an eagle song about it. So I would, I would hum it here, but you'd get struck on a copyright violation. So I [00:18:00] won't do it, but. Okay. You know, the community can sense that from an agency too. And so when you see these guys set up over in garrison and you see what kind of, you know, junk they have to deal with in the city, you can kind of understand their desire to do that, to have a better life.

And I get that. I totally get that. And I'm not saying they shouldn't have done that. Um, but I think it does bring a whole new set of problems with it that can be bad. It can be bad for our community. So, um, that's just one of the things I noticed that I didn't really think about. When I watched it the first 12 or 13 times when I watched it recently, uh, uh, I did it occurred to me, uh, because I was in a different place experientially.

And so those are some of the thoughts that go through my head. Um, so I don't know, does this, does this concept make sense or Sparking up a death tree, Steve. Here we are, a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like James [00:19:00] Earley's, key Battles of American History Podcast, and many other great shows.

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Uh, to me, you basically described about like, uh, communities not feeling like in a connection to the police force or the state authorities. You basically set up the scenario in which the mafia can thrive. That's exactly how it happened in New York, in places like Brownsville, where, I mean, a lot of the times we just finished, uh, we're finishing, well, releasing, finishing our series on Murder, Inc.

And a lot of the time was They didn't trust the cops, you know, they grew up in poverty. They didn't trust the government either, right? Because they lived in some of the worst conditions and, you know, the modern world at the time. In the world, you could argue too, uh, because of how cramped the spaces were and.

The lack of sanitation, they just looked at all authorities and be like, we're doing, we don't trust [00:20:00] any of them. So like, even if a cop wanted to go in there and like, try to make a difference, good luck. This is not going to happen. And then who comes in and replaces that, uh, the authority that the state and the.

the police force is supposed to have it becomes the gangs really it's like oh you don't want your shop burned down well you got to pay this tax for us right otherwise this is going to happen to your shop or this is what's going to happen to your brother oh you need a loan to get something oh come to me you know Here's the problem though.

It's like, we're going to charge you a 40%, you know, interest. And if you don't pay, if you don't even cover the, the VIG payments, uh, yeah, we're going to break your fingers and, uh, beat your wife up. But doesn't that, doesn't that come later though, Chris? I mean, doesn't it start with, Oh, that guy, Steve is messing with you.

I'll take care of it. Like that's what it starts with. And then it's like, then it, then it gets to the, probably you should just give me some money to take care of it on an ongoing basis for you. And then, you know, but it [00:21:00] almost like we, we, we talked about noble cause corruption on a different episode about how cops start doing the wrong thing for the right reason.

Basically to put bad guys in jail, the guys they know are very bad in jails. Yeah. So they don't get off on a technicality that might be the first transgression that happens, but then it progresses because it can be a slippery slope. I think the same thing's true in the mob, isn't it? I mean, I mean, even if you go back to Italy, it basically they brought order and they brought resolution to problems.

They brought safety to people initially. Um, and then, of course, yeah. It became corrupt and it became, you know, extortion and it became, you know, all the other bad things that that the mob does. So, uh, it's interesting. Basically, human nature is human nature. I think is what it comes down to. I think so much of what you said to about the sense of community.

Where if you are living in the community, like I've seen it in a slightly different way of teaching in the [00:22:00] neighborhood school where my kids went to that school, their friends went to school, and it could, even in that situation, there was some really awesome things about it. And really did it, it broke down some of those barriers of the authority and this.

And, you know, you became friends with the parents, they were your neighbors, they were your shopkeepers, your, you know, the person who did your breaks, all that, you know, everybody was leveled out the playing field in a lot of ways. But then there, it did also cause some awkwardness where you could see where some of that noble, uh, corruption could sneak in.

Oh, I can, can I really give, uh, so and so's kid a bad grade when they're, you know, my, uh, a good friend or, I mean, uh, getting Uh, cornered. Oh, can you talk about this or that? And I think with police, it would get amped up even more because it do you really want to live in a neighborhood where you could be potentially, you know, especially in maybe a higher crime neighborhood where you might have [00:23:00] to be locking up a lot of people.

I think there could be a lot of really good benefits to that. And there could be a lot of really, uh, negative outcomes. And I could see where some people want to keep a separation there. But the thing is that, you know, it's easy to think of a person as a stereotype. Oh, he's an Italian. Um, oh, he's, uh, uh, whatever an Irishman though.

She's, she's French or whatever. He's a teacher. She's a cop. Uh, you know, he, he works at a recycling plant, you know, I mean, you can, you can just decide that's a, that's the stereotype and you can, you know, really easily decide how you want to feel about that person. And, and, you know, but. When you know the person is an individual, it's a lot harder to sell yourself on anything that isn't true.

That's not, you know, that's not accurate. And so one of the things that's great about community policing or whatever iteration that they're calling it at this stage now, I've been out of the game for [00:24:00] a decade, you know, neighborhood policing, you know, whatever you want to call it, is that now people know Steve, not officer Guerra, right?

They know. Chris, not Officer Daniels, they know Frank, not Sergeant Scalise. I put myself in charge 'cause I have more experience, . Um, so it's, it, problem solving is different when, when you know somebody, even, even a little bit, even if you have the tiniest bit of commonality and, and so that's the benefit of being within the community.

So when you don't have that, you have to, as a police officer, you have to try ho hopefully you do anyway. You have to try to. Discover that commonality, uh, you know, I mean, if they've got a picture, if they've got, you know, Native American picture up on the wall, you know, and you are also, you know, maybe that's your history area, then you can, you know, broach that topic.

I mean, I'm not talking about the middle of a drag out fight, but you're there on a [00:25:00] call, right? Anything to create commonality, because then. The problem solving becomes easier. And I think, and I think in Freddie's case, that would have been all of the policing that he did. He knew everybody in that town.

Everybody knew him, but in New York, I mean, these guys live in care. So they, they're only there when they're working. They're in cars. They're not walking a beat. I don't know that. That it necessarily is quite as effective. It may. You know, I may be a little pie in the sky. We're never going to go back to officer Joe on the beat.

But boy, if we could find a way to bridge the gap between where we are and that, I think we'd be in a better place when it comes to policing and everything that surrounds it, the effectiveness of the police, police corruption or scandals when they do happen people's. Quality of life. I mean, it would just, it would be more like Garrison, New Jersey, where these guys want to live than it would be in some of the rougher places in New York.

Let's, uh, shift gears to training day. And, uh, how does [00:26:00] that fit in? It's a lot the same, I think. And that's kind of why I picked it. The biggest difference though, is so the corruption that's taking place in Copland is a reaction to the policing life and a desire for a better life. And then it, of course, it becomes about self aggrandizement and, you know, self enrichment as well, but that's where it starts.

And that's mostly what it's about, um, in training day. You know, Alonzo Harris does what he does to put bad guys in jail. That's his creed, right? That's what he does. And when Ethan Hawke calls him on it, he gets offended and he lists out judges of, you know, put, you know, have, have given out. This ungodly number of years of prison sentences on cases that he's worked and, and everything he's doing is about either putting bad guys into jail or bettering the life of the community that he's policing.

Um, even if sometimes that community is, as Chris [00:27:00] very rightfully pointed out, just beset with criminality. I mean, he's, he's crooked, but I don't know that he's a completely bad guy. I mean, 1 thing that people. Need to remember when they watch that movie is the actions. He takes during that day is actually a response to the fact that he went to Vegas and popped off his mouth and lost some money and made the Russians mad and they put out a hit on him and he was trying to buy off the hit.

And so he does a lot of corrupt things, a lot of very corrupt things. But essentially it's to save his own life is how he sees it. I'd be curious to see a different training day where maybe before he went to Las Vegas, how similar it would be. It would be very similar up to a point because his habits and his behaviors were, were, were what he did all the time.

It was clear, but his attitude was. You got to be a wolf to catch a wolf, you know, and, and that's not an uncommon attitude among a lot of [00:28:00] police. And I don't know that it's a wrong attitude entirely. One of my favorite television seasons, probably the best season of television of all time is a true detective season one, my humble.

And there's a line in there where, or one character is feeling bad about some decisions that he's made. And he, he asks the other character, the. He asks, uh, Matthew McConaughey, a character arrest goal. Do you ever think you're a bad man? And Russ tells him the people need bad men. Marty, we keep the other bad men from the door.

I mean, that's almost word for word, beat for beat. You gotta be a wolf to catch a wolf from training day. And so this corruption is. Is more based on what they're trying to accomplish. And I want to touch on that a little more deeply, but I don't want to go too far, too fast. How many times have me and you argued about the receiver?

There's a part of me that's just like, you know what? Like you go into places like Baltimore and Detroit, and it's just [00:29:00] like, you know what, you're not going to fix this problem. Like, can you, you need a sledgehammer to actually fix this problem. And it, at the end of the day, like sometimes people, it gets almost.

Well, some people willingly take the burden, but in a lot of ways it can be a burden. It's like, I have to be the sledgehammer, because who else is, who else is going to be the sledgehammer in the face of this, this There's absolutely debauchery and criminality that's going on in this community. Like I have to at least if I could stop it here, or at least it's not at least I can keep it from spreading in other places.

And Steve, you're you're you have more so like a libertarian Ben. So you're. Always terrified of, you know, the state having too much power, uh, organizations having too much power. And I mean, I get it like to a degree where I'm like, I, I see, I see the problems with that, right? I've, my opinion's always been like, well, if they start having a problem, then the people can just get rid of the people that are causing the problem.

But you, it was, I don't know, I go [00:30:00] back and forth with it all the time, where it's just like, there's a, in some ways I understand Denzel's character. It's just like, yeah, like if you're gonna fight a bunch of wolves, like you have to be the biggest, baddest wolf to be able to tame all these wolves, right?

And I think some people, I think they don't get it fully. Like I, I, you know, like, like I grew up in Toronto, so I didn't grow up in a place like Detroit or anything like that, right? But I grew up like. You know, like a lot of my friends end up becoming criminals and stuff like that, and then you're dealing with, you're around these people and you're dealing with this, and I, there's a lot of eye in the pie type solutions to these problems I find where people are like, well, if you just do this and you do this, and if the cops did this, and I'm like, like, sometimes it just, it literally takes a billy bat across the face and like arresting people, you know, like just literally removing the problem.

For the community to even have a chance, but I mean, that's probably a really controversial opinion, but that's how I feel sometimes, but I understand the, the concern of, [00:31:00] you know, police using excessive force or the state using excessive force, because in a lot of ways they, you know, it's cliche, but it's the truth, right?

In a lot of ways, they're the most powerful mafia, you know, they can print their own money. You know, they have their own army, but people, it's funny because if, if, like, if, if somebody goes zoom in down your block and then a police car goes zoom in after him and stops and writes him a ticket, you're cheering, right?

Write that mother a ticket, you know, write that Humpty Humper a ticket, right? You're all, you know, um, and that extends to some guys being a total jack wagon and a. Or something and takes a poke at somebody and shows up and mounts off to the cops and takes a swing at the cops and gets pig piled, you know, as we used to call it and, you know, ends up on the ground with, you know, about 6 knees holding him down and gets cuffed up and thrown in a car and taken to jail.

People probably cheer the. Cars, it drives away. I mean, people's sense of justice is pretty, is pretty well. I mean, unless you start [00:32:00] having philosophical discussions with them, but the, in the moment sense of justice is pretty well developed. It's pretty keen. And, and so the question that comes to me with this, with this movie training day is, is.

You know, he's engaged in corrupt behavior. That's one side of the coin. But the other side of the coin is how much of society is willing to accept that behavior in order to get the result. Like when we talked about noble cause corruption, a lot of times it goes when it, when it goes off the rails and goes really far, you've got absently T absentee leadership.

That's really not paying attention to anything except the results, you know, drugs and money on the table stats, you know. Uh, arrests community and happy about whatever. Um, the community is kind of the same way. I think about some things that the cops are getting it done. They almost don't care, you know, what, you know, it's just a bunch of criminals.

I mean, if somebody happened to get smacked upside the head. You know, when they didn't [00:33:00] deserve it, I can live with that sort of attitude. I think, I mean, and so in this movie, it just makes me think about the question. What does society want? They want justice at what cost, you know, what, and everybody's answer is different, of course, right?

Everybody's, if we pulled the three of us, we'd have three different answers. If there were 300 people on this broadcast there. Be 300 different answers where that line is at and training day does a really good job of, I think, drawing you in, you, you talked about liking Alonzo and I teach you about loving him.

I loved him. Like he's the coolest dude ever for like, it's a two hour movie and for like, um, 90 minutes. He's a God. You know, he's funny. He's charming. I mean, Denzel's a handsome man. Obviously, he's good looking guy. So very charismatic, very cinematic. Uh, and what he's doing makes sense to your basic sense of justice, doesn't it?

I mean, did he do anything that you thought was over the top? Until when, when did he do [00:34:00] something that you felt was too far? You know, probably when he faked the search warrant to steal the money from that, that woman who had the kid did the fake raid. Do you remember that part there? That was probably where most people go.

Oh, I think I'm out. I think he's a bad guy now. But prior to that. Most people were probably like, yeah, well, you know, that guy, he tried to rape that girl in the alley. So he got whacked in the grind by, you know, by, by the butt of a gun. He's lucky that he didn't go to jail or get 1 of those, you know, get, get it shot off or something.

Right? Um, and so where, where's that line and they do a really good job. I think of. Taking you down the road and seeing how far down that road. You'll go with them before you look for an exit. Yeah, you, you mentioned about like, how far would we be willing to go? Like, if somebody told me, and this is just all theoretical, right?

It's like, Hey, and your neighborhood, we can get rid of all the fentanyl. We can get rid of all the crack, get rid of all the math, right? We [00:35:00] just going to have to be allowed to do this, this and this and this. If they provided the results, I'd be like, It's not a bad deal. It's a part of me that goes like, that's not a bad deal, but what's this, this, and this, like, what, what would you have that kind of that's there's there and lies to me.

It's like, if you got the results, like, there's no fentanyl on the streets anymore. There's no. Okay. So I'm going to, uh. I'm gonna assassinate every drug dealer until all of them leave the neighborhood. Are you okay with that? That's a long, that's a long pause, Chris. I just dunno what I should say because I know, I know what my answer is, but I, I mean,

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. I started at the wrong end of the spectrum, Steve. It should. I should have started with, I'm gonna go and t verbally her, all the drug dealers to me. I'd be like, yeah, it's perfectly fine. Shoot the drug dealers. But what if you dial it back a notch [00:36:00] and you just, the team is around the table and they say that it's, the people who are doing this are predominantly teenagers from the age of 17 to 23 and they're of a certain race, is it okay to roust every single person of that, that fits that profile?

Is that, you know, would that be acceptable? And shake them down no matter what, you know, like basically essentially profiling. I mean, in our democratic country with civil rights and I mean, we have the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. No, but in a place like Singapore, they don't care and they don't have drugs on the streets like we do, you know, it's just employees think they profile behavior more than anything.

So, you know, if, if those individuals with whatever age group or whatever, uh, demographic racially or, or whatever, if they're on a known drug [00:37:00] corner, making frequent contacts with, Okay. People coming and going, that's the focus, right? Not necessarily the other factors. But, but I think your point, Steve is, is.

A wonderful one, because it really clearly defines what we're talking about here. You're giving up some freedoms and not your own, by the way, somebody else's in order for everybody to have safety. And how much of that are you willing to do? And in the movie, yeah, I think that that's kind of what we have to ask ourselves.

They're trying to get drugs off the street. Well, what are you willing to do to do that? Are you, are you willing to allow a guy like Scott Glenn's character to basically operate unimpeded for years because he gives you information and he doesn't sell to kids? And he, you know, he has this code that you're okay with.

Is that acceptable? Cause you're never going to get drugs off the street, right? So why not try to control it a little bit? Yeah. Um, now I'm being rhetorical here. I'm not actually saying that's what we should do, but some people would be like, yeah, that's a necessary evil. [00:38:00] That was a smart play on their part.

Um, is that okay? I mean, there's a lot of questions that it brings up. And I just, I think it's a fantastic movie from that perspective too. And it's a never ending discussion, honestly, like I go back and forth with it all the time, like, uh, but. I, I'm not going to lie, like I kind of lean towards stuff, especially with like drug related and, um, stuff like murder and obviously murder and stuff like that.

Like really serious crimes. I mean, do what's necessary to get the stuff off the streets. You know, people, I don't know, people talk about like, uh, terms of drug use. And like a lot of times, like people, I think there's certain people that just kind of gravitate towards it, but there's also people that are just like, they're at a party and they try something and.

Yeah. They're hanging out with a couple people and they try it a couple more times and then all of a sudden they're hooked, you know, and that's if that just wasn't, and if that was difficult to get, which is unlike what goes on society now. [00:39:00] If that was actually somewhat difficult to get for the average person, a lot of those scenarios just wouldn't happen.

I think what you describe is that, for the most part, drug use, more than the physical effects of addiction, Is it's habitual and a lot of the research shows that is when people get into drugs, it's, it, it's a habit and it's their lifestyle. And it's a lot of the, the best programs that get people off of drugs.

I interviewed another author, Sam Quinones, who, uh, was really a big fan of a program in, I want to say was somewhere in Appalachia or Appalachia, uh, where he said that. They put people in prison and they had guards and psychologists who just trained people on how to operate in a society where they're not on drugs.

Well, I don't want to, uh, [00:40:00] to, uh, spend all the time on just these two movies. So, uh, before we move on, I do want to ask everybody, uh, favorite quotes from each movie, favorite lines, um, Copland, Steve. Without a doubt, it would have to be, well, uh, there's so many of them that I use, uh, in for a penny and for a pound Ray, but, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the diagonal rule following, you can follow somebody from, uh, ahead of them as much as you can from tailing them.

And then, um, and I, I'm probably, I might be stealing somebody else's is being right. Isn't a bulletproof vest. Oh, my goodness. I tell you Yoda. Does he not own that line? Oh my, you know, that's, I don't think that's the best line in Copland. That's the, that is the best line. That's a, a motto you should live by lip being right is not a bulletproof vest.

And he delivers it with such like. So emphatically and with [00:41:00] frustration too, it's like, he's trying to get somebody to understand, you know, being, you know, being right. Isn't a bulletproof vest, Freddie, you know, and he comes at him hard with it, you know, and, and that is, that is my favorite line. Um, but. I will take another one then.

Um, because Robert De Niro has a very understated but extremely important role in this movie. And, you know, I went, go to lunch, you know, and he freaks out at everything . And, and when, when Stallone comes back and tries to, uh, give him the information now, and he, he's got the sandwich and he's like, not.

Worried about it anymore. And he goes, you know, we came to you and he goes, you know, you had a chance to do something and you blew it. And just the way that De Niro delivers that line and he's waving the sandwich. It's like, it's just, it's a great, it's great. I, I really enjoyed that line. You have a favorite line for the movie, Chris.

Not so much a line, I'd say more so a scene. I think it's when, uh, Ray Liotta's character comes over to Frank's place and he's [00:42:00] laying low for a bit, and Frank realizes like, like, Ray Liotta's character's doing blow in the bathroom, like his own bathroom, and it's just kind of like a realization where Frank has such a good, like, Freddy.

It's Freddy. Sorry, yeah, sorry, yeah, sorry. Freddy has such a good moral, uh, Compass in the sense like this is wrong, but he I think it's like a revelation to him to do a degree where it's like sometimes you know what I have to work with people that might not might not necessarily be as good as me or have the same moral compass as me to achieve.

Uh, a better good, and just because somebody might be bad in this scenario, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're entirely bad, which is, you know, kind of what we find out during the movie, right? And that's pretty much real life, too, in a lot of ways. I get, I have a very strong sense of right and wrong, a moral compass.

Now, I might not be right about that all the time, but I And to me, it's, it's pretty strong. Like, I don't, uh, it doesn't fluctuate all that much, but [00:43:00] sometimes I have to catch myself where I'm judging somebody because they're doing something wrong and think to myself, I'm like, well, I gotta be able to be a little bit flexible here sometimes, you know?

And, um, I just think that seems like a perfect place. Well, Freddy has to be too, doesn't he? He, he washes it off the, the mirror. He doesn't confront him. He doesn't. Arrest him. Um, he shows that he's able to, I mean, that's corrupt. That's a little corrupt. I mean, he shows that he's not a perfect individual.

And, and I love that about. The movie, because it shows that it's not a light switch. You know, there are degrees of somebody being corrupt and in whatever profession that they're in. And Freddy is at the very light end of the spectrum, but that's still a corrupting. He also knew figs. He. Blew up his own house.

I mean, he might not have been able to prove it, but he knew it and he didn't say anything. So, you know, he, he had a little bit of corruption too, just not enough to allow somebody to get killed. You know, he wasn't going to let a murder [00:44:00] Superboy. Right. So, uh, I think that's a great scene. That's a good. I think just a part of it too is where unlike say like the other characters or they they see the corruption and it doesn't like they know that they're being corrupt and it's not affecting them where you can see that it's literally eating freddie away inside that he is participating in this yeah yeah he's conflicted with and I have no choice right and.

Um, I think that's like, that was the biggest difference to me, like, and that that scene kind of perfectly represents it. And to me, that's what separated him the most from all the other characters were like, a lot of the corruption. It wasn't eating away at it. At the other guys were Friday was, you can literally see it on his body.

I think that's why I still don't gain weight for the role. And, you know, he didn't look as jacked as he usually did because it was, I think he was physically showing. That this, that, that the corruption was literally eating away at him. And if he didn't do something about it, I mean, eventually he probably, maybe he would have killed himself.

I don't know. Well, that is a very [00:45:00] insightful view of that character in that scene. I think, I don't think a lot of people would have picked that scene as being as pivotal as, as you've pointed it out to be, but I think you're right. I think you're absolutely right. I do. Before we move on to training day quotes, I did want to point out Ray Liotta's character Figgs.

He has a little bit of a redemption arc too. So you've got the cops who are outright corrupt. And you've got Freddie, who's outright not just a maybe slightly tiny bit flawed and then you got fixed. It was 1 of them, but now he's trying to get out and he's got to decide if he's going to do what's best for him, or if he's going to do the right thing.

And ultimately he backs Freddie up and he does the right thing. Um, and so that's to me, that's a redemption arc. And I think that's a, I think that sends a pretty powerful message too, but. Training day favorite favorite quote from training day. Chris, do you want to start since you had to go through it last time?

Uh, the King Kong quote. I mean, that's, that's like, that's the best line in the entire movie, right? [00:46:00] Like it's, uh, I mean, it's just so, I don't know. It's just so bad ass, you know, but it's, it's not that as the same time. Cause it's, I don't know. It's this guy's like making one last stand. And in some ways it's pretty pathetic too.

Right. Where he's just like, I run this neighborhood, I'm King Kong. And it's just like, yeah. No, you're not, you know, like your guy, you pointed out your guy, you know, made some bad bets and ran his mouth off and you've been trying to save your life this entire time. You know, you're not really, you're not King Kong, you know, King Kong doesn't have to worry about this type of stuff, you know, like this really kind of encapsulates just how delusional, uh, Denzel Washington is about The character, like, it's just about himself, really.

But it, the way he delivers it is perfect. I mean, it's like one of the best scenes in, I don't know, cop, I don't know, cops behaving badly type movie. That's my opinion. I was glad you asked me because that was, I know one of you guys were probably going to pick that scene too. So I, I snagged that [00:47:00] one. Frank, what do you think?

Um, I, I, I like the, to, you know, to protect the sheep. You got to catch the wolf and it takes a wolf to catch a wolf. I think that that's a good one. I love it when he tells the, the stupid suburban kid, you know, I will slap the taste out of your mouth. You know what I mean? I think that's really cool. But I think that, uh, my favorite is when he says.

Um, well, I love the King Kong quote too, by the way, Chris, but I didn't want to steal yours. I think when he says it's not what, you know, it's what you can prove. And that's the creed that he, you know, he says several times and it's an interesting piece of this character because it. It works on the positive side, you know, you might know a guy is guilty.

It doesn't matter. You have to be able to prove it on the flip side. They might know you're corrupt, but they have to be able to prove it. So we've got some room to tell a different story here. So the quote. Uh, you know, is ambidextrous, right? It doesn't, it applies to both, you know, the [00:48:00] law and the corruption.

So, but there's so many of them. He's got so many good lines in there. I mean, the scene at the diner is fantastic. The scene where he makes him smoke dope. And it's just, it's, it's, it's well done. The craziest thing about Training Day, I find, too, sorry, is just like, it's literally a one man show in a lot of ways.

Like, Ethan, uh, like, uh, Ethan Hawke's character is there, but it's like literally Denzel Washington is just, his character runs that entire movie. It's, I mean, the only comparison I can kind of think of is like Al Pacino and Scarface. We're like, like everybody else is just there, you know, you're just watching, you're watching out for Chico doing Tony Montana.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. There's a noticeable difference in the tone of the movie. Once the focus shifts. Strictly on to Jake, I mean, it's like 60, 40, 65, 35 on Alonzo and then Jake, you know, cause you're seeing Alonzo through Jake's eyes, but then it shifts after that. We, after he tries to have [00:49:00] him whacked by the, by the Mexican and, uh, or Hispanic gang.

And so, yeah. Yeah. So Steve, yours. I mean, I think you guys really encapsulated the best ones out of the whole movie. We kind of bogarted them, didn't we? So, transitioning to mine, I had probably, like Frank, I had about 20, and I'm sure Chris too, about 20 movies I wanted to pick. But I, as I was sifting through them, I found that there was three movies that, um, one almost made the cut, but at the last second I cut it.

But I wanted to focus in on crime in L. A. because I think that some of the best crime movies come out of L. A. like, uh, Training Day did. But so the one, uh, the three that I picked was the New Centurions, and that was from 1972, Colors from 1988, and then Ramparts, which was from 2011, and one thing that I really liked about them is that they, uh, one from the [00:50:00] 70s that was set in the 70s and made in the 70s, one in the late 80s that was set in the late 80s and then filmed in the late 80s, and then one that was in, uh, it was set in 2000, Or it was actually set in 20, around 1999, but it was filmed a little bit later than that.

But I think each one of those movies got the zeitgeist of what was going on. And the other cool thing about each of those three movies is they all took place in more or less the same neighborhood of LA. And you could see the translate, the transition of how the neighborhood was and how crime. It rose, it fell, it rose, it fell, and I, I think that that arc of those three movies is what really attracted me to put those three together.

You know, they almost form like a, uh, you know, a three movie series. Oh, no, I just say you continue to do because like I some of these ones I haven't watched in a long time. I don't know why. So I'm probably [00:51:00] not saying as much as this time. And then 1 other thing that I think that tied them all together is the, especially the new centurions and colors.

Well, each and then a couple of them had some different connections, but the new centurion colors had the, the, Uh, The rookie element and the veteran and the veteran who could who took things very lightly, they took their job seriously, but they also took it lightly. And then another development that we're almost seeing the playing out of it now is, uh, gang units in LA.

So kind of the thing that Chris is talking about, they, they put the, an experiment into place where they put these gang units that were very much targeting the people who sold the drugs and, and in some cases went into assassinations, but that's a, that's not really talked about in these movies, but the, these crash units that the LAPD had.

And it really, I think that they, it shows how [00:52:00] those things developed. Well, the Rampart scandal was, uh, involving crash officers, uh, when it happened. So, uh, it's interesting that two of the movies are related in that way as well. You know, I have not seen the new centurions, uh, film. I read the book way back about the time I was at the five year mark.

And so. I remember thinking how, how incredibly well Joseph Wambaugh captured those first five years. It was a little different in LA. Obviously every, every jurisdiction has its own little, you know, differences and, and, and it's not exactly the same, but the human behavior is the same and the, and the resulting emotions are the same.

So I'd be curious to hear from, uh, essentially a civilian, although I would argue your teaching experience actually gives you. A pretty strong insight on these phenomena, Steve, but, uh, what is it that drew you to that [00:53:00] movie? You know, I loved the, I, I mean, I'm a, I'm kind of a sucker for that old timey. It's this, you know, like the seventies and the, but I loved the, um, the Kilvinsky character, his arc in there.

I mean, it's, this is one of those movies that they made in the early seventies that it has. On the veneer, it's cheesy, but it's, it's so much better than it even has a right to be. That the, the Kilvinsky character, he, he's a great cop. He has some of that corruption. He looks another way, but I, I think he's always doing it for the right reason.

But the thing that I loved the most is that it explored. The person Kilvinsky for his 20 or 25 years that he was on the job, he was a hundred percent cop. And then when he retired, he had nothing like it, it, it evaporated his whole purpose. And I don't think he even realized that would happen. And I wonder [00:54:00] from your perspective, I mean, it's, it's pretty clear you filled your retirement up, but you must have seen, uh, Officers who Once they retired it, they were rudderless, um, not as often as you might think, but that's because, you know, we've known about things like this current Kilvinsky scenario for, you know, a long time.

And so you get warned early on, like, don't make your. Life all about the job when you're 1st on, it's super exciting and it's all a consuming and all encompassing. And all you want to do is work. I mean, there's a constant or a frequent joke that gets told that there really isn't a joke. When you 1st come on the job, you run around like crazy.

And all you can think of is, I can't believe they pay me to do this and you're just so excited. And then, you know. After about five years or more, at some point you reach a point where you say, [00:55:00] God, they do not pay me enough to do this. You know, that's, that's how, that's the arc of the career, you know? And a lot of people figure out early on, Hey, I need to, you know, I, I need to be involved in other stuff.

So I, I have friends who are, uh, let me know my best friend from the Academy. He he's into cosplay. He makes cosplay outfits, like really high end ones. I know another guy who plays a couple of guys who play in different bands. Um, you know, people, they figure that out, but not everybody does like you, like you point out.

And, and it sometimes even happens while you're still on the job. I knew a guy who was one of those people who his entire identity was wrapped up in being a police officer and being successful at it. And he really wanted to achieve a particular position and things didn't break, right. Um, and, and it really was through no fault of his own.

He deserved the position and he deserved to succeed. He was a good guy and he worked hard and he had morals, but, uh, the [00:56:00] fate conspired against him and a lousy chief came in and kind of screwed him over and he struggled for a couple of years. With with how much that shattered his sense of self, because he didn't have a lot of other stuff going on.

It was all about who he was as a police officer. And when that got rocked, uh, it really shook him. And I think that happens to some people when they retire for sure. But I'm happy to report that. I don't think it happens as often as it used to because of, uh, you know, in, in some cases you can probably say that, uh, Wambaugh is at least a tiny bit to, to, uh, blame for it not happening as much or give him credit.

I guess I should say, uh, because fiction, you know, what is fiction, but, you know, a lie. Told to reveal the truth and by showing this guy Kilvinsky and how he's so into it and it's all he is and then he's just nothing when he's gone. There's a lot of cops that read Joseph Wambaugh. A lot of cops read the new centurions.

A lot of cops [00:57:00] read the choir boys. Um, there's, you know, there's a lesson learned there just, just from that. So, uh, but you, you make a valid point. It's the same with teaching though, right? It's the same with any career, I think. Yeah, I think a career where you're super invested, you've worked hard to get to that career.

It's not, it's not something that you generally people fall into. They, it's a, usually a life pursuit. They get it. And like you said, they go through those arcs in their career and. A lot of people, if they don't, if they're not careful, like you say, they can become consumed by it and then once they retire, it's dropped off the cliff.

I have seen that in teaching as well. Uh, one other thing that I think that they really touched upon, and I think it's, you know, maybe again, this is one that's not as. As much as it was back then, was it the alcoholism and, uh, Stacey Keech's character, Failure, [00:58:00] he, his alcoholism, he just kind of slid into it.

He got home, he was working the, uh, the night shift and he got home and you have a little bit of scotch to get to sleep and then you're, you still don't really sleep very well. You go to work, you get amped all day during work. You can't, you know, then you can't get home. You can't calm down again. So you have a little more scotch because you need a little bit more.

And I can see that that must be a very easy thing to slide into with either alcohol or prescription drugs could potentially be one to, you know, just give me one of these sleeping pills so that I can not be a zombie tomorrow at work. I would love to address that, but I want to hear what Chris is. Chris has been wanting to say something for him.

A minute here. No, I like, I can't say personally, like the police work and like, I'm not a police officer. Right. But you were talking about alcoholism and kind of just slipping into it. I mean, I can speak from, uh, [00:59:00] I mean, we talked a little bit about it on the leaving Las Vegas podcast, but again, speak from personal experience, uh, working in restaurants for a big chunk of my life.

And, uh, anyone who's ever worked in restaurants for any length of time knows that just drinking goes in and, and, you know, like, especially you're getting off late at night, everything's closed. What is there to do? Oh, let's all go hang out at the bar and have a drink. And it starts like that. And then some people, they just, you know, restaurant work is just something that they do for a little bit.

But then if it's something that you pursue for any length of time, all of a sudden it's like, oh, that's something that you're doing three, four days out of the week, 10 years. And you start associating with things where like, Oh, like, what are we going to do? Hey, like, are we going to go hang out? Oh, that means that we're going to go drinking.

And that's how it starts. And it slowly creeps up on you. And then before you even realize it, you're a full blown alcoholic. Like, um. That's usually how [01:00:00] alcoholism works. Nobody, I don't think anybody wakes up in the morning and goes, I want to be an alcoholic. You know, it starts off as, you know, it starts off as a thing here.

And then it just slowly gets worse and worse and worse. And then before you know it, you can't go to social events without thinking about drinking. You can't, you can't really think about doing anything else really, except for, you know, like, when are we going to go drink? And um, That's, there's like Nicolas Cage leaving Las Vegas style alcoholism, and then there's that type of alcoholism, which is much more prevalent, where people literally, they can't think about doing anything else than, you know, like getting home to get a drink.

Like, if you start thinking like that. You're an alcoholic. You know, you might be only having a couple of drinks, but still, if that's what you're thinking about during the day, it's like, oh, I can't, this is so stressful. I just, I can't wait to get home to have a drink. You're an alcoholic. And for cops, I mean, it's understandable.

It's like, oh, I just, I saw a crackhead, you know, throw his [01:01:00] baby in the microwave, you know, that's a, I guess we could have talked about heat, but like Al Pacino's character says that in the movie, Heats, and what do you do when you get home? Like, yeah, you're gonna get a drink, you know, you just saw that, you know, and then.

You know, it just becomes a habit that you brought it up, Steve, in the in the previously were a lot of addiction. It just becomes something that you do. And then before you realize that it's just something that you do, uh, it's a massive problem and you really hit on it. Steve, the two. The 2 of the big reasons that cops drink 1 is to calm down after a shift.

Not every shift is all jacked up, but a lot of them are depending on where you work and what shift you work and and so forth. So there's that. Um, and then, uh, you know, some of it is to cope. Some of it's self medication. Some of the stuff you see sucks and maybe it's. A single event, like the one that Chris described that Al Pacino talks about in heat.

Maybe it's cumulative. Maybe it's just like the whole [01:02:00] last week. Everybody lied. Nobody told me the truth about anything. They wouldn't tell me the sky was blue on a clear day and I'm just fed up with it. I need a drink. I need to calm down. And then there's the 3rd piece and that is, you know, celebrating party.

And, you know, I mean, uh, cops are people too. They want to party, you know, and, and just because there's not. Yeah. In my experience, there's not drugs involved and I didn't know anybody that did drugs. It was, it was a very where I came up. Anyway, it was a very verboten thing. It wasn't treated lightly at all.

Um, but drinking is legal drinking was legal and drinking to excess. Well, there's no speed limit on how much you can drink. So you can drink as much as you want. Right? And so. I, you know, I've been to a lot of parties, you know, and we've drank a lot and I was probably one of the more mellow guys on that spectrum.

But there was a time in my life when I was in command roles that, you know, I was, I was having a drink in the [01:03:00] evening and I was drinking every weekend. And that was, was, you know, my wife and our friends with another couple and they were kind of drinkers. And so we kind of became drinkers to a degree for a good year.

I mean, you know, I mean, I haven't had a. Uh, uh, as many drinks in, in the last year that I would've had in a week in that timeframe. Uh, in fact, that that friend of mine, he, he, when we were talking about getting, uh, uh, the difference between a sergeant and a lieutenant, and we were talking seriously about it, you know, we're having a serious conversation.

And then later he comes up to me and hands me a slip of paper. And, uh, I open it up like we're in a meeting when he did it. He slides me a piece of paper, like passing a note in class or something, and I pop it open and he's got a list sergeant on the left and lieutenant on the right. And then he's got brands of liquor and under sergeant, he'd have like, Jose Cuervo.

And then under lieutenant, it would be Patron and then, you know, it'd be some cheap, you know, whiskey and then. You know, I don't know what's good. Whiskey Hennessy or something. I don't know. Stoli would be under the Lieutenant [01:04:00] and, you know, something cheap. And the point was, yeah, the reason they pay you more as a Lieutenant is because you're dealing with more headaches.

And so you're going to drink. So you might as well drink a finer brand of alcohol. And it was a pretty funny joke, especially when I'm sitting there in the middle of command staff and the chief's wondering why I'm looking at this note. Uh, but, uh, that that's the thing about alcohol is for a lot of society, it's free or it's legal rather, and it's, it's free of stigma, uh, for, for most people.

And so cops leaned hard into that and, and there were, there was a lot of. Of that release going on and I don't, I don't judge him for it. I did it too. And I understand, I understand why. Um, but it, it's not a new thing. Like you point out, it's in the movie. Uh, and, and I think it's shown at least if it's anything like it is in the book, it's rather insidious in the way that it's eventually portrayed.

Yeah. And people know too, that he's [01:05:00] drinking on the job and they, that's another thing that I think they explore too, is how much do you cover from, for somebody and how much do you have to expose them? Because they're putting not only your life on the line, they could potentially be putting the people, you know, Obviously somebody who was as drunk as Fahler was getting towards the end there, he was putting everybody at a lot, in a lot of danger with that.

And you want to obviously help someone in that condition, but you also need to call them out. And I think they explore it more in the book, the issues around that, but I think you can, the, the movie invites you to explore that. Yeah, I don't, no way would anybody that I ever worked with. Uh, put up with that sort of behavior because officer safety was always the primary consideration.

You, you get home, you get your partner home, you protect the innocent people that you're [01:06:00] serving. And it even extended to doing your best to protect the suspect in every situation. But that was the, he was the bottom of the list. Right? Um, so if somebody was drinking on the job and was intoxicated, that was handled, um, Okay.

Very quickly and very harshly a lot of the things that you see historically in policing from the 50 60 70s that were, you know, kind of looked the other way or covered up or just flat out accepted by the time I came on in the early 90s was just wasn't tolerated. It just flat out wasn't tolerated. You wouldn't keep your job.

And part of the reason is, uh, Uh, you know, policing was paying better by the time I came on, it was a, it was a career that you could make a good wage at and own a house and take care of a family. And, and, you know, and 1 spouse stay home if you wanted to, um, certainly you do pretty well. If you had to do income.

And when a lot of police corruption [01:07:00] started, it started because of a lack of pay for police. That was 1 consideration back in the 30s, 40s and 50s. Um, And so, you know, things became normalized and then we started looking around going, why, why are we still doing this? There's no reason for it. We're not putting up with this anymore.

Um, and, and we're professionals now. It was a big thing when I was on the job, you know, be a professional, be a professional. And there's arguments about whether policing is a true profession or not by whose definition. And, and certainly you, you can't win that argument with someone if they don't believe so, but there's being a professional and there's.

Behaving like a professional and you can always do the ladder, no matter what job you're in. Right? And so it was, it was a huge emphasis. So, like, failure, he would have, he would have been out of the job so fast. Um, and, and maybe even charged for, for some of the stuff he did. Um. But definitely out of out of a job.

So when you talked about it going from time [01:08:00] period to time period and illustrating the differences within the L. A. and within the community and society, I think that's a difference between the police. I think by certainly by the the 1990 film, the one set 99, he'd be out. No, it's just interesting. Like, I just thought of this right now and you picked L.

1. kind of as a theme for all your movies. It's interesting to think because L. A. You could argue is probably the youngest big city in the United States. I mean, it really didn't become a big city until when, like the 60s, 50s, really? Because other than that, like, I wonder, it's just a, it was just an interesting thought I had, like, in comparison, like, all of the cities in the United States are young in comparison to, say, the cities that are in Europe, but, uh, I don't know, I just thought, I just thought of it now in terms of, um, the type of, uh, I don't know, like, the type of criminality and stuff that goes on in, in some of the movies that you're talking about.

I wonder if that has any factor into the fact that L. A. is such a young [01:09:00] city and it expanded so quickly. I've done a little reading into Los Angeles and their policing, and one thing that it seems as they grew up with a very different mindset, I think maybe because they did, they exploded so rapidly that they didn't have the ability A lot of the entrenched interests that a place like New York and Boston, and I think Frank brought this up and the previous episode where there's a lot of institutional baggage that accumulated L.

1. At least on paper, they tried to create. A very certain type of department that was highly professionalized, I think even down to the uniforms, like they have pretty cool uniforms that are really clean. And I think that they went for an image of, you know, like super professionalism and a small department to that was.

Kind of in the background, but it would go to the [01:10:00] forefront when it needed to. And I think that's worked really in their advantage in some ways. And then we've seen a lot of really high profile times where that's blown up on them. Well, you know, scandals aside, you know, you can take those and set them aside.

Rodney King, Rampart, the other, you know, however many other ones you want to talk about and, and to what level you want to consider them a scandal that all aside. Los Angeles is considered a premier police department and a department to model oneself after now. I think a lot of departments in saying that would model themselves after the ideal Los Angeles, right?

And, and try to avoid some of the same mistakes. But I mean, in Spokane, we were the same uniform. Uh, you know, I mean, a lot of the department structures are structured very similarly. Um, a lot of people's understanding of police work that's not East Coast police work comes from TV [01:11:00] shows, all of which are set and filmed in Los Angeles.

Um, I think you make a wonderful point, Steve, and I think it, uh, it is interesting that that maybe they are. In good ways and bad a, uh, a result of their rapid expansion, I think they were one of the first departments to to go away from revolvers that they, they, they, I'm pretty sure they were one of the first departments to do SWAT.

SWAT was invented by, um, one of their chiefs. I can't remember. I can picture his face to, uh, the fact that I know the name of a Darryl Gates chief Yeah, that's right, you're thinking of. Yeah. Yeah. And so many cutting edge things have come out of that department. I mean, crash, really, if you think that was a very cutting edge program.

And I think any program that can go really well, it can go really bad, depending on what happens in it, where it is, and it's evolution. Crash and these [01:12:00] programs worked pretty well when they were first instituted. If you're not managed properly, anything can, uh, go down the drain. Yeah. I mean, they had to do something in the, in the eighties that with the crack explosion in, in, in Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, uh, I mean, I guess through all of greater Southern California and any heavily populated area, something had to be done.

And so. They innovated and they created a unit and it was very effective. And unfortunately, over time, it wasn't as you very well point out. It was not, uh, they didn't, they didn't, uh, pay close attention and they, they'd had a lot of mission drift, let's say, as evidenced by, by the rampart scandal, but, uh, I know you want to talk about colors, but before we move to that, did you have a favorite quote from the movie?

Because I, I don't really have one. I haven't seen the movie. I don't remember 1 from the book. I don't know if Chris does, but. I'm sure you do. No, I don't have one on top of my head. I was, when I was [01:13:00] watching it, I think one of the things that stood out is Kilvinsky, who was played by George C. Scott. He had his Kilvinsky's Laws and he was one of those guys who would always, you know, Oh, this is, but he'd have all of his sayings and his one saying was, um, I can't say this one on the air.

Well, I mean, I'll, I'll, uh, fill you in. I think people can fill in the blanks. Take a look at the streets. They'll always be another, uh, I think our code for our code for that was, uh, Adam Henry, it'll teach. It was teaching failure that you can't be an avenging angel. You're not going to solve every crime.

You're not going to make the world safe on your shift. You're going to punch out and you're going to punch back in tomorrow. And it's going to be the, uh, we had a saying and on the one job, S. S. D. D. Same stuff, different day. Yeah, there's a lot of [01:14:00] variations of that in police work to, um, that, that saying that you just quoted, it actually kind of mirrors the lesson that Robert Duvall, the central lesson that Robert Duvall tries to teach Sean Penn and colors.

Right. With his bowl story. Um, and, and, but it, it, it is a veteran guy trying to teach a young guy that, uh, You're not going to change the world. You're certainly not going to change it all today, and you're not going to catch every bad guy. Every, you know, every, every game is not a Stanley Cup final. You know, you sometimes, it's just, you punch the clock, like, like, uh, uh, Kovinsky said.

Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network featuring great podcasts like Mark Vinette's History of North America podcast. Go over to ParthenonPodcast. com to learn more. And now a quick word from our sponsors. Now I'll move on to colors. Colors. I really loved it. I think it captured [01:15:00] something of the age, even though it was a little cartoonish in some ways.

And it, it was very, uh, it painted the gangs, I think, a little cartoonishly. It didn't have the crisp ves. And then. Uh, they even, they insert a fake gang in there and that becomes the ultimate antagonist. Uh, the Crips and the Bloods kind of melt away and it's this gang, the 21 Street Gang, who's, as far as I know, it wasn't a real gang.

And I think. Just maybe to not get the Crypts of the Bloods angry, they made up this fake gang. But I think that one of the things is that it never had a clear antagonist. There was the one guy high top and then he flips and the, uh, then it switches over to Rocket. And you think that he's going to be sort of the, uh, Bond villain, but he doesn't turn into that.

And then the, uh, the ultimate, uh, Enemy or the [01:16:00] antagonist in the film is this gang that nominally was friendly with the, with, um, Robert Duvall and Sean Penn's character, the whole movie, and you could, in one way, look at it was a clunky storytelling, but I think in a way it really shows that how complicated the streets were for the nobody was really your friend.

Nobody was your enemy either, and a lot of relationships are very contextual. I, you know, I, I ran into people that I had fought with and arrested in different settings, not off duty. I didn't have that happen very often, but, you know, while working, you know, go to a party call or something and he's just chilling there and he's.

Not being a jerk and he's not under arrest and he doesn't have a warrant and we actually have a cordial conversation. That's quasi friendly, but we both know if I get behind his car and he's got a felony warrant or he's hold and he's holding drugs [01:17:00] or or a gun or something. That it's on. Right. And we know he's going to run, you know, he knows I'm going to chase him.

He knows if he gets out and points his gun at me, I'm going to shoot. If he runs from the car, I'm going to chase him. If he throws a fist, I'm going to throw one too. And, and like, we both know that. And, and, and it's interesting, some of these criminals that I came into contact Um, like there's kind of a code and it's like, you know, Hey, I, I got slammed on the ground.

I chased a guy down an alley one time and, and, uh, I was all by myself. I was undercover, well, it wasn't undercover exactly. We're playing close detail and I jumped out of the car to chase one guy and my partner jumped out to chase the other guy. And I go down this, this alley and it's in a residential neighborhood.

And, uh, I have my radio with me, but like a dumb ass, I didn't flip the power on because it was my handheld radio. Cause we were in, we weren't in a police car. We were in a undercover car. So I'm running down the alley telling my police radio and anybody with an ear shot [01:18:00] that I'm running down an alley.

But. But dispatch doesn't know. And my partner doesn't know cause he's running down a different alley. So the guy turns down and ends up being a blind alley. There's a fence at the other end and the guy gets to the fence and I'm pretty close to him. He grabs on the fence, tries to go over and Chris, you would have been proud of me, man.

I threw the best body check I'd ever thrown in my life. I just nailed it hard into the boards, man. That fence shook like it was. At the Spokane arena or whatever. And, and the guy falls to the ground, you know, I bounced back. I, you know, I got up first and got up on top of him before he could get up and he, he struggled a bit, but I had the advantage and I got, I got a good grip on him.

And he just, he realized it was like, it's either go all the way or, or give up at this point. Cause he's at a disadvantage. He gave up. I probably don't know if I was justified and slamming him into the fence like that. You know, looking back, I mean, if they had, if he had complained, I might, they might've argued I did.

You know, that was excessive for us. He should have grabbed him or something. Guy never said a peep. Um, and as we're walking [01:19:00] down the alley, he's kind of like. You know, I don't remember how he phrased it, but it was essentially good hit, you know, kind of thing. I was like, Hey, I ran, you caught me. That's the way it goes.

And the habitual criminals kind of understood that. And, you know, but, but it's a, it's a, it's a tenuous contextual relationship because if the tides had turned, I don't know that that guy wouldn't have grabbed my gun. You know, if, if he was looking at a long prison stretch, which he could have been, you know, um, and so what happened in the movie was actually brilliant in that regard, because it really punctuated the fact that, you know, the streets don't care.

They don't care about you and your relationships and the danger can come from anywhere. I mean, look at the wire, right? Who killed Omar little canard, you know, just as an eight year old kid or 10 year old kid, right? This is the big, bad assassin of the show. Um, You just never know where that's going to come from.

And so in a way, I think it was pretty brilliant that that [01:20:00] friendliest of antagonists ended up being the one that pulled the trigger on the fatal bullet. It's interesting. You bring up like that, um, like the relationship between like the habitual criminal and the cops. I mean, if you listen to a lot of these mafia guys, A lot of them don't necessarily hate the cops.

It's, you know, like I chose to be a criminal, and you chose to be a cop, and we're on two different sides. But, you know, I'm gonna do my thing, and you guys are gonna do your thing. All we ask is, be honest about it when you do get us, you know? Like, don't plant evidence on us. Don't, you know, make up charges.

Like, you're gonna, you're gonna catch me doing criminal act. I'm more than fine doing the time. But actually catch me doing criminal acting when I did, um, that's their opinions. A lot of the times when it's, you know, these guys talk about it is that's the way they view it. It's like, I'm on one side above the other side, just be honorable about it.

That's all we ask. Yeah. And that goes a long way and that was one of the [01:21:00] themes of the movie when you really got down to it was this and I think it was maybe a thing that was going in the zeitgeist at the time is that there was a change in attitude that there was maybe an honor amongst thieves and amongst cops and amongst everybody that was going away at that time and the young characters the Sean Penn that Cop, you know, he was, at least initially in the movie, he was going to bust everybody and he didn't grant any sort of mercy or have any thoughts.

He was just gonna get every collar he could, and he didn't really care if he made relationships or soured or anything. And then, The, the gang members, the older ones were the ones who wanted to work with the, you know, the cops and if they got busted, you got, but I mean, they even had that scene where the, um, the leader of the 21 gang was in the precinct helping out the police and then one of the cops walked by and he was like, Oh, hey, you have a warrant.

And he's like, all right, you know, [01:22:00] cuff me and take me to jail. And it was, there was an honor there. And then you see, as the movie develops, the young. Uh, gangsters are absolutely blood thirsty too, that they're not, they have no honor. And I think that that was a thing that a theme that I think they were trying to play out is that there's no, you know, that nostalgia of the old day where we'll all work together.

Hey, you, you got me, you got me and you know, that, or if, uh, you know, I will get you on something that's. That's chicken salad, right? I won't, I won't, I won't Trump anything up on you. I won't get you on something that's piddly. Uh, it'll be a legit thing. And if it's a legit thing, then you'll be a man about it.

That kind of thing. One of the things that you have in this show that is prevalent in all three is, uh, and you have it on your, on the outline to their Steve is. Partners riding together. And in, in every case, the examples seem to be the old veteran cop and the young brash rookie [01:23:00] or pretty new cop, um, in, in training day, he's, he's, but would be new as a detective, even though he's been on the job for a while and that that's a pretty common.

Theme that you see on pretty common trope that you see in these in these movies. Um, but I thought it was really well played in colors. I mean, Robert De Niro, he had a lot of patients, but he wasn't suffering fools when it came to to Sean Penn and he recognized that that character. I can't remember the character's name right now, but that pen was, you know, overly aggressive and he didn't understand that you're just arrested for stupid things that aren't going to go anywhere.

And the only result from that arrest. Besides padding your stats is an erosion of trust. Whereas if you were to play it a little bit differently, you might get some goodwill there that you can bank that somewhere down the line. Maybe somebody actually tells you who dropped the gun in a homicide or something along those lines.

And a young guy like that just doesn't think that way. He's [01:24:00] just all full of testosterone and, and, and, you know, lots of piss and vinegar and wants to just chase bad guys like a. Like, uh, you know, thoroughbred hound or something, you know, it's, it's, they're just so excited about it, but it's, it's really well done because he does impart wisdom, Robert Duvall, but he also kind of is like, Exasperated with him at times too, I think, and if I remember the movie, right, am I remembering right?

Yeah. Did you do to, um, officer cars when you were a cop? Because I would think that, um, I don't know. I'm not, uh, I think for somebody who's talkative, that would be the best thing in the universe. But I could also see that after about an hour, you've said everything that could possibly be said. And If you have somebody who won't shut up the whole time, that could be, that could be more annoying than, uh, actually going for criminals.

We had, uh, uh, one officer cars for the majority of my [01:25:00] career. Uh, so when you got to dump and ride with a partner, if, uh, if staffing allowed or special detail was going on or, or something like that, it was a, it was, it was a treat. Basically, it was a cool thing. Yeah. Absolutely. What you described is true.

If you were assigned to work with someone and you didn't get along, or they were annoying, or they like to talk and you preferred silence or the, you know, the radio or whatever that just go on a road trip with somebody you don't like. And imagine that 8 hours a day, 10 hours a day every week. All year long, but if you are partnered with somebody you chose to partner with and you work well together, it is, uh, it's, it's incredible.

It's a, it's a, it's like being on a, on a line with a hockey line with somebody that you just know where the other guy is and you hit him with the pass and he, you know, shoot past score, you know, that kind of a thing. Um, yeah. You, you're safer because, you know, where the [01:26:00] other guy is, you know, how he's going to play it.

You learn each other's sort of tells. And so you can communicate without directly speaking and so forth. And we used to work for tens. And so we had a sister platoon that worked our days off. There's, you know, not 8 days in a week. So there was 1 day a week where both teams worked and we call that the double update because we weren't very imaginative.

So, on double up nights. People would do 1 of 2 things. They would either use it as an opportunity to take a personal day or vacation day or whatever, start their, you know, start or extend their weekend or they, we double up. Where we could, as long as we had the middle number of cars out there, we could put out a couple of 2 officer cars and I went through the Academy with a guy named Steve and we used to double up almost every time that we were both working on a double up night.

And those were those were some of the most productive shifts. I ever had, I mean, we went to jail 7 times in 1 shift, [01:27:00] 1, 1, 1 day, and we had a couple of nights where he went 6. I mean, and these were not for chippy things. We weren't stopping people for littering and they're all warrants or felony arrests or whatever.

Got into some great. I would call it fun, but adventures, I guess, you know, pursuits and things like this. Um, it's great. It's wonderful. Um, but we got along and we both talked at about the same amount. Like we didn't mind writing around quiet for a little while too. So, um, but the biggest thing was knowing you got to know your partner.

I don't know how that relationship would have gone if we had worked together four nights a week instead of two nights a month, you know? Um, but boy, those two nights of the month were, you know, in the top 10 percent of my. You know, happiness level for, you know, patrol work. It was, uh, uh, pretty good. So I know there are some departments that have the staffing to put out to officer cars, but I think that that is uncommon these days.

So then my last movie that I picked to round up [01:28:00] this, uh, Three parter is the movie Rampart, and that takes place in 1999. And it's a, uh, corporal played by Woody Harrelson. And it's really, it doesn't, it's the story really focuses on the end of his career where he's. Burned out. He's a Vietnam vet and he's, you can tell he's burned out from that.

And he's had, he's gone through most of his career with the cloud that he, he killed somebody. And it's your normal noble cause corruption where he killed somebody because the person was a serial rapist. And so he. They don't really get into the exact circumstances of it, but he kills the guy and then it just sort of spiral.

I think it's that escalator or spiral that you've talked about, Frank, that a little bit of corruption leads into a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. And the next, next thing you know, you're not [01:29:00] making. These these choices for the betterment of society, you're making them fairly much for the betterment of yourself.

And I think this movie is maybe the most dramatic of the three. If, uh, really, when you look at New Centurions, it's the more realistic of the three. This one's the more dramatic of the three, but I think it uses that drama and a purpose to see a person whose life just goes it. It's that's. Going on, like truly going over the cliff.

It's just the inches up, inches up. And then when he goes down that, uh, that slide to the end, he's going full steam all the way down. Have you seen this one, Chris? I, I think I have has been quite some time. I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, for me too. I, I do remember watching it when it came out. Um, I remember how visceral it was.

I mean, Woody Harrelson's character was so unlikable, but charismatic. I [01:30:00] mean, he wasn't like, this wasn't, uh, uh, you know, training day in patrol. You know what I mean? It was, it was a completely different kind of movie. And he, he was. Like, like I said, very charismatic, very visceral in his behaviors, just the stuff he was doing in terms of his living situation.

And, and the biggest thing, I guess, was how unrepentant he was. Like, he did what he did and said what he said, and he believed in both and he wasn't apologizing for it. And. You know, I, I think that was already becoming problematic back in 2000, whatever it was when this was made. I'd, I'd, I'd love to see somebody in public service have that attitude today.

He wouldn't, he wouldn't last 5 minutes. Right? So it'd be a breath of fresh air though, if they did and be like, you know what, I did this at the time and by standby, I look at the results or something, you know, like something like it would be as opposed to the site and I'm constantly apologizing for something.

Thing that you did [01:31:00] before in your life at a different time, like it gets, I don't know for you guys, but for me, it's infuriating just constantly having to hear the, like the, the, the carousel of like, apologies about literally everything. It's just, I don't know. It's very, um, Sorry. I just don't like it. I could use a different word, but I, I don't like it.

I think though that in this, that, that was one of the things that they did in this movie that I thought was kind of interesting is Sigourney Weaver played. I don't know what her role was exactly. If she was somebody from internal affairs or if she was somebody from the DA's office, but she, uh, you know, he always thought that he was this, uh, you know, White knight who had, you know, rid the world of this serial rapist, but then she said, well, when you murdered him his and it all like came out to his wife and she killed herself and then the kids went into foster care and they were abused like there's no decision that just isn't that [01:32:00] has no consequences to it.

And I think when you, if you get into that avenging angel mode, Yeah. You don't look at the consequences of things, and that's maybe why we have a system that you arrest somebody. And maybe everything would have gone all bad for the family as it is. But to have that whole situation, I think that that's maybe why we don't have country justice.

So I will quote a very nerdy quote that is not a cop movie quote at all. It's actually from Lord of the Rings. It's J. R. R. Tolkien. And there's a point in which Frodo laments that Bilbo didn't stab and kill Gollum when he had the chance for those who know the stories or seen the movies, you get the contact, but Gollum is creating a whole lot of trouble at this point in time when he says this and Gandalf said.

You know, you're right. He did deserve death, but it was, it was, it was pity that stayed his [01:33:00] hand. It was pity and mercy. And he may have deserved death, but you know, some people who die deserve life. And can you give that to them? Uh, no, you can't. And so then he says, that's a paraphrase, but the exact quote is something along the lines of, you know, don't, don't be so quick to deal death.

Uh, even the wise cannot see all ends. And I always thought that last line was really great because you go out and, and, and try to be the guy meeting out street justice, deciding people's fates that are in an extra legal fashion in a way outside of the system that's in place. And you may get away with it a few times with a positive result.

You may make a difference exactly in the way that you intend, but there's gonna be a ripple effect. In some of these cases that you might end up with a worse situation than you started with. And it's not beyond the fact that it's just not your place to be doing that. But is it even wise to, I mean, at least habitually, the odds say you're going to screw it up [01:34:00] at some point, even if you get it right a few times.

And so, uh, it's, that's just an interesting piece to it. I think it's interesting though, with like street justice, because like, I'm sure if you asked. You know, pull people aside and you ask them like deep down inside. It's like, don't you want Charles Bronson just to go in there and clean up the streets that you want the punisher to just, you know, go outside the law and just kind of take care of the problems?

Because he does. He's not tied down by any of this stuff. If you honestly ask people will be like, well, yeah, there's going to be problems, but Okay. If he actually, you know, did take care of the problem, be like, oh yeah. You know, like he was, you know, he, he might be a vigilante, but look at what he did.

Honestly, if you do ask people, I mean, we touched on this with the, you know, like Robocop, um, we did the Robocop series too. This idea of like, yeah, he was working for the police force in a lot of ways. He was kind of like a vigilante to a degree. Um. I do think, like, if you honestly ask [01:35:00] people, it's like, they do want, they want Batman, they want Charles Bronson, they want a Punisher character to come in and just clean up all the junk outside of the entire system.

I mean, I know I do. Unless Batman shows up. Unless Batman shows up and kicks your butt and you're the one on the receiving end of Batman, then, you know, and, and I'm more to the point unless Batman makes a mistake, right? And that, that could happen with a human being. I hear what you're saying, Chris. I just, I, I, people absolutely have an appetite for it.

I mean, one of, one of my more popular books amongst. People who I know that are police officers is a book I wrote called the last horseman and, and the, the premise is that there are four X cops who are essentially vigilantes who are fed files from the system of those people who slipped through the system, who are with, you know, they're vetted.

They're 100%, no doubt guilty. And when, when the file comes, they, they slipped through the cracks [01:36:00] somehow, technicality or whatever, and they go and exact justice and. Man, every cop says how much they love it because it, I mean, it was born of a cop fantasy mine. Right? I mean, uh, that, that book came into being because I was walking out.

From from the end of shift 1 night, and I saw 1 of my sergeants who was looking depressed and staring at the screen. And I was like, Hey, Steve, what's going on different Steve? And he just relates to me how he was in court and they had a solid case against this job. And he got off because somebody didn't follow certain paperwork within a certain window.

And. He's like, how is that justice? That's, that's, that's a procedural, no harm error. And he just was so upset about it. And I just, you know, let him vent and try to be all Lieutenant Lee about it, you know, and offer some leadership in this situation. And finally he says to me, you know what? You know, it'd be great.

We'll be great as we get like you and me and [01:37:00] Brent and a couple of other guys. And we just, when these cases come out, we just go find this guy and just beat the snot out of him. So at least get some justice, man, that, that would be awesome. But I could never do that. And I said, yeah. Yeah, neither could I.

And then I went home and made some notes about this book because it was such a great idea that he came up with. And you're because you're right. People do want it, or at least they do think they want it because they have that sense of justice that I talked about, uh, in the previous, uh, uh, episode about how it's very refined.

And in the moment, they're very, it's very clear, but it's a slippery slope. It is a slippery slope. And, and I don't think you can rely on, I mean, it eventually leads to, to what despotism, right? Because somebody is going to get in charge that isn't noble. And then it's all going to change. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think like the Woody Harrelson's character and ramparts, it really is. Yeah. It ate at his soul. I don't see how that couldn't. I think that that's how you really do go down that [01:38:00] slippery slope is, you know, you're not doing your, your, you know, it's in the theoretical, you say there, maybe there is that group of cops out there.

Um, like that. And I, what was that dirty Harry Magnum force was kind of that, uh, yeah, that's the same kind of thing. And nobody is that virtuous that they can just do it out of pure virtue because it's, and I think all, a lot of these movies that we've talked about, the person starts off that that's what they're doing it out of the best intentions.

They did it to the, the child molester, and then it turns into the drug dealer, and then it turns down to shaking down the guy who's been doing 35 and a 30, you know, like, uh, the. You can go down that road really, it just, it opens yourself up to making these moral decisions that I don't think there's really any human who can be completely virtuous once they start going down that road.[01:39:00]

Every cop is going to realize at some point in his or her career that I cannot fix this problem in its totality. I am not going to change the world. I might change some people's experience in this world and I can make an impact, but I'm not going to change it. Big picture. Crime is going to exist. Drugs are going to exist.

All these things are still going to exist. And it's a sobering moment and it's a depressing moment. And I think. If you're already engaged in corrupt behavior, but for a noble reason, so that you could put bad guys that you know are bad guys in jail, when you reach that crisis point where you realize that even if you do that a hundred thousand times over the course of your career, you're not going to stop the next wave of the ocean coming onto the shore.

When you make that realization, if you're already corrupt, the next question that probably comes to mind is, well, If I'm not going to be able to change anything, then maybe at least I can make my own life better [01:40:00] somehow. And then you turn the corner and it's more about that self enrichment that happens.

I don't know for a fact that that happens. I'm not telling you that happened to anybody I know, but from just a basic psychological standpoint. It seems to make sense. The 1st part I know for a fact, every cop makes that realization. At some point, they don't necessarily give up. They don't necessarily become destitute or depressed to the point of not functioning.

They just realize that if I'm going to make a difference, it's going to be in more concentrated ways. I'm not going to change the entire game. I'm going to change this play. I'm going to change this 1 thing. Um, and so. You know, I do think that that realization can affect how corruption occurs. And in this case with Woody Harrelson character, he kind of defends himself by saying that he's like, I'm an equal opportunity hater.

You know, he hates criminals, but he gets into some stuff beyond that. That isn't about taking bad guys to jail. I think he's, he's reached that point of [01:41:00] disillusionment. Before that, um, at least that's what I remember. It's been a, it has, I probably saw it when it came out. So it's been a good 23 years. Uh, so if I'm blowing smoke, just, just, uh, feel free to point it out.

No, it's, uh, it's interesting. You brought, like, cops having a kind of inclusion. They can only make, uh, say, changes in concentrated ways. I can, not as a cop, but from personal experience, like, just from growing up, I used to get, uh, really, really upset and it used to really bother me when I would see injustice.

He brought up the example of, like, somebody misfiling paperwork and, uh, just injustice in society, you know, like government corruption, um, Um, you know, criminals on the streets and, you know, the list goes on. And I found as I, as getting older, as I'm getting older, being the youngest person on this podcast right now, but I am getting older, I have found that I am getting less upset about that type of stuff.

I still do get upset about it. Um. But I'm [01:42:00] finding that the difference I, I can make is in personal relationships where I can strengthen, you know, friendships with the people that I work with, um, and in particular younger people, or I find I can, I'm trying to at least make a difference in terms of giving advice.

To younger people, Hey, I'm older, you know, I've seen a lot of things I've gone through a lot of things in my life and I see what you're doing here. And, uh, this is not a good idea. And let me explain to you why. And sometimes it makes a difference. Sometimes it doesn't make a difference, but it's a lot, it's a lot more effective than getting upset about, Hey, did you hear what was going on in Congress today?

There's nothing I can do about that. Or in my case, parliament, there's nothing I can do about that. They're going to do their thing. I can at least maybe somewhat make a difference in this person's life. Yeah. You're not going to serve. You're not going to solve world hunger, but you can open a food bank locally.

And I think that from a [01:43:00] cost perspective, I'm not going to stop people from doing crime. I'm not going to stop people from speeding, but I can have a conversation with this person and maybe they'll slow down at least in a school zone. You know, I mean, you, you, you, you change your perspective and you change your focus and your emphasis.

And, you know, people don't always listen. Sometimes you talk about giving people advice. Sometimes the advice isn't heated the first time it takes making the mistake and getting pounded. And then Chris's advice comes back. Uh, after that, and, oh, man, he warned me about this. And then it really takes hold because now they have their own experience to anchor to the advice that you gave them.

And they know you're not just, you know, uh, you know, talking out your rear end or whatever. They, they see the value of it. Um, that happens on the job to people, people, cops get told things all the time by older cops. And we don't listen when we're young. And then we screw up or we, Mhm. Go through the fire.

And then we're like, Oh, wow, that old grinder, that old, that old call Kilvinsky guy, you [01:44:00] know, he looked a lot like George Patton did and he knew what he was talking about, you know? Yeah, that the, really the Robert Duvall character, the Kilvinsky character, they, they, they knew where they could make a difference and they knew where it just wasn't worth it.

There's a story I had with a student. He just. fought everything. Everything was, would turn into World War Three. And I sat him down and I said, there's two ways you can leave this room. You can use your head and bash down the wall right there and walk through the wall, or you can go out the door. Which ones get, the one is, is going to be a shorter distance.

But it's a lot more work or you can just take the door and I think eventually everybody's going to learn that there's, you can get a lot done doing it in an easier way and a more of one that easier isn't even always the way, but more [01:45:00] productively. And I think that that's what those old timers were trying to instill into the, the younger ones in colors and in the new centurions.

Walk down that hill, son. Walk down that hill. Don't run down that hill. The best is when Sean Penn tries to tell that story. He's completely screws it up. Like he's not quite there to mentorship. Yeah, that's a really, I think of all of those ones. That's the one I would go out for that. I would recommend people go out and watch.

It's such a fun movie and it puts you into that, that time, that place. They get the music just right. They get that, that whole thing with the crack and with the gangs and everything. And the world's changed a ton since then. Like, I mean, honestly, Robert Duvall's character might not have even died. And nowadays, yeah, Because he would have been wearing a bulletproof vest and that might have saved his life.

Like, I think there would have been so many [01:46:00] different things that would have been different now, but I think you really get to see a really specific time and place and good storytelling too. Yeah, it was a great movie. Not, not a huge quote generator was no tombstone or. Or a top gun in that respect, but, uh, uh, I love the Robert Duvall character.

And of course, Sean Penn is really good at playing a brash young kid, whatever role that might be. So I think it was a good choice. Uh, did, did you have a quote from it that you wanted to throw out there? I didn't have a quote, but I think one thing that I noticed with some of the older movies that it's something, maybe it's um, my old man coming out, they had a main character die in those movies.

I, I think that that, so many of the older movies, they, maybe they did it to the point of cliche where the main character dramatically dies at the end, but I think it, that brings you through such an emotional roller. [01:47:00] Uh, coaster where I think nowadays they're afraid to do that, maybe because they want to make the, make number 12 exactly.

You can't make a sequel unless he's going to be a ghost then. Right? So, so now we're going to dive into Chris's top cop movies and Chris's as mustache. Chris's want to do is taking things in a little slightly different direction. So let's hear what you got. Yeah, I, I picked The Pledge for one of my movies, and I mean, I think it's a, people would think, well, that's an odd choice for the theme of like, cops behaving badly, or the relationship between cops and criminals that we've been following so far with all the movies that we picked, but I picked this one because it is, it is kind of an odd choice, and basically the general rundown of the movie is, uh, it stars Jack Nicholson, actually directed by Sean Penn, and Jack Nicholson plays a Uh, character, uh, Jerry Black.

And, [01:48:00] um, at the beginning of the movie, we see, like, he's retiring, right? So, he's quite literally, uh, going to, uh, his retirement, uh, party. And, uh, he gets stopped, uh, the, the retirement party gets stopped. And he, because there was a murder of, uh, a little girl, uh, I guess within his district, uh, so he goes out and investigates it and, you know, they find the girl and then they go and inform the, the, uh, parents and he promises the parents that, you know, the last thing I do that I'm, I'm going to find who murdered your little daughter, um, they Get this Native American guy who has, uh, who's, who's special needs.

I believe he's, uh, it's not Down syndrome. He has, but he's, he's special needs. He's slow. It's the, I don't know what the right term is, but that's how I would describe it. And his partner kind of corroses like, uh, like, um, a confession out of them, but Jerry [01:49:00] Black, he just, he doesn't believe that that he doesn't believe this confession.

And, uh, yeah. The, uh, the Native American guy, he, Native American guy ends up killing himself. Uh, but, you know, the, the department and, uh, his partner and, you know, anybody, uh, important things, like, oh, it's open, shut case. He's the guy that did it. It's done. Uh, Jerry ends up getting, and Jerry ends up, uh, retiring and, um, He asks unofficially, can I, you know, investigate this case that I still think is unsolved and the chief of police said, you know what?

Okay, we'll allow you to do that. And, uh, he ends up buying, uh. Like a gas station nearby where the little girl was actually murdered and he starts doing his own investigation. But what we see clearly that's going on here is he is becoming obsessed with the case. Much of his career we've, he, we get the impression that he's just obsessed with his job.

He's [01:50:00] not married, doesn't have any kids. And through his obsession and trying to solve this case, he puts innocent people in danger. He befriends like a local girl. She's like a waitress and, uh, it takes a liking to her daughter and invites them to live with him after there was a domestic dispute. And he ends up actually using.

her daughter as bait to get this child murderer that he's convinced that there's like a serial child murderer going around and everyone that thinks he's nuts but they respect him because he was a really good detective for the most of his career and he's older so a lot of them kind of look at him like as a father figure and he sets up this whole scenario where he's going to trap this, uh, Child killer that he's convinced that he's convinced is going to come here, um, based on the, um, the evidence that he was able to gather because like the, [01:51:00] uh, this killer or whatever gave them like these little paper birds.

Um, I believe the, the, uh. At the original crime scene, they actually did find this, uh, paper bird there too, and that's what, how he makes the connection. And he gets all his cop friends to come and, you know, get ready, we're gonna bust the, uh, this actual, uh, child murderer. And What ends up happening is Jerry's actually right that there was a serial child murderer, but on the way to going to, uh, get the girl or go to the trap, he dies in a car crash and.

All we see is like a shot of his burning body in the, in the car crash, and obviously no one shows up to his trap, everyone's, you're, everyone's, yeah, you're insane, um, what's the matter with you? I mean, Frank, uh, I mean, sorry, uh, Jerry is, uh, during the movie you see that he is kind of slowly losing his mind, I believe it could be something like Alzheimer's, [01:52:00] um, And we pan away, and we see Jerry by himself, uh, talking to himself about, you know, how he was right, and he was right there, and it's a really depressing thought to have, because yes, Jerry was obsessed with doing the right thing to a degree, but he didn't care enough about the people around him, because he put the people around him in danger.

But at the end of the day, he, he was right. There was this child murderer and it was just a freak accident, road, uh, car crash that he's going to die with everyone thinking that. He's lost his mind and there wasn't this child killer about there actually was and if things maybe if buddy had just had finished drinking his coffee in the morning, he would have shown up there and Jerry would have been right and they would have actually been able to catch the killer of, uh, many of these girls that they had been founding, uh, finding and that just doesn't [01:53:00] happen.

It's interesting to think that it's. Like maybe a cop is right about something like is deadly right about something, but it he's not able to separate it. So he becomes so obsessed with it that, uh, it ends up destroying his life. I'm sure there's many scenarios where this happened where he's convinced that there's something going on and he's unable to directly prove it.

And, um, his partners and chief of police and. What have you, uh, ends up thinking maybe he's going crazy or ends up having to leave the police force. And what if that person ended up actually being right the entire time? I think you bring up a couple of really awesome points with this movie. And I'll be honest with you.

I don't remember this movie and I'm sure I saw it. I would have had to have seen it because it's Jack Nicholson at the time when I was watching movies all the time and. What a supporting cast. Holy cow. If you read the names of the other people in this movie that you chose, it's [01:54:00] just such an incredible array of actors.

And Sean Penn is an excellent director too. Um, but, but there are 2 things that jumped out at me as you were talking about this, Chris, the smaller of them was just that the randomness of the world is on display, much like when we were talking about colors and, and, and Steve talked about who actually shot it.

Robert Duvall's character and how it was kind of random, like, in my comment, then was the streets don't care. You know, they don't care about you and your relationships and fate is what fate is or randomness or chaos or however you want to put it. And that's what happens here, right? Just some random chaotic event, and you can't account for that.

But the larger piece that that I heard, as you were describing this film, it ties into a movie I talked about before, and that is training day where in training day, you have. Denzel Washington's Alonzo Harris say, you know, you want to catch the wolf. You got to be a wolf [01:55:00] basically. Right? And, and there are people in society who would say, yeah, you do.

I want my cops to be wolves so they can catch the wolves. It's necessary. Well, in this movie, you've got, you've got a cop who's obsessive about his cases and. If you went and ask somebody, you know, what, how do you want your detective to be a lot of them would be very okay with that. Most of them probably because he's going to find the bad guy.

He's going to hunt him down. He's never going to quit. I'll tell you right now, common sense, tenacity, and an ability to. Notice things in an open minded way or three traits that detectives need to have in spades and that they need to be able to draw upon if they're going to solve cases over long periods of time.

I mean, that's an addition to all of the basic foundational skill sets that that you have to have. This obsessive nature is just a, like the dark side of tenacity, isn't it? And As a society, we would applaud that because he's going to get his man, he's going to get this guy and if he [01:56:00] hadn't gotten that car wreck, as you point out, Chris, he would have got him.

But look at the toll that that takes on the individual. Look at the price that's paid. So is where Alonzo Harris or even in Copland, their failure, their, their negative way of doing something that society wants in, in, in training day, it affects it. The, the society, it affects the, the, the citizenry, the community, right in this, it it's turned inward.

It affects the individual flex, the cop himself, rather than the cop affecting the community, but it's just as dark. It's just as dark as when Alonzo was doing, it's just who's being affected by it. And in both cases, I think you would have a segment of society who, to at least a certain point before they got off the exit of the freeway would drive right along with it.

And they would say this guy, Jerry, this detective that Nicholson played, that's who I want looking for my kid. If my kid went missing. So I'm really [01:57:00] fascinated that you chose this film. But the part that always really gets to me in this movie is I could be say, I happen to go by that gas station. I'm talking to Jerry and he starts talking to me.

I had this guy, like I was right there and you know, I'm sitting there and I'm thinking to myself. This guy's insane. And yet, he's not, though. Like, he, he's telling the truth. The guy was right there, and I'm sitting there as an individual, myself, you know, justifiably thinking, this guy's lost his mind. But he really hasn't lost his mind.

It's, everybody else is just blind to the actual truth. He almost had this guy, and And how many times in society do we think that they'll were we think somebody is insane and then we come to maybe realize later that, you know, actually, they weren't and they weren't that insane. Or maybe people just never realized that.

And it's a slippery slope of like. How hard it is to how easily you can lose the truth and it could be just something as simple as like you pointed [01:58:00] out a freak accident. And then all of a sudden the truth is it's just gone. I always go back to Frank's movie. Cop land being right. Isn't a bulletproof vest and he was right.

But I'm You don't win every time, and I think that that's one of the things that he suffered, and he was right, but that didn't mean that he was going to, at the end of the day, get a medal from, for cracking the case, and I think different people handle that differently, and some people, it really does break them, that too.

They'd, because what I mean, maybe it isn't for notoriety, but maybe he just wants people to know the truth, but, um, to quote another Jack, uh, Nicholson movie, you can't handle the truth. Oh, yeah. And it's like just the movie itself. Like, I honestly, I suggest everyone want to watch it. It's one of those movies that, um, I don't know.

I [01:59:00] just, it's, I guess it's been forgotten over time. Um, but it's. It's a, it's a really emotional movie, and I mean, if you're a thinking person, uh, you'll get what I'm saying about just the slippery nature of the truth, and you'll go on this journey with this cop, where at one moment, like, at one moment, you're like, you're totally with this guy, like, he's obsessed, he's, he's gonna, he's, he's gonna catch this guy, and then you start realizing the, some of the stuff he's doing, like, he's putting another little kid in danger, he's sacrificing a potentially healthy relationship, I With, uh, this girl and her daughter, um, because he's so up so obsessed to, uh, to crack this case.

He basically, you know, he gave his life to the police force and trying to protect innocent people. But in the process, he ends up putting innocent people in danger and ends up destroying his own life. It's. It I mean, it's not an easy watch. It's a very depressing movie. And Mickey Rourke has, uh, has a [02:00:00] quick cameo appearance in it.

And, uh, Mickey Rourke is when he's on. Honestly, he's probably 1 of the best actors in Hollywood. And then this little 5 minute scene that he has in there where he's talking about because 1 of his daughters is 1 of the. One of the ones that were killed. Um, it's, it's, it's heartbreaking to watch and I find a lot of with a lot of these cop movies and, um, just crime shows in general.

It's all, it's all about like the CSI type stuff where it's just like, Oh, how are we going to solve this case? And like, uh, with criminal minds. And it's like, Oh, like this guy was doing this. And I found that the, the pledge really brings home just the, uh, personal trauma that comes with. The crimes of this nature, but just crime in general, like the toll it takes on people who are directly involved in it and the people around it and the people trying to, uh, solve the problem.

It's I find, uh, [02:01:00] with a lot in this genre, they try to make it seem it's like, oh, it's like a cat and mouse game. And, and, and. There's aspects of that in this movie, but it's really, it's not the focus. It's about the, the toll that, uh, criminality takes on everyone really well. And you quoted, uh, the other Jack Nicholson line of, you know, You can't handle the truth there a minute ago.

Was it you, Steve, that said that? Yeah. Yeah. But there's another line from that same speech that applies to this movie too, right? Where he says, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. And that. Applies to this character, the detective that he plays in the pledge. It sounds like to me, I mean, that obsessive compulsive, you know, tenacious sort of personality is exactly who you want.

I mean, if that's who you're, if your kid was stolen, but again, there's a price, there's always a price. And, uh, it sounds like they depicted that really well in this movie. [02:02:00] Now, yeah. I did not see it recently, so I don't have a quote from it. So I am going to do a fun fact instead. Chris, did you know this was actually filmed largely in BC?

I didn't know that, but if you told me that I would have been, yeah, I'm not shocked by just like, it looked like it was filmed in the Pacific Northwest, like around that area. Yeah, it was in the, it was around, uh, it was all in the interior of BC, except for the exterior shots that they filmed in Reno to, to, to set it, but they, they shot it in a bunch of small towns.

I've never heard of. And I, I actually know BC fairly well from traveling up there for hockey and stuff. So yeah, it's a fun, fun fact instead of a quote. Yeah. BC is interesting people. They, when they think of British Columbia, if they, I don't know how many Americans actually do think about British Columbia when they do, they can go like Vancouver.

And so people don't realize just how like, what do you like the wilderness in BC? Like they don't get it, right? Like it's [02:03:00] really like, it's really like there we have our hillbillies in Canada too. And then they live in BC. Um, and those are, I'm telling you that, like, I personally haven't been there, but I've heard stories and, uh, Yeah, it can get, like, really, uh, Hillbilly esque in certain parts of British Columbia.

I don't have a quote either, but, uh, another, Mickey Rourke, where he made a really short but impactful cameo was in this movie called Man of God, and it, it was a Greek movie, in English, about a Greek, uh, religious person, and And the last literally two minutes, Mickey Rourke is in it and he absolutely made the movie in just two minutes and he makes a lot of stinkers too, which is pretty amazing.

So yeah, he's a, he's up and down. But boy, like Chris said, when he's up, you know, when you get your angel heart and you're, and you're the [02:04:00] wrestler and movies like this, I mean, that's, uh, that's, that's some pretty powerful acting. Did you have a favorite quote from the movie, Chris? I mean, did he, were there any like favorite quote per se?

I mean, I would say. My favorite scene, even though, like, favorites, like, I guess is a weird word to use, is just that shot of Jerry muttering to himself and, like, shaking his hand, and the camera's panning out, and you see, oh, this is how it ends. It's, no one's actually going to know the truth, and Jerry's going to sit here and slowly go insane for the rest of his life.

Sounds devastating. You know, it is a very, uh, I guess that I suggest everyone watch it. Like it's, uh, it's one of those movies that I just think has slowly been forgotten about. And, um, yeah, go out and watch it when you, uh, guys listen to this podcast.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. [02:05:00] Now, your second one is a really interesting movie, and it, it, it's on theme, but it also, it has an, it's a little different, too, and that's The Departed, another Jack Nicholson movie. How does that make your list? I didn't even realize I picked two Jack Nicholson movies that didn't, just don't tell me right now.

Maybe I should have picked a third one where he plays something with cops. Uh, should have picked, I'm trying to think of what am I at Chinatown? It's not a cop. Chinatown. Yeah, . He's not, he's a detective per se. But, um, I know I picked, picked the theme for, for Steve too with the LA setting. Yeah, um, I, I just, I picked it to party because I, I enjoyed this movie and I thought, honestly, there's a lot of people who really enjoy this movie and Steve doesn't really enjoy it all that much or thinks it's somewhat overrated.

Um. To be honest with you, I do prefer Black Mass just because it's more, but we'll talk about that I guess in a little bit. But, uh, [02:06:00] yeah, I picked The Departed because it just touches on a lot of themes, uh, and it's somewhat loosely based on a true story. Like, um, I'm assuming most people have seen The Departed, so, um, because it was such a big movie when it did come out.

Uh, The Departed is somewhat loosely based on Whitey Bulger, uh, that, The character played by Jack Nicholson is supposed to be Whitey Bulger, and people aren't familiar with Whitey Bulger. Whitey Bulger was a famous, uh, organized crime figure in South Boston, which is where The Departed takes place. And what makes Whitey Bulger interesting, there's a lot of organized crime figures in the history of Boston, especially South Boston, but Whitey Bulger was actually an FBI informant for most of his criminal career, and it somewhat works.

The way that it's somewhat worked out the way that it's depicted in the movie The Departed, um, where Matt Damon's character grew up in South Boston, idolized, uh, [02:07:00] Jack Nicholson's character and became a police officer. Well, more than a police officer, ended up working for the, the, the FBI. And, uh, Made, uh, Jack Nicholson and, you know, I gotta, I gotta correct you, I gotta correct you there.

That he went to work for the Massachusetts State Police. Oh, that worked for, yeah, he did. He didn't work for the F fbi, FBI story mixed up. Yeah. , the character, the real story, he went, went to work for the F fbi. I, but it was Leonardo DiCaprio's character went to be, he became a Stai, I think. Is that how it Bo Bo Both of them were STAs, yeah.

Oh, okay. Uh, and, yeah, so he ends up, uh, tipping them off, uh, on information, uh, I'm sorry, Matt Damon's character, because he, he idolized him, and there's a whole history about that with how South Boston's almost like a country on and of itself, or a big chunk of its history, um. Yeah, and then with Leonardo DiCaprio's [02:08:00] character, we kind of get a glimpse into the problems, potential problems of undercover police work, because as you're watching the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio's committing various crimes, and I get it, because he's an undercover cop, and he has to, you know, fit in to be able to get to Jack Nicholson's character, um, and But in the process of doing that, he is committing crimes.

He's setting buildings on fire. He's beating people up. He's doing extortion. Uh, pretty much everything short of like actual murder. Um, but he's, he's part of that too, though. Remember him and him and French go into that one place and French kills that guy. Yeah. Uh, he wasn't like, I mean, he didn't participate in per se, right?

But there is that famous scene where he's, he's talking to his handlers and he's, he's saying like, I literally, we literally have this guy on murder. Like, what are you guys doing? And that's always like, I've said this to me, even when I watched the movie and I didn't know it was kind of based on Whitey [02:09:00] Bulger.

I said, Yeah, that would have been the moment where I go, yeah, I'm out. If you're not bringing them in at this point, there's something else going on here. You literally have them on murder. What else do you need? Um, but it's, it raises a lot of those, uh, themes. And then the nature of informants, because I guess, spoiler alert, by the end of it, we find out that, uh, Uh, Jack Nicholson's character has been an informant for the FBI this entire time, which is what happened with Whitey Bulger before they actually decided to start going after him, and there was a huge manhunt.

They, they start realizing it's like Wait a minute, this guy's been, and, our, his handler's basically been protecting him this entire time, and he's been tipping them off about people ratting and telling stories, which have led to like multiple murders. It's like, oh, how did this happen? And It, it shows you like, uh, how quickly, like, the informant system can be abused.[02:10:00]

Um, I mean, J. Edgar Hoover himself was not a big fan of undercover work for obvious reasons. He goes, well, I mean, if you're going to do undercover work, like, you're going to have to commit the crimes to fit in for them to actually buy that you're who you say you are. And the nature of the, the, the problems, if you say using informants is.

They can easily lie, or they can easily not give you good information, or they can, by lying, covering up their own crimes. Yeah, look at Donnie Brasco. I mean, look at what he had to do to maintain his cover. And certainly, uh, Uh, Billy Costigan, the character that Leonardo DiCaprio plays, he, he's present for a murder and, and he, you know, he's doing all kinds of crimes, lower level crimes.

And you can see it's taken a toll on him. I mean, when he goes to see that, that, uh, psychologist, which obviously that's pretty contrived that they both talk to the same psychologist, blah, blah, blah. [02:11:00] But how busted up he is about it and how he's asking for, you know, something to help him sleep and to. Cope.

I think that's pretty realistic. I mean, he knows what he just did is wrong, but, and he's still, and he's being forced to continue to do it. And, uh, Quinn and, and, uh, what's Don, what's Donnie Wahlberg's character's name? Uh, the sergeant. Uh, there's a smart Alec through the whole movie, uh, you know, they don't, they don't pull them out on when, like you said, they had any number of charges on him.

So I would be going crazy if that were me undercover work. I've done undercover undercover work for. Like hours at a time. That's, that's all the experience I had. Um, and it's nerve wracking for, you know, three hours to pretend you're somebody else and to, you know, to delve into that world. Um, and it's a completely different experience and not necessarily a [02:12:00] pleasant one.

I can't imagine doing it for the period of time that this character had to. Well, and you're watching, like I'm saying, like, you're, you're a police officer. You signed up to like, you know, I don't want to not commit crimes. Really? Like the majority, you want to stop crimes and then you become an uncovered police officer and you're participating in the crimes.

You have no choice because I mean, your life's at risk too. Like, if you're not like. Helping with committing the crimes. They're going to be like, who's this guy? He's, uh, is he a cop? Is he a rat? What's going on here? And you could easily get, you know, the crap kicked out of you or killed in some circumstances.

Like if you're a witness to a murder and they're like, oh, this guy could be a cop, they're just going to kill you right there. I mean, I wouldn't even like besmirch them to a degree. I'm like, this is what they do. And this guy's a cop. And he just watched us do it. Like, We're all going to go to jail for life if this guy talks, right?

So, like, I get it to a degree. [02:13:00] I think I obviously think it's a, it's abhorrent, but I, I mean, is it fair to be putting police officers in those circumstances? You know, I really, I know, I think, I think you have to volunteer to do this type of work. Like, they don't, it's not assigned to you, but even somebody volunteers, I mean, somebody can volunteer to go home.

To Vietnam too. I mean, was it really fair to be sending them into those jungles and with like no real like plan in place or rhyme or reason of them? We're just going to bomb the crap out of something and then just like, Oh yeah, just go into the jungle. It's it's not, I don't. There's a part of me that feels like it's not fair, but there's also a part of me that's like, it's, it's necessary work to really kind of get to the information.

I mean, one of the biggest, I mean, successful, uh, you pointed out with Donnie Brasco, one of the most successful operations in terms of the mafia and just collecting information, not so much per se with arrests, but a fair amount of people were arrested too, was Donnie Brasco, right? Joe Pistone going undercover for many years on, [02:14:00] uh, and infiltrating the Bonanno family almost up until the point where.

You know, he was going to get made and he actually pushed against the FBI didn't want him to get made. And Joe was like, I'm right there. They're going to make me just, you know, let me do it. And they pulled him out at that point. Frank, in your experience, was that sort of deep cover type thing? Was that something that it wasn't?

It's more common for the feds and the state authorities to do that sort of thing. And, uh, local police department. I think it's more common for a larger agency because they have the resources to support it. And, and yes, it usually is, uh, you know, you're targeting something big most of the time. I mean, going undercover for a shift and buying drugs and pretending you're a drug user and doing street hand to hands.

I mean, that's undercover, but it's not deep undercover. It's not what you're talking about here. And so what you're talking about here is. It has a, an overarching goal, [02:15:00] uh, that's pretty ambitious. And so it requires the person to be undercover for a longer period of time. And it's more dangerous. You're working without a net most of the time.

I mean, one thing that you do in an undercover operation, that's a short term one is you can, you can control the situation a lot more and provide for a lot more safety for your undercover operative. Yeah. Uh, if, you know, if they were walking up to the corner to buy drugs, you can have the corner coverage.

You can have a ready response car. You can have a video camera rolling. You can, you know, you can, uh, have an ear pier, earpiece in to warn them if somebody's walking up behind them. I mean, there's things you can do. You put somebody undercover like Donnie Brasco. Well, Joe Pistone, but like, You know, in that scenario or in the fictional scenario of Billy Costigan here in the departed and you know, they are totally walking, working without a net.

They are on their own. And that has a stress level to it that I think has got to be off the charts. I mean, uh, [02:16:00] and again, it's kind of shown in how Costigan, you know, relates to the, uh, to the, to the psychologist. It's, but it's like you said, Chris, there are some Goals, there are some things that you might want to accomplish that can only be accomplished through undercover work.

And you accept the danger as the officer and as the organization and you accept that there may be some smaller transgressions that take place in order to achieve the greater good. But it's far more regimented and far more, um. There are a lot of rules in place and safety precautions and checks and balances in the real world than in a lot of the more ambitious films that want to, you know, hype up the drama.

And certainly the further back you go, you can play a little faster and loosen, be a little closer to reality. But to answer your question directly, Steve, I think it is a larger department, maybe a state or a federal department. Or a large department [02:17:00] that has a task that they see that is going to take a lot of work to take down and not uncoincidentally organized crime is one of those things which speaks directly to the core topic of your show and not being a lawyer or a cop or anything like that.

But I think that somebody like Donnie Brasco. He just he kind of like kept slipping deeper and deeper and deeper into it, but I would personally think that, you know, with my very limited knowledge that you start getting somebody to in deep and they start making those, you know, they start doing those little crimes that kind of.

Opens up the prosecution to problems of chain of evidence and all that sort of thing. When they get too deep into it. Well, Mr. Brass or, uh, you know, Agent Postone, where were you when that murder was committed? And, you know, I did. That sort of thing where I think that and that's what I think the [02:18:00] FBI was getting to when they didn't want him to be made.

Like you put somebody on the stand, you were made in the, in the mafia. Where exactly did you stand in this? Yeah. And how did you manage to, to do that? Yeah, in the departed situation, where not only was he undercover, he was also working for the, the Jack Nicholson Whitey Bulger character. So he was working on, you know, all three sides of the fence.

And it's interesting, too, because when Chris points out that this mirrors the Whitey Bulger scenario, and that Nicholson was absolutely modeled after him, um, it's actually also an adaptation from a Hong Kong film called Infernal Affairs that. Mirrors the storyline very closely. Um, there's some deviations and so forth.

And there's a couple of good videos on YouTube that highlight what those differences are. But when they said it in Boston, obviously they said, well, there's a lot of local Boston history that we need to work [02:19:00] into this. And the whole, all the whitey bulger stuff obviously was where it was, what they plugged in.

Crazy fact about this movie is that Whitey Bulger was on the run still from the FBI when this movie came out, so he could very well have watched this movie that was somewhat loosely, I mean, it's very loosely based on his life to a degree, and sit there and just Like, watch Jack Nicholson kind of play a fake version of him.

It's, it's, he was, he was still on the run at the time. You know, they only caught him when he was like an old man. And then he was like brutally murdered in prison. But I mean, we're gonna, I guess we'll save that for like a whole another series. That's gonna be like Voight E Paltry. It's gonna be a huge series.

But I, I want to catch it. Like, you worked with informants, right? Sure. I mean, how, like, how reliable it's, it could be such a slippery slope where, like, you think this guy's feeding you good information, but like, is he actually really feeding you useful information or not? Like, how do [02:20:00] you discern that? Well, the proof is in the pudding, right?

I mean, you always want to independently verify what you're told and in order to use a witness, um, or a CID in order to use, uh, a confidential informant. For as the basis for probable cause to get a search warrant or to arrest somebody, you have to prove that they have that knowledge and you have to be able to prove that they have a track record of being truthful and accurate, right?

That there, you can't just say, yeah, some guy named Chris told me that Steve was slinging dope. So I want to take the door. I have to be able to say, well, you know, Chris is a user he's bought From that house before Chris has provided me information on 3 separate occasions that I have confirmed to be accurate.

I mean, you have to go through this process of essentially qualifying the informant and if they're going to be an official CI, there's actually a CI contract that they, that people will have their [02:21:00] CI sign. There's a. You know, basically I call it what you want. It's basically a code of ethics, basically a do thou shalt not list, you know, that they have to abide by.

And, um, and, and so I'm not telling you that people don't have informal snitches. They certainly do, but to get to the point where they're actually a confidential informant, then it's a little bit more involved. And, and to, to know if they're telling the truth again, it's because they've told you the truth and you verified it.

So you're just open that, you know. This this 6th instance of them giving the information is also true because the 1st 5 or true, you know, best indicator of future performance is fast past performance, right? How does the instead of curiosity? How would a department figure out whether a cop is? Basically running protection for an informant in this movie in particular, like the cop, like Jack Nicholson's character, Whitey Bulger was an informant.

He was giving them information to a degree. [02:22:00] Um, but it wasn't a lot of the times. It wasn't very useful information, but he had an FBI handler that was running protection for him. And how does the department go about finding out whether this is happening with the police officer? He's running protection for informant may be the guy was high school friend, or maybe he's giving them a little bit of cash underneath the table, or maybe the cops got a drug problem or something.

You know, he's hooking them up. How do they find out whether the information that the cop is claiming is giving them is good information. Um, it's leading to, like, other arrests and it only all you'd have to do is the informant is just give enough to maybe. So it's just so maybe somebody's getting arrested, but in actuality, it's just all a front for something else.

I mean, how do they go about investigating that? Well, that's a multi layered question and probably too big for this, for this discussion here. But I, but, but the one, one piece that, that you kind [02:23:00] of went to there at the end, it only takes one time for an informant to give bad information and for the.

Officer to act on that information and get burned, particularly if other cops are present and see that, um, to to to sour that relationship. You might get away with 1 mishap like that. If you've got a really good excuse and a real good track record. Um, but. You burn me twice and we're done and I'll probably put you on my, you know, give no quarter list, uh, as well.

Um, so it, it, it really all comes down to Chris, the facts of it, right? You just see, you know, did this person give good information or not? And that answers the question in, in, in toward the idea of a cop covering for an informant or something. I mean, it's a real great scenario for fiction. I haven't encountered it really happening.

In my career, I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but my answer would be the same. I mean, I would expect that this sort of [02:24:00] thing would eventually become apparent. I mean, even in the movie, when Matt Damon is fiddling with his phone and texting. Jack Nicholson, and he gets a text and Billy Costigan sees him get a text and then immediately make his decision to do something when he goes and talks to Queen and, and I still can't remember the Wahlberg character's name, which is bugging me, but when he goes and talks to them for debrief on this incident, he's going to point that out that he got a text or something and he changed, you know, changed the plan and they did this.

If anybody. Was suspicious or saw Matt Damon's character doing something they're going to start to be suspicious. And once somebody's suspicious of something, they start looking at it. You know, most conspiracies don't hold up once people start actually, like, you know, open in the cupboards and peeking under under the rug and so forth.

So I think the truth went out in most agencies pretty quickly. If somebody was doing that. You know what I thought was, it was great about the movie, but it, and I think it made it exciting, but it also [02:25:00] was sort of the failure at the end is that Whitey Bulger at that point in 2006, that was one of the great mysteries of, uh, you know, you could rank that with like, where did Amelia Earhart go?

And where did, um, you know, is it, are, were they all Elvis and Jimi Hendrix and then living on an island somewhere? Like that's how, with DB Cooper flying the plane that way. was how gone he was in 2006. He was on unsolved mysteries, you know, that was one of the things. And then to me, that was sort of a fail at the end of the movie is because they didn't, Scorsese didn't seem to know how to end it.

And then, what was it, I think in 2012 did they catch him, something like that? And then so we know now what the rest of the story is. So I think that that was kind of the, that was what made the movie so exciting when it came out. But then the ending kind of fell flat because I don't think, I mean, I don't [02:26:00] feel like it was a satisfying ending to it.

It was kind of an action ending. Yeah, I get shot up and then they find out that he's an informant. I mean, I mean, I, I'm not going to disagree with that. The ending's a little anticlimactic, but, uh, like the, the rest of the movie, the pace of it's just great. It just kind of rolls along. And I know you said you're not a huge fan of it, but I like, I don't know.

I enjoy it. Like, uh, especially when like Leonardo DiCaprio's character dies. It was just such a good kick in the ending. Kicking the balls, sorry, but like, it's the truth, right? It's a good shock moment, right? Yeah, you know, it's like, whoa, but then it's not like just shocking for the sake of shocking. Like, it actually makes sense in terms of this movie.

It really does. Maybe I'll upset the audience here, but. I think one of the things that I didn't like about the Departed, or one of the things that like stuck in my craw is Matt Damon's, one of my poison pill actors. I guess I, I give a quite a bit of a list that Chris knows that Nicholas Cage is one of [02:27:00] them, but when some certain actors are in a movie, it's a, it, it sets a high bar for me to like it, and Matt Damon's one of them.

Really? That's interesting. I think he's a pretty good actor. I, I got a somewhat, I'm not as bad as Steve. I got to like, I'm not a huge, huge fan of his, but I'm a huge fan of Leonardo DiCaprio. So I love his acting. I think he's great. Right? Uh, you didn't like goodwill hunting, Steve. No, I, I, and I liked everything except for him.

I think there's something about Matt Damon that he's always Matt Damon. I never really believe him that he's even like in Elysium where he played, was he a cyborg or he was something he just seemed like Matt Damon. I don't. I don't know what it is science fiction. Matt Damon. Yeah, that's funny. Good. Well, hunting was out of a soft spot in my heart because there's that scene with, uh, Robin Williams character.

And he's [02:28:00] talking about how his wife passed away and. Like, he's just, that was like, his life was over at that point and, you know, not to get too personal, it's just like, after my mom passed away, what have you, and then I, I could see, even at a young age, I could see it on my dad's face, right? Like, that was, he was just, I just, life was just never going to be the same again.

And, and, I don't know, that scene just really changed. That scene just really, this is really touching. I enjoy the movie. I, I, I, I, I somewhat agree with Matt Damon's acting. You know, I find it's kind of like The Rock to a degree where I'm like, I, I don't know. Oh my God, no, no, no. Is it like The Rock? Come on.

No, no, no, no, no. I'm saying, I'm saying like, it's almost like I'm seeing it. Yeah, his, um, I just, it's almost like, no, we're, let me explain that before we, uh, are you saying his persona comes through no matter what? Is that kind of the same thing? I kind of again and again, like, I've seen Matt Damon act [02:29:00] and it's good, but it's, it's the same, right?

Like, I don't, I don't. See a range, like a range of acting where, like, compare Leonardo DiCaprio in this movie, and you watch Leo, and he's pretty, he's very different and pretty much every movie that he's in. And one reason, I mean, Steve might hate Nicolas Cage. And to me, like, the one of the reasons I do like Nicolas Cage is I never know what to expect when I watch one of his movies, you know, it's either it's going to be a train wreck, or it's going to be leaving Las Vegas, you know what I mean?

Like, it'd be one or the other, right? And, you know, I just find, like, with Matt Damon, it's just, it's very safe, his acting, right? And, and that's the reason I kind of brought up The Rock. Like, you watch The Rock's movies, and they're like, okay, they're entertaining, but they're very safe. Like, you're, no one's gonna remember.

No one's going to remember any of these rock movies that have come out, like the way they remember the predator or Terminator or Total Recall. They're just not going to remember them because [02:30:00] they're all so, they're so polished and they're so safe. They're very vanilla. They're very vanilla. Yeah, but I don't think the same is true of Matt Damon's movies.

I mean, The Talented Mr. Ripley. I mean, that's completely different than any of these other movies. I don't think I've seen that one. Yeah, because you don't like him. So it makes sense. And, and, and just going back to the departed, you have to admit he's pretty damn good in this movie. I mean, whether you like him or not, he, he plays.

The role really well now, I can see what you're saying. He kind of plays Matt Damon really well. If Matt Damon were a steady sergeant, I get what you're saying. And he does do that sometimes. I'm not going to deny it. But I do think he has more range than you're giving him credit for. Um. Is there a favorite line from this movie for either of you?

Do you have a favorite line? Since it's your movie, Chris, you want to go first? That scene with, uh, Leonardo DiCaprio, I can't remember the exact line, but he's, uh, he's talking to, uh, Martin Sheen and, uh, uh, [02:31:00] Marky Mark, and, uh, he's saying that you, we literally have him on tape committing murder. Why haven't you brought him in yet?

And it's like, and I'm watching that movie for the first time. Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Murder. You have him on murder. Like, uh, what else could you possibly need? And, uh, they don't do anything about it. That would have been, I'm sitting there watching the movie. I'm like, that would have been the second. I'm like, I'm out because there's something else going on here.

There are a number of YouTube videos online. You can look up that talk about why the departed is not a good movie. And that is 1 of the things that they hammer on this is that that doesn't make any sense. How about you, Steve? I don't have a quote as such, but I think this is 1 of those. Scorsese movies that has take or leave Matt Damon, but otherwise like such a great cast and a young cast to a young Mark Wahlberg, young Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio was young, like all [02:32:00] of these guys were young and Jack Nicholson was still pretty young at that point.

And I think that the movie had a lot of energy to it. Yeah, that's the best part of the film is the, is the pacing. Like it's just, it's go, go, go, go, go. It's like the dropkick Murphy song that's famous in the movie. Uh, it's, it's just has a pace to it. Like almost like a punk rock song, you know, it's just, I get from one point one, even though the movie is like, I think it's almost three hours.

I think it's just, it doesn't feel like that though. It doesn't feel like that when you're watching it. The pacing is probably the best. Just from a technical standpoint is the best part of the film. In my opinion. I love how they rag on the fireman early on when they're playing rugby. It's pretty funny.

Rip on the fireman there. I also like where he says that, uh. The Irish are impervious to, uh, to, uh, psychoanalysis. It's that whole scene. It's pretty funny, but I got to tell you that, uh, Mark Wahlberg's character, it's [02:33:00] ding ding them. Sergeant ding them. He has some of the best lines and maybe the very best 1 is where somebody says, who are you?

And he says, uh. I'm the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy. Oh, yeah. He's Mark kills me. Mark Wahlberg is one of those type of actors to where he's like, I wouldn't say he's like a great actor, but like in a role like that, where he has to play the tough cop from Boston, he's phenomenal at it. I mean, his brother's made an entire career out of it.

Donnie, I think basically just playing Boston cop rates. Yeah, well, he was in Band of Brothers too, as Donnie Wahlberg was. He played Sergeant Lip, uh, Lip, Lipman, Lipman, something like that. And, uh, and he was briefly in, uh, Sixth Sense too. Yeah, he was really good at like, that was out way. I didn't even know it was him.

Yeah, this was a good film, though. I was gonna say, Don, he was also in the Saw movies, too. I think he was, like, in three of [02:34:00] them. I know that's not for everybody, but he's, uh Talk about range. He was, uh, he was a three. He plays a cop in that one, though. He plays, like, uh, like, kind of basically Mark Wahlberg's cop, kind of, in The Departure.

He's just, like, this hard nosed, like, detective. Well, these were interesting, interesting choices really Chris, because like the pledges when I had not remembered, and I think you hit on some really great themes in there and the departed could be, I mean, you can take it or leave it. You can like it or not.

It has some. Complex things woven inside of it and you could decide it's about X and X could be any of about five different things and you could definitively make a case that most academics would agree. Yeah, that's what it's about. And, and you'd have some good support for your arguments. And it is a fun movie.

I did watch it recently, um, within the last year. And I, I did find that it didn't hold up quite as well as previous watchings, but you know, yeah. That happens [02:35:00] sometimes it's funny. You brought up, like, people push to push back against the, the scene where Leonardo DiCaprio says, uh, like, you literally have them on murder.

And people said, like, well, that doesn't make any sense. Well, I mean, in the Whitey Bulger case, like, they knew what Whitey Bulger was like, they had pretty good idea that he was committing murders too. And they didn't do anything about that at the time either. So, I mean, it's not that far fetched. Great soundtrack too.

Mara, yes, Scorsese always has incredible soundtracks. I mean, that's one thing that no matter what he always has the perfect song for the perfect moment. That, that, uh, voiceover that Nicholson does while Gimme Shelter's playing at the beginning, that really, really gets the movie going. Uh, good choices, Chris.

Thumbs up on your choices here. Well, I want to thank everybody for listening. Uh, thanks to mustache, Chris and Frank for joining us. And I think we really, you know, we've looked at the, the movie qualities. We've [02:36:00] looked at the, the bigger story. I think there's a lot to get out of these episodes. And if there are people want more of movies, uh, I definitely like talking about movies.

And I think you can tell that Frank and mustache like to talk movies. Let's head out with just one more. What's your honorable mention that maybe one day we can do an honorable mention show? For me, it's a really weird one. Maybe it would, I think it would have fit well into Chris's list is the movie Dragged Across Concrete with Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn.

It was completely fictionalized and it was very weird and it was very crime noir, but it was a really fun movie. Yeah, I, I, I would love to talk about that one in terms of, uh, cops behaving badly because, uh, it's a great movie. Everything that director does has done. I'm trying to remember his name right now.

It's just been amazing. Like, he did Bonehawk Tomahawk, I [02:37:00] believe, or Bone Tomahawk. And he also did Cell Block, uh, was it 99? Right, Cell Block 99. And those three movies are just incredible. It's amazing. It's just, the themes of the films are just so anti what goes on in Hollywood right now. It's such a brush, brush hair, everything that this guy, the director's done, especially drag to cost concrete.

There's some scenes in that movie. I'm like, how did this movie get made? Like, this needs to get made, but how did this get made in this environment? I don't know how, but it's definitely worth watching, guys. So what's yours? Um, who wants to jump in? What's your honorable mention? Um, I'm trying to think of one, uh, trying to think.

Oh, I was going to say the French Connection. And I was going to do it initially, uh, for the three, but I ended up cutting it out. I think we're going to save it for something later. But, uh, yeah, French Connection is probably one of my top five favorite movies. Uh, William [02:38:00] Freakin is also one of my favorite directors, uh, you know, off air we were talking about how I just, I just like his approach to filmmaking and, you know, sometimes it's a huge hit like the Exorcist or the French Connection and sometimes it's, uh, it's not so good, but, uh, I appreciate the fact that he's willing to take risks, so.

I was buzzing through a bunch of them sitting here trying to decide which I'd name. I mean, I was thinking of To Live and Die in LA. Uh, man hunter one. I know Chris likes NARC. Um, but I think if we're doing a little more eclectic films that are police related films that are, are like you're saying, Chris, that need to be watched and watch with some intelligent intent.

I'm going to go with Lone Star. It's a movie directed by John sales. Has Chris Christopherson in it, Matthew McConaughey's in it, and I can't remember the actor's name right now. That's actually the main character. You've seen him before as a character actor. He has kind of a, uh, his [02:39:00] face is a little bit ready, you know, and, and, uh, he's, he's always a 2nd, you know, 2nd or 3rd billing.

But he's, he's the lead in this movie. It takes place in, in Texas. And I'll leave it at that. If we do end up talking about it, it's a really good piece of filmmaking and storytelling with some great acting. All right. Well, we're going to leave it at that. If you want to learn more about the show, you can check out for links in the show notes.

We'll have links to Frank and his projects in the show notes. And the best thing you can do to help us out is to tell a friend of yours about organized crime and punishment so that your friends can become friends of ours. Forget about it, guys. Forget about it.[02:40:00]

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Description:  Joe Pascone from the Turning Tides History Podcast joins us to delve into the gripping story of the Attica prison riots and their lasting impact on the landscape of prison reform. Unravel the layers of this historic event as we explore its catalysts, the unfolding of events, and its reverberating effects on the criminal justice system. Discover how the Attica uprising sparked a national conversation on prison conditions, human rights, and the pursuit of justice. Join us in this insightful conversation shedding light on a pivotal moment in history and its enduring significance. #AtticaPrison #PrisonReform #TurningTidesHistory #CriminalJusticeReform

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime, with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

Welcome back, guys. I am very excited to be joined by a very special guest today, Joseph Pascone, host of Turning Tides History Podcast, and he did a really special episode, or a series of episodes, on the Attica. Uprising from the early 1970s, and I thought that tied together really well with what we're talking about in organized crime and the punishment [00:01:00] aspect of organized crime as well, and crime in general.

So thank you so much for coming on, Joe. If people have listened to my other podcast, the History of the Papacy podcast, Joe Picon did a really helpful. Full primer on the resurgent Mento, and he has a really detailed series on that. So definitely go and check those out and then check out all of his other work as well.

Hey, thank you so much for having me on Steve. And yeah, I did a, maybe a bit too detailed of a series on the risk argument though but I definitely did it. It was a lot of fun and the Attica one just came out. And I'm just chugging along here over on my end. I think that this is a really interesting topic, the Attica uprising, because it brings together so many threads of society, crime, and in a lot of ways, it's touched our lives personally being New Yorkers who are expats from New York.

And so it gives us a, I think we have. A very interesting way to look at this objectively and [00:02:00] subjectively, especially being that it, the incident happened well before either of us was born. So I think we have a little bit of perspective on it, but it's also close to both of us as well. Yeah, in a historical sense, it happened yesterday.

Basically, it may as well have. It happened, the retaking and the uprising happened in a few days in September 1971 at, like you said, Attica. And this wasn't like an insular event. This was a culmination of basically the 60s. This was all the best and the worst parts of the 60s kind of thrown into a pot and it just exploded over into the deaths of 44 people.

And it was probably the biggest mass shooting, if you could call it that, up until the present day. And it was completely sanctioned by the state. I think the best place you could probably start the story is, I started, at least in my series, with 1865, because that to me is when race relations sort of start in [00:03:00] America.

Previously to that, there were a handful of free African Americans, sure. But the vast majority were enslaved peoples who were treated literally like property. Supreme court decided these people were property. You could bring them across state lines, just like you could bring a chair across the state line and it still counts as yours.

After the civil war. Millions and millions of free blacks were given the right to vote. They were given civil rights. They were elected to Congress. They were elected as representatives. They were elected as governors. In 1870, there was a black governor in Louisiana, for example, once reconstructing, reconstruction sort of ends with Rutherford B.

Hayes that's it all the reforms of the previous era go out the window black codes, Jim Crow laws, they come into effect, not just in the South, but in the North as well. It's just the segregated. In the north as it is in the south, just in a different way. It's not the same overt racism like, oh, this is the good old [00:04:00] south.

So this is how it's going to be. It's oh your economic status is maybe a little lower than mine because of whatever reason and because of that, you need to live in this much worse neighborhood than I get to live in. So that's where the idea or the start of Attica happens.

The Attica state is built in the height of the Great Depression. It's in 1931. It's finished in a year there, or less than a year. For the time, it was a state of the art institution, but basically what happens is over time, the facilities just degrade because time passes. It's 40 years later. It's the late 60s, early 70s, and Attica is a much worse place to live.

It's way overcrowded. There's about 2, 000 people there. In a facility that was probably only built to withstand maybe a thousand thousand two hundred tops. And in America, the continual rise of radicalization, the Vietnam War has started.[00:05:00] JFK has been assassinated. Nixon has been elected in a very controversial presidential election.

Police riots the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Attacks on civil rights the civil rights movement. You see the Klan Come back with a new renewed force, which was super powerful, caused millions of black people to leave the South in the pre or in the post Civil War era.

And these all kind of all these forces come together into a very disgruntled population, and it wasn't just. For political reasons, there were obviously political prisoners who were deeply interested in black liberationist movements and anti war movements and were the rock bed of the uprising that's about to happen.

But for the most part, they were just regular people who've done the wrong thing in their life. And for the most part, they were kids. For example, John Hill, [00:06:00] who is the accused killer of William Quinn, he was in Attica because he turned 19 while he was still in juvie. He didn't rob a bank and then...

Set fire to an orphanage or something. That's all that happened. He was in juvie because, I don't know, could have stole something from the store. It was five cents. Another guy, Charles Pernassilis, he was in Attica because he didn't inform his parole officer about an out of state trip. And that's how he ends up in Attica.

So it wasn't just cut and dry. Oh, this is a place for murderers. This is a place for rapists. That's what it turns into. That's what the. The press and the state tries to turn this place into it's just this horrible place. And eventually it even becomes that. And after this period, people talk about Attica is a really dangerous place even today.

And I think it's interesting because it. The uprising takes place during a bunch of other uprisings and a big mess of problems throughout the [00:07:00] country. In 1970, in Soldad Prison, there's a guy called George Jackson. He was a very famous prisoner slash political activist. He wrote a book called Letters from Soldad, where he talks about his experiences in jail.

Basically, what happens one day is a CO or a guard, a corrections officer, CO. See something in his hair. Apparently George Jackson, somehow, I don't know how this happened. He got a wig and under the wig, he managed to sneak in a pistol. We still don't know how this happened, but in the ensuing he takes out the pistol.

He says, the dragon has come three people are dead by the end of it, or. Or two guards are dead and then three prisoners are dead, and George Jackson's among them. The people at Attica, who have heard about this uprising through the chain of information they instantly assumed that this was a police shooting.

They assumed that it was trigger happy guards who gunned down George Jackson. We still don't know [00:08:00] exactly how he got the gun. It seems very, it's a very far fetched story either way. But they were convinced that this was, because of the prison guards. Also down the street, there's Auburn State Penitentiary.

There's a massive uprising there. The black Muslim population takes the lead in the uprising. They take hostages. The guards promise there's not going to be any reprisals. Just give up. The apparatus who were in charge of the prison say, no, there are going to be reprisals, and everyone gets thrown in key block or solitary confinement.

And a bunch of these instigators are sent to Attica. These are called the Auburn Six. And these guys interject the population with a new surge of politic, politics and radicalism that they didn't experience before. You see all these things come together and it's September 9th. Basically what happens is the day before in D yard.

I'm sorry. There's a play [00:09:00] fight between two prisoners. The one of the prisoners runs away when he sees that guards interpreted as a real fight and they're coming question him. He says, leave me alone. I just got out of keep lock. I was there for 14 days. I'm just trying to let loose. He says, no, you're going, the guard says, no, you're going back to keep lock.

So instantly incendiary situation, a tussle starts. In the end, the prisoner gets away because the other guards see that there's a very dangerous situation explosive situation building up. They'll deal with this at another time. So that night, they come and grab the two prisoners. One guy is dragged out unconscious, so they have to really beat him pretty badly to get him out of his cell.

Everyone else in the cell block is convinced that this person's dead, so they start throwing things at the CO. One guy gets hit in the face with a soup can, so then it's even more raucous. The head CO, he goes to his boss, he says, look, let me keep some guys[00:10:00] over time, so that we can make sure that there's not going to be a incendiary situation.

And his boss says, who the hell's going to pay for that? That, that was his main argument, which I guess is fair, but in hindsight, probably should have been. The last thing on that guy's mind, considering the level of problems at the prison. That morning, everyone's going to breakfast. The person who threw the soup can the day before gets sprung from his cell.

When the guard's not looking. So you have 60, 70 people who are all pissed at you and you're in charge of them as this guard. It was a lose situation. Either you try to act like their buddy or you try to act, like an authoritarian. If you're in that situation. You talked about Mike Smith before he was someone who chose to act give people respect because he realized that's the only way they're both going to get through this at the end of the day, and both [00:11:00] have some sort of semblance of a decent time.

So this guy gets sprung and they, the state apparatus, the prison apparatus, decide they're going to send the whole 50 person squad, the whole 57, the whole 50 person regiment back to their cells. They're going to stay in solitary confinement. When they go to corner them in a place called Times Square, it's like the central corridor for the whole prison.

The prisoners realize what's going on. The guards are too slow on their uptake because there's no communication one way or the other. And, riot explodes guards are attacked, the door to Times Square is forced open using the plumbing system from the prison's water system, like water pipes are used to jimmy a door, the door open, William Quinn is on the other side of this door he's in charge of the, who gets in and out He surrenders, but he gets [00:12:00] overwhelmed, and he gets attacked by a whole gang of people, and their landing blows on him, and in no time at all, he's severely wounded unconscious, bleeding from his face, his head, his mouth, all over the place.

He's a bloody mess and then The prisoners go all over wherever they can go. They try to arm themselves. They try to grab as many hostages as possible and at this time, this is one of the few times you could call this a riot. This is when the riot was happening in these first hours. There's a lot of rape.

There's at least 2 instances of it. There's a lot of instances of assault. There's no murders or anything besides William Quinn, who's severely injured. Very quickly you see black, the black Muslim population and the politically minded prisoners take the lead in trying to organize everybody.

So they, everyone finds themselves in D yard. And they quickly draw up elections, and they decide on leaders from each different cell block, from all the, [00:13:00] there's something like 1, 200 prisoners in the D Yard right now, while the rest of the prison, everyone else ran to their cells, because they didn't want to be involved in any of the violence but about half the prison is in D Yard at this moment, and Things are very tense, they ask for a doctor, they ask for food, etc.

And they want observers. They want observers from across the country. People who are associated with the black liberation movement, with the civil rights movement. Radical politics, radical lawyers. And a bunch of these people, and they range the gamut, there's not just radicals there, but there are.

Plenty of radicals there. There's there's liberal minded Republicans. There's there's Democrats from across the spectrum. There are radical lawyers like William Kuntzler who defended the Chicago seven. There's people like. Tom Soto, who was a member of YAF, which was the Youth Against War and Fascism.

They were members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War et cetera. It was a coming [00:14:00] together of maybe not center and left people who wanted to see an end of this hostile situation before it devolved into serious violence or it devolved into a massacre. Because The second the uprising happened, that was the first thing that everyone was thinking, like, how do we take back the prison?

What do we do? And they start calling in police from across the state, they start bringing in armaments they bring in rifles, they bring in shotguns they're waiting. The main thing they're waiting for is a thing called CS gas and that'll be used, devastating effect down the line. There are, there's this situation now, and the observers are showing up, slowly but surely, and eventually, they come to an agreement there's 28 points that they can agree on.

One thing they can't... Get a judge to sign off on is amnesty for the prisoners because they want amnesty because at Auburn, they were promised amnesty. They didn't get it. So they want it in writing [00:15:00] from a real judge that they're not going to face reprisals or Or legal repercussions for the uprising that they, that took place because with William Quinn's condition deteriorating by the minute there was a very good likelihood that he was going to die and the death of a CEO carries with it a death sentence if you're found guilty and given the full measure of the sentence, but even with William Quinn, he was saved by prisoners yeah.

I don't want to say the guy's name wrong, so I won't, but one of the prisoners came across his unconscious body and he got four of his fellow Muslims to carry him down the stairs or carry him to The state controlled side of the prison on a mattress and they had to slog through like water because all the piping system was a mess.

There was blood on the floor. It was a real harrowing like journey. And once the police get William Quinn's body, they don't send them to the hospital. They just [00:16:00] leave them on the side of the on the side of the prison and it takes up to an hour for him to go see a doctor. And even then, when he's at the hospital, he's never sent to ICU.

There, there are a bunch of problems with the way he was treated, but he would be dead in a few days from the severe brain injury that was inflicted by no doubt, the prisoners who were rioting, but probably could have been helped along if. The state or police, someone stepped in and tried to give him adequate care, but that just didn't happen.

Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network featuring great podcasts like Mark Vinette's History of North America podcast. Go over to ParthenonPodcast. com to learn more and now a quick word from our sponsors. But I think it's really interesting to get into the political and economic geography of New York and why these prisons are located where they [00:17:00] are.

So most of the population of New York, I think it's well over half, it might even be closer to 60 percent of the population lives in the New York City area. So right there, you're going to see that Prisoner populations weighted more in that direction, and I think it's weighted even way more in that direction.

Most of the prisons are in rural upstate New York. And it's interesting because in New York state, it's basically cut in half by the form. It still is the Erie Canal, but there's a series of cities that were once pretty wealthy, but even by the 60s and the 70s were. In post industrialization.

So you have Albany and Syracuse, Rochester Buffalo and a smaller towns that were wealthy at one time but we're on the downward spiral. But then you have places like Attica that never really were wealthy at all. They were just pretty much rural towns that were at a [00:18:00] crossroads. I think, yeah.

Attica might have had, I think you mentioned that they had a dog food factory, and I think they may have had a factory that made horseradish sauce. That's all they had. Yeah, it wasn't a very productive segment of the state, for sure. No, and... For even and back then it was a lot more removed.

Even today, the closest city was Rochester. That was about an hour and a half away. And I think Buffalo is about an hour and a half away. That's where the closest hospitals were. They didn't have very good local hospitals there. You're really talking. communications wise, like everything, even in the sixties and the late seventies, like how remote of an area, a place like Attica was from Auburn is in Auburn, which is right outside of Syracuse.

But that prison I think was built like either the late seventeen hundreds or the early eighteen hundreds. Have you ever seen it? It's [00:19:00] terrifying just from the outside. I can imagine. I'm not sure. I haven't seen a picture of Auburn specifically but Attica looks just as foreboding. And that was built much later, which is quite something.

I think I'll share a little on my own personal experience. I interviewed for a job at Attica, but I didn't wind up taking it. I was a it was right when I graduated from teaching school and I was just looking for a summer job. The jails all had all the New York State prisons had summer jobs. So I applied for one for them and I eventually got one at Wendy Correctional Facility, which is also an maximum security prison about an hour, 45 minutes from Attica.

And so I worked there and got a little bit of an inside, the most, I'd say the most interesting part to learn about was I got the Prisoner Handbook, which was really interesting. And I read that cover to cover just because it was fascinating. You saw the evolution of [00:20:00] things of there was a grievance process and a lot of that stuff had been put into place after Attica.

Really that whole time period and probably up until this day, this was maybe 15 years ago. So I'm a little out of touch with what the newest is, but I felt like even at that point, which would have been a good 35 years after Attica, that it was still a post Attica system in place.

And That was for the good, the better and for the worse, like both of it was a post Attica system. Because just what you were saying, there was no communication. There was very little elasticity between counties and state apparatuses. There was no way to communicate one with the other, even in Attica.

The phones, you could only make one phone call at a time. So if you go to, if you go to call up, you'd have to wait until whoever just called up was done making their piece. And on top of that, there was no [00:21:00] system in place for a riot. So like you were saying, for better or worse, I'm sure following Attica, that was the first thing on everyone's mind, is we need to make a comprehensive system for when a riot happens, what we're going to do.

And Probably an even worse riot in New Mexico State Prison in like the 80s after this, but that didn't have to do with state violence. That was like a gang situation and it just devolved into another bloodbath with the protective custody once they broke in there. But Attica wasn't like that at all.

In the end during the occupation, the siege, whatever you want to call it by the prisoners, three prisoners did die two were accused of treason. Because they spoke to a news team, and then another guy was just raving incoherently about how we're all gonna die. The end is nigh. He was, it turned out being right, but he was also, he also ended up being murdered.

This wasn't like a authority based decision. They weren't like, oh, let's kill these guys before they... Do whatever. This [00:22:00] was like someone just snapped and killed these three people who they assumed were snitching or whatever. But like you were saying, there's a serious divide between New York City and New York State.

You see it even in this most recent election New York state voted overwhelmingly Republican. A lot of our state or the state legislatures of New York are now Republican because there's a very deep divide between the urban and the rural suburban. And just like you were saying, you have some background with.

With New York state prison. So do I, my grandmother worked for Nelson Rockefeller. She was the his only Spanish speaking assistant. So anyone in New York state who was Latino, who sent a piece of mail to Nelson Rockefeller at that time, my grandmother probably read it and responded. And on top of that, my grandfather was a teamster.

He worked as a garbage man for years and he was, he was not a witness to, but he was around during the tombs uprising. The tombs was like this the [00:23:00] jail system in New York City. That's what they called it because it was such a hell hole. And this rose up, but he would previous to this. And after this, I assume he would smuggle in, he would smuggle in playboys.

He would smuggle in cigarettes for the for the prisoners and everything. And they loved them for it. They let them like eat with him. It was very, it's a very interesting that our lives are so intertwined by. By the prison system and so many people's lives are. This is a 2 million person chain of suffering.

That's how many people are in jail right now, which is an absurd number compared to how many people live in America compared to the prison system in other countries. It speaks to a very severe imbalance in the way we do things. I think a big part of it is and what I saw, it was really. It was a punitive system that was pretending that it was a penitential system, like they, they spent gobs and gobs of money on [00:24:00] rehabilitation, but the, at the really at the core, I felt like it was just housing people that they didn't really have a philosophy on how to reform people.

Yeah, despite half of the prison, the half of the employees were seemingly some sort of social worker or another, but they just didn't have a philosophy like the education didn't really have a philosophy on what to make these people. More educated and more purposeful and none of it. It just seemed like doing things to check off boxes.

Yeah, we're, we have an army of social workers. We have tons of teachers. We have all of this, but it didn't seem like there was a philosophy driving it. This is how we're going to get these people because another thing is like, You have the corrections officers who, even at that point, their base pay wasn't incredible.

I don't think anybody was going, has ever gone to become a prison guard to [00:25:00] make a fortune. They can make a decent amount of money with overtime, but you're still working in the prison despite your overtime. And they Even, I think to now, they're minimally trained for their job. I've been watching yeah, I've been re watching The Simpsons.

And there's a bunch of jokes about corrections officers in there. The guard hands Homer the nightstick. He said, this hand, this side's for holding, this side is for hitting. And he's okay, great, when does my training start? And the guard answers, it just finished Michael Smith that you brought up in his memoir.

And I think this is pretty common that you got on the job training. Like you said here's your stick, figure it out. Now there's a an. process, but I still think it's only a couple of weeks long. It's not a psychotic, like when I went in for the training for the, for being a teacher there for the summer, there was a two day training and I would say it was [00:26:00] a good training on two days for two days.

And I would have loved more of it. And a lot of it was really, which I think that hopefully that they're doing is the psychological training of how to deescalate and like strategic deescalation and strategic escalation, like both of them and that really drilling into your head. And I think that this is Yeah.

Because I think on all sides of it, we can very quickly demonize the inmates and we can glorify them and we can demonize the prison guards and we can glorify them. And the administration is probably just worthy of demonization. But it's easy to either demonize or glorify every side of it, but they're all.

Like in, amongst the criminals of the people I saw, there were some guys who were just like, they got caught up in some real bad stuff and they were, they seemed like honest to goodness good people, but [00:27:00] there were some. Yeah. Bad, violent people in there that genuinely deserve we were allowed to look through their files, and we were almost encouraged to do it.

And I reached a point, there was one I looked at it, and I just put it right back, because if I had looked at that file any longer that would, that'd be in my dreams. I still think of it to this day. And... It's like there, I, it's such a complicated system that can be flattened out into 2D very easily.

And I think that was like the one thing that I came out of it is it's a very complicated thing. Yeah it, and it's like you were saying, both sides are not to blame and both sides aren't the cause. They're both victims in a system that doesn't really work or at least doesn't work as well as it could be.

Certainly not as well as it could be. It's like you were saying, I doubt how much more training there is now as opposed to when Attica happened, and I'm not sure what [00:28:00] level it is at, or if they're teaching de escalation or strategic escalation like you're talking about. I think it's so much about a push and pull.

You have authoritarians on one side who want one thing, and they're trying to push that way. And then you have... The liberals on the other side who are trying to push this way and they're trying to make it, reform based while the other people are trying to make it punitive based. And in the end you have this sort of two headed monster that doesn't know what it wants and it's not doing really either.

Yeah. I think that's probably the thing that it really, that it turns into. It's just housing and it's such a large number of people that it's. People who are, people who maybe need more that there's not. And it almost seems like the counseling is one size fits all. There isn't that there's some people who need a very different type of counseling.

There probably are people who are in there. The unit, the particular unit that I was [00:29:00] working with was with prisoners who were mentally challenged. They weren't mentally challenged enough to be in a totally separate facility that are for people of asylums or places, state hospitals, but they were definitely that mentally challenged to such a degree that if they were in a general population that they would have been abused beyond all belief.

And a lot of the guys like they had to almost be recruited for this particular unit because they saw the guards and the administration saw that there were certain people who were they were just abused and we can get into the school to prison pipeline that these people should have been picked up long ago that there was one particular guy, it was because he was so mentally challenged and he was so easily manipulated.

The people on the street used him to do things that they know that he would have probably gotten caught [00:30:00] for and he did and that's why he was in jail is because he was manipulated on the outside and by criminal elements and that's why he's in jail with does that person need the same sort of programming of rehabilitation?

That's somebody who Is genuinely a criminal mind. It's totally different thing. And I don't think that the systems are set up at all to deal with those because essentially the prison system is done on the cheap. I think when I was there that each meal per prisoner was set at something insane, like a dollar and some change per person.

So that included their napkins, the cleanup, The utensils, everything had to be done in under 2 per person, per meal. Holy moly. Yeah, when that's the system you're working with and because both parties like to talk about being tough [00:31:00] on crime, they love talking about that. That's one of the few things that is bipartisan in this country.

Both parties. Love to be hard on crime. You want to look at Bill Clinton talking about your super predators or whatever he said, or you want to look at Ronald Reagan talking about, Detroit welfare Queens or whatever it's all pretty obvious what's going on. And it's very easy to demonize people who commit crimes because.

They committed most people. Yeah, they committed crime. What do you it's very hard to argue for that. It's like you said it last time we were talking. It's very hard. The easiest argument is usually the one that wins out. And it's very easy to be tough on crime. It's a lot harder to be like, Oh, we need to raise your taxes ever so slightly.

So that these 2 million people literally in bondage to have an extra meal a day or an extra shower. And that's really where the that's where the tire meets the road. That's where it is. And that's where it usually stops the second. Oh, you're [00:32:00] gonna raise my taxes.

That's it. Because that's really the only way or you keep investing in private prisons, which I think is just as a big of a crapshoot is anything else? Maybe even a little bit worse because you want to talk about profit. That's a completely profit driven. Apparatus then, and then I'm not sure if that's the solution.

Maybe it is, but I'm not sure. I think both of the systems, whether it's private or it's public, it's the Baptist and the bootlegger coalition where they both, they have diametrically opposed needs, but they wind up or viewpoints, but they wind up getting to, they need the same thing. I think that. The whole prison system, private or public, is it, the incentive is to have people in there.

You don't work if there's no prisoners. I think that's become so ingrained. It's just like that. It's the U. S. is like this Gord, Gordian knot of intractable problems that. You need to solve that [00:33:00] before you have two million people in a prison system, like that's, a whole bunch of things have gone wrong before we have two million people sitting in prison.

Yeah, and let's talk about the elephant in the room, a good portion of them are black, a good portion of them are Native American, a good portion of them are Latino. Very few of the percentages are actually white. Obviously there are more white people in this country, so there are more white prisoners, but if you look at the percentages versus population, it's staggering, it's three times as many black people that are.

In prison that are composed the population that can't just be because that's the way it is. It doesn't work for me. I need a better argument than that. I think that we have a really problematic not only justice system but corporeal punishment system. We have, like you were saying, it's all about the bottom line.

It's all about the dollar. If you could throw more people in jail you get a little bit more money. And if you [00:34:00] get a little bit more money, then you can take that extra vacation to Barbados this year. And that's really where it ends. And it stops being about humanizing people. It starts being about housing people, like you were saying.

Yeah, I think also one other thing is the strangeness of the 60s and the 70s, all that stuff just came, all the social justice issues and issues of things like you had been saying really the race problem in the United States begins in 1865 after slavery and So many things a hundred years later come to a head where it's a system that wasn't designed and didn't really understand it.

Could you think of it now, if there was a a riot in a prison, that's an uprising, it would never, you don't hear about them now because. They designed the system that those things get crushed. Like you're not going to have a thing like Attica today because they have teams that it's special teams that go and just break that up brutally and hide [00:35:00] away.

Yeah. First five minutes of the uprising is not even a chance for it to take a breath. And could you imagine today that if something happened where they would negotiate with the prisoners like over the course of the weeks and that's happened in an episode of this podcast where I'm one of the mafia people, Joey Gallo was in a prison riot and he was a part of the negotiation.

Crazy Joe. Crazy Joe. Yeah, he was he was seen as somebody who could work between the Italian, Irish Predominantly the prison system, and then he was friends with a lot of the African Americans and the black Muslims. And he worked in between. And that one, I can't remember what prison that was at but they were happening all over the place and they were negotiating.

Could you imagine that happening today? It wouldn't happen today. Depending on the state, maybe. Maybe if it happens in Vermont. Bernie Sanders would be talking with the prisoners, but anywhere else, I don't see it happening. [00:36:00] Even in like California. Even in California. It definitely wouldn't happen there.

And... And like you were saying, it's, it, this is all a response to the post Attica world we live in, and now we should probably talk about the retaking how that's a get into that. Over time they're still debating the observers are debating with the prisoners. The prisoners are debating back with the observers.

Very tense situation. Eventually, though, at some point, the state just decides, this is it. You're going to accept the 28 points we put forward or we're storming the place. And this was Nelson Rockefeller's choice. He could have showed up there and he was asked to show up there numerous times, at least.

Individually by individuals, four or five times, and then just in general by the news media, et cetera, probably dozens of times, but each time he refused to show up, he felt that if he was there, he wouldn't be able to fix the problems and it would just make his [00:37:00] administration looked weak. When they were trying to look incredibly strong with the, a new election coming up and Nixon's the guy in charge, he wants to be able to kowtow to him and show that he's tough on crime too.

He's not just like a liberal Republican, which is what he was defined as previous to this. So he says the National Guard's not going to lead this assault. It's going to be the state police. The state police have no plan for taking a prison. This isn't in the pamphlet. This isn't in the book.

The National Guard does. Why they aren't allowed to do it is I feel they are. Nelson believed that New York state troopers should take their facility back. That was the argument. It didn't matter that the troopers weren't trained to use the rifles they were carrying. It didn't matter that, the most of the prisoners would be incapacitated already by the gas. We're going to drop on them. But this is what needed to happen. It was led by the local Batavia unit in Batavia, New York Troop A. They led the attack on the catwalk. [00:38:00] And let me just talk about the loadout real quick.

These were 270 rifles. They used unjacketed bullets, which go against the Geneva Conventions. Then there were hundreds of shotguns brought in. All the shotguns were using buckshot and pellets and slugs. Bunch of people brought in personal weapons. One guy had an AR 15. One guy had a Thompson submachine gun that he fired at least 12 rounds off of.

One guy had a deer Slayer shotgun. With 12 gauge slugs in it. A bunch of people brought in revolvers, 44 Magnum rifles, bunch of things like that. It was and. A big thing about this whole thing, too, is not only did William Quinn die, but the FBI, using a thing called COINTELPRO, subtly dropped the hint that not only was he murdered by prisoners, he was castrated, and he was thrown from a second story building.

So this was this [00:39:00] inflamed all the state troopers who were... We're sure that the people who rebelled were, were absolute criminals and they weren't seeking anything they weren't seeking a redress of grievances or, human rights or anything. They wanted to just, cause hell.

They wanted to stir the pot, they wanted to make America look weak, and if they could kill as many guards as they do it, that's what they wanted to do. Like the stand that the prisoners built to be heard in D Yard, it wasn't a stand, it was an execution platform where they're gonna behead the hostages they still have.

In reality, the hostages were treated incredibly well. They were given medicine. They were given a place to sleep while all the prisoners just slept on the floor. They slept on mattresses. It wasn't a it wasn't by any means it was a hostile occupation, because they weren't supposed to be there, but.

By any other sense of the word, they were treated incredibly [00:40:00] fairly much more fairly than any prisoner would probably be treated in American prison system today. They certainly didn't have to strip naked and get cavity searched or anything like that. They were just left to their own devices and the black Muslims among them and the, more sympathetic of the prisoners formed human circles around them.

Big Black Smith was the leader of the security detail for the prisoners. He wasn't religious. He wasn't, he wasn't a political guy. He was just six foot six. So it helps if your security detail leader is six foot six. But yeah the assault is planned for around 10 a. m. on September 13th, 1971.

First, they drop CS gas into the yard from helicopters. Now, CS gas isn't a gas, really. It's more of a powder. And this powder attaches itself to oxygen. And it just strangles whatever oxygen is in the air. In turn, this strangles anyone who didn't have a gas [00:41:00] mask. Who is anywhere near the prison.

This was for everybody who was outside the prison, the news vans, everything, people who the observers who are in a different room with a closed door were feeling the effects of the gas and this made people throw up profusely one guy said he threw up until he threw up blood. If you want to talk about being incapacitated, every single person in D Yard is incapacitated right now.

You don't need to fire a single shot. Instead, they first clear the catwalks. So the catwalks, they have prisoners, hostages are brought up to the catwalks because the prisoners quickly realize this is going to go down soon. So we need to let them know that we still are in control of these people's lives in some sort of way.

So they clear the catwalks, a hundred different shots ring out, a bunch of people are felled on the catwalks, mostly prisoners, two hostages are killed on the catwalks, Mike Smith is shot four times in what appears to be an intentional attack there were four rounds from [00:42:00] I believe it's Thompson submachine gun that go into his abdomen and they explode on impact.

One of the shells takes away a base, the base of Mike's spine and a bunch of other ones just stay crammed in there and just burn him up. He's saved, this isn't the first time he was saved, by Don Noble, who is his prison guardian. He pulled him out of the way of a hail of bullets that were coming right for him.

And then it, from there, this assault takes nine minutes, In real life, this would have taken a blink of an eye, but in those nine minutes, something like 900 rounds are fired, or 300 rounds are fired. Countless pellets are fired, and each one of these pellets isn't just one pellet, it's about 14 different pellets per, pump of the shotgun.

This would, this spread all over the place, and it caused absolute devastation. People were just absolutely murdered. Kenneth Molloy. He was shot 12 times in the head. By by two separate personal [00:43:00] weapons, two guards came up on him, ripped his skull apart. They literally, his eyes were ripped to pieces because of the bone was fracturing in his skull.

Another guy so in this time, there's countless. Instances of racism, of hate based crime, torture. Big Black Smith gets the worst of it. He's he's forced to sit on a weight bench for about five to six hours balancing a football on his chest. And the guards around him told him, if you drop the football, we're gonna murder you.

And they would drop cigarette butts on him. They'd let a round off and let hot shell casings drop onto his chest. All the while saying the most horrendous things. Cause this was the guy who was accused of being William Quinn's castrator. So he was special, especially singled out and he was beaten within an inch of his life following the torture on the table.

He had to run a gauntlet. Everyone else [00:44:00] had to run the same gauntlet, but he got it especially bad. He faced. Sixty officers alone, and they were hitting him with two by fours and batons and nightsticks, anything they could grab a hold of. He had both of his wrists broken by the end of it. By the end, he's just grabbing his wrists, trying to protect himself.

His head is split open, and then they play Russian Roulette with him after he makes it past this gauntlet. That was a very... Favorite tactic of the CEO is after the retaking. It was to play shotgun. It was shotgun roulette actually, it wasn't Russian roulette. And they would make people drink urine if they were thirsty.

It was really horrendous. Imagine the worst abuses of any third world country in South America. Or the worst abuses in any African country that's been ruled by the same dictator for 40 years. This is what we're talking about. And it's not like the investigations following this go any better.

It's just as bad. It's just as [00:45:00] disheartening. It's just as undemocratic. It's just as dehumanizing. Witnesses are harassed. They're threatened. One witness who right at the end had a change of heart. He didn't want to tell on his guys. He had a gun pointed at his face and what the guard asked the other guard, you see that black jump out the window.

And the meeting was clear that, you're gonna, you're going to testify right now, or we're going to murder you. And this was the kind of state that it was in. This didn't happen in the deep South. This didn't happen in. Cuba or Venezuela. This happened in New York state. The most, uh, or arguably one of the most progressive states in the country, at least for the majority of the citizens.

And it still hasn't not only has it not been really acknowledged, has it been apologized for? The most basic thing that I think you could do is apologize. And it's again, a multi party thing. It's not like just [00:46:00] Republicans are refusing to apologize because they were the ones in charge. Democrats, who supposedly support equal rights under the law, and, racial equality and everything, refuse to apologize.

Kathy Hochul, who's the Democratic governor right now, said, Oh yeah, people were really affected by that. And that was it That was all she had to say about it. She never, she didn't apologize. She easily could. It seems like a win. If I was a Democrat, I would be like, Oh, I'm going to apologize for this right away.

This is an easy political win for me. But, either she's, she wants it to disappear. She wants the memory of Attica to disappear. She, is either worried that her original constituents in Erie County have a problem with it, or she's keeping it in her back pocket. Those are the only 3 options that are really available to her.

I suppose she just doesn't want to cause a fuss. That's the most obvious one. She doesn't want to make anyone upset because even with the amnesty that was proclaimed [00:47:00] for the Attica Attica victims following this the first people upset were the police unions and the, and patrolman benevolence association.

They considered it a slap in the face, that this, these crimes could go unpunished, even though most of the crimes committed that day were done by New York state officials and New York state. Really, the one I think who is most responsible is Nelson Rockefeller. At the end of the day, the buck stops there.

Obviously, there were other people involved. Spiro Agnew was super involved with the FBI and getting information on the Attica people. Richard Nixon just deferred to his judgment. If he wanted to Nelson Rockefeller could have made a difference, but he chose not to for political reasons, which is fine.

And in the end, he was rewarded for it. He became the vice president under Gerald Ford. In a lot of ways it worked out well for him. It didn't work out for, any of the 40 [00:48:00] people who were butchered. It didn't work out for, 40 people have, that's what 500 family members, friends.

Didn't work out for any of them who have to deal with the repercussions. Not only that, there were a hundred other people wounded. They have to live with that. People have to live with the racism they experienced that day. They have to live with the torture. And the police officers who may have committed murder have to live with that.

The officer who supposedly killed Kenneth Molloy says he dreams about brains still because he sees this guy's brains coming out of his head as he's blowing it apart. And that's real. It's a bunch of individual acts of horror culminated in a state designed massacre. And that's really what it was.

Like you were saying, everyone was the victim. It wasn't just the prisoners. It wasn't even the hostages. Because the hostages were butchered too. Most of the [00:49:00] hostages didn't die on the catwalk. Only two hostages died in the catwalk. Most of them died in the hostage circle, which is pretty crazy.

Someone ran up to a police officer, ran up to the hostage circle and everyone on the catwalk saw this and they started blasting too. So that spreading their shotgun blasts. Over, 20 feet or something, it's gonna go everywhere, and it's a miracle that anyone survived, especially in the hostage circle.

It's a miracle so few people died that did. It could have been, it could have been a dozen times worse. It could have been, 200 people dead, easily. Easily, but I guess in that sense, there was some measure of restraint shown.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. I think you bring up the, I think the, one of the most fascinating points is the politics. It's all political at, but you [00:50:00] can basically take out Republican and Democrat there. It's just politics. Nelson Rockefeller was a liberal Republican. He was not some rock ribbed right wing extremist.

He was about as liberal as you could get, but he did this completely illiberal thing to. Because you just don't know what else to do. If I do, I want to appear weak or do I want to appear tougher somewhere in between, or that, do I want to solve this problem and sweep it under the rug, that's what they really want.

It was all about what could save face. And then they give it to these people who they've. Kim completely filled with hate. Like I would, that's a study to see yeah, totally brainwashed. Yeah. COINTELPRO. Jams the people's heads full of, purposely gins up as much hatred and then gives them an outlet for the hatred.

And I just, I wonder, from the top of your head, why in the 70s, at this point, [00:51:00] there's such gluts of violence? It's just everywhere. It just, it seems like the cork's been pulled out at this particular moment in the late 60s and the early 70s that we don't really see before that, and we really don't see much of it after, but in that maybe five years of just absolute violence.

Yeah, I think it has a lot to do with World War II, honestly. You go back to World War II, America is fighting supposedly against fascism. It's fighting against anti Semitism. And then, when black veterans come home, they're lynched in their uniforms. People were seeing the hypocrisy laid bare in front of them.

This wasn't the city on a hill that it was supposed to be. This wasn't some beacon of democracy in the world. This was actually some of the places were incredibly backwards. And the way we treat anything that's other, even [00:52:00] today. thAt's how we've treated them the whole time.

This isn't some. New phenomenon where, you know, if people who are the other up have an uprising in America, they're always crushed. You want to go back to the first uprising in American history, the whiskey rebellion that happened because poor people wanted to maintain their economic privilege of trading in whiskey.

And powers that be didn't want this, so they changed the law. They made it almost impossible to trade and barter in whiskey. And, the ulterior motives were obvious. George Washington was the number one producer of whiskey in the entire country. It's so interesting you bring that up, because it's basically, as soon as the United States is formed, these backwoodsmen...

Who, like you said, that's their only real trade good, is whiskey. They're saying the same things that George [00:53:00] Washington said a week earlier, when he wasn't in power, and then as soon as he's in power, he crushes them like the British were trying to crush him. I think that's a part that you can't even really teach in school, because it's so discordant.

Yeah. And people trying to mention it really quick and then you run away. Yeah people try and brush it up. But I think if you really look at it, it's really hard to square that. Yeah, but it was. It was the first stamp. This isn't what America is. It's not made for poor people. It's not made for the other.

It's not made for different people who have a different opinion than, the status quo. It was made for this burgeoning bourgeoisie. There's a reason why France. The Dutch, the Spanish, all joined on the United States side, because these were civilized folks who could, who wanted to bring civilization forward.

[00:54:00] And that's why they joined up there. It wasn't because this was some radical movement of da. If that was the case, we would have joined with the French Revolution when we went at the beginning, but we didn't. We waited until Napoleon was the emperor. Yeah, it was a reactionary revolution, not a radical revolution.

Yeah. And it's it's just a hypocrisy that almost any country has to deal with. There are revolving factors. There were people during the American Revolution who could definitely be considered radical. You look at someone like Sam Adams, super radical for his day. Probably would be considered a terrorist today if he was still around.

But there were also people who were extremely conservative. What's his name? John Dickinson of Virginia. He was an extremely conservative guy who was even against independence. But in the end, he ended up fighting for America because he still loved this country. He just didn't love it that way.

So you see [00:55:00] this it's just this constant dichotomy. The more I look into history, the more I realize that these. I don't know what to call them, opposing forces I don't want to sound like too much of a Marxist, but that's really what it is, these opposing forces throughout history, throughout time they come together, and the result is something like Attica, is something like the 60s and 70s, it's something like World War II, it's something like the American Revolution, they all rhyme together in their own special way, and African Americans have been being treated poorly in this country since its inception, since it first started.

Like you're talking about American history the American Revolution, African Americans were promised their freedom if they fought for the... If they fought for George Washington and the national army, they didn't end up getting it most in most cases, I'm sure some probably did. But yeah, it's just something we have to contend with.

And the thing that I think we should not do is just pretend like it doesn't exist [00:56:00] or try to pass laws against it, even being taught. This is a really strange place that. We're in, and because we're so different, there's so many different opinions. I understand that, but there's a difference between having an opinion and then denying the right for someone else to have an opinion too.

Yeah, absolutely. And going back around to prisons, I think it's so hard. We've been in the series talking about people like John Gotti and Vito Rizzuto, who were, they're not good guys. Let's not Try and wash that over. They've murdered people. They've been responsible for murders drugs, but then we're putting them in jails where they're basically vanished.

You're in yourself for 23 hours a day. And the only time you have outside of yourself is an hour in a cell. That's just a little bit bigger. Then the cell you were in, sometimes they don't even get to go into a [00:57:00] place that even has any natural light. Yeah. Yeah. And I even find I struggle with that myself.

Like we have to show some humanity. So if we're putting people away that we're saying that are absolutely incorrigible for life, but we're still treating them like that. Like, why not just kill them? I think that you're essentially killing them without your. They're basically the powers are, they can't go all the way with the death penalty, so let's just essentially give them the death penalty, but oh, we're anti death penalty, but you're essentially killing them, and then at the same breath, if you look at John Gotti, where somebody like Sammy Gravano gets out scot free, and he gleefully admits he killed 19 people that's the justice system we're working with yeah it's quite something.

We're definitely at a crossroads, but it feels like we've been at this crossroads for a hundred and fifty years. Yeah. I just don't know when it's gonna it's gonna [00:58:00] snap, and it's gonna snap one way or the other. Either people are going to support reform or they're going to support punitive measures and they're going to support, like you're saying just get rid of them, it's plenty of people support that.

I'm sure people who are listening to this right now are hearing about the retaking and to be like that. That's what they deserve. They broke the law. That's just what happens. And there is, of course, that. That level of thinking, but like you're saying this argument doesn't go around toward white mafioso for some reason, like it's not the same thing.

It's it's interesting. It's us as a country. It's our big our big sin as a nation, I think, is not only the prison industrial complex, but the way we treat different people of different religions, ethnicities, whatever. It's a part of us, and it's a part, probably a part of humans.

I don't know. That doesn't mean that it's good. That doesn't mean you should encourage that part of you. [00:59:00] That's your... That's your Neanderthal talking. That's your that's your really terrified, there's only 20, 000 of us left in the entire world, we need to preserve our way of life thinking that's where that comes from evolutionarily.

But that doesn't have any place, I think, in society anymore. I think we can confidently move past it. I think instinctually we want people who've done wrong things to be punished, and I think we all struggle with that, that we want them to get really punished. I think a funny thing when we were, when I taught in the prison was on Fridays we would watch movies and sometimes the movies would be cops and robber movies.

And these criminals, a lot of them were doing life sentences to a man they always rooted for the police in these movies. Like you would think that there would even be one rebel who is anti police to a man, [01:00:00] like I think instinctually when you would strip it away. And I'm sure if you would talk to them on a political basis, they were all against the police, but once seeing it presented fictionalized.

They would they would root for the quote unquote good guy and root against the bad guy. It's like with anything. It's how the story is presented. You could present it the other way, and I'm sure there have been movies like that, but for the most part, that's the way it's presented is the way it is.

It's not how it is, it's how it appears to be. Oh, that'd be an interesting experiment to run. To have the, to have that the script flipped, so to speak, on that. I'd love to see that. Maybe I'll go try and get a job again in the summer. I think to wrap up for today, from what you learned in the Attica riots and from the, and from just that general time period, is there one thing that could be changed?

To make things better? Or does the [01:01:00] whole system really have to be evaluated? Can we make the system better with the prisons? Following the riots, there was an initiative to have prisoners a part of the decision boards for for the prison. They would give their two cents on what they needed or what, their fellow prisoners needed.

That seemed to be a good idea, but what happened is, they were just ignored. You just ignore this one individual who... Was voted on by their peers at, by the end, no one even wanted to run for the position. Someone was just chosen because no one even was voting for it because they knew it was just a nonsense position.

But if something like that could be done, maybe that would be better. Maybe if we gave even a little bit more money to. To prisons, then that would go a long step forward. More training for correctional officers. [01:02:00] I think that a lot of times. Yeah, I think that's pretty, that's a pretty general statement, but giving them more money is obviously easier said than done.

It would be nice if we, just held back I don't know, yeah. 20 million that we were going to give to the Ukraine or to Ukraine, sorry or to the military industrial complex. If we could give that to prisons, that wouldn't be a bad idea. But again the first argument from either side, take your pick is going to be, oh, they're trying to.

They're trying to go easy on crime. They're not enforcing the laws like they should be. This is America. If you break the law, this is what happens. And this is, we know the arguments and it's just going to be that ad nauseum. I would like it if something like that happened, but again, yeah.

I think that would be the response. I'm not sure if there's a clear cut answer. I and even if there [01:03:00] was, it would be something. Out of reach Oh, stop using people for profit. They would, politicians would hear that and be like, what do you mean? What do you mean? Yeah. I think that the, it's always a problem of obviously there's some really structural problems that need to be.

Fixed, and there's probably, there's very little will to fix any of those problems, and so is slapping some paint over the rusted wall really going to solve the problem? No, but it looks a little better, and so the rust comes back, and then do we paint it again, or do we really fix the problem? Then you just blame the painter.

Yeah, and exactly. Yeah, to follow that metaphor through, and it just, it keeps getting bounced back and forth until you have. A real problem. And I feel like in a lot of ways that we're really at this point, getting on 50 years from Attica. I did my math wrong. Where that there's some serious [01:04:00] problems.

And is that going to boil over now? Is it maybe never going to boil over? But the problems that happened at Attica really haven't been sufficiently addressed even half of a century later. If anything, they've gotten worse. It's just as overcrowded, if not more than it was then. Maybe politics isn't as big of a issue in prisons as it was then.

But that could change very easily. Everyone talks about us being in the new 60s, or I hear that all the time. It could very easily happen again. I'm not sure if another Attica uprising happens again, but maybe another pretty bad riot. I think that is very possible. And that would be shocking.

And probably what would happen if that happens is you just double down on being even stricter. That probably, sadly, what it would be. I want to thank you so much for coming on. We've really just scratched the surface of what you talked about in your series and your series of just scratching the surface of what was going on and what's going on with the [01:05:00] penal system in this country.

But I think we've given people a good place to. Definitely start off to go listen to your episodes and then maybe go learn a little bit more about this whole situation. If people want to go listen, which I highly recommend they do, how can they find your podcast? So you can find it wherever podcasts are.

It's the Turning Tides podcast. We're on Spotify. We're on Apple. We're on any of them. Take your pick. Thanks again. I definitely definitely go and listen to that episode and go listen to your series on the Risorgimento and on the history of Puerto Rico. You're, you've got a wide spectrum of different things that you're looking at.

Is there any, can you give us a little sneak of what might be coming up? So what's coming next is the life of Amir Timur, as he's known to history. Tamerlane he was an Asiatic conqueror. Very little is really documented about him. It's very niche [01:06:00] subject. Rose out of Central Asia and his empire expanded from the gates of China to Cairo.

South to Baghdad, up north to the gates of Moscow. So this guy had a huge expanse of territory and he built it all basically by himself. People talk about Alexander the great, but he had his Macedonians. This guy had to forge an alliance of tribal confederation, like a tribal confederation of peoples to even get into the, get out of the gate.

And after that, I'm setting sail. I'm getting on my Prahu and we're setting sail for Singapore. We're going to talk about the Orang Laut, how they discovered the island, how they created the first initial settlements there. Up through Stanford Raffles, who's one of the most interesting, weirdest dudes in history, how he founded the modern [01:07:00] colony, the British colony of Singapore.

Up through the Imperial Japanese invasion and desecration of the place for years. Oh, wow. That's awesome. I can't wait to listen to all of that. Thank you again for coming on and you're always welcome. Oh, that's awesome. I love so much being on. It's a lot of fun to, to talk to you. I think we should definitely talk again about some mafioso stuff.

That sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah. I'd love to talk about Lucky Luciano. He's a a far off relative, a far flung relative of mine, yeah, let's definitely do that. I think people will love that. And a deep dive into Lucky Luciano is you can always talk about him. He's one of the most fascinating characters, I would dare say, in American history.

Yeah. Probably responsible for us winning World War II in a lot of ways.[01:08:00]

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Original Publication Date: 11/15/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/Hy2Rf4ymHZB

Description: Today we have a brief episode on an interesting perspective on Donnie Brasco from the perspective of a 20 police veteran and former police leader, Frank Scalise. Did Donnie’s leadership in the FBI manage his uncover work correctly? What could have Donnie’s leadership done better in the aftermath of his groundbreaking investigation?

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Thank you for joining Mustache Chris and I on Organized Crime and Punishment, a history and crime podcast. Here is a teaser for upcoming episodes of Organized Crime and Punishment. If you like what you hear, look in the description for links to full podcast episodes. Become a friend of ours by subscribing to the show and following us on social media.

Tell a friend about Organized Crime and Punishment so your friends can become friends of ours. Forget about it. Hey friends of ours. Let's talk a little Donnie Brasco. Now as a retired cop with 20 with a 20 year career who spent another four years after that teaching leadership all over the U S and Canada, I've come into contact with a lot of law enforcement agencies.

Now honestly, these organizations are just chock full of good people who work hard and do their best, but any bureaucracy is like any other bureaucracy and mission drift is a real thing. [00:01:00] Now, so what does this have to do with Donnie Brasco? You might ask. Sadly, one of the most realistic scenes for me from a law enforcement perspective in the entire movie was the one in which a distracted leader gives Joe Pistone an award for his service in a very hurried fashion.

thIs guy gave up years of his life facing constant danger the entire time. And the FBI ceremony that honored him took less time than you're taking to watch this video. I don't know how accurate a portrayal that was to Pistone's actual experience. If you do, by the way, please share it in the comments.

But unfortunately this kind of bungling is all too common. In bureaucracies and in, in the law enforcement profession on the bureaucratic side as well, a thoughtful leader will make sure something like this doesn't happen to, to a valued employee. But anyway, it's probably the most realistic scene in a movie full of realistic scenes.

Now the best [00:02:00] scene. That's when Johnny Depp explains, forget about it. Do you know if that's accurate with the Joe Pistone award ceremony being super rushed in? I know for, I know he was, he became really jaded with the FBI. He left. At one point just cause he didn't feel appreciated. And he started having troubles with the officers above him, like telling him how to do his job.

And I was undercover for how many years, like I, the most successful undercover job, probably in American history. And you're telling me how to do things. And he just got fed up with it. If you actually listen to Joe Pistone talk, he has a very. I totally believe that he was that successful at playing a mob guy, cause he has a very kind of street, talk, working class type vibe to him.

He really does. You hear him talk and he, I know he's what, how old is he now? He's 70. You hear him talk though. And he sounds like [00:03:00] a guy you don't want to mess with. We we showed that video in the leadership course that I taught and as just as a a warning, as a don't do this sort of thing because it's such a simple thing to recognize people who do good work in a way that's meaningful and just the slapdashery way in that scene with With the official who, could barely be bothered to be there.

And, and then they gave him 500 bucks, which just don't even give you any money, I think in that scenario, because 500 bucks is like kind of an insult after six years or whatever you spend undercover. That's 80 bucks a year. It's just, I don't know. It always struck me as wow, I've seen that exact scene play out.

In real life on a smaller scale. And it's just sad because it's like self inflicted as a leader. You don't, you've got total control over that. It's not a disaster that's happening from outside or a crisis that's being thrust upon you. This is just taking an extra three minutes and a little bit of [00:04:00] emotional energy to make it meaningful for somebody who deserves it.

 Maybe it's just me, but that was always the movie scene, part of the movie that seemed realistic and ticked me off at the same time. It's weird that you treat a professional like that, that somebody who's done their job and even more so of their job, their duty. And then you give them a publisher's clearing house check, give them a subscription to the Columbia records and tapes club, jelly, jelly of the month.

For sure. Yeah. When, yeah, he a, he left totally, and then he ended up rejoining and he ended up having to redo all the stuff again. Like he had to take the written test again. He had to do the physicals and everything, when he decided that he was gonna rejoin, so he was 100% out. Did he write an au did he write an autobiography about this?

Yeah, he has one yeah, that he wrote himself. Donny called Donny Brasco. He actually wrote. Didn't you say this Steve? I never write it, but didn't he write a book about it was like a [00:05:00] sequel to Donnie Brasco? I think he wrote some crime fiction as Donnie Brasco. So yeah, and he's he has a, he does a podcast with, I think it was like he's like an actor slash movie producer.

He's been in a couple films. I listened to a bit of it when we were researching For episodes and it's worth listening. It's good to listen to, you get a, I don't know. Joe Pistone seems like a pretty fun guy. He seems like the type of guy I'd enjoy having a beer with.

And even though he doesn't drink, which is, he's like very adamant about that and he doesn't he'll have a beer or something like that, but he doesn't doesn't drink alcohol like at all, and he talks about that actually in his, when he was undercover, Oh, how did this.

How did this work? Like you're hanging out with these mob guys and they all drink and nobody thought it was weird. He's Oh, they thought it was weird. But then you're just honest, he's Oh, I don't drink, and people just Oh, whatever, Donnie doesn't drink. And then they just go with it.

Yeah. Especially for the time that it took place [00:06:00] too. It would be no big deal today, but this was the eighties, right? Early nineties. Yeah, that's one of the good things that they showed in, they did in the movie too, is they, if you watch it again, you notice that Donnie never drinks, doesn't smoke cigarettes either.

Obviously that's like a big thing with him being sick of the cigarettes in the car and stuff like that. But yeah, Joe Pistone was yeah, he was straight edge, right? He was, that's the modern saying now, didn't drink, didn't smoke. Didn't do any drugs, nothing. He's always in pretty good shape.

He was always in good shape, always fantastic shape, actually. Maybe that's one way, one reason he got some respect from a lot of these mob guys, because, truthfully, he could probably beat the crap out of them. When I wanted to fight, which a lot of these mob guys probably aren't, probably weren't used to, they're tough guys, right?

They're from the streets, they grew up, fighting for a living, right? Not a living, but, getting into fistfights and the whole nine yards and, Joe could probably beat them up, I think they probably also respected his convictions. [00:07:00] People... Respect someone who has, strong conviction and sticks to it.

And even if they don't agree with it, so yeah, he doesn't drink. He doesn't smoke. That's crazy. Cause I love a beer and I smoke like a chimney, but damn, if he doesn't stick to it, and so they respect that kind of thing. So throw that in there with the fact that I don't want to say anything. Cause he could probably knock me on my keister.

Then you get that situation where, he's gets a little room. I get that from work too. Cause I work like a pretty blue collar job. And I don't. I don't drink at all. I don't do anything. And then certainly, I think people think it's a little weird. But then over enough time, they just come to I think they've come to just respect that about me is the fact that I don't do any of those things.

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Original Publication Date: 11/8/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/3mw7dv9a5a8

Description: In this episode, we delve into a crucial topic: Police Corruption and the challenges officers face daily. We'll also discuss effective measures to prevent such corruption in law enforcement. This episode features 20 year police captain and police fiction author Frank Scalise.  https://www.frankzafiro.com/

#PoliceCorruption #LawEnforcement #CommunityPolicing #PreventCorruption #PoliceAccountability

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime, with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

I started to think about another form of, I guess it could be corruption, and it comes out of the fact that policing, like just about anything else, Is a lot more subjective than it is the objective and, uh, and baseball. Now they have it where they have the AI calling balls and strikes and. Seriously, it's experimental and, uh, and then they'll go to it.

Uh, if, uh, they can, that you can challenge [00:01:00] it. But there's a lot of subjectivity to a ball and a strike. Now you could have it where you see somebody who maybe rolls through a stop and, uh, should I give them a ticket? Did I really see it the right way? But you could also see it where somebody blows past a stops, uh, stop red light past the school bus.

But it's 10 minutes before your shift is supposed to end and you really don't feel like staying over. And I got to get my kid to this and that, and, uh, I'm not going to, that's got kind of a corruption in a way. Well, policing requires a great deal of discretion. That's no question. And I think if you're going to examine but.

Apples to apples is a better way to look at it, right? So if you're talking about somebody rolling through a stop, are you working that intersection? Are you writing tickets? You stop. I stopped Chris. I don't know him. He gets a [00:02:00] ticket. I stopped Steve. We went to high school together. In fact, we play baseball together.

Uh, you know, I'm going to give you a warning this time. Is that correct? You know, I was not a traffic count. I, I gave a lot of warnings and my, my rule of thumb essentially was, is if I stopped you and we had a short conversation and I thought that our conversation had a likelihood of affecting your future behavior, then I didn't see the need for something punitive.

To, to do it. If you just basically wouldn't admit that you ran through the stop sign or you were a jerk or whatever, it's clear. I wasn't going to impact your future behavior. Then my only other option was, well, let's see if a financial penalty will influence your future. Because my role is to, it's not to do anything about the stop sign you just ran.

It's to stop you from doing it again, because that's how I make that intersection safe. Well, you know, there's a lot of discretion. That's discretion, right? I mean, if I talk to Chris and he's a jerk and I don't know it and he gets a ticket and I talked to Steve and I went to high school with him and he's like, [00:03:00] yeah, man, that was stupid.

I normally don't do that. I will never do that again. If I will try to never do that again. I'm really sorry. And I cut you a break. Is that corruption? Because I didn't treat you equally. I may have treated you fairly, but I didn't treat you equally. And so even when you go apples to apples, it's hard, you know, you could get into long discussions, which we did in the leadership course, the ethics section, especially, but throughout the entire course, we got into discussions like this about what corruption was.

Was this okay? Was that okay? What variables would impact whether it was okay or not? And I mean, I found Canadians to be, uh, much more, uh, much less tolerant of. Bad behavior, but also much more reasonable in, like, common sense ways of handling things than in some of the places I was in the States. I mean, we're not all idiots down here.

That got a lot of good answers from US officers too, but it's an interesting conversation, but you do kind of have to be apples to apples. Otherwise it doesn't entirely work. Right? So, but lots of [00:04:00] discretion and and with discretion comes the capability or the possibility of an error in judgment or.

Purposeful corruption that can happen. I was going to say you mentioned something about the trees. Um, like, uh, like the police officers focused on like the individual tree where like the organization is like focused on the forest, right? That's exactly how I would like a police officer to kind of view his job.

Like, how can I make a difference in this, say one individual's life? Like, every day that I'm on the job, I know that's not, you're not going to make a difference every day, obviously, but like, when you have an opportunity to be able to make a difference, say, in one person's life, you mentioned the, like, how can I talk to this person?

So hopefully they don't run through a red light again, you know, or how can I stop this robbery? Or maybe it could actually sit and talk to this criminal or whatever that we had to arrest in the backseat when we're driving them, you know, to where he has to go. And maybe I can say something to him or, or he.

Maybe thanks twice [00:05:00] about what he's doing with his life. Um, to me, that's like, probably the most effective type of policing. If you can go into, and it sounds odd because, you know, like, I'm not a police officer, I'm not going to lie. I don't know a ton of police officers in my life. I got the mustache for it.

Uh, I need to get some aviators. Um, you know what I mean? So that's the way I would like. To view it like there was a part of me when I was growing up, always kind of wanted to be a police officer slash, uh, like, uh, detective always been fascinated by, like, murder mysteries and things of that nature. Um, it's just, I don't know.

It just never happened. But, uh, that's the way I would view the job is like, how can I make a difference in this 1 individual's life? Because to a certain degree, you have a fair amount, a certain amount of power to be able to actually do that. Um, To me, that was the most kind of effective policing. I find a lot of the interactions that I've not so much me personally.

I'm not [00:06:00] ton of interactions with cops, but, uh, the couple that I have, um, I just found like, uh, there was a couple of police officers. We had like, good conversations, like, just simple stuff, you know, like, uh, traffic stuff or what have you, uh, But there was like other times they just didn't seem like they were really interested at all and trying to make a difference.

Well, you bring up a great point. And that is that, you know, uh, the, the person to person connection is the most effective connection. And when you start your career in law enforcement and you're young and your uniform is bright and your badge is not scuffed at all, your shoes are shine, your haircut's fresh and all that.

Um, there's good guys, bad guys, and victims and witnesses, and that's it. It's a very, it's a very black and white kind of world. And at some point in your career, if you're paying attention, you come to the realization that for the most part, people are people. And while there may be two or three people [00:07:00] you come across in your career that are truly evil, whatever that means, that's majority of people.

They're making bad choices in their bad situations. And if you can make a difference in their life in any way, you should try it and you're not going to save everybody. You're not going to make an impact on everybody. Some people don't want it. Some people won't accept it. Some people don't actually need it, but you have to try where you think you Can try and I think your point is, is valid as well in that if you are trying, people appreciate that.

I mean, you go to a foreign country and you try to speak the language, don't they love it? You know, they, they, they help you. They appreciate your effort. I think if you're in a service position and you're trying to help people, even if they don't really need the help or they're still going to appreciate and you certainly have the opportunities within law enforcement to those differences.

Um, quick, quick story, real quick story. Okay. It's, it's summertime here, which means spring cleaning, cause my wife's a teacher. So stuff happens. I'm sure you're familiar with that, uh, process. See, you know, stuff that has been waiting all year to get done. It's start getting done, going through a lot of [00:08:00] stuff, goodwill visits, you know, those things, kinds of things.

Going through some old paperwork, throwing out old receipts and all kinds of stuff. And I came across a letter that a guy wrote me from my time on patrol. It's one of the few things I kept from my law enforcement career. And I didn't remember it. Really, when I got the letter, I had to think about it a little while and read his letter to remember the incident.

But in his letter, he credits me with saving his life. And, and I remember what happened after I read it. And I just basically talked to the guy. He got stabbed in the heart and I talked to him and rode with him to the hospital in case he died on the way to the hospital because he was a victim. And. Talk to him and kind of, you know, try to be positive and everything.

And he survived and he credited me being there with saving his life. Now, did I save his life? No, the doctor did, or he wasn't going to die anyway, but I made that impact. And, and, and the reason that impact happened was because I was trying. Um, and, and, you know, the guy was in all honesty, the guy was kind of a criminal.

It wasn't a bad criminal, but he was, you know. A mediocre crew and I [00:09:00] ran his record up and I was like, oh, guy's kind of a durang, but he's just a guy, right? He's a person and, and, and so you know that person to person connection matters. And so I think your view of it, Chris, is actually really bang on Steve here again, we are a member of the Parthenon podcast network, featuring great shows like Josh Cohen's, eyewitness History, and many other great shows.

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In all your time, did you see that there's been a change in police or maybe even geographically, that sort of the, the, the. The thin blue line, like we're on this side and you're on that side. And, uh, could that be a factor of that? A lot of departments are cutting back. So cops are seeing a lot more of the really bad stuff.

They're not getting to [00:10:00] do some, some more of the soft scale stuff. They're doing a lot more of the hard stuff. So they're, they're building up a barrier between them and the public. You know, that's always been a factor. Um, One of the things about policing is, and I mean, really teaching is the same way. If you think about it, Steve, um, you know, people think they know your job because they've interacted with you or they seen cop shows or in your case, they went to school.

Yeah, so they think they know what teaching is. They think they know what policing is. They know you're there to serve them in some capacity. They pay your salary. And they're more than happy to remind you of that. Um, and they have certain expectations, not all of which are realistic. They underestimate the amount of work teachers do, for example, the end, they overestimate the amount of authority that officers have sometimes underestimated other times.

And so. When you're dealing with the public, sometimes it can, you know, it can be frustrating. These kinds of things can be frustrating. And then it's an understanding factor. Um, I won't equate [00:11:00] policing and what police go through with what soldiers go through in war in terms of intensity and frequency, because I think they're different.

Scenarios, I think one is far more, uh, is far bigger than the other, I guess, for lack of a better term, but I do think they're on the same frequency to a degree. You see some terrible things. You deal with some terrible things. You have to put up a bit of a shell in order to avoid cracking under the emotional onslaught of those things, both the.

Immediacy of the event and the cumulative effect of it over years. And then again, you throw into that the public's response and they're, you know, all the stuff I just talked about the public and it all starts to grind on you and who understands that, you know, well, other cops understand that there are other people who do too, but that's, that's an easy one, right?

Other cops understand. And so. You know, there's an old, I can't remember the guy that did the course, but he [00:12:00] talks about emotional, like saving yourself emotionally as a cop. And he talks about how, when you come on the job, you've got all these friends, you know, your high school friends, your college friends, your sports friends, your drinking friends, your whatever hobby friends, your family or whatever.

And little by little, you kind of start carving them out because, you know, they don't want to hear about the dead baby at the barbecue, you know, and. And more to the point, you can't talk about it. It's not even that that you do and they go, what the hell are you talking about? It's more often that you don't talk about it.

You can't talk about it. So as slowly your circle kind of tightens and and your trust circle tightens right along with it. You end up being surrounded by nothing but other cops. And so in what attitudes. are normalized is all cop attitudes, right? And so, uh, do you become tribal? Do you become clannish?

Does the thin blue line become a factor? It does. And I think that's a natural human behavior given what's going on. No, it's like, I'll use an example. I'm trying to [00:13:00] think, uh, on this couple of years now, but you guys remember the, the guy in Florida that was on bath salts and, uh, he was, uh, I think it was eating that guy's face underneath the bridge.

Like, can you imagine being the police officer that showed up to that situation? They ended up, I think they ended up having to shoot the guy. Um, uh, and they killed him there. Just go like, Oh yeah, I'm just going to go. You know, talk to my high school friends about what I just saw and just experience like, no, you're going to be talking to like, well, they're talking about the lawnmower that they just bought.

And I could speak from personal experience, like, not to get whatever. I don't mind talking about it. Like, I lost my dad when I was quite young and I was the 1 that, uh, found them and. You know, 15 year old, uh, me, who am I going to go talk to? Who could understand that amongst your peers? And like, I'm going to talk to a bunch of other kids that are, you know, they're more concerned about like what video game they're going to buy.

Well, at least at the, at the [00:14:00] time that's, or, you know, what girl they're going to pick up or what have you. And I'm sitting there and I'm just like, I just saw this and like. There's no one for me to really talk to, you know, if there were like other people at the time to talk to naturally, I, I would have just gravitated towards them because they had experienced something similar.

It's very, uh, it just, it makes a lot of sense. I think also related to that is, uh, to what you were saying, Frank, about, uh, you can be familiar with the public when you're on duty. But with teaching and a lot of where there's an authority aspect, you can't be too chummy because eventually there's going to be a, there's a line you can't cross where there is an authority and a power differential.

And then throw in the factor that as a police officer, you are correctly trained that there is potential danger everywhere. Now, that doesn't mean everybody's [00:15:00] dangerous and they're going to try to hurt you. You don't have to run around paranoid thinking. Oh, my God, Chris is going to reach to the screen right now and throttle me.

I need to get my hands up. But then again. You don't know, and the thing about police work is like, you're not in constant danger, but you're in constant danger of being in danger. If that makes any sense. It's not 1 of the 10 most dangerous jobs by by statistics, you know, most years, but it's that latent.

Very real threat that something could happen at any moment. My help could be needed. Somebody could be placed in danger. I could be placed in danger. I may need to act in a way that's going to change my life and everybody else's life that's involved. And I'm going to have about 1. 3 seconds to decide exactly how I'm going to resolve that situation.

And people are going to spend months and maybe years pouring over that decision and second guessing it. And that's what you're up against. And so, I mean. For cops to be clannish, for cops to be standoffish, for cops to be suspicious. This is why. Um, I'm not excusing it like [00:16:00] it's a good thing. I'm just explaining why it, why it does occur and why it doesn't make, it's not because they're being evil, you know, they're not being, you know, it's not like they have character flaws.

It's a natural response to the stimula that they're faced with. And not just, and again, over a period of time, decades in some instances, and it's institutionalized. Like I was only on for 20 years, but in year one, I was feeling the impact of the previous 20 years. I mean, when did Rodney King happen? 1988, something like that.

It might've even been later, a little later than that too. I was, I know I was over in Germany at the time in the military. So it had to happen between 88 and 91. Either way. It happened in LA in the late eighties. Let's say I'm in a, in Spokane in 93, I'm a police officer and I'm getting told, don't Rodney King, me, you know, by people.

So it's not just the weight of your own experience that you feel in that profession, but it's the weight of, of the [00:17:00] collective cultural experience and the collective experience of the profession. Um, and again, I, I know we're getting a little far field from the. The, the, the topic of, of corruption, but I think it's related because certainly if corruption is part of that culture, you feel it, right?

You're faced with, uh, so it's, it, it is a difficult job and, and we were talking to Steve in the, in the pre funk, uh, a few weeks ago about how, how a similar teaching is in many ways, uh, uh, and my wife's a teacher. So we've had this conversation. And so if anybody wants to see it on, on display, Okay. Then done with expert writing and directing and acting season four, the wire is perfect, near perfect explanation of how the two professions, uh, have a lot of similarities.

You mentioned that like the, the, uh, the dangerous aspect of being a police officer and I find it's, uh, being a police, it's unique in the sense of how unpredictable could be like, you could be pulling a guy [00:18:00] over for running red light and he's got a dead body in the trunk. Potentially, he pulls out a gun or a dead body in the trunk.

Uh, or like, if you're like a firefighter. You know, going into that fire every time you go, like, it's in a sense, it's predictable. And like, it's dangerous, you know, exactly what's going to happen. Like, maybe the house collapses or what have you. Or if you're even like a soldier, I know there's unpredictable things that happen essentially.

Oh, you drove down this road a 1000 times and, you know, there's an RPG could come and hit your truck or what have you, but you're driving and. Yeah. A war zone. So you kind of know to a degree that you have to constantly be on your feet where like a police officer, you have to constantly be on your feet, obviously, right?

But I can see how it would be easy to kind of let your guard down. It's like, Oh, I'm just pulling over an SUV or something like that. And like a Toyota RAV4 and. Somebody pulls a, pulls out a knife or a gun and starts shooting for any reason, who knows, you know, they, maybe they have drugs in the [00:19:00] car or something like you, like, uh, something of that nature.

I could see where, uh, with the, the way a lot of the wars were going, like in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Vietnam to a certain degree, that it is very similar in that The soldiers didn't know necessarily they could be walking through a town or a village that they thought was safe. And then they do get hit with a R.

1. G. or an I. E. D. or something like that, like not knowing what the danger is. It's I'm in a. It's very similar in a way in that, that that's where the PTSD and those things start to kick in is when you're getting hit with that stress, that it's constant, but it's fluctuating and you don't know whether you're safe or whether you're completely unsafe.

That probably is. There is gotta be some overlap it's one to one because I wouldn't want to insult people who have been in a war zone. Um, and maybe like a Venn diagram type. [00:20:00] Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I think there's a, there's a, there's crossover for sure. And, and, and the constant threat of there being a threat is it's draining.

It definitely is draining and it causes you to always keep a part of yourself in reserve. And it causes yourself causes you to always be on guard. And this is easily and not unreasonably by the, by the public. Interpreted as being aloof, suspicious, arrogant, uh, you know, paranoid, you know, a number of different adjectives can be applied to it.

And you understand why the public might think that, but that's what's going on there. You know, the thing about policing that you have to remember, of course, is an incredible amount of responsibility is given to police and therefore an incredible amount of power. To accomplish what they're responsible for is given to them.

And you know what they say about power, right? That comes right back to our original topic of corruption is, is it can it can [00:21:00] happen. I think that in these environments, maybe where there's a good community. Police relationship, and there's a lot of trust there. You know, that's another obstacle to any corruption taking place because I mean, we're basic.

We're pretty basic creatures when you break it down to our core behaviors and and, you know, we don't want to disappoint people we care about. Like, I don't want, I don't want my wife to be disappointed. Me, her opinion matters. And, and, and, you know, you may have a boss or a parent, a good friend that you feel that same way.

And I think if police departments and police members have that kind of a relationship with the community, they don't want to let the community down. So they're going to be on guard against that. Now, if you're in a community. That is itself corrupt that takes on a completely different dynamic, right? And that's, that's a different conversation.

Trust is such a fragile thing. You could be doing the best you can and you're, you're doing a great job, a great job. And then 1 [00:22:00] major mistake can completely shatter that trust. And it's a, it's a, it is a very. All these different, the, the grid work, really the lattice of power and corruption and good and not so good and all that.

It really is a very complicated situation. And that's why I'm so glad we had you on to really discuss this. Well, and I think I would leave you with the idea, uh, that one element that matters a lot in addressing this is always going to be leadership. And I remember when I was a patrol officer or detective, I was like, I don't care about my leaders.

They don't do my job. They don't know my job. I know my job. I do my job. All they do is occasionally get in the way. And I'll bet if you pulled any. Profession anyway, I bet teachers feel the same way about principles half the time. You know, I mean, I bet I bet that's how you feel [00:23:00] about some of your bosses.

It's your job to Chris and you don't have to say. So, because it's not a big business, you don't hang yourself, but don't get it. But my point is that, uh. That we're all wrong, right? We do take our cues from leadership. It's human nature and not necessarily a 1 to 1. I see my boss, Steve, do this or my boss, Chris do that.

And so I'm going to do the same thing, but they set the tone. They set what's acceptable. I mean, imagine a situation if if you have a difficult. Difficult case happening where maybe there's somebody in danger and you're trying to get a suspect to confess to some information, um, about where maybe a missing child is.

I mean, something dire. How far would you go to get that information as an individual, right? You're the cop looking at that tree. The tree that you're dealing with today is this guy who knows where this kid is and won't tell you. How far would you go to get that information? That could be an individual question.

Now, [00:24:00] and you might have a different answer than the guy next to you and the gal next to him. But now a sergeant is in the room or a lieutenant or another leader is in the room and that leader says, wow, we really need this information. Huh? I'm going to go grab some coffee. Let me know how your conversation goes and walks out of the room and knowing full well that your next thing you're going to do is smack this guy at the phone book or whatever, you know, some kind of corrupt behavior, probably noble in your own mind in the scenario I drew out here.

Correct. And he walks away and and, you know, that's what happens. That is an unofficial almost official, but it's an unofficial legitimacy, right? It legitimize that legitimizes that behavior in an unofficial capacity. And if that happens repeatedly, it becomes embedded in the culture that that leader doesn't have to be in the room.

And turn a blind eye and go get coffee for you to know it's okay to smack this guy around. You can just smack him around, maybe even if he's in the room, because it's part of our culture. Now, [00:25:00] if that leader goes a different direction and doesn't permit that behavior, you get a different sort of action.

You end up with a different cultural anchor into how we handle these scenarios. Now, nobody likes that scenario, uh, or nobody likes that response in the scenario I've given because we have a child in peril in us and a, you know, dirtbag who's not given up where this kid is. I mean, you know, I bet you 90 percent of people out there and say, smack the guy and get the information.

There's a kid in danger and that's noble cause corruption, right? Cause you smack that guy to find the kid. The next day you're smacking him to find the dope. The next day you're smacking him to give him his. You know, I mean, I'm exaggerating the pace at which this occurs and the frequency, but you see the problem, um, in, in these scenario, this scenario that I've drawn out, the leadership matters, not because of what leadership tells you to do, not because of what leadership itself even does per se, but because of the tone that is set.

And this, you know, starts at the very top. It starts at the top of an organization. [00:26:00] Um, I said it that way for you, Chris, uh, starts at the top of the organization. But I mean, even at the top of the country, you know, I mean, who the president is affects the national discourse to a degree, you know, and, and, and so leadership matters.

So, where corruption is concerned, I think, I think it's a huge factor in either keeping it from taking root, minimizing it where it may crop up. Occasionally, or trying to beat it back and change culture where, where it's a systemic, which unfortunately does exist in some places, but not nearly as frequently as, as I think some of the public.

Yeah, you just, you mentioned leadership and we, we, on previous episodes, we had talked about in terms of just organized crime families and how important of like, in terms of how the family actually ran and the way it ran was largely dependent on who was in charge. Really like the Colombo family, we ran like a basket case because no one was really in charge and the people that were in charge weren't very [00:27:00] effective at what they were doing.

And then you contrast it to the Genovese family, which had solid leadership throughout most of its most of its tenure. And they also had like, solid, like, organizational structures in place where they did get a bad leader or something did bad did happen. They were able to like, you know, Adjust course, but it really boils down to who was in charge, really, and actually making the decisions and just how important steady leadership is.

You don't even have to be a remarkable leader, but if you're steady and you're providing, like, as you, uh, pointed out a tone, and I'm talking about, you know, crime family, not, uh, the police, but the principle still stands, right? Like, the guy at the top really is the most. The people leading it are really the most important because they're the ones that set the tone.

Steve here again with a quick word from our [00:28:00] sponsors. Yeah, I, I think, I think I'd interject there. Yeah, no, I just would interject just Chris because I, I don't, I don't like to say they're the most important person because I think the people doing the work where the rubber meets the road are the most important people.

But you're right. They had the biggest impact in terms of setting the tone. I think you're absolutely correct. And, and you, you mentioned real life crime families. I think it's on display, even in a fictional crime family. If you look at the movie, the Godfather, which I have a sneaking suspicion, you're both familiar with.

Um, you know, I mean, if you look at Vito Corleone, you know, won't get involved with heroin, you know, I mean, he has a moral code that his family. Adheres to he sets the tone and that's the culture of that family. Now they got, you know, gambling prostitution. They're doing all kinds of things, but they're hearing to this code.

Why? Because the leadership set the tone and people will adjust their behavior. Based on that [00:29:00] tone, both positively and negatively, the tone changes and they'll change their behaviors. And so I think you make a stellar point. We're not talking about police behavior here. We're talking about human behavior, and it doesn't matter the organization or the purpose of the organization, what their goals are, what their activities are.

Leadership sets the tone. Yeah, that's such a huge part of it is the leadership setting the tone. You could have a leader that. I'm going to this is my overall guiding principle. I trust you. If you make a mistake, I'm going to call you out on it. I'm going to correct you. But if you're doing a good job, I'm going to trust you to do a good job.

But you can have a leader who goes in the other direction and I'm going to nitpick every single thing you do. Then you have the person who's doing the job. I'm sure it goes this way with policing. Oh, well, Jim, you're not quite pulling over enough. People are. Hmm. You didn't seem to be doing very much your last shift.

Well, man, I better go, [00:30:00] you know, shake some trees and, you know, get some things moving. And that might go against what he knows is the correct, or she knows what's the correct thing to do, and that's really a tone set by, by leadership. If you go, uh, back to one of my favorite programs of all time, The Wire, uh, there's a scene in which one of the senior leaders, uh, uh, Daniel, says his name, talks to a new lieutenant.

Carver, and he tells them flat out, you're going to go into your district. Some people there, some of the cops there are going to be good cops. Some of them are terrible people. Some of them, but most of them are just going to be people and they're going to be looking to you to take their cues. You show them loyalty, there'll be loyalty.

You show them work ethic, they'll work hard. You should, you know, whatever you show them, they're going to reflect back to you. I, I'm not doing the speech justice here. It's, it's probably worth looking up on YouTube real quick. But it's, it's pretty powerful. So I probably want to like [00:31:00] top five or the top 10 speeches from that show.

It's a pretty stellar show. It's worth your time. Um, but it absolutely, you're absolutely correct. That's that's, and, and it, it, it goes towards our main subject, which is corruption, if you have a, you know, police chief, who's loosey goosey with the rules. That's what he's showing his people or her people and that's what they're going to be if they're on the other hand extremely, you know, tight to the rules, but not to the point of subverting common sense, which some policy and procedure nerds can do, then that's how people are going to handle things.

You, you show your people like how, how you want them to solve problems by the cues that you give them. Do you just open the policy book and that's the end of it, or do you apply common sense as well, you know, or you just don't worry about it, you know, as a leader, you show your people how you want them to handle that kind of scenario.

This might sound familiar to you, but, uh, I was reading your book. I, I don't know if it's your first book. It was the one about, um, it was a special forces [00:32:00] guy who came back and he was robbing. Gas stations and, uh, the field training officer wanted to fire the his recruit because he was just messing up everything.

And then the lieutenant comes in and he's basically forcing the field training officer to push this guy through. And I think that that thing where you're your leadership is Not trusting in the, in the person who has the most intimate information. And I think that that's something that can get bread into leadership.

Well, now I'm a Lieutenant or now I'm a supervisor. I'm sure you see that in your job, Chris, where as soon as somebody gets that, that bit of authority, well, now I know everything about everything that that can really sneak in and make big problems. Yeah, I like, I kind of laugh at those situations. I [00:33:00] guess I'm like, I've worked at the particular, like, I don't know, I've done this type of work for quite some time now.

And it's, I guess I'm like the 20 year old vet on the police force. And that's like somebody becomes like a supervisor or something like that and be like, yeah, you'll be relying on me in a couple of months. And you'll see. So you'll see, you'll see why I look at things in a particular way. If they were smart, they'd be relying on you from day one.

I mean, that that's the that's the 1 thing that, you know, I will never sit here and and make a claim of having been a great leader. But I did do 1 thing that I feel. Particularly proud of, or that I think was smart. And that was, I recognized my own limitations and, and so like, we all have our strengths and we all have our areas of expertise, but those don't necessarily mean we're experts at everything else.

And so for instance, when I took over the canine unit as a lieutenant. I'm not going to go in there and pretend I know more about dogs than these guys. I mean, one of our lead [00:34:00] handlers was regionally recognized as the guy. If you had a question, you ask Kevin King, and he had the answer. And if he didn't have any can send you to the sources to get deeper answers.

And I mean, I'm not going to try to act like I know more than that guy. I am going to learn from that guy and figure out what he needs for me as the leader to make sure he can keep being that guy. That's my job. And, and you're right. There's an arrogance that can come up with leadership. And there's a, uh, uh, uh, Not just leadership sometimes, but expertise.

Somebody's a real strong expert in one particular field. And they think somehow that, you know, just because they're smart and really good at 1 thing, that means it's going to transfer to another thing. And that's that's a dangerous supposition to make. I think, um, as a leader, you, you, I think 1 of the things you have to be You have command presence.

You have to be willing to lead. You have to have, be able to act with authority. All of that's true. But humility is one of the traits that I don't think often gets [00:35:00] enough emphasis when we're training our leaders to be, to be humble enough to, to say, I don't know everything. I want to learn more and, you know, figure out how to do my job better.

And the people I am leading. Who essentially I'm serving, even though they're called followers, and I'm called a leader, I'm serving them. They can help me in that journey. They can help me in that process, um, or process, sorry. And they can help me become a better leader, right? I, to me personally, I've always found that to be.

A real, the true sign of intelligence is somebody who's humble enough to fully admit when they don't know something. I, just speaking from personal experience, like I, I go, like, I work out at the gym and stuff like that, a fair, like a, uh, fairly often I like consider myself maybe slightly like an amateur bodybuilder.

I, I cannot believe the amount of people that will argue with me about basic stuff about in terms of. Terms of bodybuilding and like, uh, [00:36:00] rep ranges, types of exercises and what have you. And I'm like looking at them and then I'm looking not to sound arrogant. Then I see myself and I go, really? Are you arguing with me?

It's like, it'd be like me arguing with the car mechanic about what's wrong with my car. Well, but it, it, it, it it? I mean, you, you have to be willing to admit that. We're all human and therefore susceptible to those failures that humans are susceptible to, therefore, could I have made a mistake that could be viewed as corruption could lead to corruption if I continue to do it or did it in a slightly greater, you know, go down that road a little bit further.

Is it going to hit a point where the community around me would say that is corruption because that might be a good. Good litmus test, because every community is different, right? I mean, what's okay in Cleveland and what's okay in Albuquerque and what's okay here in Redmond, Oregon might be 3 different [00:37:00] things where on that spectrum is whatever I'm doing considered corruption being willing to be humble enough to.

I mean, let's face it. I mean, humility isn't necessarily a trait that most people attribute to cops. You know, arrogance is one that gets trotted out a lot. And there's some validity to it at times. We can appear arrogant. Um, you know, uh, uh, we don't listen, you know, we're bossy. We're taking control. We're telling people what to do.

Now, there's legitimate reasons why all these things are. Or being done and why in most cases, they're probably proper, uh, and effective, but they don't always come across great. Right? Um, and so that's how people see us, but I think, and I say us, I've been retired now for 10 years. So I should probably my speech patterns.

But the point being is if, if, if you're in a profession where you got to be type a, for the most part, because you could be in a survival situation at some point, um, Okay. You have to take control of the situation. You have to tell [00:38:00] people what to do in a way that they're willing to do it, whether they're a suspect, a victim or a witness or a bystander.

Um, and, and so that requires a particular persona and that persona doesn't always. You know, lend itself to a great deal of humility. Um, and so it could be a difficult thing, maybe. And I do think that if we are humble enough, if we do take that step back and say, okay, you know, I am in perfect. So was this something that could be construed as corruption?

Was this a mistake? I think it's a good 1st step. I think it, I think it does tie in just like leadership ties in. It is, as Steve said at the very beginning of our discussion. I It's a very convoluted and very multifaceted and difficult conversation because there's so many intersecting threads, uh, that are part of it.

We've just really scratched the surface here. And I think what we're going to really try and do is take some different situations. [00:39:00] Look at some cop movies because who doesn't love cop movies and we're going to explore a lot of these different issues of corruption and police, what they do really well, what maybe they had, they haven't done so well as exemplified in his.

And using different case studies and especially movies to talk more about these issues. So, uh, speaking from me and I, I know Chris as well. Thank you so much, Frank, for coming on and we definitely look forward to continuing to talk with you. Well, thanks so much for having me. I've really enjoyed this guys.

Well, Frank is now a friend of ours and we, uh, really the best way for everybody to support the podcast is to tell your friends about the show so that they can become friends of ours. Forget about it guys.

You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, a history [00:40:00] and crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today, find links to social media and how to support the show. Go to our website, A to z history page.com. Become a friend of ours by sending us an email to crime at a to z history page dot com.

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Original Publication Date: 11/1/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/YErXOzeB214

Description: In today’s episode of Organized Crime and Punishment, we explore the intricate relationship between law enforcement and crime. We look into the complexities, ethical dilemmas, and consequences that arise when these two worlds collide. Join us as we unravel the hidden aspects of this captivating intersection. This episode features 20 year police captain and true crime author Frank Scalise. https://www.frankzafiro.com/

#PoliceCorruption #OrganizedCrimePodcast #CriminalUnderworld #CrimeAndJustice #CorruptCops #UnveilingTheTruth

You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places:

https://atozhistorypage.start.page

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

Thanks for joining us again on Organized Crime and Punishment. I'm your host, Steve, and I am joined as usual by our own Mustache Chris. Today, we have a very special guest, our first guest, guest, uh, as it were. Frank Scalise. Frank is a retired Spokane, Washington police officer. Is it Spokane, Spokane, Spokane?

It's definitely, it is definitely Spokane, not Spokane, not Spokant, but Spokane.

[00:01:00] Frank served at every level from patrolman to captain in his 20 year career. Look for Frank to be a fixture on the podcast to provide the law enforcement aspect of crime and punishment. In this first episode of a, of a series where we're going to begin to discuss law enforcement, we will discuss a serious topic in policing that of corruption.

Police corruption is a really complicated topic and a really a fascinating one. And I'm really excited to have Frank here to lead us through this, uh, in some ways, difficult conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today, Frank. Well, thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about this too. And I think it's, uh, going to lend itself to an interesting discussion, given that, you know, I'm up in the Pacific Northwest.

Uh, you're down in Texas, I think, by way of the Northeast. Yeah. And, and, and Chris is up in Toronto area there in Ontario, um, in Canada. So, I mean, [00:02:00] there, there's that. Cultural divides there, and I think that comes into play when we're talking about this topic. So it'll be interesting to hear the different viewpoints.

And now, Frank, can you, we'll get into a lot of details of your biography, but can you maybe give us a 10, 000 foot view about yourself and your police career and then your post police career? Uh, sure. The, uh, thumbnail sketch is I came on the job in Spokane, Washington in 1993. For people who don't know anything about Spokane, it's in Eastern Washington.

Um, I think it's about 250, 000 people. Now it was closer to 200, uh, even to 10, maybe when I came on, uh, in my career, I was kind of fortunate. Uh, not kind of. I was very fortunate. And then I spent the first half of my career doing the job where the, where the rubber meets the road. I was patrol officer training officer.

I was a detective. I was a corporal. Um, and, and I, so I did the work that that police are there to [00:03:00] do about halfway through my career. I kind of fell backwards into a leadership. Position, uh, as a sergeant and, and had to reassess my career a bit in terms of what I wanted to accomplish and, and, and what leadership meant and, and I embrace that.

So, uh, I spent the 2nd, half of my career in leadership roles and I retired as a captain. The good thing about that was. I did some different things in patrol and in investigations, but I got to see an even greater breadth of the department in my leadership roles. And so. Like, I got to command, for instance, the canine unit.

Um, now, I learned a lot about canines. I mean, I couldn't have jumped in the car and taken a shift for one of the guys if they were sick. Uh, not even close. I didn't know a hundredth of what they knew. But I knew enough, uh, I knew a hundred times more than the public did though. So, I mean, it was a good education.

And, and that happened in every unit that I was fortunate enough to, to command during my career. And, and so this gave me [00:04:00] a little bit of a different view than say, someone who spent their entire career as a detective or as patrol officer. Retire as a captain, as I mentioned, post career, I spent about 4 years teaching a course for the International Association of chiefs of police.

And this is a, it's either nonprofit or not for profit. I forget the difference in which it is. But it has a mission to assist police agencies in a variety of ways. And one of those ways is training. And the course that I was teaching at a national level is called leadership and policing, pretty intensive three week course, where we'd go in for a week and do the first week and then come back a month later, do week two, and then finish with week three a month after that, very heavy into behavioral science.

And, and, and created with a very, uh, with an eye towards application in the policing world. Um, this was pretty cool too, because, you know, I spent my whole career in Spokane and then I went to a few different training [00:05:00] conferences and other things and interacted with other agencies, but I was pretty Spokane centric for that 20 years.

Um, and in fact, the biggest stretch I probably had was working with other municipal. Entities, you know, the mayor's office and the water department and the fire department and things like this. Now, suddenly, I get to travel all over the US and Canada and see all these different agencies and all these different parts of North America and that really opened my eyes and really taught me a valuable lessons that probably conversation.

3, 3 thumbnails of sketching there. Sorry about that. But now, you know. In a department of that size, it's not a huge city, but it's not a small city. I guess you could call it a medium sized city. As a captain, you would have some different roles as a captain. You're not just focused. It's not a big enough department that you're just the captain over patrol, or just the captain over the [00:06:00] canine unit, or that sort of thing.

Would that be accurate to say? Yeah, I mean, every department is different. Um, I think Spokane's up to around 300 sworn officers now. It was closer to 270 during my career. Um, and, and yeah, as the K 9 unit, I commanded that as a lieutenant, the SWAT unit. As a lieutenant, as captain, I had roles like the entire patrol division or the entire investigative, um, or all of support services.

And so you, you become a, uh, you have a much larger purview, uh, rather than a more. Uh, you know, precise 1, uh, narrow, um, and, uh, you know, they, they had the rank of major for a while. And I, I was a major when they had that rank, they ended up getting rid of that rank and restructure. And that became a very outward facing job or as like, as captain of patrol, you're.

Focused on running the patrol division and helping solve the problems associated with that when you're the major of operations, you're, you know, [00:07:00] dealing with city council and you're dealing with, it's a very outward sort of facing position and that's, that's a, that's a gear shift that shifts your gears into mode.

So it was a valuable experience. I can't say I enjoyed it as much as focused, but it was what it was. You had, when we were having our pre conversations about what we would like to talk about focusing on law enforcement, you brought up the aspect of police corruption and it really, just in our brief conversation, it really opened my mind to it that it's a lot more complicated than what I would have ever thought police corruption is and it's one of your specialities and so maybe, uh, you could just kick us off and What has, what got you thinking about police corruption?

Well, I, I should be clear. Um, Steve, just to say that I'm not purporting to be an expert on this subject. I haven't written a book or a doctoral thesis or anything like that. There are people [00:08:00] far more knowledgeable than I am. Um, so I think I would say rather that it has been a. A personal focus of mine, especially post career, I've really paid attention because I, it fascinates me, um, you know, I, I first came across the idea of corruption, um, you know, as a young patrol officer and, and I was very dismissive of the idea.

Um, because I didn't see any around me and I felt like it was a bunch of old ninnies worrying about something that wasn't there. You know, ghosts and goblins under the bed. Let's focus on something real. Like, let's, you know, take care of this domestic violence problem. Let's take care of this drug house over here.

Um, and, and, you know, that was Hmm. That was my perception. It probably wasn't correct entirely, but it was, you know, born of my experience. And just to give you an idea, kind of where Spokane was at the time, we had a, uh, uh, convenience store [00:09:00] located, uh, uh, it's changed hand multiple times. So I guess it's fair to Bring up where it was, uh, located at Francis and wall in Spokane.

There was a Chevron station at the time. It was clean, had like a couple of booths on each side that were, you know, weren't broken down and it was clean. You could go in there. You could write reports and they gave. Cops, taxi drivers, ambulance drivers, and the bread guy, uh, 0. 25 coffee. You know, they want you to stay awake while you're on the road, and they wanted cops to come in at night because they were less likely to get robbed if there was a guy in a uniform sitting there writing a report.

So that became a destination for us when we, oh, hey, I got to write a report. I'll meet you up at Francis and Wall. Let's knock this out. That 0. 25 coffee was viewed by our administration at the time as a gratuity and therefore corruption. So that was the kind of stuff that I was hearing when corruption came up in my early patrol years.

And so you can imagine why I kind of dismissed it. Um, and of course, I revisited it later on because it's an [00:10:00] interesting discussion, but, you know, I don't think when I say the word police corruption, people probably picture, you know, a cop getting a 25 cent cup of coffee along with the bread guy and the tack, you know, the cab driver at night.

Right? So that's where that's where it started. Um, yeah. You know, later on, I kind of had to look at it from a leadership standpoint and recognize where where the pitfalls lay and I was fortunate to be from what I would term a clean department. Now, I think that's probably my own bias kicking in there. So feel free if you've read up on Spokane and want to call me on on it, because there have certainly been scandalous behaviors that have occurred.

But when I say clean department, I guess I mean, institutionally. Thank you. Uh, even though there have been some bad actors like the department of any size, um, and, and I was always proud of that fact that, that I, you know, came to partner, but I recognized, you know, the danger exists, the danger exists. And then when I got out into the even bigger world after, after, uh, retiring [00:11:00] and got into some cultures where it was a little more prevalent.

Um, I just kind of reinforced my, my book that I came from a pretty good in, in this respect. Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network featuring great shows like Richard Lim's This American President and other great shows. Go to parthenon podcast.com to learn more, and here is a quick word from our sponsors and I can see where you, that idea that, oh yeah, it's just a 25 cent co coffee, but you almost had, there was a quid pro quo of some sort.

They wanted. Cops to hang out there too, but and I can see where that snowballs and even in my own profession as a teacher, you get gifts all the time from students and 99. 99999 percent of the time it's completely completely nonstop. Honest and it's just they want to give you a gift. They're appreciative of it.

And I'm sure as a [00:12:00] cop, people would love to give you a bottle of scotch or something because you help them out. But then you almost do feel like there is some sort of expectation that when a bump in the road comes along that you're in some compromised position of some degree. You know, it's definitely a spectrum.

Up here in Canada, there was a burger joint that used to give cops, I think it was like half price lunches, I don't know, like you brought up the 25 cent coffee and like the vast majority of the public is just going to look at that and go like, this is ridiculous. Like, what are you guys even talking about?

They just want some cops around in the, in the coffee shop late at night, right? And then, but it does be, it can become a slippery slope, like, uh, Like, I've read a fair amount about Whitey Bulger, and, um, back in the day, like, the, the, uh, detectives that were his handlers, I'm trying to remember their names right now, it's escaping me, you know, Bulger would give them gifts, and at first, it kind of started off like, oh, it was, you know, it was like [00:13:00] a, I don't know, it was like a Like a ring or something like that, or maybe a couple hundred bucks.

And then increasingly the gifts got more and more extravagant to the point where like, like you guys can't be doing this. Like this is, this is illegal. It's against the rules. But I don't know. It's crazy how people make like a big. Deal with something like 0. 25 coffee and then immediately it almost makes people want to just kind of dismiss the whole idea that there's police corruption because it's ridiculous, right?

It's a, it's much of what goes on in terms of just debate in general that goes on in society now, where it's just like, really, we're getting upset about this. And then nobody wants to take anything else, but take the, uh, the rest of the stuff really seriously, if that makes sense. It does. And, and you brought up a, a, a several good points.

I mean, one good point is that for most cops, and I mean that 99 percentile, like you, you mentioned the closest thing they're ever going to get to corruption is, Oh, 25 cent coffee at Francis and wall. That sounds cool. [00:14:00] You know, and they're not going to, uh, uh, amend how they do their job. They're not going to extend particular, uh, or favored treatment.

Uh, it's, it's, it's a big nothing. Yeah. And that's what it was for me. I wasn't going to, you know, if I went to that, the owner of Francis walls house on a domestic, he wasn't going to not go to jail for hitting his wife because I got 25 cent coffee. You might make a stink about it afterwards, but he's not getting out of getting arrested.

Right? And that's kind of what it is for, for, like I said, the vast majority of officers, but it does become kind of tricky. You talk about that half off burger thing is the other point you brought up that that I think is kind of funny is. Somebody always has to ruin it for everybody. Right? Um, and, and they're everywhere I went.

It didn't matter where I went, whether it was up in the Northeast, Southwest, up in Canada, Canada, East Coast, Canada, out West and in the prairies. It was always the same. If something like this existed, you know, if a, if a dinner place [00:15:00] said, we're going to adopt a cop. And when that cops on shift, he gets half off his meals because maybe we don't pay our cops a lot around here, or it's an appreciation thing or whatever.

And everybody seems okay with it. Eventually, some cop is going to decide on his day off. He's going to take his whole extended family there and expect the discount and make a fuss when he doesn't get, you know, he's going to come through the pizza place that gives half off an order. 25 pies. You know, I mean, they just, there's always an idiot that screws it up for everybody and calls attention to it in a negative way.

Um, but maybe it needs to have attention, right? Because it can be a slippery slope. Like you mentioned. You said that Spokane was overall a good department. How do you define a good department? And then maybe, how do you define a bad department? Yeah, that's a tough one, because defining what's a good department, what's a bad department.

First off, I think is it's not an objective of an objective thing. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. The [00:16:00] culture of the place where that department exists, um, and the system it resides within plays a part. Um, you know, I think you're going to bring up At some point in the conversation, the idea of a corruption spectrum, a spectrum of corruption and, you know, where that, you know, how that spectrum looks and what's on the light end and the dark end of that spectrum is impacted by where, where you live.

I mean, I had a buddy of mine who. Was, uh, served as the IA sergeant for a little while, and he went to school and he's sitting there in the IA school. I don't remember where it was and they're talking about things that happened within a department and how to approach them. And he's just kind of flabbergasted by how terrible some of the stories that they're being presented are and.

And he kind of got up to a couple of guys from Boston. I think it was actually, um, if you're from Boston and I'm, and this sounds bad, don't hate me. Cause I could be wrong, but he asked these guys from Boston. Is that, is that real? You know, because like, [00:17:00] you know, we, we in Spokane, we take anonymous demeanor complaints.

That means Chris, you can get on the phone and call my police department and say, Frank's Glees was a jerk to me. At this time and place, well, what's your name? And you can hang up and they'll still investigate that. Right? And so my, my, my friend, Dave, that, you know, that was the policy, right? Investigate everything.

And so my friend, Dave tells this to the Boston cops, and they just look at them and, and they'd been in for a little while at that point, of course, was required, but they didn't have to take it right away. Anyway, he guy says to him, uh, We don't even bother with if it's not a felony now, 1 caveat, my buddy Dave is a storyteller.

So whether they said felony or not, they might have said crime. They could have, it could, he could have been exaggerating a little bit. He's prone to doing that, but that's still a long ways from an anonymous demeanor complaint. And so I was, I mean, this was shocking to him. It was shocking to me. And so, uh, but [00:18:00] culture has to do with that, right?

The guys told him if you're not, if you're not making 50%, 70 percent more. Right. In street money, then you're not working and Dave was like, what's street money, you know, so, so there's a difference. Right. Um, but I would say a good department is a department that provides necessary law enforcement service.

To to the constituency to the people and has the trust of the people that they serve and, and, you know, it's, it's easy to say it's kind of hard to define, but I mean, that that is 1 definition of a good place to. I think you can see, though, that that different idea of trend. It's almost a transparency.

Yeah, it can be a little Nick nitpicky. Bill working the south side today was a little bit of a jerk, but you could honestly see that maybe there was a pattern that Bill was being a jerk every day. That's something that if you cared, you could take corrective measures were in that other department, uh, not to pick on Boston, but let's say Boston and you have Bill in [00:19:00] Boston and he's just allowed to be a jerk all the time.

And then that does corrode the trust. Yeah, I have a theory that has absolutely zero academic support. I haven't checked it out. It's good. I could be totally blowing smoke here. Um, and, and you gentlemen feel free to poke holes in it. Um, but I think that in, in your Eastern U. S. police departments that were founded.

Centuries ago, when policing was a very different animal and when the expectations on the police and who ran the police and what their purpose was, was very different. I think that they are because those things become part of the culture, even if the original behaviors go away, the, the, it's still part of the culture as it changes.

I think they're more susceptible to, to that kind of, uh, of, Of corruption, particularly if there's an organized crime element that's prevalent, [00:20:00] that's, that's very, you know, very much a part of the fabric of the culture as well. Whereas, you know, I mean, Spokane was founded in 1884. I have to go check and see when the police department was founded, but obviously sometime after that.

Um, and, and so what a police department supposed to do, while it's very different than what it is today, it was also very different than what it was in 1780 in New York. Yeah. You know, or, or Boston, since we're picking on Boston, because, you know, they think they have to win every championship that's out there.

So screw them. Um, you know, I mean, it's just it's and so culture matters and where we come from and how we develop through the years matters. And, and I'm not saying better or worse East versus West. I'm just saying that, that they develop different and, and maybe Chris, you could touch on it too. That, you know, things in Canada is a different culture.

It's similar to the US, but there are some. Yeah. Pronounce differences as well. And so maybe, you know, the way that Canadian law enforcement developed was different than the way it developed into us. [00:21:00] Well, I know we were speaking for, like, Quebec, because we, we talked a lot about, um, I haven't released the episode yet, but we've talked a lot about, like, Vito Rizzuto and the Rizzuto crime family in Quebec.

And there's a long history of corruption that went. On in Quebec, like, to the point where, with the Hells Angels, like, there were members of the Quebec government, like, asking the, the federal government, like, can you, like, do something about this? And at that time, I don't know what the laws are right now, but the federal government really didn't really want to get involved.

It's like, this is a provincial matter. You guys kind of have to figure this out. But, like, Quebec, And I don't know, people will probably get angry at me, but there's like a long, long history of like deep corruption and the Quebec police force and the Quebec law system. I mean, um, you know, it goes back to like, like, the Controni and like before that.

And I mean, kind of, I guess it's similar to how the Italians, uh, saw like law enforcement in the government period. [00:22:00] Like they brought that kind of mentality from Sicily and they brought it over. Okay. Into the United States and even the Irish to write, uh, with, you know, whenever the English showed up, nothing good happens.

And they kind of associated like the angle, upper crust and the United States with the English really. Um, and with Quebec and, you know, they were kind of isolated. They spoke a different language, different religion. So there was just like, kind of an innate. I think there was like, like an innate distrust of government period.

This is my opinion. And I don't know anything about Quebec, to be honest with you. So I wouldn't want to comment on that. But the, the dynamics that you describe are not unique to that area. If that's what's going on, it's, it's a definitely, you know, everything exists within a system, right? And you know, I had a friend, a very close friend who took on a training.

Role is the chief trainer, essentially for an Eastern agency that that I won't name, I guess, because mostly because I [00:23:00] taught there a couple of different times. So I spent like 6 weeks there at various times and there's a lot of good cops there, but but they, they live and work in a department that has some corruption issues.

And they exist within a municipality that is corrupt. I mean, their, the previous mayor went to prison for corruption. Um, you know, the current mayor, uh, mayor at the time that my friend was working there, um, wasn't any better. Um, they brought in a, a, a, a reformer chief, a colleague of mine that I also, that also taught within this program, great guy out of, out of, uh, the, uh.

What do you call it? Like Michigan, Wisconsin, that area. It's not the Midwest is upper Midwest, maybe upper Midwest. Right. So, you know, that's his background in terms of geography. He goes in and tries to reform and he was up against the culture, not just the police department culture, which is formidable enough when you're talking 800 people, a thousand [00:24:00] people that can have their own culture, but the city culture and the regional culture, all of which reinforced many of these behaviors.

I don't know that there was a big organized crime, uh, presence there. Um, I, there was on the other side of the state and another, another agency that's pretty well known for its corruption. Uh, so maybe there was, but even without that, it was difficult. It was impossible. He ended up leaving without not having accomplished his mission.

It did not change. Um, so culture is huge cultures like gravity, you know, it's, it's inexorable and, and it's extremely hard to change. And if you're trying as a police chief. Um, to change a department that has some corruption issues and some members who may be corrupt and you have a culture you're battling that with inside the department and you're having to fight an external culture that reinforces all of that and won't allow you to make the changes that you want to make, um, because they're ineffective because they don't work in a corrupt environment.

You [00:25:00] know, what do you do? I mean, you're, you're, it becomes a real, real problem, uh, and a difficult one to solve if it is solved. Yeah. That aspect of culture is another thing that I never really thought about in working in schools. I, we've talked about this before that schools and police departments have so many crossovers, but culture, you can have the top down, but it's really hard to penetrate into the bottom.

If there's a lot of veterans who have been around for a long time and they're They've been there 15, 20 years and they're the ones who are, in a lot of ways, they're the more ground level of mentorship of the new people coming in. Yeah, the, the chief or the superintendent or the principal can come in and say, Hey guys, we're doing it this way.

But it's really hard when the 15 year veterans saying we, this is how things are done around here. Yeah. And, and in any agency, police or education [00:26:00] or, or any, anything like that, it, you're talking about like your sergeants, basically you and your veteran teachers and these folks, they're doing what they're doing the way they're doing it because it's working, even if it's broken, it's working in some fashion.

And if you're going to come in and try to change that, what you're, Yeah. Trying to change it to better work as well, or show promise of working. Otherwise, they're not going to change. And, you know, there's an old saying that that I encountered pretty early in my career that I found out pretty much every cop gets told this at some point in their career, and it's always when they're a rookie or young cop, and it's always by an old salt.

I mean, it's, it's almost a cliche at this point, but it goes like this, uh, The brass comes down, they come to roll call, lieutenant comes to roll call, captain comes to roll call, whatever, Hey, this is the new program. This is what we're doing now. And they give you the buzzword. You know, I can't tell you how many buzzwords I heard in a 20 year career.

I mean, I know you have to in education, you know, [00:27:00] no child left behind, you know, uh, you know, we're doing, you know, whatever student led teaching, whatever. It's the same thing. We're community oriented policing, neighborhood oriented policing, you know, uh, Uh, intelligence led policing, all of these different buzzwords and some of them, and they weren't just buzzwords.

Some of them were fantastic ideas that if implemented or when implemented are effective, but one of the mistakes leadership often makes is they change course so often that nobody really gets a chance to get grounded with the direction that we were going. And then people. Are like, Hey, we're just going to change course in six months.

Why am I going to engage? And that's what the old assault tells the young rookie when they come into roll call spouting about this new buzzword. And, and the rookie's like, well, how am I supposed to do this? And how am I supposed to do that? And the old guy just told me, just put your head down, take your calls, do your job in six months.

They'll be back with some other shiny toy to talk about. And, and so that's the cynical. And not entirely incorrect at times viewpoint that can exist at the ground level at [00:28:00] the, you know, the mid level for your, your veterans and your mentors. And so you have to overcome that and people talk about, like, uh, with both your professions, you guys are like, have to deal with unions and stuff like that.

So you can't even. Even if you catch a dirty cop, it's like a huge process to even get rid of them. Like the union's in place to make sure he doesn't get fired. And I, I don't know, I think people have this like false impression of just how you can change like a big organization, say, I don't know, we'll just use the Boston police force or the New York police force.

Like it takes. A long, long time to do it and it takes a long time and it takes a lot of people to actually be committed to wanting to make that change. And like you brought up, like, you know, we're talking about guys have been on the force for like 20 years. Sometimes like you're trying to get them to change their ways and.

It's, it's a huge process to be able to deal with a lot of these problems. Like, I know everyone thinks that you can just fix a problem with these large bureaucracies, like, oh, you can just do it [00:29:00] overnight. I mean, like, you can to a degree, like, you can just blow it all up and then just start from scratch.

But you can't, but you can't, can you? Yeah, exactly. That's why you can't you can't just fire all the cops and have them reapply for their job. And what contract with another police department to for your police services while that's happening. I don't that I guess you could try it. It'd be it'd be a mess.

You're going to fire all the teachers and bring in subs while you reinterview them. I guess you could, but what's the impact going to be? On the people you're trying to give service delivery to to those kids in the classroom or those citizens on the street. I think you make a great point there, Chris.

It's not a speedboat. It's an aircraft carrier. You know, it doesn't turn around as quickly as as people want it to and and so people get a little bit. Maybe inpatient leadership changes and changes the course. And so they shift course again. So now it feels like you haven't made any progress or, or even leadership just changes their minds because it's not happening [00:30:00] fast enough, or they get pressure.

I mean, all kinds of things can happen. So culture is a huge thing. Culture is a huge thing. And, and how corruption is viewed, what, what constitutes corruption, how corruption is dealt with, um, All of these things I think are heavily influenced by culture. I mean, if a cop murders somebody, I mean, that's going to be the same everywhere.

You know, if a cop is kicking in doors with his buddies and, and, and robbing drug dealers or dealing drugs, I mean, that's going to be dealt the same. Across the boards. There's no agency out there is going to say, well, you know, that's, you know, they, they, they, they, they put in a card and took some time off before they went and did that.

So, I mean, you're not going to get that. But on the other end of the spectrum, the 0. 25 coffee and up, you get different responses and what, what corruption is. From personally, like, I work in like a non union environment, right? Like, I work at a scrapyard and just even there with relatively, I don't know, it's not large staff, but like, it's, [00:31:00] it's not small either.

And it just to change something, even something, even personally, like, I've had a couple of freak outs where I'm just like, Why do we insist on doing something stupid? Do you know what I mean? But it's just, it's just, it's just the nature of how, like we pointed out, like how just bureaucracy works, like it's just this, it's this slow moving behemoth that takes forever to make a right turn.

That's the nature of bureaucracy, right? It's intended to work that way. The purpose of bureaucracy is to confer stability. And, and yet there, and therefore, because it's so stable, it's difficult and time consuming to make changes. So I think, I think you nailed it. Now you laid out, uh, at least 1 part of this conversation of, okay, the 25 cent coffee is a way to show appreciation.

I appreciate you. And here's a new Tesla. That's there's a spectrum of corruption there, but there was something else that you had talked about [00:32:00] when we were planning. This out is corruption that starts from the best of intentions kind of. Good, good intentions that lead to corruption. And I'd love for them to hear a little bit more about that, really a lot of it more, to be honest.

Yeah. The term that I hear that's been used most commonly in the profession is noble cause corruption. And, um, I, I, I don't know who coined the phrase. I know that somebody wrote a book about it that was on every promotional exam I ever took. And the first couple of times I. I read it just so that I could answer the questions and I, I, I, I even thought it was BS.

I didn't think it was, it was legit. But the idea of noble cause corruption is that you take a good person in a, in a role of responsibility. In this case, a police officer. And imagine you go and you arrest a child molesting murderer. And guilt is, [00:33:00] I mean, you catch him in the act. I mean, whatever. Guilt is not in question in this scenario.

Um, but you, you make a small clerical mistake that would become a procedural error that actually could put things into jeopardy. Maybe you, Asked him a couple of questions. He made a guilt, a guilty statement. And then you remembered you hadn't read him as Moran writes yet. This is actually a pretty big violation, but it works for our example.

So then you read him the rights, you read the guy's rights and, and go from there. And, and he doesn't make that same confession again. That confession is going to ultimately be inadmissible and maybe it's enough to keep them from getting convicted. And so you decide, you know, I read him his rights. He's guilty as hell.

He admitted it. It's a procedural harmless error on my part that's going to have this major issue come of it. I'm just going to write in my report that I read him his rights and then I started asking him questions. It's just a [00:34:00] small little white lie. And in doing that, I am going to ensure that this Pedophile murderer doesn't get acquitted on a procedural error that I made that is essentially harmless.

So are you going to find anybody in the world except a lawyer that's going to argue that you did something wrong there? I mean, most cops are going to, would consider that at least. Um, if they were faced with that situation, that's still corruption, right? Isn't it? It's a lie. It's not your job to make sure somebody gets convicted.

It's your job to enforce the law and to write reports truthfully and to administer the procedures. But if you do it incorrectly to document that you made that mistake and let the courts figure out how to deal. That's technically your role. So it's a form of corruption, but it's a, it was done for noble purposes and.

This can be the start and you know, could be something that occurs once and never again. You could have cops that never do anything like that. You could have cops that that's the they do one small thing like that in [00:35:00] their entire 25 year career and that's it. But from a. Psychological standpoint from a behavioral standpoint, it can lead to well, this time I, you know, he didn't exactly say he did it, but he kind of gave me a, he raised his eyebrows like at me, but he didn't say yes, but he meant yes.

And he was being a smart ass, but I'm going to put yes, because I know we did it. And then you're planting evidence at this point on a guilt. You know, I mean, I'm trying to remember what movie it is where the guy says, uh, Oh, uh, LA Confidential. When the, um, the Irish captain asks, um, the Guy Pearce character, Bagley, Bagley, Ed, whatever his last name is, asks, asks him, you know, would you plant evidence on a suspect you know to be guilty?

And Ed says no, and he's like, this job's not for me. Well, you know, planting evidence on somebody, you know, to be guilty, that infers again, a noble purpose, but you're doing something wrong, very wrong. It [00:36:00] can round a bend at some point. I mean, most people argue that's already around the bend, but your purpose is still, I'm trying to make the world a better place.

I'm trying to put bad guys that I know are bad guys in jail. No question. It can round the bend into, uh, self. Aggrandizement self, uh, bettering your own circumstances on, you know, keeping money, stealing money, starting money and things of this nature. And that's where the slippery slope idea comes in. Um, there's fascinating, uh, case study in Chicago, um, back 2000s.

I think it happened 2008. Maybe I could be wrong early 2000s. It's a Chicago S. O. S. group. Um. Yeah. In which a guy, you know, he, he was a idealistic cop and he started doing exactly the kind of things I'm talking about. And in this scenario, there was a mentor. There was a guy he looked up to even before he came on the department that kind of showed him the way and let him down the garden path.

And what started [00:37:00] as a guy's running from me and he ditches the gun and when I catch him, I decide the gun I picked up in the bush that he threw there never left his hand because I want to make this an airtight case. And this guy, you know, you know, killed 3 people and he's a drug dealer and, you know, piece of garbage.

He went from that kind of behavior, which is bad enough, most people would argue, to they're kicking in doors and stealing 30, 000 from, from the safe of drug dealers. And then after they got caught putting out hits on some of the other cops in their group, I mean, it's a terrible story. It's a horrible story.

And if you're a police officer, you listen to it in horror because it's such a. You know, 0. 0001 percent sort of thing, but it happened rampart happened. You know, it does happen. Um, but it doesn't start with, uh, you know, what, what do they do in New York where they, I think they, you know, they sodomize somebody with a flashlight or screwdriver or something.

That's a big story around the same time. And I mean. That's not day 1 [00:38:00] of, of, of noble cause corruption, you know, day 1 is a free pizza or whatever, you know, and, and so the idea is that that's why that 25 cent coffee is something you have to take a look at. That's why. Uh, no, no zero tolerance rule or a very tight grip on what you expect from your officers and what is allowed in terms of, of appreciation and so forth is so important because it's almost like a disease.

You can't get a little bit pregnant. You just, you get pregnant and it grows. That's kind of the idea. So I know that was a long and rambling explanation, but there's a lot of. Academia out there about noble cause corruption. If people are interested, there's, like I said, there's textbooks and plenty of papers on the topic.

It's pretty well known. And then you can check it out.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. I got understand like, I [00:39:00] totally get this slipper. So I mean, Steve have gone back and forth about this a couple of times. It's like cop walks into a house and it's some guy that's, I don't know, pimping out his daughter and You know, there's drugs all over the place and, you know, he decides, you know, I'm just going to change the report a little bit different to get this guy off the street.

There's a part of me that's just like, you know what, just go ahead and do it, man. You know, like this guy deserves to be behind bars. It's like this, this person's scum of the earth. It's not like this person's going to turn around and all of a sudden change his life. How often does that happen? Let's be honest here.

And then, but then. It becomes a silver so play you pointed out like it starts off with something like that. And it's like, oh, I got away with it the 1st time. And then, you know, like, you plan a good result came of it, right? That's how you're seeing it. Well, yeah, you know, like, you got a scumbag off the streets, like, not like, not like, just like a guy who stole a good.

You know, some candy bars at a store. We're talking like the worst of the worst people [00:40:00] that I think for the vast majority of the human population really has a difficult time, maybe even comprehending some of the people that police officers have to deal with, like, have seen and have had to deal with.

Like, you just you see the. Absolute utter worst of humanity and, you know, maybe you change the report just a little bit or, you know, you change something just once just to be able to get this one disgusting scumbag off the streets and maybe save that little girl's life. Or give her a fighting chance, right?

You know, yeah, give her a fighting chance. I think the whole idea of you sleepwalking into that level of corruption, that it just starts off as just that tiniest thing. I'm going to put this guy away, uh, because I, I know they're, they're dead to rights. They've done that. And then it just. It can start getting a little bit grayer, a little bit grayer, a little bit grayer, and then it just makes it so much easier to get into the really bad corruption of, I don't make that much [00:41:00] money as a cop and I gotta, you know, put my kids through college and it's not fair.

So, and they have all this money from drugs. So, you know, if a couple of packets fall into my Bag on the way out, then, you know, that's not a big deal. Once you start making those little bad decisions, it just key. It's like an escalator. You just can't get off of it. Yeah. And so two quick points there. One, I want to be really clear.

The overwhelming majority of police officers that I have come in contact with don't do this kind of stuff. Not even close. They're very conscientious that is preached from the academy onward. And a lot of people, even though they might look at a book like noble cause corruption and had the same reaction I did when I first came across it and be like, I don't need to read that.

I'm not, I'm not dirty. I don't take. I'm not on the dole or whatever they still intuitively understand the concept. They understand I have to be true and remain true to do this job. And so they just do if they ever do anything [00:42:00] like that. It's extremely minor and probably a once in a career event. That probably no one would have a problem with, but it's still wrong, right?

So that's one point. I just, I want to be really clear on, I don't want to sit here and sound like, you know, uh, I'm saying that, uh, that the cops do this willy nilly because it's not even close to the truth. Um, but to your point, Steve, you know, it's, it's not that it is a slippery slope, but it's not that far to jump from.

I know for an absolute fact, because it happened in front of me, this guy did it to Chris saw him do it. And I trust Chris to. Objectively speaking, the facts point to the fact that he probably almost certainly did it too. I'm pretty sure he did it too. He might have done it and he's probably done some other stuff too.

And if you're doing the same action to make sure that person goes to jail, you know, over a period of time, it can, you know, it can morph to that, the, the lower the threshold is going to lower, I guess, if you start to make that a practice. Um, and so that's why, you know, yeah. Better, better to not [00:43:00] start in the first point, you know, and void it entirely.

And I think you make a good point that it's. Most cops, the vast, vast majority and want to do the best, they punch in the clock every day to do their best and, but they're trained from the beginning to check these things that you do things by the, the book. And is that as a leader, was that something when you moved from the, from the patrol side and from the, uh, I guess the, the ground level, and as you started to move up into leadership, Were those some of the things that you were looking for and putting in systems and thinking about systems of how, you know, the best cop on your department, making sure that he stayed on the course?

Um, I'll answer that. I did want to give you a quick analogy. I think that brings that last portion of our conversation really into a tighter focus. Um, I think for the individual officer, the issue of potentially falling prey to a [00:44:00] form of corruption, however slight without really being aware of it. You said sleepwalking into it.

I think that that's a good way to put it. But I think it's a combination of kind of a forest and trees problem. When you're a police officer, you're focused on the trees. In fact, maybe just this 1 tree in this particular moment and much like a lumberjack, it's a good thing because that tree might kill you.

So pay attention to that trade. Um, but it does mean you don't necessarily see the forest and so the things that you're doing, you could sleepwalk a little if you weren't paying attention. And then also, as I think I kind of mentioned before, as it becomes that frog and boiling water problem to, you know, you can get progressively lower that threshold to your leadership question.

I was fortunate. I think. In that I didn't have to develop these systems. They were already in place. Um, you know, we had a chief who was chief when I came on who, who took this very seriously and his successors did as well. And so, you know, I mean, I was. Still in a department where the 25 cent [00:45:00] cup of coffee was something that we took a look at.

So the systems were in place. Um, the concerns were always there. And, you know, you're never going to completely be able to stop individual bad actors. It doesn't matter how much you screen people and believe me, if I told you, we can spend 20 minutes about the, on the screening process to become a police officer, at least in most of the agencies I'm familiar with.

And I think you'd be surprised. How difficult it is, uh, to get past that screening process. But even so, you're still going to have bad actors that get past and they do it. And there's always, uh, you know, uh, people do things. There are people doing things that are bad across every walk of life. And policing is no different.

The big difference is the impact. You know, teaching is similar in this regard. If you have a teacher who does something that's scandalous. It has an outsized impact. I mean, you know, Chris, if you're working, if somebody in the scrapyard does something in their job, that's not great, it's going to [00:46:00] have an impact, but it might not have a city wide impact or a state or province wide impact, but in teaching or policing, I think, you know, it's because of the responsibility that's given to the people.

And the authority to exercise and deal with that responsibility when bad things happen, they are outsized and how much attention is given to them. And I think rightfully so I'm not decrying that that scenario, but I was fortunate. We already had things in place. And so all I had to do is unfortunately deal with the individuals who.

Who failed and address that I didn't have systemic issues to do. Yeah, you brought up the, uh, like the spotlight the police have on them and it's. It's perfectly like, it's 100 percent true, right? Like, it's easy for. The spotlight go like, to go on, like, the corrupt police officers or what have you, because I don't mean, let's be honest.

I don't know what everybody else's opinion is. Like, nobody likes being pulled over by the police, right? Like, there's almost like an inherent, like, I don't like these type of guys. Like, straight off the bat, when you talk to the [00:47:00] vast majority of people, right? So when there's any type of corruption, there's a huge, like, magnifying glass on it, right?

Like, where, um, just people love to talk about it and people like to focus on it. And rightfully so, right? Because police officers, as you pointed out, have an opportunity to do some really, really, really, really, really bad things if there's not there's not enough oversight. But I think it's just 1 of those.

Right. Professions were when somebody screws up, everyone loves the dog pile on it. And I cannot understand, like, the police officers, like, getting really defensive when, uh, situations like that happen, where, as you pointed out, like, the 99 percent of the police officers that you met in your, uh, tenure for working, you know, through, uh, uh, various police forces.

They're 100 percent like, legit, they're squeaky clean, right? And, you know, one, a few bad apples, uh, make everybody else look bad. But then, it's the entire media apparatus. It's Twitter, it's [00:48:00] social media, it's everything. Everyone's jumping on it. It's because of the nature of how policing has changed. You don't really have police officers.

I don't know how it works in Spokane. Or, you know, where I grew up in Toronto, there's no police officers walking the beat. You know, I couldn't, I didn't know any police officers by their first name or, or anything like that, whether they had family or, you know, like, uh, back in the day, police officers used to like, kind of walk the, the beat in the neighborhoods and people used to kind of know, like there was a fixture in the neighborhood.

Um, so almost every interaction you end up having with police officers nowadays, uh, is typically negative. I mean, uh, uh, I mean, just real quickly, I'll say people don't like the cops, but they sure do like us when somebody's breaking down their door. You like us then , how do you like me now? Right? I've taken that guy to jail.

Um, but, uh, uh, but you're right. Um, and, and, and lately of course, there's been even more negative press in the last few years. It's gotten, uh, [00:49:00] amplified. Um, as the world gets smaller, every bad act that happens anywhere gets broadcast to the, to the entire. You know, country or entire, uh, continent. And so it feels like it's happening more often when in reality, I just think it's being reported more widely to more people because that's the nature of the world that we live.

But you're right. Um, you know, I, another one of my pet theories and I don't think it's that crazy is that when we took the officer off the beat and put them in a car, we, we, we lost something. Now we gained something too. We gained, you know, you know, strategic ability to deploy rapidly to crimes in progress.

And that's a big thing. And that was a great development. And, and, and there are advantages to that, that I don't think we can go back from that. We would not want to go back, but we did lose something. Um, and, you know, ideas like neighborhood oriented policing, community oriented policing, these programs.

You know, are, are geared towards trying to [00:50:00] put that back into, uh, some form of that back into play so that, uh, the relationships between communities and their police departments are more organic and more pronounced and more person to person rather than entity to entity. But ironically, when you had that.

Cop walking the beat. It was during a time when cops didn't make a whole lot. So that's why people, you know, took terms given the cop free meal while he was on duty. Right? Because they knew he probably couldn't afford lunch. So this, you know, he's come to my diner today. He's coming to yours tomorrow.

He'll eat with Steve on Wednesday. And, you know, it's not a big deal. We're taking care of our neighborhood cop. And just like the noble cause corruption kind of slide that we talked about, you know, that. Yeah. That becomes an entitlement rather than an assistance, and that entitlement then becomes a demand and then it escalates.

And now we've got situations in the 70s. and so, [00:51:00] um, no, no system is perfect, but I think you're onto something. Chris. I think I think that, uh. Effective policing really does start with community engagement and, and of course you have to have a ready reaction group as well for crisis sorts of events, but that's become our focus.

And in some instances, if you're understaffed to a particular degree, that might be all you can do is respond to those sort of events. And that's an unhealthy department when you get to that point, because you're not engaging the community. You can't, um, and. Thank you. If you're disassociated from the community, that's another opportunity I think, for corruption to work its way in one fashion.

You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, a History and Crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today, find links to social media and how to support the show. Go to our website, A to Z history page.com. Become a [00:52:00] friend of ours by sending us an email to crime at A to Z history page dot com.

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Original Publication Date: 10/25/2023

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Description: Today we have a special crossover episode between the History of the Papacy Podcast and Organized Crime and Punishment. Chris and Steve talk about how much religion, particularly the Catholic Church, has impacted the Mafia and how the Mafia has impacted the Catholic Church. This relationship goes far into the past and exists to this very day!

You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places:

https://atozhistorypage.start.page

email: crime@atozhistorypage.com

www.organizedcrimeandpunishment.com

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https://www.youtube.com/@atozhistory

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https://facebook.com/atozhistorypage

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https://www.instagram.com/atozhistorypage/

By Quirinale.it, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=129042272

Music Provided by:

Music from "5/8 Socket" by Rico's Gruv

Used by permission.

© 2021 All Rights Reserved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=210vQJ4-Ns0

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime, with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

Thank you for joining me again today. I have a special program today featuring the brand new podcast I've launched with my co host, Mustache Chris. called Organized Crime and Punishment, a history and crime podcast. Organized Crime and Punishment takes the true crime genre and injects it with the heavy dose of the, uh, the much needed history podcast genre.

Mustache Chris and I will... Take you through [00:01:00] some of the most fascinating topics in organized crime throughout the history of the United States, and even beyond the United States. And a lot of it is actually gonna cross over with history of the Papa c and in coming episodes and seasons. Mustache. Why don't you introduce yourself to the history of the Papacy audience nicknames, uh, mustache.

Chris was the story behind that, but you'll have to listen to the new podcast too. Uh, Get why I have that nickname. I have a mustache, but there's a, there's a little more for it too. Yeah. I don't know if you ever listened to Steve's like beyond the big screen podcast. It became like quite frequent guest on there.

Um, you know, we're discussing movies and. You know, this, this new show that we're going to be doing, uh, came about because we were discussing mafia movies and we were both, uh, kind of history dorks and, um, you know, one thing led to another and the series just kept on getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

And we decided this, why don't we just do [00:02:00] a history of organized crime in general? You know, just we're going to do the mafia, but, you know, we're talking about doing, you know, all around the world. So we really, it was, we needed to get set free from being held back by. We had to tie something into a movie and we could really go where we wanted to go and follow the history.

Wherever it took us, and it's taking us in all sorts of interesting places, which really ties into today's episode. We're going to let you wet your beak a little bit on what Mustache Chris and I will offer in this new podcast series with an episode on the history of the Catholic Church and the Mafia.

We'll discuss a few of the people and events where the Mafia and the Church... Collided and crossed over. If you want to learn more and subscribe to organized crime and punishment, you can find it on Spotify, Apple podcasts, your podcatcher of choice, and on YouTube. And if you enjoy [00:03:00] what you hear, make sure you tell a friend about this podcast so that they can be friend of friends of ours.

So let me give you a little background, basically. The Roman Catholic Church has had a very strange relationship with various organized crime organizations in southern Italy since they formed in at least the 1800s and even earlier. The full history of the local organized crime outfits in Italy, such as La Cosa Nostra in Sicily, the Camorra, and the Campania region of Italy, and the Um, Ju.

Undrangheta of Calabria is really long and something we will get into more properly in the Organized Crime and Punishment podcast. As we've learned throughout this entire series on the popes of the 19th century, the popes hated secret societies that rose in the 19th century, like [00:04:00] the Carbonari, the Freemasons, and others.

And even though the La Cosa Nostra, the Camorra, the Uyghurs, and the Calabrians, the Calabrian Gondreta, where secrets, were secret societies and the popes and the church in general hated secret societies. These mafia societies were really quite different than the secular societies. You've read into those ones a bit, Chris.

What do you, what would you say about that? Oh, like the differences between the, like, three, uh, types of three major mafias the more secular, uh, secret societies. Yeah, like, La Cosa Nostra is pretty predominant. That's Sicily's, uh, mafia, really. Um, it's... You know, has a very, uh, hierarchical kind of structure to it.

Um, you know, non Sicilians, you have to be Italian, but non Sicilians could join in the, uh, La Cosa Nostra, right? Um, and it was [00:05:00] like the, the big area where it was based in, but it's on all of Sicily, but Palermo is like the big hotbed of La Cosa Nostra activity. Um, yeah. After the, I would say kind of after the second mafia war, which is not to go down too much of a rabbit hole, they kind of took a step down.

The Camorra, which is, uh, based in, uh, is, I'm sorry, the Camorra is actually probably the oldest out of the all three of the, uh, mafias. Um, it's, uh, I believe from what I've researched, it predates Locosa Nostra, it predates the, uh, the Adrangata. Um, yeah. Yeah, and it's very, it's different than the Locos Nostra in the sense that it's, uh, kind of loosely affiliated.

Like, there is an organizational structure, but it's more kind of like individual cells, like working somewhat together, but also like competing against one another. And the Andrangita, which is based in Calabria, um, is, uh, it's kind of like, it's You know, all [00:06:00] these are all, they're all mafia, so there's a lot of similarities between them, but the Adrangata is, uh, really, really, really, really secretive, and one of the things that kind of makes it unique that, at least from the information that we have available to us, where like, guys in like, they have like family, Say, in La Cosa Nostra, a lot of fathers who try to push to not have their kids join, where in the, with the, the Andrangita, it's the exact opposite, really, like you, they push for their entire families to join and keep it as, like, close knit family wise as possible.

I mean, in some ways it, it, it was kept it from being able to expand, say, like the, like, uh, Lacosa Nostra did, but in a lot of ways it's proven to be highly effective because, uh, as of right now, they're probably the most powerful out of all three of them. Now one big difference between the secular secret societies like the Carbon [00:07:00] and the Freemasons, they were Virulently Virulently, anti-Christian and anti Roman Catholic Church.

And at least on the surface, and I thinking, uh, you might say hourly, but even deeply, these. Were these organizations of the mafia were devoted to the Roman Catholic Church, its institutions and its practices and like many other cultures, the southern Italians were very invested in the folkways of the religion and see the episodes on the resortimento with Joe Pascone of the Turning Tides History podcast to learn more about that.

All of this leads into What is the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Mafia? You would think, well, maybe the Roman Catholic Church should be against the Mafia. Maybe they should be completely against the Mafia. That makes us want to, makes me want to talk about this [00:08:00] issue and lay down some groundwork of what is excommunication.

Excommunication traditionally doesn't mean someone who is permanently booted out of the church, as we might propose. popularly imagined. Anathematizing is the final booting out where someone isn't welcome back. And even then, if the person repents, there is usually some path to back, to get back in the church.

And I did, I've done many episodes on this topic throughout the podcast, including several episodes on the late antiquity and early middle ages controversy over Novationism and Donatism, which we can actually talk about in this episode as we go along. These issues get very confused in modern Christianity, especially in places like the United States and the Anglosphere because of the Puritans and the Reformation in early American history.

Their theology is not really. applicable to Catholic theology on [00:09:00] salvation, but that's a whole different issue. So, and really, excommunication means exactly what it says, being out of communion with the church. In other words, not being able to participate in the central sacrament of the church. Communion, no church leader is going to take that lightly, no matter how pious or corrupt they might be.

So let's keep this in mind and this whole idea of what the church ideal is, even when the institution is at its very best or fails completely. At that ideal, and I think that this will be a very informative conversation. Let's take a look at a few examples from Italy and the U. S. to see what the Roman Catholic Church had to say about these issues.

So the first one is the mafia and the church in Italy, and this is a huge topic, but I really, we decided to take a one small chunk of it. Now, southern Italy [00:10:00] is by far the most religious part of the country, and this was the case back during the post enlightenment period of the 18th and the 19th centuries, and it's very much the case all the way up till today.

In many places, the leader of the local mafia is also the local leader of the government. And also the biggest proponent of the church. Steve here again. We are a member of the Parthenon podcast network featuring great shows like Josh Cohen's eyewitness history and many other great shows go to Parthenon podcast to learn more.

And now here's a quick word from our sponsors.

Yeah, I think it's something that's kind of a little bit. Difficult for, um, American and Canadian audiences to understand, even just like Western Europeans, I think, in [00:11:00] general, like Southern Italy is, in a lot of ways, is not what we would consider like a well functioning society, you know, for most of its history, where, well, there's a lot of history to it, you know, like you, you've talked about it on your podcast, like places like Sicily and Southern Italy have had like, you You know, being conquered many, many times, many different rulers from different parts of the world.

Um, and, you know, it's like, just certain institute, like certain things that, like, just don't run properly, like, you know, like a court of law or like, if the groceries are going to be on the shelf to buy. You know, when the government is it's not even so much like the government doesn't want to have this type of powers.

There's a lot of the times they're just incapable of being able to exert this kind of control. And once they're not able to kind of exert that control, it's usually local mafias in the case of Sicily, but it's usually like a local gang or a local baron or you know, You know, like the local rich guy ends up taking up the, [00:12:00] uh, the duties of that would regularly be that would typically be, um, divvied out to say, like the state government or even the local, like a municipal government, or in some cases, the federal government, right?

Where most of these types of governments have, uh, Failed, you know, and even when they sometimes are, they are running properly, they're running corruptly. And there's a whole history to it too. And, uh, this region of Italy of just the distrust of the government, because of what, as I pointed out, a lot of its history was, you know, you had like French people were there, like French rulers were there, and then it was like Spanish rulers were there.

And. All different types of rulers, you know, even you want to go further back, you know, the Muslims were running this region for a while too, right? The Moors, um, so for most of Southern Italy's history, it's kind of been ingrained in the people that you really can't trust the local authorities because, I don't know, they're usually trying to rip you off [00:13:00] or they're corrupt or they're treating you like a conquered people.

And then this attitude persists to this day. I mean, it's gotten a little bit better when kind of, Just how, like, the seriousness of, like, just how, um, evil the mafia is, um, in Southern Italy. And if, you know, a couple brave judges and a couple of brave people have spoke out about, um, um, the evils of the La Cosa Nostra and the mafias in these regions, but it's still relatively Still kind of functions like this.

It really is. Like if you go to southern Italy, I haven't been personally, but everything that I've read, it's you, you're reading about this. And it's like, this doesn't sound like Europe. And in a lot of ways, it isn't, I think it's, yeah, I, I absolutely agree with that. The local local. Government of your brother or you're basically your tribesmen, they might be pretty evil, but at least they're putting food on your table.

They're evil, but they're a little less. [00:14:00] Evil than the way that the central government of say that was coming out of Rome or going back to the Naples or whatever they were, they were rotten evil, and they were just looking to basically steal everything from these people, at least the local. Bad guy was a little bit better and a little bit better at protecting your slight rights than what was coming from the centralized government and really the leader of a local government was usually connected very tightly to the church because they didn't have it.

Any of this idea of a separation of church and state, and in many instances, and in many places around the world, that distinction would be absurd, like, in our world view, that is the most enshrined thing, really, in our culture, is that religion in the state is, should [00:15:00] it be absolutely separated, but there's a lot of places around the world that they would think you were a lunatic for separating them.

But for most of human history, that's the case. And for the vast, like that, you know, for most of the world, it seems like a really crazy concept. I mean, I use like, kind of like a modern example, look at Afghanistan, you know, uh, the Taliban's back in power and when the Taliban derives their authority from, you know, religion, the religious institutions, but mainly, you know, being like a religious force for Islam and look at Iran.

You know, India is slightly different in the sense that it's a little bit more secular, but like, you really can't separate, like, Indian government and, uh, Hinduism. You just, the two were kind of insep like, you can't really separate the two of them. Uh, Japan up until, uh, I mean, literally, they worshiped the emperor as a god up until World War II for most of its history.

It [00:16:00] only stopped doing that. Well, I don't, I, I wouldn't say they even really stopped doing it. They just kind of directed it in a different, different way. But in Russia, as an example, um, yeah, like the, the, uh, the Orthodox Church was kind of, uh, marginalized and pushed to the side when the communists took over.

As soon as the Soviet Union fell, that separation of church and state just went away, like, for most of its history, like, uh, you know, it's hand in hand again, um, I mean, even England, like, even if you look at England, I mean, in theory, technically, the queen is the head of the, the state, uh, religion too, I mean, it practically has not ran like that, and, but, you Yeah, for most of human history, this, even I think it's kind of a crazy concept where, like, in the States and over here in Canada, we have this, like, strict separation of, like, the church and the state.

I think it's, I think it's kind of crazy why we're so adamant about that, but, I [00:17:00] mean, that's a, that's a discussion for another podcast. Now, the Sicilian La Cosa Nostra boss, they said that all men of honor consider themselves Catholic, and I think that really shows that, at least by their ideal, if you're a mafia member, you're also a Catholic, and that's going to seem kind of strange how those two things that are seemingly at odds with each other will Have to be mushed together.

It's kind of like two poles of a north and a south of the magnet getting pushed against each other. And they you would think they repel that in this case, they don't necessarily repel. Yeah, it's interesting, like, because even if you look at other different type of organized crime organizations around the world, like, I'll use Eastern Europe as an example, like using, uh.

Kind of religious iconography, like you'll see, uh, [00:18:00] them, you know, wearing rosaries and having, like, uh, uh, tattoos of, like, uh, religious, like, uh, religious saints and what have you on their body. Um, I just said, I was thinking that now because I just recently watched that movie, Eastern Promises, and that's all filled with.

Russian mafia and they all have these religious tattoos and it's not a meme. It's, it's an actual thing. Um, as the same thing with Southern, uh, with the mafias in Southern Italy and even in the cartels too, like a lot of these, a lot of these guys end up being high up in the cartels and running the cartels, they could.

They consider themselves religious too. It's, it's, uh, I, I don't know how they reconcile the two things. I don't, I don't think they, I mean, in their minds they must, right? But I don't see how they're able to do it. And that really went for the, the mafia organizations all across Italy. Bosses or their families or their associates would get pride of place in religious processions, which were, uh, which, Were and [00:19:00] are a very popular form of do devotion and they would get many other perks within the church.

And a lot of these mafia guys, like you were saying, are honestly truly religious too. They go to church all the time. They pray. They are maybe the more, the most pious people. And it is, it's a hard, uh, circle to square. If that's the right idiom, there's square to circle or whatever you're going to say, but you know what?

You get, get my drift. It's a hard thing to wrap your mind around. I, the only thing I can kind of think of is the way they, I guess, rationalize in their head. It's like, well, I'm actually not participating in any of this stuff. Like I might provide it, but I'm not forcing anyone to do this. And we live in a sinful fallen world and.

I, they're choosing to live a life of sin, whereas I'm choosing to live a pious life in some circumstance, like some of these guys just straight up, like, aren't pious at all too, [00:20:00] right? And they don't pretend to be otherwise, but some of them do truly feel like they are, um, like I'm living a pious life. I'm donating to the church.

I'm doing this and that, uh, helping out my local community in their odd sort of way. I guess you could rationalize it to yourself, or like, I'm not forcing anybody to do any of this stuff that I'm providing. They're choosing to do it, and like, my conscience is fine. I mean, I guess it kind of makes sense. I mean, if you're running like, say, McDonald's and be, as the CEO, should he feel really bad that he sells, like, Garbage food to the American public and the Canadian public that like causes diabetes and obesity.

And I would argue, yeah, you probably should. Do you know what I mean? But we don't really look at it that way. Um, I guess, I guess that would be the kind of round, you know, logic behind it. Does that make sense to you? And really, a number of political tides kept the Mafia and the Church as a strange coalition [00:21:00] even after the Risorgimento and the national formation of Italy throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

The rise of anti religious parties, uh, took control in the state, and these parties left, of the left usually, and even the fascists were aligned against the interests of southern Italy. Along with the papacy in the Catholic church, Pope's during the 20th century made at least lip service to distancing themselves from the mafiaa, but it was, it really was a challenging situation from them.

Pope Francis, the first who became Pope in 2013, has recently pushed back against the mafia in Italy saying that brothers and sisters cannot be both in the church and in the mafia. As with many of Francis pronouncements, much can be read into his statements and much will depend on what other bishops and prelates do in individual situations.

Francis has also [00:22:00] tried to take away some of the devotional practices used by the Mafia towards things like the Virgin Mary and the processions. Ties between various mafia factions like the Andrangheta and the Vatican Bank still exist to this very day, and they're really just getting exposed to this very day.

Yeah, the Andrangheta is like, probably, most people probably never even heard of the Andrangheta, to be honest with you, but, um, Yeah, like I pointed out earlier, like, they're based in the Colabrio region. There's actually a huge presence of the Andrangheta where I live right now, in southern Ontario. Um, a lot of the, uh, Mafia, at least the top Mafia in this area is, they're Durangata, um, and we're not quite sure exactly, just kind of a side note, we're not quite, we think that they're kind of running on their own, but there's still people theorize that they're taking orders directly from Calabria.

It's just a little interesting tidbit, little rabbit hole. I've been trying to go down and [00:23:00] trying to find out exactly how it runs. Um, yeah. Yeah, but, uh, the adrenaline has very, they have, like, a very strong ties to the, uh, to the cartels and, uh, South America. And then most of the drugs that ends up getting import, like, imported into Western Europe, it's usually.

The Adrengata will be buying the drugs, say, from the cartels, and then they ship them to Calabria, and then from Calabria, it goes into Western Europe. Um, virtually, from my under, from my reading, almost all of it come, uh, it can be traced right back down, traced right back to the Adrengata. Very interesting.

And we should also mention there has, uh, have been many priests and bishops who have stood up to the mafia in Italy and have really paid the price and violence for doing so. There's a particular priest named Father Pino Pugliese, who was killed in the 1990s. And there are plenty of stories of priests who supported the Mafia and were even [00:24:00] related to them.

Now we're going to move into a very interesting example of a Mafia family connection to the church. That's in a man named Joe Profaci and the Catholic Church. Can you give us a little background on Joe Profaci? Yeah, so Joe Profaci, he was the founder of the Profaci family. Most people probably know him as the Colombo family, which is what they later ended up becoming.

Um, kind of, he was, um, I think they, he took, um, A lot of inspiration from, uh, the godfather took a lot of inspiration from Joe Profaci because he ran like an olive oil, uh, importing business. Um, he was kind of like an old school, uh, mafioso. Um, one of his daughters married, I believe it was one of Joe Bonanno's, I think it was Joe Bonanno's son.

And that wedding, the FBI had like tons of pictures of it. And I think they used that as the [00:25:00] inspiration for the godfather. The big wedding at the beginning of that movie. Um, yeah. And he was kind of like a conservative, he was kind of like a conservative member of like a mafia wing within the commission.

Um, yeah. And he considered himself like very religious. Like he donated tons and tons and tons and tons of money to the, uh. To the church, you know, like to the point where people were pushing for him to get a, like a knighthood in the, the Knights of Columbus at Pro, like you were saying, pro Joe Profaci was a huge and very devout Catholic w with his massive wealth, a game from both the Mafiaa and his hugely successful legal, legal businesses.

He was a significant patron of the church, and he attended a particular church called St. Bernadette's Church in Brooklyn. He was members of the Knights of Columbus, the men's organization, which in a way [00:26:00] operates very similarly to one of the secret organizations like the Freemasons, but it is Catholic and he was a kind of a member of it.

That's a whole different story, but we're going to focus in on one particular story today. He even had a private altar in the basement of his home where he could have private masses served. Now, many of the Italian American Catholic leaders wanted a papal knighthood for Profaci, but there was actually a fair amount of pushback against that in various quarters, so it never really happened.

But there's a really Fascinating story about Joe Profaci and the stolen crown like that could be the title of it. Joe Profaci and the stolen crown. There was a really high expensive and highly ornamented crown that was made for the Brooklyn church that Joe attended. The crown had jewels that were worth over 100, 000 U.

1. dollars Back in the 1950s where 100, [00:27:00] 000 meant something. Now there's people buy cars for 100, 000 and it's not that nice of a car. But, um, back then 100, 000 was a lot of money. Anyway, Joe This crown was stolen, and Joe made it his mission to find out who did it, and eventually the thief, a jewel thief named Ralph Amino, returned the crown, somewhat desecrated, with a few jewels missing.

Supposedly, Joe had a contract put out for this thief, and one way or another, Ralph Amino was found shot dead in the Bath Beach section of Brooklyn. A local paper reported Amino was even refused Catholic burial service for his crime, even though he was never convicted or even arrested for it. And some...

Sources even say that he, maybe he wasn't shot, or he was shot later, but [00:28:00] that he was strangled to death with a rosary. Joe Profaci died of cancer in 1962, and he was given a full Catholic burial at St. Bernadette's and is buried in St. John's Cemetery, a Roman Catholic cemetery. Yeah, it's interesting because like some, you know, when we get into when you guys start listening to the, the other podcast, we'll get into some of these mob guys didn't, they were denied a Catholic funeral.

They were denied, uh, um, from the local pastor or what have you, or the church just straight up. So like, we're just not doing this. It's interesting that Joe got, I guess, because he would, I guess he was so devout and he donated so much to the church and maybe the extent of what He was up to, wasn't quite well known, you know.

Like, Joe Profaci was a drug dealer. He was an rocketeer. You name it, this guy was doing it. It's just, it's so bizarre to me that, like, people were pushing for him to get a [00:29:00] knighthood. I think Joe Profaci, in particular, he was so insulated with his legitimate businesses. I think it would be easy to just say, well, Hey, he's an olive oil merchant.

And I think, I think that that is the thing that probably insulated him more than other people. It would be hard to say that somebody who had never been. convicted or hardly even arrested of any crimes. I'm not, I can't recall offhand if he had been arrested many times, but it's hard to say that you can say we're not going to give you a Catholic burial to a guy who, at least on the surface, is completely legit.

Yeah, you know, other than, like, he was caught up in, like, some drug smuggling, like, charges, but the nothing ever were stuck, and, I mean, there was, if people wanted to kind of scratch a little bit underneath the surface, they could see, like, uh, where's Joe getting [00:30:00] all of his money, right? But... Like you said, like he did run a successful olive oil business, you know, um, from, by all accounts, he, Joe, wasn't like a, like, it wasn't like a psychopath.

So he wasn't say somebody like, uh, like gas pipe castle or anything like that. Right. But, um. Yeah, it's just interesting. Like some of these guys got Catholic funerals and others were denied it. We're going to talk now about a Catholic churchman and a cardinal in the church, a very high ranking person, Francis Spellman.

And the setting is the late 19th century. Forties, early 1950s, really the beginning of the cold war. And this tale matches up the Catholic church, the mafia, the CIA, the cold war, the FBI and communisms now communist parties were taking over all over Europe in the aftermath of world war two. And. If you know your history, the U.

1. government wanted to stop that trend immediately in [00:31:00] Italy, especially at where the Communist parties were really growing rapidly. And the big thing that was needed was money. And who had tons of money and ways to move it around internationally and secretly, especially to Italy, I think you can make your guess on that the Catholic Church and the mafia money was funneled.

All over the U. S. into Europe for anti communist measures by the Catholic Church and the Mafia. Connections to drug trafficking in the Vatican Bank were all involved. And this is very much scratching the surface here with stuff that's just starting to come out now. So look for more connections between the Vatican Bank.

The Mafia and anti communist activities soon. This is not tinfoil hat stuff here. This is stuff that's coming out right [00:32:00] from CIA archives and Vatican archives. So let us know if this is a topic that you find interesting because I find it very interesting. Yeah, so do I myself, like, uh, just, you mentioned that book and I started reading it and started getting into it a little bit, and just like, just from researching the Mafia in general, like, there's always been this kind of theory, at least in Italy, that.

Like Benito Mussolini had like smashed the, uh, the mafia in a lot of ways. He actually, he did do this. Like he did smash the mafia in Southern Italy is one of the few leaders that was able to do it. He didn't smash it completely, but he definitely weakened it. And there's always been kind of a conspiracy theory, at least on the left in Italy, that like the Americans allowed the mafia to come back into place.

Like to come back into Southern Italy because they were afraid that the, the communists would fill the gap and it was actually the American government that propped up the, uh, the mafia back in Southern [00:33:00] Italy, uh, as like a stop gap against, uh, um, the communists from taking over. I mean, in a lot of ways that there's people that theorize it, but even with the labor movement and in the United States where the American government came to the conclusion, it's like, well.

We could stop these mafia organized crime types from getting into these unions. But if we stop them from getting into these unions, then the communists are going to get into the union. So they kind of, they pick the, they pick the mafia over the communists. No, I'm not saying that's, uh, it's just the theory that has gone out there.

Um, that this is kind of maybe what happened in, uh, both of these regions. You know, I, I can't say with 100 percent certainty, but, uh, just from my personal research, it definitely makes a lot of sense. I mean, if you're going to have to choose, if you're going to choose between communists and the mafia, the mafia, you can kind of somewhat understand, it's like, oh, they just want to make money where, like, the communists want [00:34:00] to do, like, You know, we're not talking like communists that you talk to on the internet, like at this time they were like legitimate communists, like they wanted to overthrow the government, so if you have to choose between the two, the mafia doesn't want to, they just want to be left alone, you know, they're not trying to overthrow the government.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. Our last tale is going to be more recently, it's really something that's, a story that just wrapped up itself within the last year or so of the early part of the 2020s, and that is And this tale takes place in the United States in the Italian American phenomena that developed in the United States and that's really largely the focus of this first series of the organized crime and punishment podcast and we're going to talk about Father [00:35:00] Louis Gigante, a Catholic priest who was the brother of not one but Two notorious mafia figures, boss of the Genovese family and lifelong play actor at being mentally ill, Vincent the Chin Gigante and Genovese family capo Mario Gigante.

This guy, Father Louis Gigante lived a crazy life. Chris, can you give us just a little background on his famous mafia brother, Vincent the Chin Gigante? Yeah, I've been, yeah, and I, it's incredible that there hasn't been a movie made about this guy, but yeah, Chinchiganti was, uh, probably one of the most powerful mob bosses in the United States ever.

Um, he was the leader of the Genovese family. Um, he's most famous, the Genovese family had this unique structure where they have like, they would have like a front boss. And in this case, it was Tony Salerno. He was like the front boss. So this was the boss that, You know, the cops would be looking at and thinking [00:36:00] was the boss of the family.

And then there was the actual boss behind the scenes. And this was, uh, Vincent, the chin gigantic, but like, you think, oh, that's enough secrecy, right? No, like Vincent, the chin gigantic took it up a notch where he decided that he was going to spend the vast majority of his life acting crazy. Um, so people wouldn't think he was a mafia boss.

So we're talking about stuff, you know, walking around, like exposing himself in a bathrobe and. On the streets and, you know, peeing in corners and mumbling to himself and going to like weekly psychiatric meetings where he would get like referrals saying like, yep, he crazy. And if the cops showed up to the house, there's one famous story of him.

Showering with his suit on, shaving. You know, like, it's just like a really crazy story, man. Um, yeah, and like I said, it's incredible that there hasn't been a movie made about this guy. I just even think they would make a movie about him. Um... Yeah, and, uh, this, this [00:37:00] act worked for a really long time, like, pretty much right up until he finally admitted that he wasn't crazy, but, you know, for years and years and years and years, he kept it up, he would show up to court, you know, in a bathrobe and muttering to himself, and, you know, even the, even the mob guys who kind of knew that it was kind of an act, like, some of them would say, like, you know, they'd talk after, they're talking afterwards, and like, we weren't entirely sure at the time whether how much of it was an act and how much, You know, wasn't an act because he even had like the mob guys convinced.

That's how convincing he was for many priests. I mean, honestly, being a priest is a full time job, and it's a lonely one at that, being that most of them are celibate. Being that most of them are celibates, but not for Louis Giganti, Louis lived with his common wall, common law wife in the, in a pretty solid middle class New York suburb, New York city suburb, [00:38:00] and he even had a son they lived like.

Typical, classical, suburban family, except as, uh, Louis son said, Dad went to work on Sunday mornings. And most priests, even if they don't exactly take a vow of poverty, they don't get rich on the job. Again, not so for Lewis. When Lewis died, he left in a state of over seven million dollars. And he made that money through various positions he held in both non profit and for profit, building and building maintenance ventures in the South Bronx area of New York City.

We don't know exactly for sure if Lewis was connected to the mafia, an informant claimed he was, but, uh, never testified to that fact. But the types of businesses that Lewis made as fortune and certainly smell of the [00:39:00] mafia, and they were certainly very They lived in, they lived in the very same areas that the mafia would dominate, like building, construction, building maintenance.

Lewis defended his brother up and down and never apologized for being married, essentially being married, having a son. Honestly, he was proud of it. He was proud of it that he was rich. He was proud of it that his brother was chin gigante. I'm in the sky. I'm honestly shocked I've never heard of him before, until I started poking around.

This is another guy who should have a movie after him. Yeah, maybe the two of them together type, like, you know, do a movie about both of them, do like a part one, a part two, or something, um. Yeah, I mean, Lewis wouldn't, wouldn't not just like Lewis would for years and years and years like defend his brother, you know, like, you know, this guy's not mafioso.

He's not involved in drug trap. He's not [00:40:00] involved in any of this stuff. Like, what are you guys talking about? Um, very like vocal support of his brother. Um, you know, he gets it is really wild story. Like, like, how was he not kicked out of the church? Like, well, he not kicked out of the church, but how was he not kicked out of the priesthood after he had like, He clearly was not living an excellent life and he had a son, like, I don't, you're more familiar with that.

That really comes down to, and that gets us into a, a wrapping up of the episode of today is that it's very difficult for the church to enforce the rules. Exactly. And strictly because as much as you might have the Pope lay down a certain set of rules and canons in Rome, and that's kind of what the Catholic Church sells it as is that we have a Pope.

We have a central authority that makes centralized decisions, but it's really how it's enforced on the [00:41:00] ground. And the Pope doesn't necessarily have a many mechanisms to leapfrog over the local bishop who would be the one who would have to put that priest into trouble. And I mean, honestly, it's such a big organization.

It would be very difficult for a Pope to know. And then get involved. And I think that's how a lot of the problems that the Catholic Church had throughout the 20th century and into the 60s, the 70s, and even into the modern age is that as much as it is hierarchical, there's a lot of places for people to hide in that big of an organization.

And that really comes into how we can see a lot of connections between the papacy, the Catholic Church, and the mafia. And what... Should, you brought up the question, what should the Catholic Church have done with the Mafia during the Golden Age of the Mafia, and what should they do [00:42:00] now with the Mafia in Italy and the United States?

What do you, uh, what do you think about that? Well, I mean, during the Golden Age, it's, they were pretty silent, uh, about, about it all. I mean, in their defense, like, the FBI, like, J. Edgar Hoover pretty much denied the existence of the Mafia until almost, like, the 1960s. Uh, it was the Appalachian Meeting was basically when he's like, okay, I guess we can't deny it anymore.

Um, um, even though he knew that he was denying it and maybe at one point, like, early on, he didn't think it was the thing, but It shouldn't have taken that meeting for him to come out and recognize that, like, yes, the locosanostra is a real thing, and it is in the United States, and it's a very bad problem in New York.

Um, the church should have, uh, in my opinion, just vehemently denounced it. Don't, you know, don't accept donations from people like Joe Profaci. Um... You know, like, lead a campaign or something that says, like, you can't serve [00:43:00] two masters. It's right there in the Bible. Like, you can't be mafia and you can't be part of the church.

It's either you're part of the church or you're part of mafia. They're two... They can't... You can't be a mafioso and... Claim to be a Christian. You just, you just can't. You can rationalize it in your head all you want, but you really can't, you know, to become a made guy, you know, we didn't get into this, but like to become a made guy, you have to make your bones, right?

Which means you have to kill another person. You know, that's usually once you make your bones, uh, that's, you know, you're for that's okay. Yeah, you're good. You can get made. You can actually officially become a made guy and be, uh, yeah. You know, part of the inner sanctum of the mafia. I'm like, I don't know that.

I think there's a thing or two in the that tells you not to do that. I could be wrong. I think that this we can put our theologians hats on. Uh, we're armchair historians were armchair philosophers. We might as well be armchair theologians. I [00:44:00] think the organized crime and crime in general puts a religious organization like The like a Christian church in a really tough position because theologically speaking, and you look at the scope of the history of the church, the church is the hospital of sinners and just skim your gospels for a minute or two, and you'll see Jesus points.

weren't about the pious. I mean, in a lot of ways, Jesus was making points against the pious. He was talking to the sinners. I mean, casting the first stone, the woman in the well, the publican and the Pharisee, the thief on the cross, Zacchaeus, you name it. These are the people that Jesus was talking to in, in the gospels.

And Western Christianity has taken that theology, added to it, taken some away. But to me, it's, um, It's undeniable that Christianity's focus isn't on the righteous, it's on the sinner. And how [00:45:00] can they say, well, you're, you're somebody who's a sinner, but you're completely out. I think that that would, it would honestly cripple the, the, the organization of the church, theologically speaking, because then at what point.

It's a, you know, the old cliche of the slippery slope. When do you say that somebody is actually pure enough to be in the church? My argument would be like, like Jesus had pointed out, like you can't serve two masters. If somebody who say was a mafioso sincerely comes to the church and repents and says, you know, like, I'm not going to, I'll just, I don't know, I'll use John Gotti as an example, right?

Say, let's just say, in theory, John God, he says, you know what? I'm out. I'm not mafia. I'm not a mafia boss anymore. I denounced my former, uh, Locoza Nostra life and he comes to the church and he repents and, you know, does the sacraments and in. Uh, you know, his [00:46:00] community service and yada, yada, yada, like, you know, does all the things or so that he's a repentant, uh, Christian, you know, reads his Bible studies, his theology, um, then yeah, for sure, you know, the vast majority of people.

They're not going to change that fundamentally. They really aren't. Um, and it's sad, to be honest with you, but like, you know, Jesus had a line I'm trying to remember right now, like, getting into heaven, uh, is, uh, I think it was like, what was it? A rich man getting into heaven is about as easy as a camel going through the eye of a needle.

You know, he says it's hard. You know, and the most people aren't going to do it. Uh, so yeah, in theory, like if, say, John Gotti decided and say he, he, he did all the things I had just listed, then yeah, but you can't go to the church and be like, oh, I'm sorry for, you know, murdering this person on Sunday and then go two weeks later and go like, well, [00:47:00] sorry, I had to do it again.

But, you know, it's just not how it works. But I, I don't see how they can close the doors on those people because that's fundamentally against the religion. I mean, bring up the, I mean, we can look at historical examples, but if you even bring it back to the Gospels, the thief on the cross, he's on his deathbed and he, he, uh, acknowledges the religion.

And Jesus says that I'll see you in, I can't remember the exact quote, but basically I'll see you in heaven this evening. Theoretically, at least the church is supposed to be, the doors are supposed to be open to the people until the bitter end. And like I said, and I'll, I'll get a lot of hate mail on this when I think, but crack your Bible open, look at the early church writers.

really mostly anything up until the [00:48:00] Reformation. And it's hard to say that anybody should be denied at least access into the church and access to the mechanisms that the church has to leading somebody out of the sinful life. And to just say that they're completely cut off, to me, cuts out. Completely cuts off the church as an organization at the knees.

And like I said, it puts them in a very difficult position to say that, yeah, we are going to let these in a lot of ways, Cretans into the church, but I don't know how you can deny them access. Oh, it's true, right? No, it is the truth, too, right? Like, it's very, I mean, that's the difficulty at Jesus's message in general, right?

Where, in a lot of ways, it kind of, I would say it goes against our human instincts, right? Where, you know, my human instinct is go, like, you're mafia, like, what are you talking about, man? Like, sincerely repent, and then you can [00:49:00] come in. You know, but that's not up for me to decide whether he's sincerely repented or not really.

I mean, Jesus is the only one that will see it in his heart. You know, maybe one day this, this, uh, ex mafioso or hopefully one day does become ex mafioso. Maybe the, the one Saturday comes in and. I said, you know, I told him to get out or what have you because of, uh, the previous times that he had failed to, uh, change his life around.

Maybe it was that one Saturday he was sincerely going to do it, but because I told him no, he never did it, you know, it's, it is difficult. I mean, you could say at the very least, like, don't take donations from these people. I mean, I don't think that's much to ask, right? You know where they're getting their money from.

It's not difficult to figure out, you know, drug money is pretty easy to spot. I think we, I think in this, we're never going to answer this question, and I think anybody who says that there is an easy answer to this [00:50:00] question, like, because I mean, again, hate mail alert, Pope Francis is kind of laying out that, oh, there's an easy answer to this.

I don't think that there is, and I think that, agree or disagree with me, that 2, 000 years of church history is on my side on this one, that there is no easy answer to situations like this of crime in the church. Uh, and I'll stand, I'll debate anybody on that, that there is no easy answer on it. And honestly, these are the questions that we are going to ask in the Organized Crime and Punishment History Podcast.

And I want to thank everybody for indulging us on sharing this little bit of the history of the papacy, the Catholic church, the 19th century church, the modern church, and organized crime. History. So thank you, Chris, for coming on today. And we will definitely be talking more about this on not only the history of the papacy, [00:51:00] but on organized crime and punishment.

You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, a history and crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today, find links to social media. And how to support the show, go to our website, a to z history page dot com. Become a friend of ours by sending us an email to crime at a to z history page dot com.

All of this and more can be found in the show notes. We'll see yous next time on Organized Crime and Punishment. Forget about it.

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Original Publication Date: 10/18/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/fGOuaYx9PwB

Description:  

In the second part of the Organized Crime and Punishment podcast's two-part episode on the Danbury Trashers, the focus remains on the intriguing story of this minor league hockey team's entanglement with organized crime.

In this episode, the hosts delve deeper into the Trashers' ties to the underworld and the consequences faced by those involved. They explore the team's financial dealings with notorious figures, highlighting how this partnership impacted both the players and the league itself.

The episode also sheds light on the legal repercussions faced by key individuals within the organization, offering a gripping account of their trials and punishments. Throughout, the Steve, Mustache and Frank discuss hockey, law enforcement and the Mafia to provide a comprehensive understanding of this remarkable tale.

Best Hashtags: #DanburyTrashers #OrganizedCrime #HockeyUnderworld #CrimeAndPunishment #MinorLeagueHockey #hockey #NHL

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime, with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

Hey, friends of ours, this is Steve here. This is the second part of a two part conversation on the Mafia and Hockey. I'm joined by Frank and, as usual, Mustache Chris. If you like what you hear, you can go back and listen to part one to get some more context for this episode, or just dive right in. They both work really well individually, or even better as a team.

So let's dive [00:01:00] right in. One of the corollaries to the, to the wrestling aspect of it was the fighting, and anybody who's even semi aware of hockey. Knows that fighting is a part of hockey, Chris, and then we'll bounce it over to Frank. What's your opinion on fighting in hockey? I'll say right off the bat, like it is kind of bizarre.

We're I think it was, uh, there's a clip, there's a famous clip of, like, Joe Rogan talking about hockey, and it's just like, it's the weirdest sport in the world, where, like, they're just playing the sport, and then all of a sudden, people are dropping the gloves, and they're just beating the crap out of each other, and it is truly bizarre, there's no other sport in the world that just, that happens, there isn't, like, I know there's, like, a little bit of roughhousing in football, and once in a while, maybe, people in basketball, they're like, Throw some slaps and maybe sometimes in baseball people will like charge them out.

But like, like a, like a fist fight, like a one on one fist fight that goes on in hockey, like there's [00:02:00] nothing compares to it. And the fact that like, say like happens in baseball, it's like, oh, like that's out of the ordinary in hockey. It's like, no, it's just part of the game. This is what you do. It's, it's, uh, it's interesting, like the history of fighting and hockey from everything that I've read, like really early on.

It wasn't all that common, uh, like it would happen, obviously, right? Uh, you know, like, more frequently than any other sport. It actually, I believe it was around the 60s and 70s is when it really started kicking off where teams like the the Flyers, as Frank will probably tell you about, um, Saw an opportunity where they maybe they weren't as skilled as some of the other teams, but the intimidation factor fighting and the hard hitting, uh, became like a level or so you could bring the basically like kind of nullify this skill and the speed of another team if you beat the crap out of them enough.

And I mean, it works. It's part of the [00:03:00] game, really. There's no way around it. It's just, um, I don't think it's ever going to leave. I mean, I'm quite, I'm, to be honest with you, I'm happy. They've changed a bunch of rules where, and just because the rule changes, the game has gone so much faster. So you can't just have like a guy out there whose, whose only job is to like fight.

There's still a couple of them. I mean, the Leafs just kind of recently signed a guy named Ryan Reeves. He's like the heavyweight champ of hockey right now. But, yeah. He can still play to a degree. He can't play like, not gonna be playing him a ton, but he can still kind of keep up. Um, a lot of like the old school, like traditional tough guys that were, we think of like Ty Domi, uh, you know, that's a Leaf one right there.

He couldn't play today's end. Yeah. Bob, Rob, well, Bob Prober could actually play tmi. was like, Ty TMI was like, I, I don't know how much he could actually play. Uh, um. He couldn't keep up with today's game just because the rule changes, but the fighting it's it's never going to [00:04:00] leave. It's always going to be there.

And the intimidation factor is huge in hockey because I've seen it. I've seen it personally just over the last couple of season with the Leafs where the Leafs are a skill team. They're fast, but a team like Boston, who's not afraid to face wash you, you know, beat the crap out of you, that intimidation factor, it does it.

I don't care what anybody says. It changes how the other team plays. They're less likely to go into the corners. Maybe they're a little scared to go in front of the net. Um, so you need, you need that aspect on your team and the trashers. I mean, I think they went a little bit overboard with that. What aspect of the game, but they said right off the bat, like we wanted a team that was going to beat you up.

And beat you literally, like beat you in the game and they accomplished that. So you would say that it's an integral part of the game. Could you have hockey without the fighting aspect? Well, you do, you do, you do in, in women's hockey, you don't have fighting either. And in [00:05:00] college hockey, it's, it's rare.

And, and the thing is, is it's really two different kinds of fighting. If you go back in history, or it comes to hockey, you know, The further back you go, the less, uh, less safety equipment, the players war, right? I mean, you take off the visors, then you take off the helmets and then off come the shoulder pads and then the shin pads.

And pretty soon you're just down to a pair of skates and, and, and, and some gloves maybe. Right. And, and this entire time from whatever, 19, whenever they founded the league. And even before that, when they were still, uh, professionals playing, there's only one referee. And, you know, there's 10 skaters out there, I mean, there were 12 at one point plus 2 goalies, but now they're, you know, for the longest time, there's been 10.

There's, there's no way 1 referee is going to see everything. And so people took liberties with the stick or, or, you know, speared, hooked, slashed, whatever, uh, the ref isn't going to see that. And if you want to dissuade that [00:06:00] from happening, then you, yeah. You know, go punch the guy in the nose and next time he won't slash you.

And, and I, and I just was kind of a gentleman. It was a rougher time in our history. Uh, and I think people accepted that, that people could have a disagreement and it could end in fisticuffs. Uh, and then at the end of it, they went and sat in the box for five minutes. Uh, if they were allowed to have a beer together, they probably would most of them.

And then they go back out and play again, but it did affect behavior to a degree. And then what Chris was alluding to. Round about the late sixties, when the expansion happened and you got six more teams in the league, including the flyers, they, uh, they got pushed around one year by the Bruins and by, by St.

Louis and Ed Snyder said, we're not, that's not happening anymore. We're going to get some tough guys and nobody's pushing us around. So they did. And what they discovered was, yeah, they're not getting pushed around. Their thing. But then the entertainment factor kicked in. People started to like to see somebody pounding the snot out [00:07:00] of somebody in an opposing Jersey.

And then that became not just entertainment, but like Chris just said, intimidation as well. I mean, when the broad streets, the broad street bullies were at their height, there's a thing known as the Philadelphia flu. Which basically meant players when they came to Philadelphia to play suddenly came down with the flu and didn't want to play that night.

You know, it was kind of a joke, but it was also a real thing. And, you know, I mean, Dave, that hammer Schultz had like 400. 27 or some penalty minutes one year. It's insane. Like the guy who has the most in the league today is around a hundred or so, you know, it's just a crazy number. Um, so that entertainment factor kind of kicked in and, and it, and it, it.

Got to the point where it was as bad as what you saw in that documentary and Danbury, that was the NHL in the, in the, uh, mid seventies. And I mean, that's where the joke came from. I went to a [00:08:00] boxing match and a hockey fight broke out. I mean, that's, that's, it was that common. Uh, and ultimately they said, okay, enough is enough.

This is too much. Uh, we're having bench clearing brawls. We're having, you know, just too, it's, it's becoming thuggery and our skill guys can't. Play the game without getting mugged. And, and so we're going to clean it up. And so they started, you know, uh, the instigator penalty, and then they started giving, you know, third fight and you get a suspension, all these different rules to try to cut down on the number of times somebody fought.

I don't know if it was you or Chris that said it, but you made a very valid point. They never said no fighting. They did because it's against the rules, but they, I mean, if you really wanted to get rid of it, they do what every other rule, what every other sport does. And that's if you fight, you're suspended maybe for a game, maybe for a season.

Maybe you're suspended for life. I mean, it depends on the, on the sport and the severity and all of that. But if you wanted to get rid of it, that would debate way to be the way to do it. But the league recognized there [00:09:00] still was some inherent value to that self policing element that the rest aren't going to see everything, even though they added a second element.

And it's a fast sport with the, you know, I mean, people are going to get emotional a lot more so than some of the other sports. Football is one that I think could be the equivalent. But the thing about football is, is you get a little bit of time to cool down. In between place, you don't get that in hockey.

It's constant. And, you know, basketball is constant, but the contact isn't there. The hitting isn't there. Baseball is slower than molasses. It's, it's interesting because something's always going on, even when nothing's going on. Uh, but. You know, how often do you get something explosive happening in baseball?

Usually when somebody throws a couple of brushback pitches or something, you know, that's about it. So I think they recognize, you know, better that, that we can just kind of control it rather than try to get rid of it. Cause if we get rid of it, people are going to take liberties [00:10:00] and people are going to get spared and all this other stuff's going to happen with greater frequency because the refs aren't going to be able to catch everything.

Now there's 800 different arguments. Surrounding everything I just said, uh, but the biggest point, I guess, is when you say it's an integral part of the game. Historically, it has been an integral part of the NHL and it remains, uh, apart, but at a diminished level. What Danbury did. What AJ Galante did is he got players who could bring back literally the broad street bullies style of play because the flyers weren't just beating the hell out of people.

They were beating them on the scoreboard too. Most of the time. I mean, they won the Stanley cup in 74 and 75. On the back of not just beating people up that you don't get any goals for smacking somebody in the face. They don't just start going, Hey, that's three punches. Now you're up three, zero on the scoreboard.

You got to put the puck in the net too. And Danbury did that as well. Like I said, their record was really good. And they show clips of some pretty nice [00:11:00] little goals. Um, I mean, I thought they were pretty nice goals, Chris, you saw it. I mean, they seem like they had a couple of players. Oh, yeah, for sure. Even, uh, probably one of the more, um, Brad, um, blanking on his name right now, Brad Wingfield, Wing.

Yeah, Wingfield. Yeah, they interviewed him a lot in that. They interviewed him a lot. He was actually, he's known as like the, one of the big fighters and, uh, big fighters on the team. And he was that, but he also was on the same line as Brent Gretzky. You know, he could play, you know, he will. And then that's the unfortunate part about him.

And I did. They touched on it a little bit in the documentary where he was on pace for 30 some odd goals and like over 1000 minutes or something like that before he got his leg horribly snapped in half, which is just that's that's just incredible. Like, well, you'll, you know, you you. And the NHL, I mean, there's a couple of examples of that.

I think like Cam Neely was one of those guys. Um, that's just like right off the top of my head. Just like the [00:12:00] total package player was like that. Uh, Wendell Clark famous pop and 40 goals and, you know, have like a ton of penalty minutes and fun draws was, uh, was close to that. He, he, he would get a fair amount of penalty minutes and some fights and score a ton of goals.

The thing that made the trashers like you trashers unique in the sense of like you brought it up or most teams even to this day the least have in the NHL at least have like one guy who's like the fighter some teams will have like kind of couple guys um even like uh in the 90s you'd have maybe two guys that were like fighters that you know push comes to shove they'll you know they'll throw the gloves down and they'll fight.

The Trashers had like six or seven guys. So I think it wasn't like dependent on like one guy doing all the fighting. I think one guy wanted to take a night off and be like, you know, like my hand hurts or my nose is broken. You know, you, you have another five guys who are willing to step up and fill it, fill that void.

So like at no point during the regular season [00:13:00] or the playoffs, or there are not guys out there that were going to beat the crap out of you because they just had an army of them. And that's why you had multiple scraps every game. That's what the commissioner was complaining about. And, and it just. You know, the, the crowd loves it.

I mean, I, again, I mean, I used to be a season ticket holder for the junior team in Spokane, the Spokane chiefs, 2008 Memorial cup champions, URA. And you know, when the gloves would come off, people would get out of their seats and it wasn't to go to the bathroom. I mean, there wasn't many people who didn't like a good scrap the, the people, there were a few, obviously there are a few.

The thing that people tended not to like as much were the staged fights, you know, or people just take off the gloves when the puck drops and it's a big, you know, uh, some people didn't mind other people. They were, I don't know. I got to the point where I was like, if you know, if they wouldn't do that, They probably just leave fighting alone.

If it just happened organically, the frequency with which it would [00:14:00] happen and the nature people would probably leave it alone for much longer, but they didn't really get into it in the documentary. But I got the sense that a lot of those fights were of the stage nature and forced and, and that starts to catch the eye of somebody like the commissioner.

But Hey, did you guys notice that the commissioner went from really down on the The trashers seemingly in the early parts of that documentary and about the midpoint, right about the time where it became obvious that Jimmy Galante was pretty closely associated with a major crime mob family. Suddenly he's a little bit of a fan of, I mean, did that.

Yeah, he really did. There was a definite turn. I would say, Oh, yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure he got, uh, you know, I'm sure he got an envelopes, you know, in his mailbox or something like that, you know, or efficient as bad baby. Apparently, I was listening to a podcast with A. J. And he was talking about, like, all the suspensions or whatever.

So it's like the [00:15:00] commissioner would be calling off Jimmy and be like, Oh, yeah, you got to pay this and pay this and this fine and this fine. And apparently he would be like, Apparently just would just start wiring 10 grand like every week or something like to the commissioner being like, you're like, yeah, here, here, the fines are going to stop calling me on a Monday.

Like, I'm busy. I got, I got stuff to do and it just like, I'm sure, like, I'm sure the commissioner was taking a little bit of that money himself. Well, he retired to Las Vegas. So who knows? The team really did capture that whole aspect of the, of the entertainment. Like when we would go, when I was a kid, I go to Sabre's games and I was there basically to watch fights either on the ice or in the crowd behind us.

That's what I wanted to see. And my brother was the one, he would sit there and he wanted to see how plays unfolded and you know, the, the artistry of the, the skaters and all of that. You know, everybody is somewhere on the spectrum between [00:16:00] spectacle and then wanting to watch, uh, a fair game. I want both. I want both.

I want the, I want the beauty of the sport. I want the Pavel Bureys. I want the Paul Correas, but, uh, you know, if somebody's Being a rat or somebody throws a dirty hit, I want to see the gloves fly too. And I want to see my guy pound your guy pretty good, you know? And, and so I, you know, I don't think there's, there's the two are not mutually exclusive.

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It's funny though, because like as much as they've been trying to clean up the game, [00:17:00] really at the end of the day, if you look at the last kind of, the last couple of Stanley Cup winners, what do they have? They. They have the skilled guys, but they also have the rats usually playing in the bottom six. And sometimes their skilled guys are rats too.

I mean, if you look at Tampa Bay's famous for being a dirty team, I mean, I think Colorado kind of last, uh, Colorado was like, they didn't really play that type of style, but like Vegas this year, they Definitely played that type of style and if you look St. Louis was famous for just for, you know, being tough, intimidating type of hockey.

Like at the end of the day, like an all skill team is just most of the time. It's not just not going to do it. You need a mix. And I mean, even the trashers kind of understood that we're like, right. It was like when they're making a run for the colonial cop and Jimmy's like, you know what, just get me a goal scorer.

And they, they signed, that's when they signed Mike Rob, right? Yeah. And they had Bora guard, who the one I'd guy who, who [00:18:00] was pretty talented before he got injured. And, uh, uh, and he, he could put the puck in the net and the two brothers, the one guy that always interrupted the other brother all the time. Um, those guys were.

You know, those were 1 was 1 was more of an assist, man, and the other was more of a goal score, but they, you know, they were talented for that level of play. And you're right. You need a mix like any team. You need a mix of people playing different roles for the team to be successful. Because if you don't have that mix, the team you're going up against is going to.

Take that one dimensional play that you're able to offer, and they're going to find the weakness in it. And they're going to pound on it until they beat you. You have to be more, more well rounded. And to do that, you need players who can fill different roles, uh, you know, defensive defensemen, you know, an offensive defenseman, you need a sniper, you need guys that can pass, you need guys that can bang, you need guys who can eat minutes.

I mean, just all kinds of different roles. And, and for being a, you know, the thing is, is when, when that show started and they [00:19:00] brought out AJ, I had the same reaction that the commissioner actually gave voice to in his interview, I saw AJ and I was like, what a punk, what a little goof, my God, I forgot what a goof this kid is, but then if you sit back and look at it objectively.

You can argue whether he should have tried to accomplish what he accomplished or not. You can argue the goal if you want to, but you can't argue that he didn't achieve exactly the goal he set out to achieve. He built a team that had skill and toughness that provided one hell of a spectacle that just the fans became enamored with.

He, they intimidated the opponents and they made it all the way to the colonial cup championship, um, in their inaugural season. I mean, yeah. That you can't argue with those results punk 17 year old kid that looks goofy with his chains in his turn sideways hat and all that aside, uh, you know, you just have to admit the results are there, right?

Well, [00:20:00] yeah, that's the craziest thing. Like he's a 17 year old kid did this right from the impression that I get his daddy got a kick out of it and like enjoyed watching the games and how much fun his son was having and like all that part of it. Obviously he was the one providing all the cash, but. I think he had a pretty hands off approach in terms of like how the team was constructed and like the philosophical approach to how to play the game.

And it seems like it's very fitting that the owner was, you know, essentially a mob associate running a business like waste management and doing the things that he was alleged to have been doing. I mean, that, that team. So perfectly fit the persona of its owner. I mean, it was, it was him personified. Was it not?

Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, like, that's what it's great. Like, the, the documentary itself is like, I think they're 1 of the reasons that works so well. And everyone who's that I've ever. Uh, told to watch and [00:21:00] ends up watching it. I think one of the reasons they like it so much is because as ridiculous as the story is, it's real and the people come across as real.

Like the AJ doesn't come across like he's playing a character. Jimmy doesn't come across like he's playing a character. None of the equipment guys, even the equipment guy, uh, Teddy or whatever his name was, the guy with the cigar, that guy was hilarious. And my wife pointed out, my wife pointed out when we were done watching it, I, I I clicked it off and, and, uh, you know, I told her I was coming on this show and everything.

So she, she knew about that. I asked her, Hey, you know, what'd you think? And she goes, it's so interesting because these guys are criminals. They're literally criminals and, and not of the blue, the white collar variety. I mean, they're threatening people. They're blowing up or setting trucks on fire. There's, you know, I mean, how many counts, 103 counts or some crazy number is what they charged him with.

And yet they come across as [00:22:00] likable guys. Jimmy is likable in, in the flashback stuff and the, in the footage they show, uh, you know, the older stuff. And then in the interviews that they conduct with them that are contemporaneous to when this was made, same with AJ, same with, uh, whatever the equipment manager guy's name was.

He was a little bit of a caricature, but he was still. Like likable guy, and when you see him go into the bar for that 10 year reunion of the section 102 people, the big like super fans, there's joy on their faces. Both both the people in the bar and the characters going in, you know, that Jimmy and those folks, they're hugging, they're They're toasting.

They're telling stories. I mean, it's the, it's, it's like the Sopranos, right? Like when you watch the Sopranos, you get to like, at some points in the show, you get to like Tony Soprano. You get to be sympathetic with Tony Soprano. And then he goes and does something absolutely horrific and reminds you that he's a total piece of garbage human being.[00:23:00]

And you get to be uncomfortable until the next episode with that. It was very similar in that regard with, with these, these folks there, they're likable even though they're despicable. Well, we, we, we, uh, got into that when we were researching, I think it was Donnie Brasco and me and Steve were talking about, you know, uh, Sonny Black, uh, who was, was the, the capo, uh, one of, was a capo in the Bonanno family, and he was like the, It was basically running the crew.

He comes across as a likable guy from what you're reading, like playing pranks with people and I think he had like, uh, he was wrestling Donnie Brasco, um, with Joe Pistone or whatever they were having arm wrestling matches all the time and Joe Pistone would beat him all the time and he, uh, Just say, Oh, I'm going to beat you this time.

And he's like, well, I don't understand. Like, I beat you every other time. And he's just like, spits in his face. And then it slams his, uh, fist fist on the ground. It's like, and like, every, you read the guy and he seems likable. And even show up a stone said, like, sunny black was a likable guy. He [00:24:00] said, like, out of all the things that happened afterwards.

Um, him getting whacked was, was one of the things that he does regret, because he legitimately likes Sonny Black, and he was hoping that Sonny Black would just turn, you know, state witness, which never happened. He, you know, he kept Emerita right to his death. And if you watch the movie, if it's any, any...

Percentage of accurate. I mean, the, the character of Donnie Brasco ends up having a greater affinity for the people he's undercover with in his own organization. I mean, they treat him like hell. I mean, that scene where they hurry him in, give him a quick award and hurry out. I mean, that's just despicable.

Um, and so, so, yeah, you have these, these yeah. You know, I think that's why they do well in the community. And of course it doesn't hurt that they're paying for, you know, all these things in the community. So there's something tangible that is making the lives of some people in the community better. I mean, now there's a [00:25:00] football field to play on or the scoreboard is brand new or whatever it is that they're paying for and they're supporting the girl scouts and their cookie drive and all this other stuff.

Uh, they start to become, like I said before, maybe, you know, kind of folk heroes almost. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Putting on your, uh, your police hat, if, as it were, Frank, when we talk about fighting, because like, if I got into a fight in the Walmart with somebody, you're going to probably put us into handcuffs and bring us to jail.

But on the hockey rink, it's, uh, nobody ever, or it's a very, very infrequent. And I know you and Chris will have some examples of where The law enforcement agencies and prosecutors and that sort of thing get involved. What is the line between being on the ice and being in the stands as far as when you, uh, throw fists?

Well, the stands is no different than the Walmart behavior wise. [00:26:00] So that, that's an easy answer there. If you're in the stands and you're acting like a, like a ding dong and you get in a fight, you're just as liable for whatever you do is if you're being the same at, in the Walmart parking lot or anywhere else.

But when you're involved in a sporting event, you know, there's an expectation of, of, of certain, uh, Things happening within that event. I mean, uh, you're, if you go to a boxing match, you know, that nobody's going to be charging anybody with assault, right? They've agreed by participating that they're going to punch each other.

It's a tacit admission that you could be involved in this when you are playing in a professional hockey league like the NHL. Uh, not so much. Thank you. With like recreational hockey so much, but, you know, they were talking about the pros here. Um, and so, because even though it's against the rules and even though it's, it's, it's penalized five, five for fighting, right?

You go into the box and feel shame. It it's, it's also kind of condoned because. [00:27:00] Nothing else happens if you pay your, you know, you do your time, you do your five minutes. And so if, if two guys, for whatever reason, fight, it's not a big deal. There's no law enforcement involvement at all. When it crosses the line, uh, it has to be something very egregious.

And we were talking about a couple of examples from the NHL before we went live, uh, on the show. Um, one that, uh, The Chris mentioned 1st was the Todd Bertuzzi and Steve Moore incident, and that in a nutshell, just involved them being angry at a player for something that had happened in previous games.

And the code in hockey kind of is, if you do something that makes the other team legitimately mad, like you hit somebody and hurt them, or you do a dirty play or something like that, and somebody challenges you to fight. You got to answer the bell. That's the code, right? I mean, everybody, it's not written down anywhere, but that's the code.

And Moore was not a fighter and he wasn't going to fight. And so Todd Bertuzzi trying to get him to fight, followed him [00:28:00] around for a bit. He ended up cross checking him from behind. And then when he fell to the ice, he cross checked him again and his head hit the ice and he ended up damaging his spine.

And, and there was Police involvement, there was prosecutorial involvement there, uh, and I, did that, that happened in Vancouver, didn't it? Didn't that happen in Vancouver, Chris? Yeah, that was, that was in Canada. And that was in Canada that happened in, uh, yeah, I believe. Yeah, for sure. I positive that I'd happened in Vancouver.

I know he was playing for Vancouver at the time. And, um, Colorado was the team that more was playing for. Ironically, the other one we were talking about also involved the Vancouver. Player, um, this, this time on the receiving end, um, and that was a player named Donald Brashear, who, uh, another, who was a known fighter, who was an enforcer.

He had a little bit of skill, but not a ton. And then Marty McSorley who wrote, uh, Road shotgun for, for Wayne Gretzky for a lot of years. And he was definitely an [00:29:00] enforcer. He was upset with Brashear. What was he doing? What Chris, why was he upset? I don't remember what he was upset about. They, uh, I guess they would have been getting under each other's skin.

And like Donald Brashear was like cross checking him, sparing him, you know, probably saying stuff to him, like during the entire game and. Marty McSorley had been trying to get him to fight the entire game, like, you can watch the montage on YouTube leading up to the incident, and Marty McSorley snaps and smacks the stick right across the side of, uh, Donald Brashear's head, you know, like, two handed, like, baseball job from behind, right?

From behind. Yeah. From behind, which is even worse. Yeah, he claims he was trying to hit him in the shoulder or the upper arm to piss him off and get him to turn around and fight. That sounds bad. I missed and hit him in the head. And then of course the real damage happened because that that stunned him.

And so his feet, it went out from under him and he fell hard to the ice and had a little whiplash action [00:30:00] there. And so he was, he was hurt pretty badly. And there was again, uh, there was law enforcement and, uh, the, the prosecutors got involved in that. Um, but those are extreme cases. I mean, and those are egregious.

Uh, there are not as many fights in hockey as there used to be, but. There's never any question that it's against the law. It's part of the sporting event. The thing with the trashers, though, is like they were in that gray area in between what the brochure incident or the more incident were and what your daily night in any hockey league might be.

You might get a fight or two, maybe not. I mean, you know, in the today's NHL, you might go 10 games with no fights. Your team might not have a single fight for 10 games and then maybe you have one. The trashers were having four and five fights a night, you know, so, you know, they're, they're a little out of control.

They're a little off the hook to use a two thousands [00:31:00] term there for you. There was that big blowout, um, in basketball that happened about the same time. And I believe there's a Netflix documentary on that as well, where, uh, one of the players. Went and, uh, got into a fight with a heckler and it turned into a whole big thing.

I think it was in the Knicks, I want to say, but that gets into that gray zone too, where what's your expectation? You know, the player versus a fan and then it turned into a whole, uh, a whole, basically the whole arena went into a brawl. Well, that happens in this documentary. I mean, Jimmy... The owner comes down after, uh, after Brad's leg gets snapped and it, uh, off a dirty, a dirty head is flew foot.

Um, and like the, it's just an utter bloody chaos. Like, uh, Jimmy actually comes down and I, he punches the ref in the face. Does he not? And he ends up. Yeah, I didn't see what he actually [00:32:00] did, but he got in trouble for. For threatening the ref or trying to get at the ref or whatever. And that is one thing that the leagues, none of the leagues will put up with is if you abuse of an official is, is, is never, is never accepted.

And, and they're pretty sticklers on that. Um, things like that have happened. I remember Ty Domi, uh, was in the penalty box in Philadelphia. And some very Philadelphia looking fan talking like a Guido looking guy, kind of a heavyset guy with dark hair looks just when I think of Philadelphia, that's the face.

I think of, you know, just a Northeastern looking guy. He's just given Domi the. Business he's ripping on him and chatting at him and then he starts leaning over, uh, the glass and pointing at him and, and Domi's chirping back at him. And then he squirts him with some water. I think 2 from his water bottle and the guy lunges for it and the glass pops off.

And this fan falls into the penalty box with [00:33:00] Tidomian, you know, you can say what you want about Tidomi skills with the puck, but he could throw hands and he had a cement head. And the last place you'd probably want to be with him is in the penalty box, wearing the opposing team's colors as a fan. And so, uh, and then Mike Milbury in Boston, he, he, when bunch of Boston.

Bruins went up into the stands because somebody was throwing keys or something or whatever. I don't remember what started that, but he took a guy's shoe and sort of beating him with his own shoe. So, I mean, it, it, it doesn't just, it hasn't only happened in Danbury. The, the, the difference is, is by 2005, a lot of that was 20 to.

30 years in the rear view mirror, and now all of a sudden it's, you know, it's right here in front of you and in your face again. Let's start to wrap up the story there. Let's wrap up the hockey story. What happens to the Danbury Trashers? They're only in existence for a very short amount [00:34:00] of time. Uh, Chris, do you want to wrap up their story?

Yeah, and it's weird because in the documentary you get this impression that it was all just one season, but the Trashers were actually around for two seasons, actually, and I believe both seasons they went to the Colonial Cup, um, and it ends with them losing to, uh, Kalamazoo is what they lost to in the documentary.

I don't know which year that was, though. Basically how it ends, like, uh... Like, which is, I mean, it's really remarkable type of story when you really think about it, because getting into League, I don't think people really gave them much of a chance, and just kind of the way they played the game, they're like, oh, we're gonna mix the wrestling and hockey together, and You know, here they are like going all the way to the cup.

And, uh, I think I looked up the series. They, it was a close series too. And I mean, they almost pulled it off, which is, you know, for expansion team first. And it's a little bit different than say the NHL. [00:35:00] But still it's their first two years and in the league and they go to the cup both years. Like that's pretty wild.

One of the things that's kind of interesting from a, I guess, a human behavior standpoint is. This team really endeared itself with the population, uh, population, or at least the fans that came, they were very, you know, the relationships appeared to be very genuine and, and some strong emotions and they love their team and, and the team seemed to love them back.

And, you know, they had that, uh, winger character, uh, that Wingfield, you know, talked a lot and he thought very highly of. Uh, Jim Galante and at the end of the documentary, when they surprised him by having Jimmy be there, he, he was in tears. He was trying not to cry really. So these really tight connections that are going on at the, on the hockey side of things.

And then you get to the mob side of things, right? Where, where the FBI lands, this massive [00:36:00] indictment, Jimmy Galante is faced with whatever it was a hundred and some counts. He could go to trial. He could try to win. But because of the hockey team, ironically, he's got some close dealings with his son because his son is so integral to the hockey team.

And you know, they were funneling money through there, like crazy, you know, they were doing all kinds of, he knows his son is vulnerable. If the FBI starts going that direction, they may have even said as much to them behind closed doors. And so what does James Galante decide to do? You know, I'm talking about this guy who's kind of a folk hero in the community, right?

A bad guy, but essentially to save his son. He, he pleads, takes a plea arrangement and goes to jail for like 10 years, goes to prison rather. Um, now you guys are doing a lot of these shows. I'm not, uh, I'm only on a couple of them, a few of them here, but you're talking about organized crime a lot. Omerta doesn't usually hold up like that.

Right. I mean, emeritus, a little bit of a myth [00:37:00] sometimes. I mean, there are guys who adhere to it, but it's not, it's not the staunchest of codes in terms of adherence. And yet, you know, he, he did, you know, he didn't, he didn't give up, you know, or, or, you know, he didn't give up Maddie the horse and he didn't, and he took a hit to save his kid.

So. You know, to echo what my wife said after we were done, it's hard not to admire that in a grudging way. Uh, I'm not doing the Tony Soprano thing and making him out to be a hero by any means. Um, but it is hard not to, to admire the way that the community. Rallied around this team, what the team gave the community, what the community gave the members of that team, and then the people behind that to see that that same expression was taking place within the family.

And here's a guy who's willing to do 10 years to keep his son from facing the prospect of any time at all. Um, I think that's a, that's a, that's an actually a very beautiful human story, even though there's a lot of [00:38:00] ugliness surrounding it.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. Well, that's exactly it, right? Is me and Steve are going back and forth about it. I go, I mean, it's such a Capta Emerita, right? Like he decided that, you know what? I chose this life and you know, I benefited from it and I'm going to not be a rat, right?

This is what I told my son his entire life. Be a standup guy and don't be a rat. How can I turn around and just be a rat myself? The other side of the coin though, is. The guy that he was really, I think, none of, I don't think they would have went after his kid or, I think they just started going after that because they were pressuring him because the guy that they really wanted was Matty, uh, the Horse Ionello.

He was the guy that the FBI really wanted. He knew, they knew that Jimmy knew a lot of stuff that he was up to. Did he give him anything? I mean, they give you the impression in the, in the documentary that [00:39:00] he didn't give him anything, that he just took his hit. He didn't give up anything at all. And he gave up, but at the same time, he gave up 10 years of his life that he could have been there with, and they don't get, they don't catch on, they don't catch on it.

They don't like, and the impression that you get in the documentary, it's like, yeah, they were father and son, but in a lot of ways they were like best friend. Um, and he gave that up 10 years, you know, and he even talks about it. When he comes back, you basically have to realize it's like. They're all living their lives and they did it.

They're doing it without me. And can you imagine being like a father and then, you know, you're seeing your kids there and it's, well, if I died tomorrow, like, they don't need me. Because that's basically what you have to come to the conclusion with, right? Because 10 years is a long time. Was it worth it? I don't know.

It's not for me to say. No, but, you know, here's an interesting thing, right? As a police officer, I'm [00:40:00] always happy when somebody gives me information, a criminal, right? You want an informant. You want a confession that makes your job far easier. It fills in facts. It strengthens your case. It's what you want.

And yet I will tell you that most cops that I know still have disdain for somebody who is a rat, a tattletale, whatever you want to call it. I mean, uh, I worked with a guy who grew up in Brooklyn and, and then he. Came out playing baseball, uh, in the Mariners system. And when he got out, he had met a local girl and decided to live in the Pacific Northwest and everything came on the job.

And, uh, he and I were talking one time and he absolutely spit the name, uh, of Sammy Gravano. He called him a rat, thought he was a piece of garbage, just, you know, and he's, you know, he's a patrol officer. I was, I'm his Sergeant. We're having coffee and just talking. And he has. Just absolutely no respect for the guy at all, even though he's doing [00:41:00] exactly what as an investigator, you would want him to do provide information so that you can bring down this, this, you know, criminal organization.

So it's a weird dynamic, uh, in that people just not just cops, but it's odd that cops are this way too, but people are generally that way. They respect somebody who doesn't rat. And even more than that, I think they respect somebody who says the, this is my code. And then they stick to that regardless of what that.

That's what this code is. Oh, for sure. I mean, there's like numerous examples, uh, just from the research that we've done. Like, Samuel Bolgrovano is a guy where it's just like, oh, my God, like, the fact that they even used him is a whole other story. But it's like, really? You're going to be the guy that rats after all the stuff that you did?

Like, Thank you. Like, give me a break here. I'm like, I'm reading another one, uh, on the Westies, this, another gentleman named Mickey Featherstone. He ends up becoming a state witness. And it's like, really, really, you benefited from all of them. And I loved, I loved Goodfellas and I thought it was a great [00:42:00] movie.

Absolutely loved it. I loved Ray Liotta, great actor. Just awesome film in a many, many ways, but come on. I mean, Henry Hill was a pretty bad guy. He maybe not as bad as Sammy the bull, but you know, I mean, he flipped pretty easily. Uh, and so I don't know. It's, it's an interesting dynamic. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that it doesn't surprise me after watching that and seeing how the fans and the team interacted that they would also feel a certain way about this guy.

In their midst, you know, this, this folk hero, uh, who they very well know is, is a little bent, you know, but it's part of the culture and it's a little more accepted than it might be in some other areas. And he said, I wasn't going to rat and he didn't rat and he did 10 years. He walked the walk. Uh, I, I bet, I bet he doesn't buy a beer anywhere in that town, you know, right or wrong.

I'm not condoning it. I'm just pointing it out. It's an interesting. It's an interesting thing. I [00:43:00] think there's something to that. I would imagine, you know, on your side of the table, looking at somebody who's snitching or ratting or squealing or whatever the word you want to use that you always have to have in the back of the mind.

Are they really a reliable narrator to the story? Or are they painting a picture to make themselves look better or to make the, even if maybe they're dead to rights on something that they've done wrong. And that they're making the person who they're selling out look a lot worse than they may even actually be.

Yeah. You always want to confirm independently the facts that they tell you, if you can, what, what often what informers will do for you is, is kind of point the direction and give you, you know, There's a thousand boxes in this room and they tell you which one to look in. You know, I mean, it's, uh, you know, it's that kind of an assistance in your investigation.

But yeah, I mean, it's a weird thing. I, I, I was [00:44:00] very grateful for, for people who told the truth and snitched people off and they helped my cases. They helped me as a patrol officer. They, they, but deep inside, I had a little bit of contempt for him too. It's like, it's almost like they're a traitor. It's like you chose your team.

You chose your team and now you're a traitor. It's like a, like a, somebody who defects from, from, from Russia. I don't, Hey, great. Thanks for the secrets, but I don't really admire you. You were born there and that's your country. And you just betrayed that your country, you know what I mean? It kind of feels like that with these mob informers too.

And so, you know, 10 years is a long time, but he took it standing up, you know, and, and in a way, you just kind of have to grudgingly admire that just a little bit. I think the other thing with Jimmy is I know there was some violence and there was the setting of the trucks on fire, but a lot of the stuff that he eventually went down for two is a lot of complicated financial crimes and stuff like that.

I think in a lot of ways. [00:45:00] People maybe don't overlook it, but they don't really understand it. Or they don't see that, oh, well, that's not so bad. He didn't break anybody's kneecaps in the streets. And we like that he puts on a good hockey game. So we're there, people are able to mentally overlook a lot of things.

A little bit of willful blindness there probably too, because if you're, if you're listed as a close associate of Maddie, the horse, you're probably, you're probably doing a few things that most people would, uh, uh, would change their minds about what a good guy you are. If they knew about it for sure. And that's why guys like that go and give Christmas gifts and I mean, a lot of guys like that probably would gave money to the, um, you know, the police boosters club and like, uh, you know, made themselves look like big men, you know, in town.

Sponsored cub scouts, you know, this mile on the freeway is sponsored by, you know, galante waste management. I'm sure he did [00:46:00] all that kind of stuff. I mean, hell's angels have a choice for tots drive or whatever it is. I mean, it's a, it's a very old tactic, but it works. That's why it's old because it keeps getting used because it's effective.

Jimmy does eventually go to jail the and that's pretty much it. He comes back 10 years later. A. J. Has moved on. Everybody's moved on and it's kind of a happy ish ending in a way. Yeah, like we see like they have like a reunion at a bar and they're reminiscing about the trashers. Uh, I listened to some interviews with A.

1. And for a really long time after like the trashers fold in and dad went to jail, he just Didn't want anything to do with hockey. Didn't want, didn't even watch the NHL. Nothing. He was just, I guess he associated with all of that went down really with his dad going to jail. And I think it's only until recently that he started watching some hockey again.

Um, And like obviously like they had that reunion and yeah, it's like a happy ending. It's like, you know, like we, it was a short time, but like, [00:47:00] look at all the memories that they created with the players and the friendships and within the community. I mean, we're talking, we're still talking about them now and how, how many years ago was this?

The team was only around for two years, right, in a, you know, kind of lower end league in terms of professional hockey, and it's really incredible what they did. You know, one thing they didn't talk about that, that I noticed that was glaringly absent was what Jimmy's doing now. You know, they talked about AJ, he's got a job and then he's doing this boxing thing and you know, and he's that, that was pretty clear, but you know, he declined to answer a couple of questions directly on advice of counsel, probably wisely, but they didn't talk about what he's doing now, you know, is he back in the business?

Is he doing something else? What is he, is his wife supporting him? What, what's happening? I don't know if you know the answer to that, Chris, I have no idea, but I found it, uh, I found the absence of, Some kind of a, uh, because [00:48:00] that's kind of the kind of thing you include at the end of the story. And the date and while the story, it's like, you know, I mean, you see these documents are all the time where it'll freeze frame and then it'll print across the bottom, you know, James Galante is now working as a consultant for the FBI or something like this.

Right. But they don't do that with him. And I got to tell you, that actually made me a little suspicious. That maybe he's drifted back into what got him in trouble in the 1st place, and there's still stuff there. But do you know, uh, Christie, have you read anything or anything? I don't know. Uh, off the I know.

I don't know exactly what he's doing now. I know for sure. It has nothing to do with trash because I know the plea that he took he. Said that he would never get involved in the trash business again, right? So, I mean, well, you, you both know, there's lots of industries where he could get involved in, though, that are that are absolutely adjacent industries.

I know we had a significant amount of money still left after he got out of prison. I think it was, they couldn't, they couldn't take it off because he was able to still, they [00:49:00] couldn't take it. Everything. So he still had like 10 million. I mean, he, maybe he's just living it off that. Yeah. And all being like, you know what, I did my time and I get 10 million, right?

I could live like this for the rest of my life. Just, yeah, you, I don't know how much interest that bears every year, but I got to thank you. Live on a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. That's going to last you. Yeah, I'm sure you can figure out a way.

I just thought it was interesting they didn't, they didn't, they didn't point in any direction whatsoever. And that, that omission was a little glaring, but maybe I'm making more out of it than it is. That is interesting though, because if he was just cruising, I think people would, they would say that, well, Jimmy's just.

Living his retirement now that trying to men fences after being in the can for 10 years, but they didn't say you're right. They didn't say that or he's a motivational speaker for people trying to recover from battle criminal life or whatever it is, if it were positive, I would think they would highlight it.

[00:50:00] But again, I mean, that's. You get to have a suspicious nature when you spend some time in law enforcement. So, you know, suspicion is, is fine. Uh, but, but I, you know, you got to seek out whether your suspicion is accurate or not. And I do not know. So I freely admit that it's just a suspicion that I would have to follow up on.

I was kind of hoping Chris knew for sure.

No, it's not a bad suspicion because he's a, you know, he's a career criminal. So he's probably, I don't know if I had to take a guess. He's probably, I don't think he's doing. He's probably, I. Probably not doing anything like he was doing before, but I'm pretty sure he, you know, he's probably doing some illegal.

I mean, I don't think, I don't think he's ever going to be stopped being one, right? That's, that's what he is. That's what he did in his whole life. It's a hard habit to break. I mean, look at, I mean, yeah, well, Henry Hill gets sent out onto the west coast and he starts, uh, you know, a stolen property ring or something [00:51:00] like that and almost got kicked out of the witness protection program.

And I think they sent it up to Seattle and I think he did get kicked out after a second time. I mean, so, you know. You know, more habitual creatures and crime can be a habit. Well, I have to say I enjoyed the documentary. I enjoyed the hockey clips, both the goals and the scraps and the, and the, the people and the fans and the interaction and all those dynamics.

I thought it was fascinating. I'm glad you suggested it, Chris. And we really had an interesting confluence of a lot of different topics that came together. And I'm very happy that you were able to join Mustache Chris and I, Frank, and I very much hope that you'll come back for more episodes. I'd be thrilled to.

Yeah, it'd be awesome. You know, it's like I suggest everybody watch this documentary. It's you don't have to be a hockey fan or even organized crime fan because it's just it really is just a really crazy story. It helps if you're fans of both and then you'll really enjoy it. But just sit [00:52:00] back and watch it because it's, uh, it's fascinating.

Netflix, in my opinion. It's a well made documentary too. It's, it's, it's high production value. If you like what you hear, you like episodes like this, definitely send us some feedback, send us back some feedback on maybe some episodes you'd like to hear Frank talk about in particular, um, when the three of us get together.

But if you like what you hear for sure, tell your friends about it so that you can become friends of ours. Forget about it. Forget about it.

You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, a History and Crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today, find links to social media and how to support the show. Go to our website, A to z history page.com. Become a friend of ours by sending us an email to crime at a to z history page dot com All of this and [00:53:00] more can be found in the show notes.

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Original Publication Date: 10/11/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/iwB0rOeBrF9

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In the first part of this two-part episode of Organized Crime and Punishment, Frank, Mustache Chris and Steve delve into the intriguing story of the Danbury Trashers hockey team. Founded by James Galante, a prominent figure in the waste management industry with alleged connections to organized crime, the Trashers' rise to notoriety is a fascinating tale of sports, business, and criminal influence.

In this episode, we explore the origins of the team and how it became a symbol of defiance against the established hockey world. We discuss the controversial figures involved, the Trashers' unique marketing strategies, and the tensions that arose as they challenged the status quo in minor league hockey.

#DanburyTrashers #OrganizedCrime #HockeyHistory #SportsScandal #JamesGalante #MinorLeagueHockey #hockey #NHL

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

I'd like to welcome everybody back to a special Episode of Organized Crime and Punishment. We're joined not only by Mustache Chris, but also our new contributor on this series, and hopefully many series to come, Frank Scalise, and you will be aware of him. Frank Scalise from some of our previous episodes, Frank Scalise was a 20 year officer with the Spokane police department.

Uh, so [00:01:00] he's going to give us a law enforcement perspective, but today he's also going to give us both. Frank and mustache. Chris are going to give us a perspective on crime, but not only crime, but a mutual passion of theirs of hockey. As we talk about a really. Fascinating piece of history, of hockey history and the mafia history with the hockey team called the Danbury Trashers.

And we're going to have a really wide ranging conversation about organized crime, hockey, hockey meets organized crime, and much, much more. Maybe we'll start with Chris. Can you give us a little bit of background on why you came up with this episode, because you had come up with this episode just for people.

If you want to really dig in deep, even more into this. There is a Netflix documentary on the Danbury trashers, but we're going to go into some other avenues on this story. Chris. [00:02:00] But to start us off, what got you interested in this particular topic? And why did you think it might be a good one for a collaboration?

When me and Frank and you all talked previously on the, the previous episodes, we, what you guys didn't really hear was, uh, me and Frank talking about hockey and Frank's a Flyers fan. I'm a Maple Leaf fan and we just hit it off right away because I don't know, I guess we're both like, uh, hockey nerds. Uh, you know, it's not very often you meet people who can remember players like, You know, Donald Breshear and, you know, from way back in the day, and we were talking about even when the Flyers beat the Leafs in the playoffs and almost immediately after we finished our conversation, I remembered, oh, yeah, there's a documentary that literally is about hockey and organized crime, and it would fit perfectly for the show.

And why wouldn't I want to talk about probably two of my most favorite things now? Um, what did you think? What was your first [00:03:00] blush of this? Frank, when you watched the documentary, I had watched it once before, uh, shortly after I think it first came out. My wife. Watched it and said, you would love this.

It's hockey and the mob and it's a fascinating story. So I checked it out. But when, when Chris brought it up as a possible discussion point here, I went back and watched it again just earlier this week. And Christie and I sat down and what struck me about it was how, how completely. Interwoven the two topics were, I mean, the things that were happening that were mob related in this story were tied directly into things that were happening to the, the hockey element of the story and, and there were just a lot of different things that I'm sure we'll touch on that, that, that reached out and grabbed me by the throat and said, Hey, this is pretty interesting, um, as a huge hockey fan and, and, uh, and, uh, yeah, Fan of [00:04:00] Canadian culture and, and certainly hockey culture.

Um, I liked some of the things that they showed, but the, the, the mob culture, or at least the family culture of the Galantes and the dynamic between the father and the son, especially, uh, was pretty interesting. And so I'm sure we'll delve into that. It's kind of interesting. I watched it and I remember absolutely zero about this.

I don't know if it just wasn't national news or it was happening during when the Iraq war was just about starting in Afghanistan. So maybe that, uh, didn't rise up in the news. It was also during the, during the lockout, the NHL lockout. And so a lot of people. That weren't massive, crazy fans, uh, kind of checked out on hockey, unless they had a local team to follow.

So it wasn't getting a ton of news. I don't think. Yeah, that's really interesting. I also, I mean, it was just incredible. The. The story had so many different elements and a lot of elements that you, Chris, and I [00:05:00] had talked about with wrestling. I felt like I was watching something that was ECW like with this extreme, uh, extreme form of entertainment.

Uh, Chris, maybe you could set us up a little bit of the background in the early life of AJ Galante and Jimmy Galante, the founders of this team. Yeah, well, like, early in the documentary, I think the first person you see is the, is the commissioner of the UHL, and he immediately starts talking about Jimmy and, you know, like, how he did all this stuff for the community, like, not just like, oh, he was donating turkeys, like, I believe he was, like, actually building buildings, and he was donating to the hospital, and, you know, from everything.

Football field. Football field, yeah, and, um, From everything that I read, he was, uh, you know, uh, Jimmy Galante, the father of AJ Galante, who was a, like, a very well, uh, respected, uh, member of the Danbury community. And we get this little [00:06:00] montage of, like, uh, uh, AJ, like, when he was just, like, 16 or something like that, and it just made me laugh, just how people used to dress.

Fact, because I grew up during that time, like me and AJ are probably around the same age, and just like the baggy clothes, and like the, uh, like the hats with the giant gold chains, it just looks ridiculous, even he, I've listened to some stuff that he's done, like podcasts, and like interviews, and he talks about just how ridiculous he looked at the, at the time, it just, it's like one of the better moments in the documentary, in my opinion.

So, uh, Jimmy, he's, what was his industry that he was in, because that'll, uh, inform a lot about the, of what we were, what we'll be talking about. Oh yeah, Jimmy, he was like, yeah, he was the, uh, actually owned one of the largest, well, he owned the largest, uh, trash company in the Connecticut, uh, region, I believe that served, uh, like Winchester Putnam.

In Putnam, New York, like all [00:07:00] around that area. I mean, you're more familiar with that geography around that area, right? Like, where is that? And I believe that is right on the border with Connecticut. They're all kind of touching in that, uh, the tri state area. Yeah, well, he like he ran like the auto recycling company was called, uh, auto, uh, automated, uh, waste disposal.

He had like up to upwards to like 50 trucks, right? Like this guy was running a multi million dollar business and trash disposal. I don't know if, uh, maybe our audiences might not be familiar with it, but like trash disposal and especially in and around that New York region, uh, Up, up and around there and the mob was just, was one hand in hand.

I think at one point literally the mob ran the entire like trash business in New York. That's like, I don't mean it was convenient for getting rid of bodies too. So they, uh, Jimmy, he kind of, uh, corners the market in this, uh, [00:08:00] in this whole trash business. He winds up going to jail and this sets up a whole, uh, narrative arc that they have.

With this, but let's get right into the hockey team and maybe you can set us up, Chris, with the hockey team. And then I think you and Frank are going to just go off on hockey. So let's, let's get into the hockey before we hit the hockey. Can, can I point out 1 quick thing? Um, and that is that, uh, uh, and, and I think you and Chris can speak to this a little bit more, but I didn't want it to slide past that.

Uh, Jimmy Galante was. It was listed as a, as a very close associate of, uh, uh, again, was it Ionello? Is that the, the acting? Oh, Maddie. Yes. Yeah. Maddie, the horse. Ionello. Yeah. Ionello who, if I'm not mistaken, was the acting Don essentially of the, the Genovese family. Uh, you, you guys are up on this more than I am, but that sounds to me like a [00:09:00] one heck of like, of a connection for some, for some clout.

Yeah, and then Jimmy was, um, yeah, for sure, like, Jimmy was connected to, um, well, in particular, the Genovese crime family, but in particular, he was a capo, actually, Matty, the, uh, horse Ionello, and, uh, anybody kind of knows, like, knows a bit about the, well, I would say more than a bit, like, Matty the horse was, uh, Oh, He was a big deal, right?

He's actually, uh, quite famous for peddling pornography, believe it or not, and, uh, when we get near to the end, I think that's, uh, the downfall of Jimmy Glancy and the Danbury Trashers, uh, that's one of my theories of, um, what happened to him, but we'll save that for, we'll save that for a little later on.

Yeah, it seemed to me like Jimmy, if he wasn't, I can't say guarantee or I wouldn't say 100 percent that he was a made man. He was in all of that, but he was very, I guess what they say in the modern parlance, mob adjacent and [00:10:00] that particular industry you needed in the. Trash disposal industry. You need connections to governments.

You need connections to big business. You need a lot of connections that something like organized crime can grease the wheels on. If you just look at, uh, the De Cavalcanti family in New Jersey of what the Sopranos was all based on, it's this whole idea of, uh, municipal garbage collection. If I mean, if you look at Jimmy and it's in the documentary, he kind of sees himself as like Tony Soprano.

He has like a big picture of him with Tony, uh, Tony Soprano signed. I mean, if he wasn't a made guy, he definitely felt like he was a mobster, you know, it was the thing that he taught his kids growing up was like, you know, always be a stand up guy and don't rat, you know, straight up like that's what AJ was saying when he was a kid.

Right? So definitely. If he wasn't a maid guy, I don't know for sure. I was actually researching this and sometimes, sometimes these things are [00:11:00] hard to tell. I tend to lean to think that he was a maid guy, um, but maybe he wasn't. Either, either way, he was a, he was a favored associate, though, at the very least, right?

Oh, yeah, for sure, right? Like, uh, even if he wasn't a made guy, I still have a feeling, like, if you were going to whack Jimmy Galanti, you would probably still need permission, just because the amount of revenue that he was bringing in, which was millions of dollars. You mean he was a good earner? Oh, yeah.

What was the short story of how they actually got into the hockey racket? AJ got hurt, right? Yeah, that's exactly it. It's like AJ was, uh, he got into, um, playing hockey and he loved it. And his dad liked watching him play hockey and knew how much AJ loved it. And he hit a kid. And even AJ says he doesn't even know exactly what happened, but.

He banged up his knee really bad to the point that [00:12:00] he just would never have been able to play hockey ever again. And I was reading apparently, Jimmy had been thinking about getting into minor league hockey, like investing into it. And like, before any of that happened, and this kind of just kick started it off or well, I would, I don't know, they call it a minor hockey league.

I don't know if I would consider the UHL minor league hockey, but yeah, Getting into smaller hockey is the way I would describe it for those folks that aren't into hockey. I think you could use a baseball analogy. Like, you got the NHL and that's like the majors and then you've got the American Hockey League and that's like triple a and then you've got some double a leagues like maybe the East Coast Hockey League is probably double a and then you got like a tweeners like they're not quite single a, but they're pretty low double a and that's like.

All the rest of them, the Southern Professional Hockey League, the UHL, this, this league that they're in and, and a slew of others that are smaller and more regional, but you're still talking about guys that are pretty damn good at hockey. I mean, they're [00:13:00] playing professionally. They're just not NHL caliber.

I mean, there's only 700 some jobs in the NHL. So he pretty much got to be the best in the world to be there. Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like Richard Lim's This American President and other great shows. Go to ParthenonPodcast. com to learn more, and here is a quick word from our sponsors.

Oh, that was a question that I did have. So that's not, it's, it's interesting because we'll get into some things later on. It wasn't really in the baseball metaphor. It's not AAA, the league that they were in, like people who are on the cusp of professional hood. AA at best, I would say, I mean, uh, and lower AA, like, uh, the East Coast Hockey League is probably a higher tier talent wise than, than, uh, than the, than the UHL.

Is the UHL even still [00:14:00] solvent? Chris, do you know? No, they're not around anymore. It's, uh, the UHL, it's, it's weird cause it's like, it's, it's, it's a minor league, but it's like kind of semi pro. So in the UHL, okay. So I'll use an example up here. We have the Ontario hockey league, the OHL, and that's strictly developmental, right?

So you, you can't be older than, I believe it's 18. Once you're 20, is it 20? Yeah. Every team can have like three or four overagers. So it's really. 16 to 19. Yeah. So that they get strictly for developing young talent is really what it is. Right? And then you go from there, like, Oh, are you good enough to play in the NHL, the HL, or, you know, maybe overseas in the KHL, or there's a lot of different leagues, right?

Where the you HL. They never really got into the details of how it works, but I know in the AHL, it's considered, it's a semi developmental league, where you're allowed to have a certain amount of overagers, [00:15:00] right, but only a certain amount, so I think it's like, I don't know off the top of my head, it could be, do you know, is it like, you're allowed to have like, was it like 50, it's not 50, you can have like 25 percent of the roster being overagers, I'm not sure.

Yeah, I mean, overagers is probably not the term I'd use though, cause that's specific to junior, but I think you mean veterans maybe, um, of a certain, and I don't, I don't know what the rule is, but you could definitely look at the American hockey league as the farm league to the NHL. In fact, most NHL teams, almost every one of them, uh, has an affiliate.

So, you know, the Toronto Maple Leafs have the Toronto Marlies, you know, and so they send people down and bring them back up. A lot of the teams also have a essentially double a affiliate. And those are mostly, uh, maybe exclusively. I'm not certain on this, but they're, uh, East coast hockey league teams. And so I don't know who it is for Toronto for the flyers.

It's, [00:16:00] uh, uh, it was, uh, the. Yeah. Or was it Richmond last year? I think I can't remember. Um, the point being is that that is your professional developmental leagues, right? One's AAA, one's AA, as opposed to the junior leagues, which are for kids, you know, 16 to 20, mostly 16 to 18, 19, uh, developmental. So the UHL is a cup below that.

Um, and I think when you call it semi pro, I think that's a good word, Chris, because like some of the guys that AJ hired hadn't played hockey in a while, you know, this was like a return to the game for them. Well, they, they had that one player to Roman, uh, the Nigerian, I'm trying to remember his name right now.

He played in the NHL. He played in the NHL. Brent Gretzky, he played a, not a lot, but he played a couple of games and a couple of points. Yeah. Um, and I'm trying, Mike Rump, we'll get, well, that's near the end and he played in the NHL, of course, you know, so it's like, it,[00:17:00]

there's older players, but there's, there's younger players there and, and the documentary, they call it minor league hockey, but that's not really something like it, I don't know, it's like the age, all right, like we'll have, like, I'll use the example, like the Leafs had Kyle Clifford, who played it. On the Marley's all season.

We're talking about a guy that's played in the NHL's entire life and is a two time Stanley Cup winner. He's just playing there because he's not good enough to play in the NHL anymore, but doesn't want to stop playing hockey and he wants to live near home. So, and we liked him. So we just signed him to be like, Hey, mentor the kids.

Yeah, it's kind of a situation where you'll have play a lot of young players coming up, but then some players who are on their way back down. Exactly. Exactly. And then the other thing is the confusion of language, right? Like, I think when you say minor hockey in Canada, the inference is almost always youth hockey.

[00:18:00] Right down here in the U. S. When we say minors, we think of like double a triple a baseball and we think the same for hockey and we would say youth hockey, not minor hockey. So, you know, it's 1 of those language things that can cause some confusion as well. But however you want to label it, I would say that the U.

1. L. Was, uh, at least, uh, 3. Yeah. Tears below the NHL with the exception of a couple of players, uh, and, you know, let's face it. Some of those players were only there because of the lockout. Were they associated then or, uh, rather affiliated with a team, a professional team? I don't believe so. No, not that I'm aware of.

No, the UHL, everything that I've read is they would like corner the market in places say like Danbury and just like other teams that just did not have a professional sports team of any sort and they triggered, well, if we set a team up here. Will be the only show in town. I mean, I believe the U H [00:19:00] L ran for 15 years.

So, which is not a bad run for, uh, one of these types of leagues. Even when they folded just like some of the other leagues that folded some of the franchises get gobbled up by the next tier up, you know, like Kalamazoo still has a, a minor team. I believe, I think there are Red Wings, uh, affiliate, whether they're East coast.

And the, I don't remember, but that sometimes happens too, but you're Chris is bang on. I think they go into markets that like hockey, but don't have a big team around. So like, if the Hartford Whalers were still up in Connecticut, you know, instead of down in Carolina as the Carolina hurricanes, it probably, the Emory probably would have been a market for the team.

Cause they'd all want to go watch Hartford because it's the NHL, but there's no NHL this year because of the. The, the lockout, and then there's no Hartford anymore because they moved down to, uh, to Carolina back in whatever it was. I forget. It's a [00:20:00] real interesting confluence of events that there's this lockout, Danbury, it's kind of in the middle of nowhere for hockey.

And then. Uh, they set up this almost like, uh, they have the money to set up a dream team, even though they're not officially supposed to spend the money the way they do, but we'll get into that shortly. Uh, maybe, uh. Frank, you can set the stage a little bit for the lockout. What was going, what was behind this lockout?

Because I think in a lot of ways that none of this with the trashers or a lot of this wouldn't have happened the way it did if the lockout hadn't happened. NHL lockout. That's an interesting theory. I, I, I'd have to think about it to say whether I agree or not. Um, I do think there's no way that they make a run to the colonial cup with a, an NHL caliber player or two on the roster.

And that made a big difference. So you could be onto something. Um, you know, I don't even [00:21:00] remember. What they were fighting about in 2005, I've been a hockey fan since the mid nineties. And so there's been several labor disputes and, and they're, you know, they're always arguing over money and what the share is and whether or not we should have a salary cap and so forth.

I believe in the 2005 lockout, the hard cap was the biggest issue. There was no salary cap in hockey and the owners wanted it for cost certainty. And, and of course, if you're a player, you don't want a salary cap, right? Because you're. You know, capping the potential earnings of your, of your members, if you're the union.

So they fought about it, drew some lines in the sand and ultimately, you know, one of the reason reasons Bettman gets booed every time he shows up anywhere, the commissioner of the NHL is because he's. Presided over several stoppages and this one killed the entire season and, and that's a pretty big deal.

And so the NHL, they, they delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed, and God, did they get all the way to like December, Chris, before they [00:22:00] finally canceled it, I think, or January. Yeah, it was, it was pretty, yeah, it was pretty bad and it was, um. Especially what they were arguing over. I mean, I mean, there are a lot of the reasons why, like, a league will end up putting a salary cap in, which is essentially what this lockout was all about, was they'll put a salary cap in, and they'll say, because the league, say, the NHL is only bringing in so much revenue, right?

So we can't have the owner spending X amount of dollars or what have you on players and this and that. It's just, uh, In the long run, it's not sustainable. That's the argument. And the other argument is, is that you got a big market team like Toronto or Philadelphia, and they can spend 80 million on players.

And then you get Buffalo who can only spend 35. And so they're at a distinct disadvantage switch. Probably you're with me on this one, Chris. I don't see the problem with that because anytime the flyers wanted a free agent, they could pay for it. Right. So Toronto did the same [00:23:00] thing, but, but it does create an unfair compete.

Right. Yeah. And I, I, the big thing to me personally, the big reason. That the salary cap's in place anyways is because the owners can't stop themselves. That's basically it, right? They'll sign these ridiculous contracts to these players that shouldn't get them and then they end up getting, being stuck paying for them and there's like, I don't want to get into the weeds about how the salary cap works or not, but like It's actually the owners, uh, trying to rein in their general managers, if we want to be more specific, right?

Because the GMs are the ones handing out the contracts and the owners are tired of paying them. But they're the ones signing off on it too, though, right? Sure, sure. They get free agent fever every July 1st and out comes the checkbook.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. There's also [00:24:00] a big problem with hockey, being that it's international. A lot of times if the dollar versus the Canadian, the U. S. versus the Canadian dollar fluctuates, it can kill the Canadian teams because they have a lot less buying power with their dollar.

When it's when it's uneven like that, that is absolutely a factor. And then the other factor that comes up, uh, is, uh, those teams that are in states that are, that don't have an income tax. So you're attacking another 10 percent on whatever. You know, if you're not paying income tax or whatever, the income tax would be in another state.

So, so there's, there's all these little unfair advantages and I guess they figured we'll put the salary cap in place and everybody's on a even playing field, blah, blah, blah. And it took them a year and they had to fight about it and cancel the season to get to it. And the Danbury trashers ended up being very much the recipients of that.

Bad luck for everybody else because, you know, they landed a couple of players that might have been playing at a higher [00:25:00] level had had, because once the NHL isn't playing those players who want to play, go play elsewhere. Some went overseas, some played in the American league, some played, obviously, one of them came and played in Danbury and that pushes the talent all down another tier.

So guys who are good enough to play in the A, some of those get bumped down to the East coast league. Some of those guys end up in one of these, you know, regional semi prototype. Teams like the, like the UHL. And so it's just a, you know, a, a trickle down effect. And as most trickle down effects go, it's not good for the people that trickles down to at the end.

So, uh, but that worked out good for Danbury because now it's, you said it's a confluence of events. It surely was. I mean, here's a guy who wants to buy the team for his kid, make him the president and general manager. He goes out. And he can get players that he couldn't otherwise have gotten if the situation were different.

And then once he's got those players, he is going to be able to keep them because as you alluded [00:26:00] to earlier, you know, they might be getting a check for whatever from the Danbury trashers, but they're getting a nice fat envelope every week as well. And that is circumventing the rules and they admit it freely, at least.

Two of the players, or no, three of the players admitted it freely during that, uh, documentary. If you remember. And what do you think about that, Chris, that they were getting big, they were that, uh, you, HL did have a cap, a salary cap and a salary structure, but to get these guys on board, they're giving him big, thick envelopes full of cash.

I just think it's, like, I think it's hilarious, right? Like, the players are talking about, like, Jimmy Galante just dropping 10 grand on the table, and, like, there's your signing bonus, and, like, if you do, like, a little bit of research, too, like, Jimmy is, like, hiring, like, their wives and kids to work at the, at the dump.

Basically with no show jobs and plus they're eating steak and lobster [00:27:00] and private cars. I think they alluded to, it sounded like they were putting them up to like their lodging was comped as well. It sounded like, or they got really cheap lodging. That was really nice. I mean, they kind of skirted that a little bit, so it wasn't entirely sure, but that is what they alluded to.

It is.

This is what the mob does to society, like, but like, it's within this hockey context, right? Like, they're circumnavigating the rules. They're, they're not paying their taxes per se. They're, uh, cheating, really, is what they're doing. At the end of the day, that's what they're doing. They're cheating, right? Like, I've joked about it with my friends with, like, the amount of money that, The organization that owns the Maple Leafs and be like, just sign Matthews to Austin Matthews, the big superstar up here and like, just sign them to a reasonable contract and then just, you know, give them, you know, a couple duffel bags worth of cash and, you know, big contract with Boston pizza and you're, you're good to go, you know, but that's, that's, uh, you're, [00:28:00] that's cheating, you're circumnavigating the cap.

You're not supposed to be doing that. They're the rules are in place for a reason, right? It's almost like. And the best it's like, basically, like a no show jobs, right? Where the cities used to be famous. They're still famous for this, but like, local governments are famous for this. Like, the mayor is like hiring their friends to go work for the dump or go work for, um, you know, the drive a.

Say a bus and it's just, yeah, they're on the payroll. They're collecting a paycheck, but they're, you know, they're not actually showing up and doing this job, right? Like it's all it's a kickbacks, right? Which is this is what the mob's famous for is the kickbacks, right? And unless I'm. Mistaking my sopranos history, weren't these kinds of jobs used to show legitimate income and to create legitimate.

Retirement opportunities like 401ks and stuff. Yeah, that, well, that's exactly it. Right. All for a lot of these guys, you can show [00:29:00] that like, Hey, I am bringing in some money and You know, most of the time, it doesn't account for. You know, the vast amount of money that you're showing up. It's like, well, yeah, you work in a, uh, you work in a dump, like, I mean, like, how do you afford this Lamborghini?

But at least you have something on paper showing like, hey, I work here. And maybe you might have to just literally show up to plant once or twice a week or something. You probably don't even have to do that. Maybe once a week, just show up and. Just there so they can be like, oh, yeah, he was at work type thing, right?

When they investigate, but it's it does help when you can have the ability to be like, look, I am actually bringing in money, you know, like, oh, I'm investing in this and this and this, right? Like, as opposed to I believe it was lucky Luciano when they were asking him. It's like. Where did you get all this money from?

You haven't had a job in 20 years. He's like, well, no, I own, I own this restaurant like down the street. And he forgot what the name of the restaurant was. He actually did own this restaurant, but like he, [00:30:00] but like he actually forgot the name of the restaurant and you know, it doesn't look good. Like when, you know, they're prosecuting you and be like, you know, where'd you get all this money?

You like, there's no, you've never had a job. And then there's no way to funnel the money, but, uh, getting back to the, to the story a little bit, and that's that, uh, AJ, he was, and this is a conversation that I'd be really interested in hearing both of your opinions on. Maybe we'll start with Frank on this one.

I find it very interesting that AJ, he was, he loved hockey as a sport. He played it, he lived it, but he also was a huge fan of professional wrestling. And he, he loved the showmanship of that. And he wanted to really bring those two elements together. And I think you see that in extremes in this, but.

Anytime you watch a sport, really, you're looking for both the pure athleticism, but you also want to be entertained as well. Uh, what [00:31:00] do you think about those, those two really competing forces inside of sports, pure athleticism and then fun? I think you said it perfectly. I don't think I could say it any better.

Um, personally, I'm not a wrestling fan at all. I've always been disdainful of it because it's fake. Not that they're not physical, not that it's not athletic, but because it's staged in terms of the fighting and stuff. And. It took me a long time to get off my high horse and, and just recognize that people enjoy it for the entertainment value.

And movies are stage two and I don't call them fake, you know, so, uh, and sometimes things happen in hockey that are staged, you know, like, you know, some of the fights that used to happen, you know, off the, off the buck drop. So I kind of quit being such a jerk about it and realize that. You know, I don't need to, to, to downtalk it in my, in my circle of friends or whatever.

And, and it's just another form of entertainment and it does have a very spectacular element to it, doesn't it? I [00:32:00] mean, it's over the top, it's big, it's loud. It's, it's a, it's a spectacle and. When you bring that to a hockey arena, like AJ did, what do you end up with? Well, pretty quickly you end up with a very full arena, you know, section 102 full of the biggest maniacs of your fans.

And all those folks are paying money to get into the rink. They're paying money to buy a Jersey. They're buying popcorn, beer, hot dogs, you know, um, And everything else that goes along with it. So number one, it's a, it's a, it's, it's great for the community. That's the one thing that struck me about this entire thing was here.

You have a couple of guys, well, Jimmy, anyway, in particular, he's a bad guy. I mean, if you look at the stuff that they had him on tape saying, if he did those things and he was, you know, he pled to some things that he was accused of, he's a bad guy, right? But he's very likable. He's almost like a folk hero in this community.[00:33:00]

And when they create this team, it's something for the community to rally around this huge, this huge event, uh, that's just full of energy and spectacle. And, and they all, they reveled, of course, in being the, uh, being the foil, you know, being the bad guy. What do they call that in wrestling? Chris, the, the bad guy has a different name.

Being the heel, the heel, that's it. Right. They were the heels of the UHL. Were they not? I mean, that, that was very, very, that's exactly, that's exactly it. Right. AJ played that part. He even talked about that. He was trying to play the heel of, uh, You know, hockey really, but the Trashers and he played because he knew that everyone was gonna hate him anyways They think like oh daddy, but you this team you dress dress ridiculous You're you're only 17 and you're running a hockey team and he just played it up, right?

Like it'll like Floyd Mayweather is famous for this, right? Like he had to change up how he boxed because his hands were literally like disintegrating [00:34:00] And so he knew that he was going to play, he was going to fight a style of boxing that was not going to be exciting and just to continue his career. And he knew that people were going to hate it.

So he started creating this persona, the money Mayweather, which is people just pay to watch him fight in hopes of seeing him lose. For a long time, that was it, right? Because everyone just hated him so much. Um, but they were paying to watch. Money, money spends the same no matter why they came, right? Yeah, and as you were mentioning, like, you're not so, like, I would, I'm a huge fan of professional wrestling and I totally get what he was, like, trying to do, uh, with mixing the two of them up, right?

So, anyway, I, We did like an earlier episode on the beyond the big screen, where I kind of went into like the whole history of professional wrestling and we covered the movie, the wrestler too. And great movie. Yeah. That was like kind of one of the crazier scenes in the movie, though, is like when Jimmy brings all the professional wrestlers to AJ's party and it's [00:35:00] like Triple H and China.

And I think The Rock was there. The Rock was there. I mean, when you, when you've got wrestlers in the crowd that I recognize, you're, you're probably hitting the high ones, but you know, I don't know that we truly got. A good picture, a good picture watching this documentary of how crazy it probably was in that arena, because when you're watching it on video and let's face it, it's not the greatest video.

It's not television. It's not, you know, like, like, even like a phone today would probably take better video than, than what they were using there in 2005. But when you're there in person, And you can feel the energy in the, and the spontaneity of the events. It's, it's a whole other level than like what we saw in the, in the documentary there on the screen.

And, and it has a galvanizing effect on, on the community, especially a smaller community. You know, I [00:36:00] mean, I think Danbury's tiny, but it's not a metropolis, right? I'm guessing. Uh, do you know how big it is, Steve? You're, you're from that region. I know I, to be quite honest, I had never even really heard of it until fairly recently, and Hartford's not that big, and Hartford's bigger than Danbury, I'm pretty sure, so it's definitely, and I get the sense that it's sort of a Rust Belt community too, it probably hasn't gotten, uh, it, it's boat didn't get lifted in some of the better times that came along either.

It seemed like a, a hard scrabble town. As of 2021, 86, 000 people live there, so I'm going to guess fewer people possibly in 2005, but even if it was comparable, that's, you know, that's a city, but that's a small city and you get a galvanizing force like this spectacle that was the Danbury trashers. You got a team that's entertaining that is beating the hell out of other people [00:37:00] 3 and 4 times a night.

And they're winning. I think their record was like 44 and 28 or something like that. I mean, they had a, uh, like a 68, 70 percent win percentage, which is in cocky. That's incredible. That's a great percentage. And so. I mean, you're putting the puck in the net, you're putting, you're putting their fist in somebody's face, you know, and it's all spontaneous.

You never know what's going to happen. And it's all occurring in front of a full arena, uh, with all that energy. I mean, I understand why people got swept up in it and, and why it became such a big deal. Uh, but there's another piece to it too. And that is how much money do you think they laundered through that hockey team?

And I mean, that that's a cash business. A lot of the time it easily can be, you know, and, and I have to think they just laundered, uh, just a metric ton of cash during that season. I almost 100 percent guarantee it. That's [00:38:00] exactly what was going on. He saw, like, Jimmy saw an opportunity. I think he, like, legitimately wanted to own a hockey team and he wanted to get it for his son, but he also saw an opportunity.

He's like, oh, this is a way of getting rid of a bunch of this cat. Like, you know, launder a bunch of this money that I have lying around. I 100 percent guarantee you that's what was going on. Yeah, you get the ticket sales were probably cash or a lot of cash back then the concessions like you were saying that is a cash machine right there where now, I mean, now you go to a game and like, where we go to the triple a league and everything is cashless.

You might as well not even bring your billfold with we went to climate pledge arena up in Seattle, which is pretty new. A couple of years old now is all for, uh, yeah. Seattle cracking game. We went when the flyers came to town and my wife was kind of freaked out a little bit. She didn't like it, but basically you just walk into a place and pick out what you want and walk out and they charge your card.

You don't have to, you know, contactless, much less cashless. [00:39:00] And that was a little too big brother for her. She didn't care for it. And I certainly understand that. But, uh, uh, you know, I mean, I, I bet that arena was, uh, yeah. You know, 7, 000 cedar or something like that, and I bet they sold 12, 000 tickets every night when, when the books were done, you know, 5, 000 phantom seats that somebody quote unquote paid cash for, you know, I mean, there's just the opportunities are, are, were huge there.

I think we're going to leave it at that for today. I just want to mention though, the best thing you can do to help us in this podcast is if you enjoy what you're hearing. Tell a friend, tell a couple of friends about the Organized Crime and Punishment podcast so that your friends can become friends of ours.

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Original Publication Date: 10/4/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/gYDhPsotOyw

Description: In this episode of "Organized Crime and Punishment," we are joined by author Paul Moses to dive deep into the pages of his latest work, "The Italian Squad." This gripping narrative explores the fascinating history of law enforcement's battle against organized crime, specifically focusing on the dedicated officers of the Italian Squad.

The Italian Squad, formed in the early 20th century, played a pivotal role in dismantling powerful criminal syndicates in New York City. Moses' book sheds light on their relentless pursuit of justice, often at great personal risk.

Key takeaways include the Squad's innovative investigative techniques, their impact on organized crime, and the enduring legacy of these courageous officers. We also discuss the broader implications of their work in the context of today's criminal justice system.

#OrganizedCrime #TheItalianSquad #LawEnforcement #TrueCrime #PodcastDiscussion

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email: crime@atozhistorypage.com

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

Welcome back to Organized Crime and Punishment. Steve here, uh, with a special interview with a really fascinating topic, and it's a topic that, uh, Mustache Chris and I will definitely dive into more, but this was just the perfect opportunity to talk with Paul Moses, who is the author of The Italian Squad.

The true story of the immigrant cops who fought the rise [00:01:00] of the mafia. And this is a really fascinating story because it falls outside of what most people traditionally think of the mafia in the timeline of generally the later part of the 20th century. And this is going way back. So Paul, maybe you can tell us, um, what got you interested in this topic of the Italian squad?

Sure. Well, I had done a previous book called an unlikely union, the love hate story of New York's Irish and Italians. And in that book, I focused, uh, I had one chapter on what it was like for people within the Italian immigrants in the NYPD, uh, to try to advance in a department that was really, uh, very much controlled by the Irish, uh, either immigrants or later generations.

And they, they had a rough time of it, and the Italian community itself had, had pretty, um, rough relations with the, uh, NYPD in, in that, in that [00:02:00] era. Uh, there was a lot of ethnic friction. So, in doing that, I included a chapter that told the story of, uh, Joseph Petrosino, who was the founding detective of the, uh, NYPD's Italian squad in 1904.

And from the, mostly from the point of view of what it was like for him as an Italian immigrant to try to be the go between between the Italian community and the NYPD so. His story is really interesting. It's, it's been told quite a bit, but I saw that he's after Petrosino. He's, he's murdered while on a mission to Sicily in 1909.

Um, and generally stories about the Italian squad, uh, kind of stopped there, but the squad went on to 1922 and I saw that that. Part of the story really wasn't told that much. And it was just as fascinating as the better known story of Joseph Petruzzino's service. It's a fascinating story because Petruzzino goes, [00:03:00] maybe we can, before we even get into Petruzzino and the whole story of the Italian squad, they're fighting against Organized Italian organized crime, and it's referred to at that time as period as the Black Hand.

What was the Black Hand? Yeah, the Black Hand, uh, was seen by many people in that time as being, uh, a giant, uh, sinister underground organization probably controlled by criminals in Italy. It wasn't that at all. It wasn't a mafia kind of thing. It was really in the isolated or independent groups of thugs who realized that if you sent a letter to somebody with a black hand on it and use enough threats that it may force somebody to to pay off.

And so it actually really found its oxygen in the news coverage that made it seem like a, uh, international conspiracy. Uh, and [00:04:00] that's not to say that people using the black hand label or to be taken lightly. Uh, you know, they did many bombings, kidnappings and serious crimes that that needed to be tamped down.

One interesting thing about the whole story before we even get into New York is Joseph Petruzzino, which you said, uh, you know, his story is pretty well known, but he did it. He was killed in Italy and his, uh, the subsequent leader of the Italian squad. Worked in Italy, and one of the things that I found was really interesting is like, well, under what authority was the NYPD operating in a sovereign country?

And was that something that was common? Was the, did people think like, was there just no other mechanism for the FBI or what that didn't really exist at that point, but other agencies to do that? The NYPD just opens up office in a foreign country and is doing intelligence and all. And all sorts of other police [00:05:00] work.

Yeah. Part of the problem was that the federal government really, uh, should have been doing this kind of work. Uh, no, it, it was a, it was a, um, authorized trip in that the police department arranged it through our state department, which in turn. dealt with the Italian foreign ministry. So, um, you know, he was there, uh, Petrosino, but he was distrustful of the Italian authorities and he didn't want them to protect him.

So, uh, so, and he was. They're primarily to gather some records of people who are criminal records in Italy, which would enable him to come back to New York and get them deported under a certain federal law. But, um, so that relationship. You know, it just wasn't giving the records in the time that they needed them.

So he wanted to straighten that out. He was also doing some things that may have been a little under the radar. Maybe the State Department wasn't fully aware of, like, [00:06:00] trying to find his own sources, um, you know, making connections with people that that was that part of it was a little under the radar.

But he went over there, he met the, the, the chief of all Italian police in Rome, you know, when he arrived, so it was above board. What was the genesis of the Italian squad? Where did they come up with this idea to set up a special police unit of Italian, uh, American officers and detectives? It comes from really two places.

One is the Italian community itself. Which felt the police really didn't understand their community couldn't speak the language and maybe didn't even care that much if unless somebody else other than Italians was a crime victim. Secondly, the newspapers were really building building up the threat of of Italian immigrant crime.

And so between the newspapers and the Italian community itself, which, which really was, uh, wanted better policing, um, that kind of forced the hand of the, uh, police [00:07:00] commissioner to create a small, uh, squad headed by Petrosino in 1904. You, uh, discuss this a lot in the book, but what was the thought of the Italian American people at that time?

Because you, there was a high crime rate amongst Italians. Often by people inside of their own community, but, uh, an issue that we'll get into later, some of the times this Italian squad was using some pretty rough policing techniques, what did the people think about these issues? I didn't see any broad pushback, uh, maybe partly because all the police use pretty rough methods at that time.

Uh, you know, Joseph Petrosina was trained by, you know, the leading, you know, detective commander of his day. And some of that method was, uh, uh, you know, extra judicial, uh, let's say, um, and, uh, uh, Primarily, [00:08:00] the, the, really the reaction was that they, they wanted decent policing, but, uh, and they wanted it to be done by people who understood their community in some ways, a lot, like we see today, people want policing.

They, they just don't want it to feel like an invading force, you know, and I think that was the same thing. And the strength of the Italian squad detectors was that they knew the community, um, and people will come and talk to them who probably wouldn't have gone down and talk to somebody. I didn't feel connected to.

Um, eventually there is some pushback because, you know, leaders of the Italian community, political leaders start to say, why is there an Italian squad? Every ethnicity has gangs. Why? Why is there only one? And so eventually there was some pushback in politics against having a quote unquote Italian squad.

I didn't see it initially though. I think. Italian Americans were by and large proud of the successes of these detectives who were often written about in glowing terms in the newspapers. Um, [00:09:00] certainly, among criminals, there was a lot of anger and resentment, uh, though, that was building up and that may have actually contributed to the plot to murder Joseph Petrosino when he ventured off into Italy.

There was a, there was a real conflict between the... The prevailing, uh, administration of the police department and these sort of up and comers with the Italians, who was really the, running the police department in the late 1800s, early 1900s in cities like New York City? Well, I found in the early 1900s that a lot of times the mayors had a really strong hand in it, but their interest was often from a political angle.

Um, Then, you know, there were the inspectors who were very powerful figures, uh, and some of them corrupt. Uh, the, um, in the mid 1890s, of course, Teddy Roosevelt famously played a role as as the head of the what they then called the police board of [00:10:00] commissioners. And he was actually the one who promoted Joseph Petrosino to a detective.

Um, so, yeah, the leadership, uh, the commissioners came and went not unlike today, uh, because I think policing is a very politically sensitive issue for the mayor and I think many mayors in New York history have been undone by. How the public view the police department and what they wanted from it. Um, so mayors played a lot pretty close attention and whoever held these top posts like chief of detectives that that has to go through city hall.

And at that time, that meant off mentality hall to. And Tammany Hall and a lot of these organizations were run by the Irish. What sort of political machinations and operations did these predominantly Irish police departments and governmental organizations, well, how did they operate? Yeah, I mean, [00:11:00] there was always an issue about, about corruption.

There was a pretty strong reform movement to sort of Republican slash reform movement, uh, progressive that, and that, that, that movement was also somewhat anti immigrant, um, in my opinion, that there's that influence. And then Tammany is, is, you know, kind of absorbing the immigrants in a lot of ways. Um, Tammany has gambling interests.

There's no question about that. So, uh, your district leaders in Tammany, uh, you know, wanted a police commissioner who was not going to get in the way of those gambling interests. So, and then the mayors themselves are under pressure from the reform side, you know, to really clamp down on, on, uh. Police graft, so those forces kind of come at mayors from both directions, and they sort of have to find their way through that.

And sometimes they lean heavily towards the reform side. Sometimes they kind of give a bit so they can have good relations with certain leaders. And it does actually affect. [00:12:00] The work of the Italian squad and what it can do and not do the whole idea of civil rights. There was really, I mean, I guess throughout the whole history of the United States, and this is a theme that we discuss a lot in this current series of the podcast, but there's always been a push and a pull between.

Preserving civil, civil liberties and being tough on crime. And it seemed like this, that was really playing out in particular within this discussion of the Italian squad. What were some of the abuses of civil liberties and then some of the, the pushback against that to preserve civil liberties? I, the, there was really a very wanton use of the nightstick in those days, and I don't, I don't, in a way, pin that on the Italian squad detectives.

They were typically not out trying to get a bunch of people out of a bar or things like that. But, but they were very free with the nightsticks and to the point that, um, [00:13:00] eventually the people, the city elected a mayor who was, who was really an ardent civil libertarian, uh, Judge William Gaynor. Thank you.

Uh, he was elected in 1910, and, uh, he made, you know, uh, police violence a high priority. He would, he would, you know, investigate the cases himself. He would get complaints in the mail and call the officers in. Um, with the Italian squad, I think their great frustration was that they often knew more than they could prove in court because people would talk to them, but they were not willing to testify.

So, uh, that's where you might get a Joseph Petrosian or going to somebody and say, I'm threatening them or more. Uh, and and, uh, and so their, their use of, uh, violence centers be targeted, I think, to people, they, they thought were criminals, but, but, you know, couldn't have trouble prosecuting. Um, that that's what I noticed, uh, and looking at it closely, which is not to excuse it, but that that that's, that's, uh, kind of how it how it played out.

[00:14:00] Um, yeah. There was also a big issue with what we would now call gang databases. In those days, they would post photos of people who they arrested on the wall in the detective bureau, and detectives would look at those, and then when they're trying to, you know, find suspects for a crime, they would, you know, look for those people again.

And and they call it the rogues gallery, and that became a huge controversy and actually led mayor gainer to let go of the police commissioner, who was probably the Italian squad's greatest supporter. Uh, uh, general, uh, Theodore Bingham was his name, uh, sort of, uh. Teddy Roosevelt knockoff kind of, uh, not, not, not, not certainly not as brilliant as Teddy Roosevelt, but, but very brusque and, you know, I can do anything strong and he made a lot of enemies, especially in Tammany Hall.

And eventually, you know, the mayor removed him, but, um, over, over this whole issue of the Rose Gallery. Uh, so, yeah, um, civil liberties, I guess, issues are nothing new. People were concerned about [00:15:00] them back then also, um, as they are today. Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network featuring great shows like Scott Rank's History Unplugged Podcast and other great podcasts.

Go to ParthenonPodcast. com to learn more. And here is a quick word from our sponsors. I found that dub. Mayor Gaynor was a really, probably one of the most surprising people of a book full of surprising people. I think you could have transported him to 2010, and he would be on the cutting edge of civil liberties.

Yeah, it's rare to see somebody who's so ardent a civil libertarian get to a position, you know, uh, at like mayor of a big city and, uh, yeah, he, he was, uh, uh, you know, old fashioned, uh, uh, you know, very tough, uh, uh, [00:16:00] tough guy. Brilliant, could have been president. Even people thought he was shot while he was in office by a disgruntled office seeker and kind of lingered in office with the bullet still in his throat.

He died before his term actually ended. Um, this is kind of a sad story, but he was, had been a Brooklyn judge who took on the machines in Brooklyn, you know, and fought his way up and he was a maverick, true maverick. And, and, and I think in that era, that, you know, progressive era, you know, people like that.

Uh, Tammany eventually backed him just because they wanted to back a winner, but he, he had no use for Tammany, even though he went with their support. Maybe we could talk a little bit more about Tammany because Tammany is always looming in the background. What is their power? Because they're starting to, they really start to fade out.

Is there, is this peak Tammany at this point, even in the early 1900s? Well, they had a boss named Charlie Murphy, who was pretty brilliant [00:17:00] and not, not a boss tweet type who, who was a hundred percent thoroughly corrupt. Uh, um, and, uh, you know what, they were the ones reaching out to immigrants. Uh, they had, uh, uh, the boss on the Lower East Side, big Tim Sullivan was, was he, yeah, he was totally in bed with the gambling.

Probably prostitution interests, but he was also the 1 who was, you know, providing services and going to the legislature to try to get laws that would, you know, help help working people, you know, in the factories. Uh, also famously passed the, um, major gun control law of New York state, uh, the Solomon law, which only recently got struck down by the Supreme Court.

Um, so I kind of. I guess, as a kind of former newspaper reporter myself, I always kind of view them as totally corrupt. There's been a book by a historian and journalist, um, uh, uh, Terry, Terry Galway that that takes a somewhat [00:18:00] revisionist view and actually, in some ways, Tammany was really the ramp for some of the reforms of the, um, that, that theater, uh, Franklin Roosevelt made later, you know, through Al Smith, that concern about working people was also there.

So it's. It's not a big, massive evil, but they weren't, yeah, they did, there was a lot of mischief. Um, uh, uh, and, uh, I wouldn't say they were solidly behind the working person, an immigrant too, because they had other interests that would undercut that sometimes, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's more nuanced, I think, than I thought before I started researching the book.

Yeah. You see that so many things in your book that Tammany is really pro immigrant, but then you have big Tim Sullivan, who passes, gets this law of, uh, gun control, the Sullivan Act, like you said, that just, uh, was overturned, as we're speaking in 2023, about a year and a half, two years ago, and that was, you [00:19:00] would, Say that it was an anti immigration, uh, law.

What was sort of, um, what was the gun laws before and maybe what was the impetus of all of a sudden in that time period to get guns off of the streets, especially done by Tammany? Yeah, this is the law that involved, you know, concealed carry and, and required a permit, uh, which was not going to be granted to, uh, to Italian immigrants, most likely.

Uh, in fact, that was an issue that some of the parties raised in the recent Supreme Court case, uh, which actually did hinge on the history of, of, uh, gun laws. But, um, so it made it a felony, uh, it did a number of things to, to, to, you know, crack down on, uh, on gun crimes. Um, I found it impossible to read Big Tim's motives, uh, because he did arrange between reformer and, you know, ally of mob.

So, um, uh, but certainly in the newspapers, [00:20:00] the law was looked at as something to stop, uh, immigrant crime, especially by Italians, but others also, uh, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and others, but, um, uh, actually the events that. Yeah. Really triggered it were the shooting of mayor gainer, which had nothing to do with an immigrant.

And also there was, there was a, an author who was, who was murdered in Gramercy Park and, uh, and that, you know, had nothing to do with immigrants either. So, uh, yeah, it was portrayed as a measure to bring immigrants under control. And certainly some of the judges who sentenced people applied it that way and said, so, um, you know, this will your kind is going to.

You know, not do this anymore. You shouldn't be carrying guns. Of course, some Italian immigrants carried a gun because they, they, they were afraid, you know, and, and, uh, but there was a lot of gun violence. I also want to say it's, it's Italian immigrants were not [00:21:00] exceptionally prone to crime. There was a problem with violent crime.

A good part of that is because the Italian migration was mostly young men compared to other migrations. So young men. On their own, you know, yeah, they were crimes, mostly crimes of passion and stuff that, but if you looked at the numbers of people arrested, Italians weren't out of proportion. They, they were not heavy drinkers, which often causes a lot of crime.

So I don't want to say there was no problem. There was a problem with violent crime and, and this kind of growing gradually organizing crime, but. There was a widespread belief that Italians were prone to crime and, and it really was not true. And it was the Italian squad detectives kept trying to tell that to reporters.

They knew all the reporters, but somehow usually got lost by the side beneath the size of the headlines, you know. And there must have been an aspect that the Italians, like you said, they were majority young men, which young men commit a lot of crimes [00:22:00] compared to others, and that the Italians were the first major group to come who didn't speak English.

They had. At least, you know, um, we have discussed this in other episodes. There were German immigrants, but they were often wealthy and landowners, and they didn't, they weren't crime suspects generally just because of their situation where you have this massive, uh, influx of people who were Catholics, which wasn't, and to a lesser degree, the Jewish immigrants who were coming who didn't speak English and who were of a different religion.

Did that play upon the people who were... In the power structure and the people who are writing these newspaper articles. It certainly did. And there's one other factor, which is kind of out of our worldview now, but was very much a part of it then. And that's the whole eugenics thing, where you believe that by the shape of people's skull and things like that, that it tells you what race is [00:23:00] inferior or superior.

And Germans actually, even though they may have spoken English when they arrived, would not have that, that didn't tar them. They were Teutonic, you know, whereas Italians, Jews, anybody from southern Europe and Italy, the further south, you know, they, they had this idea that people were genetically inferior and therefore, no matter what they did, they wouldn't make good American citizens.

And people like the Italian squad commanders, Petrosino and those who followed him, they knew that they knew the people, they knew that they worked hard, that they were good people. And they kept trying to get that point across, uh, with not great success. We'll get into some of the brutal crimes that the squad addressed, but maybe we can just talk a little bit more about their methods.

So you brought up the rogues gallery, and I believe that's where that term was invented. That's pretty common place now. Third degree was another one that [00:24:00] I think was, uh, innovated with them. What were some of these methods that they use? Well, the superintendent, you know, who, uh, uh, was from the late 19th century, uh, Thomas Byrne, he, uh, he was known for the third degree and, uh, it involved, you know, uh, brutal questioning, uh, uh, he might, he might've said it didn't necessarily involve physical violence.

Um, but, you know, yeah, it was common and that's where the 3rd degree, uh, comes from. And I think you're right about the rogues gallery. Also, um, it was an early form of intelligence gathering. They would also do the Bertion method, which was a Frenchman designed this to take a very, very detailed measurements of the suspects body.

Uh, and and that was a form of criminal identification and fingerprinting was just coming into in this, uh, this decade. A lot of things happening in law enforcement in that period. Um, so, yeah, that [00:25:00] that's all happening. Yeah, you can really see at that time period where fingerprinting is a way to identify people.

That's. Holds on to being scientific, but then a lot of these ideas that were very unscientific, but had an air of scientism to them, like measuring cranial features, really do people discover that those aren't exactly workable. Yeah, that was really terrible, because... It wasn't, this wasn't like the uninformed people.

These were like leading professors who were backing this up and writing about it in scholarly journals. Uh, so, yeah, this, the so called smart people, uh, lean towards, towards that. And that I think affects how, how the courts, the journalists, how everybody kind of viewed this, this so called Italian problem, uh, at the time.

Some of those, some of the major crimes that happened were really brutal, especially if you think [00:26:00] about the mafia and later generations. They were things that they generally did not do in the United States, like kidnapping on a really massive scale. What were some of the really, uh, big crimes that the, that this Italian squad was fighting against?

Yeah, maybe some of their major crime. Well, uh, there, there, um, there was a wave of kidnappings and, and these would become national news. Uh, and they were really heartrending cases. Uh, so we have, we do have a series of, of children who were kidnapped. Some are returned. Uh, in some cases they're not. Um, and, uh, we have 1 interesting case.

A little bit later in the period around 1920, where they used a woman police officer, who was the only, uh, probably the first Italian American woman, uh, in the police, in the, uh, in the department, uh, Ray Nicoletti, and they placed her with the family whose child had been taken, [00:27:00] and, uh, she poses like a visiting cousin, but she was quick to recognize You know, who was doing this, there was a man living across the street who kept looking into the apartment and she asked the family about that man.

Oh, he's a good friend, you know, and and she knew that that's often how these kidnappings got started. Some so called friend of the family and then he came over and was offering to, like, I used to be in a gang. I, I can deal with these people. I'll negotiate it for you. And that's often the person who's part of the gang.

Uh, and and so she helped them to get. The, um, uh, the, the, the suspects arrested, uh, unfortunately, uh, the bosses then sprung the arrest too soon. Um, and they never recovered the, the victim, uh, they brought the defendants to the, to the station house and they, they just beat them brutally all night and, and let the, the [00:28:00] little missing little boy's father do the same.

Uh, yeah. And, you know, they, they just never got it. And that little boy was, was murdered by the gang. Uh, and they never got the main suspects, but it was, it's a, it's a sad case, but it's an interesting case. And it's interesting that really, as a, as a woman, a woman stepped into, uh, uh, uh, To really, uh, make the case, which, which was a big news, her picture was on the front page of the daily news when the arrest for me.

So that was 1 of the, uh, the many kidnapping cases that there were, um, uh, and people always were unsure whether to cooperate with the police or just pay off. You know, so that was always an issue in many different cases. What was the gang situation that the police and the Italian squad was fighting against?

It really wasn't what we would later consider organized Italian American crime. Was this really very diffuse at this [00:29:00] point? It's gradually becoming more organized. There was one group in the first decade of the 20th century that Joseph Petrosino and his successor, Anthony Vachris and others recognized as, you know, a more powerful crime group.

And, uh, there's a book by historian, uh, Mike Dash called The First Family that tells the history of, of that, uh, crime group, the Lupo Morello. Family, Giuseppe Morello, Ignazio Lupo. Um, and so they are coming together. They're probably the ones all evidence points towards them who are responsible responsible for Joseph Petrosino's murder in in Sicily.

Um, they both came over from Sicily, fleeing criminal charges. Um, they were not poor people, they came over, you know, people of some means that were like, middle class, I would say, when they arrived and set up businesses. And, uh, so, so that's, [00:30:00] that's a group that is sort of a crime family and differently from, you know, the black hand types, they had connections back to Italy too.

Um, back to Sicily and, uh, but the others were, were, were smaller gangs that eventually started doing what gangs can do is, you know, they start developing, uh, sources of income, regular sources of income and putting it into buying businesses and, and, and real estate and, and, uh, so you, you, you do start seeing this, This forming, uh, as you get into the later 1910s, early 1920s, but it's, it's really prohibition that in the 1920s makes these gangs powerful.

That, that, you know, and unfortunately that's around the time they disbanded the Italian squad in 1922. So, uh, the two going together is, it's not a surprise by 1930, you really have the. More the genesis of what we would [00:31:00] call the Mafia, American Mafia now, I think would be fair to say.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. Yeah, that's a, that's fascinating that the, just as the Italian squad is phasing out, that's when they really the pedal to the metal with the, with These, uh, Italian, um, American crime organizations get started. Well, why was this, uh, band, uh, Italian squad broken up?

Well, some of it is just internal politics of the police department. Who was favored, who was not. And they folded the, uh, the Italian squad into the bomb squad, um, which was at the time politically more important because they were very concerned about radicals. Uh, there were bombings, you know, anarchist bombings and so forth.

Um, there were a lot of arrests of people who just had political views were not [00:32:00] criminals, but, but, uh, but there was, there were issues with, with, with radical bombing, certainly some very serious ones. Um, so they were folded into the, uh, bomb squad, but really not, uh, that was really the end of it. They, they weren't, the bomb squad was not effective in, in, in doing the things the Italian squad had, had, had to do.

You know, I don't think, uh, catching the bootleggers was a huge political priority for the mayoral administrations in 1920s either. They, they're always defending themselves. And, you know, but so I think that's part of it too. I mean, there was a virtual outdoor marketplace, you know, like, a couple of blocks from from police headquarters, not.

Not where they were selling the actual booze, but where their deals were being made, uh, outdoors, you know, street corners, right, right, right there, uh, near the police headquarters in lower Manhattan. So, yeah, I don't think there was a lot of zeal for breaking up those gangs, uh, you know, also. So [00:33:00] it's a combination of things.

Didn't the Italian squad, uh, in large part break up, or at least kind of break up that first family, the Lupo Morello family? Uh, yeah, although the, the Secret Service, um, really did the heft there, provide the heft because, uh, it, it was a counterfeiting case that sent, uh, Lupo and Morello to jail for, uh, I think they both got very long sentences for counterfeiting, I think, because everybody sort of knew they were, they were also killers, but that, that wasn't, you know, part of the case.

Uh, Italian squad detectives helped with that. Um, the head of the secret service in New York, uh, uh, William Flynn, uh, not long after became the chief of the, uh, deputy commissioner in charge of detectives. And especially like working with the Italian squad. Uh, then he went on to head the entire secret service.

And then he, uh, went on to head the Bureau of Investigation, [00:34:00] which later, which not long after becomes the FBI. Um, so, uh, so he, he had a lot to do with, with those prosecutions. That Lupo Morello gang and the whole counterfeiting issue, that really seemed to me like that. felt more later mafia than just random gangs.

And you really do get the feeling that they were setting up something that would blossom into what we really know of as the mafia. Yes, I, I think, and, and Mike Dash traced that in his book, you know, how they become the first family, uh, even in, you know, 1908, 1909, they owned, they owned, you know, importing businesses.

You know, restaurant, things like that. They, they had their business interests. Um, they start, you know, they just start working on different levels. And, and so, you know, that's. The, the Luo Moreo family, uh, [00:35:00] that 'cause they're brothers-in-law. Um, it's like a, say a mob name. More, more familiar to people who know about the 1930s would be chiro Terranova.

He was part of that family, the so-called artichoke king, right. He controlled the artichoke market and stuff like that. Um, so yeah, they're taking over different, uh, commodity markets locally and, and becoming that kind of, Enterprise, we would, we would say we would call the American Mafia. And the last couple of sections of your book, and I highly recommend people go and read it.

I think they can listen to it. I think it's a very nice version. You really get into the, uh, the rest of the story, so to speak, on a lot of these people. And one of the things you mentioned that I thought was really interesting, and I don't think. I don't think I really knew of it, and most people probably don't.

People who are even aficionados of the mafiaa know that Moreo really kind of trained Joe, the [00:36:00] boss, mazare, who uh, later on trained some of the bigger, the biggest names like the, uh, Genovese and Lucky Luciano was the, but, but, but at this point, the Italian squad is pretty much gone. As a squad, but those officers, a lot of them are still around.

Did they ever try to tap into these guys to take on this next generation of the mafia? I mean, there are, um, there, you know, there are cases, uh, that are developed. A lot of times it would be the D. A. who like Manhattan D. A. or somebody who would step forward to, uh, to push it. Uh, like, with Luciano, um, but yeah, no, there are like, actually, Joseph Petrosino had a nephew who became a very accomplished detective.

Uh, and that nephew has other descendants who are involved in New York law enforcement still. Um, but, um. Yeah, I, I didn't really study the thirties, but, but that's, [00:37:00] there's been a lot of written, a lot of written on the mafia in the thirties in New York. And, and, uh, I didn't get the impression that the, the, the, the police were, were, uh, as big a threat as maybe some federal agents might've been at that time.

Uh, so, yeah, although, uh, you know, LaGuardia becomes. Mayor, and he certainly, uh, was clued in to, to fighting, uh, racketeers. Yeah. It seemed that a lot of the, the really. The, the cops that were, you know, really hard working in that department in that squad got pushed off to the margins. I mean, was it Vakris who was pretty much literally pushed to the margins where he was made the, I mean, you'd almost call him like the sheriff of City Island, which I didn't even realize City Island was a part of New York City proper.

But I mean, back then that might as well, it seemed like that might as well have put him in Alaska. Uh, Vakris. Was the head of the Italian [00:38:00] squad after Petrosino. In fact, he was the one who went to Italy to complete Petrosino's mission immediately after the murder, which, you know, took some, some bravery. Um, and I thought he was a very good cop.

He was both a good commander, but also a good detective himself. And he, he, uh, I guess he was not much of a politician because when the mayor and the police commissioner started to cut the Italian squad down to nothing. Not that long after Petrosino was murdered and he was this huge, uh, you know, martyr and everybody in the city, you know, wept for him and then not long after the, you know, they're cutting out the, the squad that Petrosino headed, um, and he, he started to, you know, make some waves and question that and in Brooklyn, the DA did a grand jury to investigate the closing of the Italian squad and.

He went in and testified before, and so pulled him out of [00:39:00] his post, his head of the Italian squad, uh, and sent him up to city island on patrol duty to on patrol. Not not as a detective anymore. He lived in Brooklyn. So, in those days to get to city island by by transit was like, you know, like a 4 hour trip or something.

And so he would just like, sleep over in the police station there at night and. So, yeah, they, they gave him what I think the police now call highway therapy. They, they, uh, and, um, even when he wanted to retire, they blocked his retirement, too. He had to go to court. He also had to go to court to get his rightful promotion to, to detective sergeant, uh, earlier on in his career.

So he was always, you know, he, he was an excellent cop. And, and he always had, and You could see that because judges, everybody had a good word to say for his work. Um, but yes, he was very much marginalized. And I guess 1 thing you do notice is that most of the Italian squad detectives, [00:40:00] you can't really pick.

A particular 1 and say, ah, he's a victim of discrimination, but when you start, you just do start seeing the pattern is that they're making very big cases and they're having a lot of trouble getting promoted to detective 1st grade. And almost no Italian detectives hold that rank. So I think there, there was discrimination against that.

I think it. The early 1930s, the, uh, Italian American police formed their, they formed the first ethnic association in the police department, the Columbia society. Um, and, uh, there's most many other groups are like that exist now, but they were the 1st. Yeah. One of the parts that I really enjoyed thoroughly about your book is that you included a lot of addresses.

So you could look up on Google Maps and look in some of the buildings. There was one of the houses. I want to say that it was Vacris's house, that it looked like it was built at about the time you said the current building that's there. And you could really feel that you were in these places. I felt that that was a really, [00:41:00] uh, I wish more books would do that where you really had.

Put yourself into the place and time. Thanks. I, I mean, I like to do that. Um, because, you know, I know I would want to see know where that house was. And, and, uh, yeah, I hadn't thought of that. You can look it up on Google Maps. The city archive also has online. You could see all the buildings that were photographed in 1940.

So that gives you, uh, you know, Uh, even closer time period to see what the building looked like, uh, back back at that time. So, yeah, I, I, I, it's, I think visualizing the places is important. You think that the Italian squad helped Italians move from being a immigrant marginalized group and to really the mainstream?

I do 1st of all, just by being, uh, sort of heroes to the public, you know, hero cops. I think that we've seen that with succeeding generations of [00:42:00] immigrants and minority groups to that that that that plays a role. Um, I think they. Eventually, the Italian community, you know, becomes very much a part of the police department to the point where you get to the 1960s, and they were just as opposed as the Irish to, uh, say, creating a civilian oversight board, you know, uh, that was a big 1 of the big issues in the 60s.

And, and, you know, play a major role in the police and fire department to similar situation. Um, so they do play that role. I, I think they, they help make Italians a little more trusting in the, in the police department that they can never overcome when they would make a big case. That only seemed to tell the public more that Italians were bad people because here this big headline.

So, uh, uh, and and so I can't say if they won that battle on their own, but eventually, uh, this is actually kind of how the Italians and [00:43:00] Irish came together is the theme of the previous book. I did, uh. And some of it does have to do with people in the public eye like Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, and I think the Italian squad cops are, you know, in there, uh, also in their way.

You get to 19, LaGuardia's last mayoral campaign in the 40s, uh, he, he, he goes against Paul O'Dwyer, who, uh, no, William O'Dwyer, who was, um, Irish born, uh, and defeats him, but more Italians voted for O'Dwyer than for LaGuardia. So, you start to see the lines getting blurred, and after World War II, the two groups start to intermarry in a big way.

Um, so, yeah, I think they contributed to that, but, but it was a fight that they couldn't win on their own. I wonder, you, this is such a, uh, personality and character driven, uh, non fiction book. If the, of all the people [00:44:00] who you profile, and I'm sure you did, I mean, the, so much research and you're trying to get into the minds of these people, if there was one you could meet and have a cup of coffee with, who would you, who really stuck with you?

Well, I really admired Anthony Vakaris, uh, and I knew him a little better than most of the others because He, uh, his family had kept a diary that he had of the undercover trip. He took to Italy. Uh, so, you know, through a diary, you get to know somebody a little more intimately. So I think of all that's a great question.

I hadn't thought of it, but I think, um, that's my, my immediate reaction is I, I would like to meet and interview him. I'm a Brooklynite and he was a Brooklynite. Uh, in fact, I, I sort of discerned that he, he had a very close relationship with the Brooklyn's major newspaper, the Eagle, which. So Tend to say what he thought, whether it was attributed to him or not.

So, um, yeah, I would, I would like to sit down and have a, maybe a coffee or a beer with, with, with [00:45:00] accuracy. Yeah. You think this is a theme that you'll, I mean, not to move past this book, because people should really check it out, but is this, are these themes you want to, you're developing more in future projects of.

I don't have anything on the table right now. I'm supposed to be retired, but I like to do this project at some point. Um, but no, I'll, I'll speak on the book and maybe try and develop something, something cinematic from it. And, uh, but, uh, I don't think I'm gonna, uh, do another 1. I'm, I'm, I'm half Italian. My mother's parents were both from, uh, Calabria and Basilicata, and I've explored that in two books.

So my, my father, uh, late father was a, a German Jewish refugee from Hitler. So a number of people have said to me, well, what about the Jewish side? So, so I have to, I have to think maybe of, uh, of looking there too, for, uh, for, uh, uh, a story. We'll see. Yeah, there's definitely a story there. And I think that this is a, This would be a [00:46:00] great project for a movie if somebody's out there looking to produce a movie.

I think that this could be a really great movie. Well, thanks. I hope you're right. I've been, my son, you know, is a writer, screenwriter and television writer. And so we've been working together on putting together something. So hopefully, you never know. Well, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show.

Uh, if people want to hear more or learn more about this, they should definitely check out your book on The Italian Squad, The True Story of the Immigrant Cops Who Fought the Rise of the Mafia by Paul Moses. Thank you so much for coming on, Paul. Well, thanks so much, Stephen. It was really enjoyable chat. I really appreciate it.

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Description: In this episode of Organized Crime and Punishment, we had the pleasure of interviewing Diana Rickard, the brilliant author behind the groundbreaking book, "The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence." Diana took us on a captivating journey through the world of true crime narratives and how they have evolved with the advent of serialized storytelling. Diana shared her deep insights into the impact of these gripping narratives on our perception of innocence, drawing from her extensive research and expertise. We delved into the ethical considerations surrounding the portrayal of real-life criminal cases in serial formats, exploring the blurred lines between entertainment and journalism.

#TrueCrimeEvolution #SerializedStorytelling #InnocenceInFocus #CrimeNarratives #AuthorInterview

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

I want to welcome everyone back to Organized Crime and Punishment. This time it is just me, Steve, uh, here. Uh, we don't have Mustache Chris, but I am very excited to be joined by Professor Diana Ricard, who is an associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences, Human Services, and Criminal Justice at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, which is a [00:01:00] part of CUNY.

And she is the author of another book, Sex Offenders, Stigma, and Social Control. But in particular today, we are going to talk about her latest book. The New True Crime, How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling is Transforming Innocence. It's a fascinating book, and I think maybe the, uh, how we can start this out is maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself and maybe where the genesis of this book came from.

Oh, I'm... Very actually excited to talk about that because, um, it came from my interest in wrongful conviction, which actually came from a personal connection of a family member of a friend of mine and an interest in where wrongful conviction fits into different. Concerns in criminal justice or criminal justice reform or criminal justice issues, and I kind of had [00:02:00] trouble as a researcher finding where my place was in the conversation, in part, because there's so much good journalism, like, as an academic and a scholar, it was hard for me to find what I could contribute when there's, you know, the innocence project has so Um, offered so many important case studies and analysis, and there's so much really good stuff out there if you, if you look and in that search, um, I just became aware of these amazing documentaries and I, and more and more people were mentioning them to me, um, in my introduction to the book, I, I talk about how people kept telling me I should listen to cereal.

I should listen to cereal. And when I saw Making a Murderer in December of 2015, so quickly, there was a huge outcry in response to that. I knew I had something [00:03:00] here about the synergies between entertainment, wrongful conviction, true crime, journalism, news. You know, popular culture and, um, that's how I got started in this podcast.

We're really trying to not follow the standard true crime genre that we're trying to inject it with looking at it historically and maybe trying to be a little bit more objective. And I wonder. Uh, is it possible, this is one of the things that you brought up and it's, it's always been in the back of my mind is it, can you be entertaining and objective at the same time?

Do you have to create a narrative, which by its whole definition has to have good guys and bad guys, protagonists, antagonists? So I don't think I, I don't think being objective and being entertaining are necessarily in [00:04:00] conflict, but what the reason I chose the specific series I focus on is because they open up the problem of perspective of point of view.

And I'm really fascinated, fascinated by how they destabilize what is truth. And they make us question who has the authority over truth. So I chose only cases. I did not choose documentaries that covered cases where the person had been exonerated. So the, I chose to look at documentaries where the journalists or entertainers, because it is, these are absolutely.

Acting as entertainment, um, question the official outcomes and unpack those in a way that raises so many questions. And a lot of people come away from these convinced that the person is guilty, convinced that the person is [00:05:00] innocent, but what these. Series have done is explode our sense of faith in in the certainty of these verdicts.

So I think even, you know, a lot of these are criticized for, for not being objective or definitely for, you know, excluding this response that the prosecutor had, or not talking to this person or sensationalizing. This person. Um, but the other thing they do is they also make us aware of those things. You know, so I don't think any of the filmmakers or that Sarah Koenig of Serial would say, Oh, yes, I have the final word.

And this is, you know, the complete, objective, definitive truth or version of the truth. What do you think with, um, in our society, you discuss it and it's something that I've definitely seen. I've seen it in very stark terms, the schizophrenia. [00:06:00] That we have with crime. And I, uh, I'm a teacher by trade and my first job out of teaching school was teaching at a maximum security prison and we would have a movie day and we were watching, uh, you know, a standard, uh, Crime film, and they were all on the side of the police, and I think that that's something that in as probably America.

I don't know outside of America, but we can just focus on America. We're both want to be tough on crime, but we also don't want innocent people to get railroaded. How do we put those 2 ideas together? So the, the word you use schizophrenia, I would call more ambivalence and conflict and, you know, are kind of warring sentiments and, um, and also how we can be led to sympathize with the different.

Characters, you know, again, getting back to whose [00:07:00] perspective we're looking at. Um, I, I teach this issue. I was just in my class the other day discussing what we call the crime control model versus the due process model, which is get the bad guys at whatever cost. Or worry about the civil liberties of the defendants, even if that that means, you know, tying the hands of prosecutors and, you know, I think.

I think we have to look at these things, both, you know, an individual case by case basis, but also what I encourage my readers to do, or I hope they take away is look at the broader cultural context because, you know, right now our. Um, political, you know, right now we see these conflicts between politicians that are running on law and order and politicians that are running on, on racial justice.

And, um, the way we understand the individual issues are also being [00:08:00] framed in this broader issue. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think you're really getting to something there that. It's those two ideas, at least to me, don't have to be completely separate. You can be tough on crime, but also we have a system that's designed to be fair.

Why did you pick these in particular? In my, um, second chapter called the new true, I go over the criteria that I chose. Um, and I'm calling these a sub genre of the true crime genre. So one reason I chose them, most of them are highly popular, you know, so they're culturally relevant because a lot of people have listened to them or watched them, you know, I mean, particularly making a murderer where, you know, Barack Obama was asked to weigh in and pardon him.

And, you know, the response to serials unprecedented. I, like I said, I chose [00:09:00] cases where the outcome is left, um, questioned, you know, but I, I chose cases specifically where there was not an exoneration, you know, or a confession of, you know, the real killer. So you, so people have to decide from for themselves.

Um, I also chose. Uh, stories that were told over multiple episodes, um, for a few reasons. I think this is part of a new way that we watch stories and consume stories. For some reason, a lot of us have a lot of time to watch TV. I mean, making a murder is a total of 20 episodes, but people are really interested in all of the details.

And these, um, These documentaries and, you know, serialized podcasts are much more complex than like the two hour feature documentary of 20 years ago on the same subject, you know, which would be the thin blue line. We're [00:10:00] capturing the Friedman. Do you think that, uh. People as a generalist, the audience, did people look at these particular shows like Serial?

Do you think that, yeah, Serial or the other ones that you covered, do you think that they maybe focused more on that particular case? And did, do you feel that people took that, what you could learn from that and apply it more broadly to other cases where it, because those were very high profile cases, but I mean, it happens every day where people Can't afford a very particularly good lawyer or they have lawyer, it's public defenders who have a gazillion cases and, you know, have no particular time or sometimes even the skill to really crack a case or they have the, uh, When I, I was for a short time, I worked for the city of Philadelphia and for people who were just slightly not poor enough to qualify for a [00:11:00] public defender, we would give them a list of at that time, 500 lawyers and Uh, Again, they maybe weren't Clarence Darrow to put it, uh, kindly.

Do you think that, to, to make a long question short, that these pe that, um, the audience is focusing in on just this particular case, or are they able to analyze it to broader, more broad problems in the system? Well, um, unfortunately what, you know, I didn't do like a systematic empirical study, but I did spend a lot of time reviewing social media posts about these in great detail.

I have an entire chapter on, um, basically Redditor's response to these and unfortunately, I did find that most people champion. You know, or champion Stephen Avery and not as much discussion of the [00:12:00] more systemic problems in the criminal justice system, as I would have liked to have seen, because all of these do bring up the issue that you bring up of, you know, underfunded.

Defense attorneys and all of these, these cases benefit, like you said, they're high profile. So they benefited from the exposure that allowed them to have more resources put into their defense. But all of these series show problems with forensic forensic work. All of them show a lot of problems with policing and coerced confession.

There, there's abuses of prosecutorial problems and Brady violations and when you look at Redditor's response in some ways, they're very and I think most American viewers at this point are very sophisticated about their understanding of different aspects of criminal justice between all the crime news [00:13:00] and, you know, all the trials we've seen on TV and all the shows that we've watched.

You know, I think viewers are pretty well informed and they're on Reddit. There were, you know, very important discussions about these things like Brady violations or bad forensic work, but for the most part, I did not see them applied in a bigger way. You know, other than, you know, this must be this must mean, you know, Michael Peterson is guilty or this.

Oh, 1 thing I did. I going back to this idea of problematizing truth. 1 thing I did find is that a lot of people. Would say something to the effect of, you know, this person might be guilty. I'm not sure, but definitely the state did not prove their case. And to go back to what you were saying about due process or crime control, I think it's very interesting that a lot of people felt if the [00:14:00] state didn't prove their case in a murder conviction, that would.

You know, mean someone going away for life that, um, that takes precedence over. There's a good possibility they did it. It hasn't been proved by the government. Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network featuring great podcasts like Mark Vinette's History of North America podcast. Go over to ParthenonPodcast.

com to learn more. And now a quick word from our sponsors. Maybe we can take a quick discussion first because I think maybe a lot of people aren't aware with what is a Brady violation. Okay, uh, thank you for asking. A Brady violation is when the prosecutor fails to turn over evidence that could possibly help the defense.

So, in our system, and, and again, to go back to what you were saying about underfunded defense attorneys, the, the government [00:15:00] has a lot more resources to put into its case. And at the point in the trial, that's called discovery, like, after the prosecution gets an indictment, which the defense is not there for that.

That is just the prosecution going to a grand jury and showing the grand jury what they have. And getting an indictment. Um, at that point, there's what's called discovery and the state is supposed to show their hand. They're supposed to say, you know, this is what we have and they're also supposed to turn over things they uncovered that could legitimately help the defense.

And that's called a Brady violation, and that has happened in most of the cases in the series that I watched. And, um, and that points to, you know, sort of corrupt or dirty playing prosecutors and that it also points to the, um, you know, the. [00:16:00] The, the, the big power differential between the prosecutor's office and the defense.

Now, Arthur, generally speaking, I mean, this is hard to say, and like you said, it's, uh, it's more of a, uh, qualitative, uh, investigation than a quantitative one, would you say? I mean, to take it from, uh, to try and be a, a. Maybe a 10, 000 foot view. Do you think these Brady violations are purposeful in the most part, or are they just incompetence?

Are they overlooking, um, have, have you seen, and maybe if you take these case studies you looked at, did you get the sense that they were just blatantly, we're going to try and get it, get away with this? So, um, there's very, there's a lot of really good, good research that, um, this, this book is, is not just me watching these documentaries and, and saying what I think there's, there's a lot of research on, [00:17:00] on.

A lot of this, and there's a lot of, um, understanding of what happens in prosecutor's offices and the culture of the prosecutor's office. And most of what I've read. It does not appear. That overall, this is happening because a prosecutor wants to lock up someone they know didn't do it. Um, it, I feel comfortable saying for the most part, the, the law enforcement and the prosecutor's office has some good faith that the person they are prosecuting did it.

And again, to go back to the crime control model. We have to catch the bad guys regardless, but what happens is when we have, um, the larger culture and the political court culture. Organized around fear of crime, it gives the prosecutors and it gives law enforcement this excess of power to do that. Um, and [00:18:00] a feeling of righteousness.

Of doing that, and then they're in these series that I watched, um, and some of them do show like conscious malfeasance of, you know, real bad faith actors. Framing someone and I was thinking about this for your podcast because I know your listeners are interested in organized crime and in these series, the, the lens is pointed.

At the government, and if you haven't read it or seen it, the innocent man is very interesting is the only nonfiction work by John Grisham. Uh, about, you know, uh, some wrongful conviction cases in Ada, Oklahoma, and in telling this story, they paint a picture of organized crime involving the prosecutor's office and the sheriff's office, you know, [00:19:00] kind of being involved with the, the, the drug scene.

You know, and drug dealing in this small town. And again, this is what I think is really interesting about these series is they force us to reconsider who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Do you think that in a way that the, the true crime, especially true crime done well can be a check on prosecutors and the, the government?

So I think it, it could be in theory. But what you see, so these series, so the other, another reason I showed them is they, I chose these is they have different follow up episodes where you kind of see the consequences of the series on the case. So, you do get, um, prosecutors and law enforcement responding in some ways to what the documentarians did.

And in these cases, they're very defensive. And angry, they do not say, oh, yeah, you gave me something [00:20:00] to think about there. Um, what and and so I don't know how, you know, I don't I can't quite answer that question. I, I think it could have that effect. Oh, also. Um, I, I think the culture is changing towards criminal justice reform and towards a really critical look at all of these things.

And I was saying to someone, you know, Adnan Syed was released last year to great fanfare, and people attributed serial to that and Sarah Koenig's work, and she has not wanted to take credit for it. Um, 1 thing that happened in the time from when she made cereal in 2014 is the legal culture in Maryland change and they have conviction integrity units and they had, they changed their laws about juveniles convicted of life sentences or 20 getting 20 years or more sentences.

And so [00:21:00] that is part of. People in the system starting to take, starting to look critically at themselves and starting to be responsive to constituents who want, who want to be, who want them. To play more fair and look more critically at their power. So I think these series are part of that, but I also think these cultures of law enforcement and prosecute tort prosecutors offices are really entrenched.

You know, maybe it feeds into that, but we can take a step back or we can take a step back and discuss some of the problems with forensics because forensics and things like DNA were promised to be. This is science. This is incontrovertible. What are some of the problems that have come up with forensics?

So DNA is considered from what I know, it's considered still considered somewhat of the gold standard of. Scientific evaluation [00:22:00] of evidence and the, the DNA revolution in 19, in the late 80s, early 90s, when these tests became available in to the criminal justice system is, is the start of the, the modern innocence movement, because they were used to exonerate people who were on death row and that, you know, that's where the innocence movement, uh, the innocence project steps in.

And, you know, got a lot of publicity for saying, Hey, this DNA proves that person a could not have been the rapist. And this proves that this other person could have, um, and very few things have that degree of certainty. But what we see with the forensics in these shows is. Much more questionable and problematic, uh, scientific analysis.

There's a lot about the inaccuracy of hair analysis. [00:23:00] Um, you know, and if you watch, you know, shows like CSI, if you watch, you know, sort of television dramas, they put a lot of stake in things like hair analysis and blood spatter patterns. Um, and, you know, bite mark analysis has famously been disproven and has, you know, led to, you know.

Real miscarriages of justice, quite tragic ones. So in these series, we, we see those I less do we see any criticism of DNA does seem to be, you know, um, like I said, that gold standard. It, it does seem though that, uh, the, it's almost, the prosecutor has to get a conviction, you can't have a, a high profile murder and then just say, well, you know, we don't really know who did this and, you know, we don't want to just convict somebody to, you know, You know, or we want to convict somebody, and sometimes, like you said, for the most part, they genuinely think that it's that person, but do you think that within prosecution offices, [00:24:00] that there becomes a group think that, yeah, most of the evidence does point towards this person, and then it just, it takes on a life of its own?

Absolutely, this is called tunnel vision. What happens, what often happens, this is a generalization, but what often happens is early in the investigation, when, when they, you know, at the police stage at the detective stage, they start focusing on 1 suspect as the likely person and what that does is just psychologically, you know, this confirmation bias comes in and they don't, so Take seriously other possible leads and they, you know, just, you know, unconsciously, maybe discredit these other things and they have this real focus on what they've decided is the right thing.

And so things that point in that direction become over emphasized and other leads aren't followed. And in the, [00:25:00] and this is this is something we see play out in some of the series I talk about, you know, and then the same thing happens in the prosecutor's office. The prosecutor gets a case from the, you know, from the arrest and from the detectives who, you know, and they, and it expands from there.

You know, the confirmation bias and the tunnel vision and and then also the defensiveness around that. And then also what you said about convictions, like, you know, prosecutors careers are based on their record of convictions, not their record of, you know, due process respect of due process. It seems like such a big.

Issued a reform now because you have big city police departments have a lot of crime and a lot of, you know, investigations that come in. So they have a resource issue and then smaller departments. I mean, all the way down have issues of resources and them. And skill [00:26:00] level, the big cities have a lot more skill, in a way, because they're getting a lot more, they have more, uh, practice, you might say, where the smaller departments have less practice with, uh, with investigations of big crimes.

Is there a way to fix any of this, or to reform it in any way? I believe there is, and not to point attention away from my book, but a few years ago, Uh, the journalist, Emily Basil on wrote a kind of important book called charged that that looks at conviction, integrity units and prosecute prosecutor's offices and all of these issues, like, like I said, conviction, integrity units, um.

were responsible, at least in part, for Adnan Syed's release. There definitely are ways of reforming it part, but, but I think that one of the biggest obstacles is this sort of the, the culture of conviction, um, both convicting someone in the [00:27:00] criminal justice sense, but also being sure in your convictions of who, who is and isn't guilty.

What you said about these, um, outside of big cities, the skill level is actually something I, now that you're saying this, I think I didn't explore it enough other than a lot of these take place in rural areas with, um, with poor defendants, but also the, the law enforcement, you know, the law enforcement in a small town in Wisconsin is not the elite.

You know, it in the bigger landscape of the U. S. And that that is that is really interesting. The sort of, um, lower class dynamics. It's almost actually, I think I, I didn't explore it that much, but I think I talk about conspiracy low, because there is a way that some of these documentaries. The, um, the story of [00:28:00] malfeasance is related to these conspiracy movies that we also love, you know, the corporate conspiracy, political conspiracy parallax view kind of thing.

But the. The bad government actors are not those powerful elites. They're just like regular Joes.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. I saw an interesting, uh, discussion that in a way it's A lot of small towns, their police departments are dissolving because the small towns don't have the resources anymore to support a police department of even a couple of officers. And a lot of that power is, uh, evolving or devolving, I guess, going up to County sheriff departments that have a little bit more, uh, resources and a little bit more [00:29:00] institutional knowledge of these things.

And in some cases to state police departments. And I guess it always has that push and the pull of localism is in a lot of ways good. And then having a bigger picture is good. Do you see that that might help in these situations? Especially, you've talked about some of those, uh, like in that one in, um, I, I'm totally blanking on the name.

The one John Grisham did, uh, that it was a small town that was kind of corrupt. Yeah. So, um, one, I don't know if this directly answers your question, but. In terms of the smaller budgets of local law enforcement, um, something of important aspect of this issue is when people are exonerated. The state or the law enforcement officers are sued and Oh, restitution and the more this, the more DNA exonerations, the more critical focus [00:30:00] on convictions is leading to more of these exonerations that are becoming very expensive.

And I don't know if you saw making a murderer, but where it starts is that Steven Avery was. Um, exonerated in 2003 for a rape conviction earlier, um, and that, that sort of corrupt local Wisconsin police force. And there was a very expensive lawsuit where these officers were named and the argument is, is that then for the neck that the murder he was charged with, he was kind of framed by them.

And he had to, um, he had to plea a settlement rather than keep his case going so that he would have money to defend himself, um, against these new charges. So the cost of these exonerations is, is a heavy, heavy burden. And there's also, um, a series that came out, I believe last year [00:31:00] on max called mind over murder.

That really, um, I see you're nodding your head. It really looks at both the emotional and the financial costs on a very small community. Of, you know, having to pay for an exoneration. Well, that is really interesting that in a lot of ways that civil litigation can help move these things. But then so often, I mean, it's very difficult to sue a police officer civilly.

There's a huge bar to get overqualified immunity. And I. Think it's virtually impossible to sue a prosecutor for prosecutorial misconduct. I mean, that's an even higher bar. Is there a way that, because in a way they, you police and they need to be protected because they are kind of going out on a limb with these things, but also that's a lot of protection as well.

Right. So, um, uh, agreed that [00:32:00] prosecutorial immunity is a high bar. Police immunity is also a high bar. And there's also a real reason that you do want some kind of immunity so that we don't have, um, our police officers and our prosecutors being sued left, right and center to, to the point that they, they can't do anything, but, um, a lot of these cases can go forward and the government has, you know, a duty to To the community to to not do these abuses.

So, um, in terms of how some civil litigation has more teeth than others. I'm, you know, I'm not sure, but the, the Stephen Avery case in 2003 had had a lot of teeth. He had a very, very good case and. Yeah. Oh, also because part of what it is, it goes back to the, um, the tunnel vision in the Stephen Avery case, they turned away information about who turned out to [00:33:00] be the actual perpetrator and a similar thing happened in the case in the innocent man.

What do you think for some people for, um, if they wanted to ask your advice on how to make things this new true genre, what are some things that producers should really look for when they're doing cases like this? How should they design a program so that, you know, they can stay Be objective and do something that isn't sensational because a lot of true crime is very sensational.

Doing this study, what are some big picture ideas you came up with? Well, um, you know, these are all media products. You know, making Netflix. You know, the, these series have to be bought by, you know, these big entertainment. Companies that are not going to buy things that they don't think people will watch.

So that [00:34:00] is built into the batter. Um, I think what I already see happening and what I would suggest. Is find new ways of. Changing up the formula, you know, so there's a podcast called murder in alliance where the journalist Maggie Freeling kind of, you know, starts with this, you know, wrongful conviction innocence formula that we've seen, like, she, she and her investigators are going to go out and, you know.

Look at this case of this person who was convicted, you know, with the idea of wrong stuff happened here and we're going to exonerate them and it kind of ends with her and her investigator thinking they were played, you know, and this person might have done it. And I thought that was very interesting.

You know, like, this is another version of the story. There are 2 series. So 1 of the things. That is [00:35:00] happening here that we see is in all of these. It seems like the filmmakers and the podcasters have a better investigative tools and capacities than law enforcement did. So, this is an era of the citizen sleuth.

This is the era of an average person who is not a trained criminal justice professional going out and figuring things out, you know, taking it into their own hands. Um, and related to that are these recent series I've seen both on max, the burden of proof and, um, murder at Middle Beach, which are both, um, young filmmakers who there was a murder in their past, a murder in their family when they were children.

Sort of taking the camera, you know, along these lines and trying to solve the case, which involves trying to get their dads to commit, you know, confess to a crime on camera. Um, but so [00:36:00] these are, you know, these are new iterations of the true crime genre, you know. Um, solving a case or, um, criticizing the criminal justice system.

There's also something that has not gotten a lot of attention that I refer to in my book is I highly recommend people watch free meek on Amazon prime, which looks at a case. It plays with what we mean by innocent because it looks at a case of someone who did commit crime, but who gets so caught up in these oppressive practices that have to do with with probation that get this fellow this, you know, sort of successful rap artist more and more entrenched in the system.

So, how do we, what is our system doing to people that are guilty? That is that is beyond fairness, you know, that that victimizes the guilty people in a way that we don't want our criminal justice system doing, what do you think about the democratization [00:37:00] of media where people can have an independent podcast?

There's YouTube and the other services that are full of basically. Just a, a guy with a camera, and in a lot of ways they're exposing a lot of things that are happening with the, the government and with the police. Do you, what are some of the pros of that, but what do you see as some of the cons of the, that they're not on YouTube and places like that?

They're not, they don't have the big budget and they're not on the big. Streaming services, so they have more freedom to make some different choices, but then again, they have less checks on them as well, right? And I think the less the less checks and not being bedded. Is what the potential problem is there because they can make claims that a journalist can't they can make claims that [00:38:00] a prosecutor can't that, you know, they can say whatever they they want.

If I went out and took a camera and started. Trying to unearth, you know, the big mystery of the stolen bagel, you know, at my deli, I have, I can do a lot of things that an investigator can't I'm not bound by 4th amendment protections. You know, I can go through someone's garbage. You know, I can go into someone's house without them without a warrant.

Um, so there, there are problems inherent in that. I do think it's also exciting. Um, and I, I think that's what the draw is like with with cereal. After I don't remember a couple of episodes of cereal, someone from high school. Called up and I was like, I saw him that day. I was the girl he talked to a witness came forward, you know, other people came up with evidence.

The appeals attorney. This case was covered in the HBO film. [00:39:00] The case against admin by Amy Berg, the appeals attorney said this was the 1st crowd source investigation. I had, you know, he had the benefit of 1000 thousands of people going out and trying to solve this case. And so I, I think that stuff is exciting personally, but, you know, we definitely have to be.

Careful of it. And we also have to be careful of using that things to criticize law enforcement or, you know, criticize journalists because because they do have rules and regulations that are important for them to follow. It's made me think a lot too about, um. Like citizen journalism where something happens and the person, yeah, it's great if they can get a thousand people to call the police department to, to complain.

But that to me, you get, you get all sorts who will call and they, you know, they might not always be the most professional in manner. It [00:40:00] almost seems like you can, you're almost encouraging law enforcement to build a bunker mentality that, you know, anything we do, we're going to get a thousand people calling our office when we normally get two people calling in a day.

I think it's good. It's bad. Are we just kind of back? You know, we always wind up in the same place with these new technologies and we're always just trying to figure out how to move forward with them. I, I don't know. I see I see the ways that it is that it is bad and dangerous. And certainly, you know, we don't want police departments glutted with so many false leads and people thinking they've solved the crime that they that they can't do their job.

Um, but I also think people, I think it's exciting that people feel they can go out there and they can contribute and they can find something, find something out and. But yeah, it [00:41:00] does bring up those problems a lot, and it does make, um, law enforcement and people trying to do their jobs very defensive, it does create that bunker mentality, it might be exacerbating the us versus them blue wall that is part of the problem.

I think that people if people are really interested in true crime and innocence and how how our system can be. Uh, reformed and look just even if you're not interested in those things, you should be because they're that they really are the topic of the day. I definitely highly suggest people go read your book, The New True Crime by Professor Diana Ricard.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I wonder if, um. Is there a series you're watching right now that you didn't mention in the book? And you've mentioned a few, but is there one that you would suggest that people, as soon as they're done listening to this, go and watch [00:42:00] right now or listen to right now? Well, um, this is, this is not a series.

This is a book that just came out that is getting a lot of press and interest. I have not read it yet, but A Threat of Violence by Mark O'Connell. Revisits a case in Ireland, that, that sounds very interesting. Um, I'm not watching a series now other than the, the two that I mentioned, but I will say I saw a very funny movie called Vengeance with B.

1. Novak, which kind of mocks the idea of an elite. Urban, you know, latte drinking podcaster going to a poor rural community and solving a crime and, you know, it kind of takes the things that we're talking about to the next level and popular culture where it's, it's become actually a cliche. Um, but I look forward to the next true crime, wrongful [00:43:00] conviction, documentary, and fortunately, people are always recommending things to me now because of this book.

So, um. I'll get back to you with the list. Yeah, you'll have a lot of watching to do, I'm sure. Well, I want to thank you so much for coming on and discussing your book and discussing these really important issues of crime and law enforcement. It's a fascinating topic. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

I really enjoyed this discussion.

You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, a history and crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today, find links to social media, and how to support the show, go to our website, A to Z History Page dot com. Become a friend of ours by sending us an email to crime at A to Z History Page dot com.

All of this and more can be found in the show notes. We'll see you [00:44:00] next time on Organized Crime and Punishment. Forget about it.

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Original Publication Date: 9/20/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/ryW2CowG6ow

Description: Join Mustache Chris and Steve are joined today by veteran police officer and crime fiction author Frank (https://www.frankzafiro.com) to play the game: Mafia Hitman or Serial Killer. You can play at home and see if you can beat us! Send us your score and thoughts on the fuzzy line between two different kinds of mass murders.

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[00:00:00] Welcome back to a really special episode of Organized Crime and Punishment. This episode, we are going to wrap up Season 1 of Organized Crime and Punishment, where we really talked a lot about the murder involved with the Mafia. And the way we're going to wrap it up is with a little... We're going to play the in show style of Serial Killer or Mafia Member.

So we're joined by our crew member, Frank Scalise. I believe this is, we've recorded other episodes with Frank, but this is the first time you're actually meeting Frank. It's kind of weird the way that lined up. But this is our first introduction to Frank, you're going to learn a lot more about Frank in future series.

We are also joined by none other than our very own Mustache Chris. And Mustache Chris is going to take the hosting duties today, and he is going to be our host in our game show [00:01:00] of Mafia Member or Serial Killer. Yeah, we, we'd been, we thought about coming, we came up with this idea and we thought it'd be a little bit fun and then, uh, we got in touch with Frank and figured, you know, this would be a good episode to have Frank come on for, and this is one of those tougher questions when it comes to the mob, but I suppose, but I suppose crime in general, like the difference between, say, a mafia hitman and a serial killer can become pretty blurry.

Like, Many mob hitmen, uh, have a much higher body count than most serial killers, like, um, you know, mob hitmen also, like, are notorious for, like, cutting up the bodies after the fact to help. You know, with the help, uh, have them not get caught, obviously, right? You know, throwing the body parts in dumps and stuff like that.

Uh, but, uh, the truth of the matter is, uh, many of the mob hitmen, they enjoyed killing people. And some of them... Some of them it comes across like they just kind of saw it as a [00:02:00] job like, uh, you know, if you look at the likes of, say, Harry Strauss or Roy DeMaio, we were looking at, you know, body counts that go high above even the Green River Killer, who I believe still in American history is, has the highest, uh, body count.

You know, the typical argument that I, uh, find is people say, like, well, serial killers enjoy, like, sadistically killing their victims, whereas mob hitmen tend to just get the job done as quickly as possible. And I think, for the most part, that generalization is, uh, Is correct, but there there's examples where it doesn't entirely fit.

What do you guys think? Well, uh, this is Frank here, uh, saying hello to your audience for the 1st time. We'll chat some more in future episodes. And, uh, but for this 1, I, I think I would say that the difference between a serial killer and a mob hitman. Is a matter of compulsion. I think that most [00:03:00] people that and let me back up a step.

I think you could clearly label a mob hit man as a serial killer by the letter of the definition. I mean, they meet the criteria, but I think in popular parlance when we say serial killer. We're not talking about a mob hit man, you know, and so the difference to me is that compulsion, a serial killer kills from a very deep place that they're compelled to do so for sadistic and psychological, uh, reasons that are pretty terrible.

Um, and while I guess some hit hit men might enjoy their work, I think it's a job 1st and a hobby 2nd and it's, it's not that way for serial killer at all. And I should mention, uh, even though we will more properly introduce Frank in future episodes, Frank's not just shooting from the hip here, Frank was a 20 year career police officer and a crime fiction writer, so he definitely [00:04:00] comes to this with some cred.

Although I was never a homicide investigator, so I might just be full of crap, but I have to, I have to agree with frank on this is that I think it comes from a different place. Like you said, there's probably mafia hit man and people in that who enjoy. Killing, but it's not there. The killing for enjoyment, I think, comes secondary to the business aspect.

I mean, there's I had never I haven't seen many studies of this, but there are people who were in the military who kind of blurred the line. And I think in any business where killing is a part of the, uh, Is basically a job requirement. You're going to draw in some people who might not be there for the best of intentions, but it still is the secondary aspect of it.

Yeah, I also think, like, if you look at some examples of serial killers, they tend [00:05:00] to, like, inflict, like, extreme sadistic pain on their victims, or do, you know, entirely weird things with the bodies afterwards, or, like you say, you look at somebody like Jeffrey Dahmer, and Dahmer, his whole M. O. was, I wanted to get the killing is over.

As quickly as possible. He didn't like that part of it, but he would make works of art with the bodies. He would, uh, you know, eat them, right? And from all, from all I've read about the mob, I haven't come across a hitman that did. Stuff like that. But then we consider, say, somebody like David Berkowitz is considered a serial killer.

And what did he do? He just simply just walked up to people in cars or on the streets and shot them. And that's, you know, that's all he did. Um, But as serial killer go, serial killers go, he's kind of a little bit of an oddball. I mean, not all serial killers, um, for sure, but a lot of them have a sexual component to, to their killing, even if they're not.

Doing those acts, there's a [00:06:00] psychosexual component there. Um, yeah, kind of melded with the whole power dynamic and everything else. And so, you know, I, I, I, I hear the expert on the mob stuff, but I don't know if there's too many mob guys that even if they're enjoying the power of being a killer and taking a life, I don't know that they're getting a sexual thrill or satisfaction out of it.

Not, not too many. Like there, there's, We just finished a series on Murder, Inc., and one of the guys was, uh, he enjoyed it. I mean, there's no way to sugarcoat it. He was a sexual predator, right? And he enjoyed it, uh, um, I'm trying to think of, um, oh, his name is escaping me right now, but Pauly from, um, the movie Goodfellas, the actual character, Paul Vario, he was, uh, I believe he was convicted of rape twice, um, so he, there was no component there, but it's not something that, uh, I've come across a ton of, but there are examples of, uh, um, there are a few examples of, of it.

So, uh, are [00:07:00] you gonna, are, would you be willing to say that it's more of the outlier than the, the rule? Yeah, I would say, like, generally, like, the, the, I would say the rule is, like, as Frank pointed out, serial killers kind of have a compulsion, um, I would say serial killers enjoy inflicting, like, kind of a sadistic pain on their, uh, victims, and, or doing weird things after the fact with the body, um, And there's a sexual component to it all, right?

That goes kind of, well, I mean, it's a dominance factor, obviously, right? But, uh, um, I believe it goes a little bit further than that, uh, but there are, I would say that's generally the rule, uh, the difference between, say, a hitman and, and, um, Like a serial killer, but there's there's examples outliers, uh, like David Berkowitz is an example of this.

I mean, you look at somebody like Rory DeMeo and depending on who you're talking to, this guy probably maybe killed up towards [00:08:00] 150 people. Now, he was doing it strictly as business, like you could say, but he was definitely enjoying what he was doing. Um, but yeah, but there's always kind of exceptions to the rules.

And I, I mean, I, that's where I kind of find it. A little bit of a fascinating subject because, uh, it's those exceptions that makes you pause and think and go, you know, I mean, could we like, it's weird that we don't consider Roy DeMeo is the say the highest have the highest body count and, you know, for killing and in the United States, but we consider the Green River killer.

I mean, I don't know. It's interesting to think about to me. I mean, yeah, he was killing other criminals. He wasn't. Yeah. Killing prostitutes and defenseless women, but I mean, he was still killing people to me. It really boils down to the job aspect of it. And obviously I disagree with the, that it's a criminal job and it's bad, but it was still a job function for him.

And he [00:09:00] did get enjoyment out of his work. But DeMeo. He all, uh, towards the end, he seemed psychologically damaged by his lifestyle, where I think most of the serial killers, and I'm no expert in that by any stretch of the imagination, but any of the serial killers that I've seen are not psychologically damaged by the things that they've done.

They're almost proud of it when they get busted. Yeah. If anything, it's, it's fulfilling something that they need to fulfill or they feel like they need to fulfill. It's almost the opposite. I'm in the green river killer when he got, um, when he got caught, he was like chumming it up with the police. Like he was, you know, like they were finally on the same team or something.

Like he had no idea. And, uh, uh, Dennis Raider, the, the btk killer, he was kind of the same way. Like he just didn't. Well, it was like all the games up now. Yeah. And then there's like [00:10:00] even a, even another example as a curve ball, you know, you look at somebody like the Zodiac killer, you know, they never found out who it was, but he's like a mixture where like, he would like, I don't know, he would like tie people up and like make them wait for a while.

And then like, there's other times you just, you just straight up shot people. And it's like, I don't know what's going on there. That one's always kind of perplexed me. I'm, I, I'm not entirely convinced it was one guy that did all of that, but yeah. I think it might've been a couple of different people that use like the Zodiac thing, uh, to make the police think that maybe it was one guy doing it all, but I don't, I'm not a police officer.

I didn't investigate the case, but, um, I just use that as an example. I was doing some research, uh, quite recently for, uh, one of the books I'm working on now, and I was curious, like how many serial killers are solo and how many. You know, how many partner up and as best I could find with, uh, the assistance of detective Google, um, it's [00:11:00] about 10% of serial killers are multiples are couples usually.

And they're, uh, more often romantic couples than not, but not always. So 90% of serial killers are lone wolves. This is what it comes down to there. Yeah, which in the case of Mob Hitman, they're not doing it by themselves, they're using, I mean, it's usually one person doing the hit, but it's usually multiple people in terms of disposing the body and, um, even setting up the hit.

And that probably is a psychological way to boost up each other's confidence to do something that's really unnatural, you know, for most people, is to kill another human being. Why? I mean, it's perverse, uh, way of looking at masculinity that's in the mob, right? Then they call it making your bones, right?

But like, you know, you got to be a real man, you know, kill somebody and not care about it. Um, and in a lot of ways, it's kind of how cults work, right? Like they, they break you down, right? And then they screw up your [00:12:00] sense of morality. And instill their own sense of morality. I mean, my saying that the mob is a cult, but in terms of like alternative societies and, um, say, I don't know, use an example like the Freemasons, right?

Uh, secret societies. This is kind of what they do to people. It's kind of necessary to really join it. All right, with this prelude, uh, why don't we jump into the, your first scenario, Chris, where you explain a situation and then Frank and I are going to try and decide whether it is a serial killer or a member of the mafia, and we will be keeping score.

You didn't tell me we were keeping score. We have a man that, uh, that is hanged on a meat hook by his feet. And then how does his face wrapped and, uh. Uh, wrappings that have been, uh, smeared in gonorrhea [00:13:00] discharge causing him to go blind. If you had to guess, was this the, uh, mob job or was this done by a serial killer?

Now Steve, you want to alternate who goes first so that we keep it fair? I'll let you go first, Frank, because I remember this one. Oh, you do? This one really stuck with me, so. Uh, this sounds very vengeful, and it sounds like something somebody would do to make a point. Like, maybe they saw something they shouldn't see, or, or something.

Uh, it sounds to me like a, a mob hit. And not the work of a serial killer. I'm gonna go with serial killer. I'll give, uh, Frank a head start on this one. This is actually, it was, this was done by Dutch Schultz and, uh, and his, uh, his partner. Uh, quite early in his career. Uh, so I guess I'll go on to question 2.

Oh, wait, did you, did you, did you actually know that one? And did you, did you throw that round? I [00:14:00] threw that one for you. Oh, that's bull, man. No, I'm amending the score. Alright, we'll call this one a wash. Score's 1 to 1. I don't want any handicaps if I win. If I win, I want it to mean something. If I lose, I want it to be real.

Even though we're from all over North America, once, um, one of us lands in one of our areas, we'll owe each other one a beverage of their choice. That sounds like a fair bet to me. Steve here again. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like Josh Cohen's Eyewitness History and many other great shows.

Go to Parthenon Podcast to learn more. And now, here is a quick word from our sponsors.

Alright, so question two. Uh, when asked what happened to the body after [00:15:00] it was shot, this person in a deadpan fashion simply replied, I cut his heart out. If you had to take a guess, was this a reply from a serial killer or a mob member? I'm up first for this one. I, um, I'm gonna say, that sounds very Mafia like to me.

I'm gonna cut out your hearts. Unless, yeah, I'm going with Mafia. Yeah, I have to agree that that's, that's, uh, that sounds like a cold, hard hit man and who, uh, is, is taking care of business for the cop. Oh, it was actually, yes, it was, uh, it was Dutch souls again. He, uh, he shot his, uh, former bodyguard and, uh, his lawyer saw him do it.

And the lawyer actually later saw that the body was, it was somewhere on the side of the road or in the newspaper was saying that the heart had been ripped out and he goes to Dutch. Yeah. What's, what's going on here? Like, I, I saw you shot him, kill him, but what's with the heart? And he's just like, Oh, I ripped his heart out.

Don't worry [00:16:00] about it. I cut out his heart. Forget about it. Dutch really did walk the line. Yeah, I really, he really did. Like he's, yeah, he's. Crazy. On to question three. Here we have a man that was kidnapped and then tortured for hours, being sodomized, cut up, and then was ritualistically killed in a human sacrifice.

If you had to guess, was this done by a serial killer, or... The mob. Well, unless this was the familiar satanist or something, you know, I, it doesn't sound very mob. Like to me, this sounds like a, like a, uh, serial killer and, and, uh, maybe a devil worshiper and a little satanic panic coming true here. So I'm going to go with serial killer on this one.

Yeah, I think I have to go with Serial Killer, the same one. That's, uh, very, very bizarre. And I could see maybe Arthur Flangenheimer might go, he'd go [00:17:00] maybe 80%, but I don't think he'd go full 100% of that scenario. Well, I gotta break it to you guys. You guys are both wrong. This is actually done by Adolfo Constanzo and he was famous for running a drug cartel in Mexico.

That also was a cult that ritualistically sacrificed, uh, their victims and the guy that he killed was, uh, was, uh, Mark Kilroy. He was an American. And this is eventually kind of what brought this, uh. This drug cartel down. Um, kind of reminds me a little bit, I don't know if you guys have seen the movie Predator 2.

Yeah, it kind of reminds me a little bit, like this, this Mexican drug cartel that was also like a human sacrificing devil worshipping cult is uh, I'm, I'll be completely honest with you. I'm surprised more people don't know about it just because it's such a crazy story. I mean, there's a movie about it too, and I [00:18:00] haven't watched the movie.

Maybe I'll watch it tonight. Um, yeah. Is the movie Sicario? Is that what you're talking about? No, it's, uh, uh, yeah, it's a Sicario. I watched some mass murder going on in that movie. Yeah. Um, yeah, and then they, uh, yeah, they killed like a, a, a number, like a fair amount of people in this fashion. And it kind of reminds me of, uh, that, that movie Predator Two, uh, with the, the Jamaican Voodoo Gang, that's, I don't know, they're like ripping people's hearts out and stuff like that.

I don't know if you guys seen The Predator two of Danny Glover. Yeah. Um mm-hmm. . That's kind of what reminds me of a little bit. When was that approximately then that murder, and when did they operate? 1989 was when they, uh, they killed Mark Kilroy. And this is the one that was the murder. That was the that was the thing is they went after Americans and that's pretty much like as soon as they found the [00:19:00] body and stuff like that.

And they found out what was going on there. The Americans are like, okay, well, we got to take care of this. If they had maybe just stuck to other Mexicans, they who knows how long. They would have been around for. I mean, it's crazy to think, like, these guys were bringing in, like, crazy amounts of money running a cartel.

They had tons of weapons. They're all high on blow. And they're devil worshippers. You know, it's almost like they're channeling the old Aztec spirit or something like that. Like, the old Aztecs, like, ripping arts out and stuff. There was a video game, um, it wasn't Call of Duty, it was Ghost Recon, in Ecuador, that was about a, uh, fictionalized, uh, cartel gang that had like a, a worship of, it was a, like, Catholic worship, but with like, um, Wildlands, which is the game.

Pardon? Wildlands is why it's such a good game, and it's loosely based on a Mexican gang, and I think they just that gang that it was [00:20:00] loosely based in just had like a really nasty hit in Mexico within a couple of months of our recording, maybe even a couple of weeks. So that kind of stuff is still going on.

Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, it's, um, I just thought that would be because it sounds totally like something that, you know, serial killers were doing, but it was actually a drug cartel that was doing it. I mean, and it shows you kind of like the blurry lines were like 100%. I would consider this guy a serial killer, but I mean, he was running a drug cartel.

He was also running a call. It's just one of those outliers that kind of blurs the lines. Uh, yeah. Between, uh, what we were talking about earlier. Yeah, because it doesn't sound like the purpose of what they were doing had anything to do with their mob activity. So, um, I'm going to ask the judges to reconsider if we were actually wrong or not.

I, yeah, I don't, I, to [00:21:00] me, you call them either one, right? I mean, you know, they're running the cartel to help fund the, the, uh, devil worshiping cults, you know, it's, uh, You know, I don't know, it's, it's crazy to me, like, people are so dismissive of stuff like the, just a little bit of a tangent, like, some of the stuff that, like, gets talked about, like, during the satanic panic, and then you, you know, you start digging into it a little bit, and you start realizing, it's like, well, I don't know, I mean, some people are acting crazy, but, like, a lot of the stuff, I don't know if they were acting totally crazy, you know, this would be something that, I think people would just dismiss out of hand if I had to say told somebody at work, I'm like, Oh yeah, did you know about this like devil worshiping drug cartel that was like ritualistically sacrificing human beings?

It would have been like, Oh yeah, Chris, you're just, you're just pulling her leg. You're screwing around. You know, like that, that didn't happen. It's like, no, it did. And it probably is still going on now. I'm sure there's weird, like, secret societies in some of these cartels, they're so big, you know, it's very [00:22:00] difficult to probably, uh, you know, keep an eye on everything that's going on in them.

I'd say give us a half a point for that one, 2. 5 to 2. 5. Yeah, I guess. Pays to complain. So, yeah, number four. Uh, here we have a man that was very meticulous about how he went about his work. This man carried a special toolkit around with him at all times that he would, uh, that would help him, uh, dismember bodies.

He would make sure that each body part was either wrapped in plastic or were put in suitcases and buried deep enough so that dogs couldn't find them. This person had one weakness though, and that's, and that was he enjoyed, uh, keeping personal items of the victims that he killed. Was this a mob guy or was this a serial killer?

Who's up for this one first? You got, you got evens. Okay. Um, you know, I think for me keeping the personal mementos, like everything, I [00:23:00] think any one of those things, or maybe like two or three of them could have been, Oh, that's a mafia guy. But I think the totality of that I'm going with serial killer. I should make a great point there, Steve.

Um, you know, carrying the tool around sounds like a professional mob guy. That's just, you know, ready to rock and roll as soon as he needs to the meticulous nature of how he dismembered and stored the bodies and buried him. So they wouldn't be discovered, which is a little bit interesting because while serial killers tend to be really careful.

Sometimes they get sloppy on purpose, like, I mean, they want people to know these people got killed and not know who did it. That's part of the power rush. So he's trying to avoid being, you know, being discovered, but that that keepsake thing, that is a hallmark of serial killers. So you are bang on there.

So for the purposes of, uh, Breaking the tie one way or the other here, I am going to go with, uh, the mobster. Well, Frank, you're [00:24:00] right. Oh ho ho! It's, uh, Tommy Karate, who's a famous Bonanno, uh, hitman. He's also got the nickname Tommy Karate because he was really good at karate, too, and he studied in, uh, Japan and the whole deal, and he was really physically fit.

Um, yeah. But he would keep personal items of the people that he killed, uh, which... That's totally a serial killer thing. He really enjoyed what he did, right? Um, I don't know, you know, was he, to me, that sounds like a serial killer. I mean, he was getting paid to do it. Um, but it's one of those examples where it's just like, oh, so was he a hitman or was he, you know, was he just a serial killer that was getting paid?

I think the only thing that would make the difference in my mind in this situation here is, was he choosing his victims or are they being assigned to him? If they're being assigned to him, he's a serial killer. If he's just seeking him out, then obviously, or I'm sorry, if they're being assigned to him, he's a mobster.

And then if he's [00:25:00] picking him himself, then that's a hobby, which makes him a serial killer. Um, that, that personal item thing though, that's a, yeah. That's, uh, uh, honestly, if I had gone first, I would have said, I would have said the same thing. Steve did. Yeah, that really is. I mean, that's, I guess that maybe if, did they, did you in your research, did you ever see a motivation for that?

What was that? A, a thing to almost like. A trophy because I could see almost with the mafia person like wanting to keep a trophy of pride, but not in a in a sick way. I mean, that's sick no matter what, how you dice it. But it is a little different that he thought of himself. I mean, I'm really stretching here, but as a hunter, almost the.

Well, I mean, I guess he could show people after the fact, it's like, yo, you remember, uh, you know, remember Tommy DeSimone or what have you, you know, you know, that necklace that he used to carry around with him on all the times and go look in that drawer right there, you know, I have [00:26:00] it, I'm, I'm sure he probably did that enough times, you know, he's the one who whacked Tommy DeSimone, no, I just used him as an example, I just used him as an example, it's like the first Italian name that came to my head, um, Um, but I'm sure he did that, you know, I mean, he killed a lot of people, he, he probably kept mementos for the same reason that a serial killer does.

And it's a, it's a matter of having something physical to connect to the event to relive the fantasy and, and. You know, there's no reason he couldn't have been doing it for the same reason, uh, he, you know, what he was reliving might be a little different, but, uh, it sounds, sounds like it was the same purpose that those mementos were fulfilling.

Boy, though, you couldn't, I would be hard pressed to believe that somebody like that didn't go and find people to kill outside of contracts. Yeah. Little side, little side hobby, maybe. Yeah. Trying to find his, uh, his total body count. Yeah, see I'm reading [00:27:00] here and it's um, they're saying as many as 60, you know, so obviously a lot of them were assigned, but some of them he was probably just did him on, did, did his own, right?

Uh, I mean, what was the Green River Killer at? I mean, that's just him, Green River. What was he at, about 200? I 100? That sounds, that sounds right to me. There was some, when you get that high in a body count, there's always some, was this really by that person or wasn't it sort of discussion that starts taking place with some victims, you know, um, but he may have, he may have verified all of them.

I don't recall. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean he did them right. He might have just decided to inflate his own body count. Yeah, so the Green River Killer, he was actually convicted of 49. Right, those were the slam dunk cases they had, yeah. And he confessed and is suspected of 71 to 90. So let's just say [00:28:00] 80, right?

Uh, Tommy Karate killed 60. And he was killing guys that were, you know, legitimate tough guys, like other criminals. You know, he wasn't just picking on women. It's um, you know, it's fascinating. Um, 60 plus though, that's one of the highest in, in the history of the mob. It has to be. I mean, uh, Roy DeMille killed more.

Harry Strauss killed more. I mean, Richard Kavinsky, whether you believe him or not, he obviously killed a lot of people himself. Um, you know, and you keep personal items of these people. I mean, I don't know. He's a serial killer. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's going on my, that's going on my point list.

All right. So next question. Okay, I think so. Frank pulled ahead. Frank is at 3. 5 and I'm at 2. 5. This, I think this one will be a little bit easier. Here we have a man that would abduct younger women, where he would take them to his home and rape them. He would later release them in the wild, where he would hunt [00:29:00] them like wild animals, either shooting them or stabbing them.

Was this a mob guy or a serial killer? How could this be a mob guy? This has got to be a serial killer. If this is a mob guy, then he's got a whole lot of, uh, flexibility from his boss and how he does his job. I, I mean, I have to go with serial killer too. Yeah, it is, uh, it's, uh, Robert, uh, Robert Hanson, who was, uh, the famous, uh, serial killer in Alaska, and that would, uh, I mean, I think there's been a couple of movies that kind of loosely based on him, but, uh, yeah, he was famous for, like, literally hunting his victims, like wild animals in the middle of Alaska, and then sometimes he'd just leave the bodies there, and then, you know, animals would come and, you know, take care of it.

You know, the, uh, HBO show, True Detective, that. Uh, has a 4th season coming out with, uh. Jody Foster in the lead role. It's called night country and it's set up in Alaska. And this is, this is the kind of serial [00:30:00] killer that would be perfect for that kind of a show, you know, doing that kind of stuff. I don't know the plot.

I have only seen a very vague preview of it, like a little teaser, 15 second preview or whatever, but it'd be kind of funny if this was actually the kind of the basis for their bad guy in season four. Yeah, a little like, sorry, just a little tangent. I was going to say, like, uh, you're talking about True Detectives, like the first season's the best.

The second season was, uh, so so. I actually quite enjoyed the third season. A lot, actually. Most people figure it's one, one, three, two is their order of preference for the most part. And the, the third season reminds me a lot of, um, the Franklin credit union scandal, which is, uh, I mean, I don't know. Maybe one day we can go down that road because that was organized crime and punishment or lack thereof punishment.

And it's a, it's a, it's a really, um, big conspiracy, but sorry, what were you saying, Steve? Alaska is such a like [00:31:00] perfect setting for some for a serial killer. The backwoods, the creepiness of either being all day or all night. I mean, you couldn't imagine the chances of finding if you're in the backwoods or probably anywhere between.

Uh, any, anything other than like two cities, there's never gonna be a cop to help you or anything. I mean, I couldn't imagine. I mean, that's why like some of the creepiest ones have happened in places like Russia. Because it's just open season. Oh yeah, for sure, you know, like, I mean, there's so many, there's so few people there, this guy could just release women that he had just raped in the wild and have them go run and scream and literally no one's gonna hear them.

That's how isolated much of Alaska is from everything else. It's, uh, yeah, it's a perfect setting for, you know, like a sick cycle like that. Definitely sick. I mean, just on so many levels. You know, so I guess, uh... We'll go on to [00:32:00] question six. This one, I think that maybe this one you guys might have a little difficulty with.

While awaiting his death sentence, uh, by hanging, this person said this as their final words. Hurry it up, you, uh, Hoosier bat. How do you pronounce that? Hoosier? Hoosier. Hoosier? Hoosier. Is that like an American thing, or? Hoosier. It's in Indiana. It's, uh, Indiana, right? Yeah. For the basketball. Yeah. It's the, it's the, it's like, uh, like it's a type of person from the early settlers days, I think, isn't it?

Uh, when, when they first started settling Indiana, they became known as Hoosiers and then became the. Motto for the sports teams. Laters. I should probably Google that so that I don't sound like an idiot. It's actually a flower or something. Yeah. I think that sounds a legitimate. I told you while waiting, uh, his death sentence by hanging.

This person said as their last final [00:33:00] words. Um, yes, hurry it up. You, uh, who's your bastard. I could kill a dozen men while you're, while you're screwing around one. Was this a mob guy's last words or was this a serial killer's last words? And so this one's on me. Oh man, I am going to say serial killer just because not a ton of mafia guys got the, the death penalty that I've read.

At least, I mean, some did and. I, I never heard of a, that seems like a major one that would come out of Indiana. So I am going to go serial killer for this one. And what, what do you think, Frank? Yeah, I'm mulling around whether I want to go opposites again and risk letting Steven catch up here. Uh, do you risk letting him catch up or do you pull into the lead by two?

Um. You know, the, what he said there sounds very much like something a mobster would say, you know, I [00:34:00] mean, uh, but yeah, I'm going to chicken out. I think it's a serial killer as well. Well, you're both right. Uh, this was, uh, Carl Panzer Rams, uh, last words and Carl Panzer Rams, like one of the early, uh, American serial killers, but he's also another guy that kind of blurs the line a little bit.

Cause he was also like a criminal. So, like, he would rob people, and he had, like, all different types of little scams, but, um, he also, like, killed a lot of people, and he was, like, tough as nails. He actually wrote a book, um, which is a very interesting read, because for a guy that was not... Very well educated, he's actually a pretty good writer, he has this like, uh, it's very, kind of, really kind of perfectly exemplifies like somebody who basically took like a nihilistic worldview and just basically took it to its logical conclusion, really, um, it's a very, uh, blunt way of writing, but it, It's it's actually really [00:35:00] effective.

I've read it. Um, and yeah, he's, uh, he's pretty fascinating guy. Like I said, he's kind of a criminal, but he's also a serial killer. He claims that he was in Africa for a bit. He was, uh. He was a homosexual, even though I'm pretty sure he denied that he was a homosexual, but he almost exclusively just had sex with men, um, or, or sodomize them as he said it, because that's basically what he was doing was raping men, uh, and killing them afterwards sometimes, but not all the time, um, or one point, I think he had this crazy idea that he was, he was so pissed off at this one town, uh, they'd screwed him over somehow, and he was just going to poison their entire, uh, Water reservoir and just kill them all and they never, they never actually happened, but he talked about doing it.

Uh, he actually robbed, uh. It was, uh, President Taft's house at one point and stole a revolver from it. I don't know, for the audience, just [00:36:00] look this guy up. It's, he's got a really crazy story and, like, he's probably got, like, probably the best last words out of all the... serial killers. I mean, you know, not to make Casey sound cool or anything, but like Casey said, kiss my ass, which, I mean, I got to give it to him.

He just straight up just said, kiss my ass. So, um, a lot of these guys, like, I don't know, like their last moments, they'd be like, go like, I don't know, like either they don't say anything or, you know, express kind of some kind of regret, or I don't know. You know, Panzer I was like, you know what? Just kill me.

Like, I'm just gonna keep on doing this. And like, Casey's just like, you know, like, screw you guys. There's a certain degree you can kind of respect that, um, in a perverse kind of way. I mean, they're just people with no remorse, no regret, no human decency. I think that that's, it's an interesting, uh, uh, word.

It's an interesting way, uh, thing to look at is these people who are [00:37:00] just totally remorseless and The different areas, some of them do, uh, go to full blown organized crime and they sort of find a legitimate, be illegal, but more legitimate outlet to these feelings and then other people find one that's just totally, uh, totally off the wall and anti social.

I guess anti social is maybe the word? Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, I think a lot of these mob guys, uh, Have extremely anti social personality disorders. Not all of them, but I think a lot of them do. I think that's how you kind of end up finding yourself in a situation where you're, you know, joining a secret society that, you know, commits crimes and views down on the rest of everyone.

Not part of your little clique, right? Clear sign that that guy's antisocial is to give, is that given everything he did, all the terrible things that he did to people, all the pain he inflected, how awful a person he was. He somehow thought calling somebody from [00:38:00] Indiana, who's your bastard was, was, was an insult.

That's the lame. I'm going to, I'm going to put him in the lame category when it comes to final last words, but So it's like a fascinating life in a, you know, in a car wreck. What did I leave out on this? That there were people there at the time they were protesting, they were against the death penalty.

And Karl Panzer apparently was like yelling at these people being like, like, what's the matter with you? It's like, I want to die. Like, I can't. I'm just gonna keep on doing this, like, what are you people, like, what are you people even arguing about this? There's like, people showing up to like, basically his death sentence, like, arguing, like, Please don't kill this man, and, and, he's like, basically telling them, it's like, just bugger off, like, we just, you guys are slowing this down.

Like, it's, you know, which is like, um, Trying to, Martin Goldstein, which is like [00:39:00] the, we were doing the Murder, Inc. series, which is the exact opposite. He just turned into like a full on coward where he's just like, please don't do it. And he's acting all hysterical. And I mean, I don't know how I would react in that situation, but.

I mean, I'd like to think you wouldn't kill anybody in the first place, Chris,

you know, like, uh, yeah, I mean, like the death sentence or what have you, right? It's, um, Carl pans around. It's like, you know, it's like, I don't know. He faced it like a man, right? Or Martin Goldstein was, uh, like a coward, right? You know, pretending like he didn't do all these horrible things that clearly You know, did do and bragged about, so that, that, that, that, that could be, that could be a little bit the difference between a serial killer and a mob hit man.

Right? I mean, Bob hit man, you know, the reason that they're doing it is, is a little different. And when they get caught, they, you know, they could turn coward like that. I don't think too many serial killers have, have [00:40:00] done anything other than, you know, Try to beat their case, maybe, but they've embraced their role.

A lot of times. I mean, it's like, all right, I'm caught. I might as well get as much infamy out of this as possible and let people know how quote unquote awesome I am, you know, and, and I, I, I just think it's another difference. You could point out. I don't know that every hit man turns into a cry baby. I'm not saying that, but I haven't seen many serial killers who have, uh, just one or two.

Yeah. to mind first, maybe.

Per se turn into a cry baby, but like Ted Bundy, you know, he started saying, Oh, like I started watching pornography when I was young and this is why I like let it into this and this happened to me. And it's just like, yeah. And he tried to string it along with, uh, I'll tell you where this body is and I'll tell you where that body is, but, you know, trying to keep himself alive.

We had a serial killer up in Spokane, um, back in the, in the nineties. Um, That that might make for an interesting discussion sometime, but, [00:41:00] uh, Robert Lee Yates is his name and he was a big blubbering baby at his sentencing. Um, so, you know, but his cover story was, you know, upstanding community member, family man, you know, and all that.

And so, you know, he. He had his roll down. I mean, I think they're all sociopaths, you know, in the same way that Tony Soprano is a sociopath, you know, they learn how to pretend to be, uh, normal people who have emotions and react appropriately to whatever's going on. Um, so I don't know if he was legitimately upset or not.

I kind of doubt it, but he sure did put on a show. Blubbering like a baby. I think you could almost say Jeffrey Dahmer at his trial. Like, maybe he was somebody who just could not fight his compulsions. And, um, when he had to finally stop after getting busted, it all, it all did hit him. What he was doing was so awful.

So, like, I watched that [00:42:00] Netflix series, the Dahmer one that everyone was watching, and they tried, I don't know, they tried to make it seem like, like, his whole family situation was, like, really messed up, and, like, yeah, his mom had, like, mental health problems that he probably inherited a bit. from because some of that stuff is passed on genetically.

But like, I mean, the truth of the matter is, like, Dahmer didn't have anything that was like, it's not like he was abused as a kid, or his dad was bad to him, or even his mom, right? Like, I, he's one of those cases where, like, I think he was, like, just born like that. And. You know, if we had people that could notice things earlier, like, um, Dahmer should have institutionalized film pretty much like, right from the get go.

That, that, that, well, that, that infrastructure just isn't there to, to, to do that preventatively. Unfortunately, I was just going to express a little disgust for. For the inconsistency with which Netflix has been producing historical documentaries and docudramas and stuff. There's some really good stuff on there.

The stuff about the Roman Empire and the stuff [00:43:00] about the Ottoman Empire is really well done if a bit dramatized. But there's some things on there. I mean, I didn't watch the Dahmer one. The reviews I read on it that that talked about the historicity of it were rather critical. Um, so that was my biggest complaint, right?

Um, My wife like likes slut stuff. So I, I just ended up watching So with her, and I'm just, I don't know. I'm just sitting there, I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, I mean, is this really something that like the vast majority of people should be watching? Like, I'm literally watching a guy fry up, up and flesh and, you know, like it's

I don't know, like maybe I'm just, I don't know. Like I, maybe this is just something that shouldn't be popular. I don't, I'm just saying that out loud. Well, and you, you talk about the concept of justice and the different kinds of justice, uh, that exist. And, you know, on a karmic level, I guess justice was served on him in more than one way.

I mean, he, he didn't last very long in the prison system after being convicted. I wonder if Jeffrey Dahmer was the type of person where it was [00:44:00] almost like a perfect storm, where His family life was kind of messed up, his dad was checked out, like you said, his mom had mental illness, like if somebody had caught him early and got him into counseling and dealt with those issues before they really took off, if they, if he might not have done what he did, it's just that he just continuously slipped through the cracks.

See, I don't, I think there's some people like in Dahmer's, I don't think there's a lot of them, but I think somebody like Dahmer is just, there's something is that maybe we just don't understand it yet. But there, I don't think any amount of counseling was going to fix that guy. Like, I think he was going to end up doing what he did 1 way or another.

I mean, like Frank said, we just don't have that kind of preventative, uh, infrastructure in place for, correct. You know, there's certain things that you could see and you catch it right away. And I mean, should have been, I mean, we used to put people in institutions a [00:45:00] lot more quickly than we do now. I mean, I think that's one of the problems we have now is we don't, we don't put people in institutions.

Um, I just, I don't think there was any fixing to armor. I think like almost right from the get go, there'll be something seriously wrong with this guy. And unfortunately, not only do we not have. Preventative, uh, mechanisms in place to any great degree, but even our reactive mechanisms in the, in the structure supporting it, the infrastructure there is, is pretty overtaxed and pretty limited.

So, a guy like him can pretty easily slip through the system. Um, when I was teaching leadership after I retired from, from law enforcement for a few years, I, you always teach with the almost always taught with another instructor. And, um, I, I taught with a captain from, uh, Milwaukee, um, and, uh, she had some interesting stories to tell regarding that time period and, and, and, and how they screwed up with Dahmer and [00:46:00] then places where they were getting accused of screwed up where they didn't, and where they're getting let off the hook, where they screwed up and it was kind of an interesting kind of secondhand story to hear rather than, you know, a Netflix, maybe not very accurate show.

So we're at 4. 5 for Frank and I'm, uh, still stuck at 3. 5.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. Yeah, so, here we have a group of men that would lure, uh, a group of men that would lure men To an apartment and a bar that they own. They would shoot, then wrap a towel around his head, point blank to help contain some of the bleeding. Once that was done, they would stab the man in the heart to slow down the bleeding.

Oh no, we're not done yet. They would hang the body up afterwards and cut it into small pieces that would be scattered around various dumps in the city. Was this, uh, the work of, um, mob [00:47:00] guys or serial killers? Okay, so clarification request here. Uh, this is something that occurred on more than one occasion.

This is not a singular event. This happened multiple times. Okay. Well, it sounds like it sounds very serial killer esque, but, uh, I think you're trying to trick me, Chris. I think this is a mob thing. I think they just picked the people that they. Thought needed to to disappear and then they did it in a way that made a statement.

So this is your opportunity Steve I'm in the kind of in the same spot in the reverse Do I go with what at my gut or do I go with the opposite to try and get caught up? I'm going with mafia on this one Yeah, well, basically what I described is, yeah, mob hit, uh, this is what's, this is called the Gemini Method that, uh, Rory Dembao and the, uh, Gemini, Gemini crew made famous.

Yeah, they would lure guys, uh, apartment that was in the back of the [00:48:00] bar, and they came up with this elaborate system to basically... You know, contain as much of the, uh, the blood and the, uh, the mess that comes with killing people. And this is like kind of through trial and error too, right? Like they figured after doing it a couple of times, they're like, Oh, if we wrap a towel around the head right away, like it contains most of the bleeding.

And then it's like, well, how do we slow down? Like just the bleeding itself. It's like, Oh, we're going to stab a guy in the heart. And then the, uh. You know, if we hang it up, then, you know, you run the water and the blood just goes down the drain. And then the body parts, you know, they learned, uh, they learned, uh, got to throw them around different dumps around the city.

And then once it goes to the dump, they're almost next to impossible to find. And I mean, I think they learned, uh, 1 time they, they found torso 1 time, and then they learned, oh, wait, we forgot to, uh. Stab lungs. Uh, otherwise the the lungs will, uh, help the torso float back up. But if you stab them enough times, they'll [00:49:00] just sink to the bottoms they fill up with the water.

Right? Um, yeah. This is kind of, they've discovered this method through trial and error. Once they perfected it. Uh, the rest is history. I mean, they became probably the most efficient, uh, mob killing machine in history. You know, some people put the body counts for the, the, um, the Gemini crew up to, you know, 250, which is just insane.

Holy cow. 250 people, you know, it was a group of guys that were doing it, but Roy DeMeo was, uh, um, personally involved in most of these killings. And it was over a fairly short amount of time too, wasn't it? Yeah, it was, uh, not that long. It was, uh, it was more than just, say, like, a couple of years, but, uh, Yeah, it was, uh, you know, it was a fairly quick, um, I mean, technically, a lot of these guys, they kind of go super overboard with the killing, like, say, like, the Gemini crew, uh, they don't tend to last super long, but, um, yeah.

You know, it wasn't wasn't over, [00:50:00] like, say, like, 40 years or 30 years or anything like that. Uh, you know, Roy DeMille would end up getting killed by his, uh, his mafia partners. But yeah, you know, it's crazy to think like, you know, 250 people, maybe, who knows? Could be more, you know, a lot of these bodies they never found.

They're never going to find them. Like, uh, at one point they were thinking, well, actually just start digging up. The dump to try to find parts and I think they did it for like a week and they're like, we're not, we're not going to find anything, not an apartment. That was an abattoir and those dumps. I mean, it's, it's honestly a smart place to go because those dumps and most metropolitan areas, I mean, they're getting Feet of garbage a day.

I mean, and it, there's usually not a lot of other places to move the garbage to other places. And so if you don't let people, if you don't let them dump in that dump, it causes a major problem. So that, uh, that you couldn't stop filling a [00:51:00] dump for a week. To go digging around in there, if you even, you know, maybe a place like the NYPD would have the resources to even do that.

Yeah, but any place that would have the resources would also live in an area that had, has a dump that huge than that, you know, that daunting of a task. So, I mean, it's probably all relative in that regard. It is a smart place to go. And the dismemberment is, is such a smart thing too. I mean, even today with, with DNA.

It's still a smart way to get rid of a body. That's, that's amazing to me that that was that number that they cranked out. That, you know, it's, it's, it's up for debate how many they actually did. I've, uh, I've heard different numbers, but you know, let's just call it, I'd say 200, yeah, 200 or pretty. Pretty darn close to 200 bodies, which is while they and considering like, 1 of the 1st ones that they ended up doing, they almost got caught where I think it was like a thigh of 1 person that they, they dumped in a [00:52:00] dump.

And this homeless guy saw this thing wrapped up in like meat wrapping packaging and thinking like, uh, oh, like, I scored big, like, look at the size of this piece of meat. So then apparently when he, he opened it up, he realized pretty quickly that it was, uh, yeah.

And, uh, he confirmed it because there was like a tattoo on it. So they started, uh, started using like, um, you know, like the knives that you like scale fish and stuff like that to, uh, get the tattoos off and any kind of identifiable, uh, markings. And what kind of world was that where people didn't notice that maybe, uh, several people a month went into the Gemini lounge, but never left.

Yeah, it's not the Hotel California. I mean, come on, you know, they only think a lot of the times they were just taking out other criminals and they were also taking out like criminals ended up becoming informants and, you know, like the DeMayo crew. You know, they had cops on the [00:53:00] inside, right? They were feeding this, feeding them this information.

So they, they must have known, had a pretty good idea. Like, oh, where did so and so go? It's like, oh, we don't know. Type, type thing, right? And there was a lot of people that are making money off of them too, right? Because they, they're big, uh, Their big score was running, uh, um, well, they ran drugs and they ran, they did pornography, but their biggest, I guess, I guess the thing that they're most famous for is the stolen cars, um, like mass stealing cars and, uh, chopping them up or repurposing them.

And at one point, like he literally was an international criminal where he was like shipping cars. I believe is, uh, if I'm remembering correctly, it was, uh, to do, uh, United Arab Emirates. And, like, to the point where they're like, I want a Toyota Camry with, that's red, with these types of rims. And, that's how, like, sophisticated this car theft operation was.

So, there's a lot of people that are getting kickbacks. You know, it's like, oh, we're all making money, and, you know, you know, this person's [00:54:00] gonna screw that up. And, I'm assuming that's, that's probably, that's probably exactly why it was allowed to go on for as long as it was. Everyone was making too much money off of it.

It's crazy. People are ticked. Terrified of Rory DeMille, because they knew what happened at the Gemini Lounge. Alright, so 5. 5 to 4. 5. Now we're at the final question. Here, here we have a group of men that captured and tortured a man for hours. Then after they thought he, he was, uh, killed, they buried him in a shallow grave.

It turned out that he wasn't dead, and was actually buried alive. Was this, uh, the work of, uh, the mob, or serial killers? That sounds like a, a story I've heard of. And I want to say it is the mob. Yeah, it, it, it comes across to me as, as a little bit of a, an incompetent hit more than it does a, uh, a serial killer.

I mean, [00:55:00] and I mentioned earlier that only 10% of. Serial killers are duos. So the group of men part kind of puts me more towards the mafia angle angle as well. So mob. It is. So, yeah, this was done by the mob. And, uh, actually you can revisit this, uh, this murder. Actually, this is the 1 that, uh, a brellis and his crew committed against 1 of the Shapiro brothers where.

They were burying him and, um, somebody, uh, pedestrian happened to see kind of what they were doing. And so they hadn't, they didn't actually finish the job fully. Pretty sure they, they thought he was dead. But, uh, when they exhumed the body, the, uh, the doctors realized, uh, pretty quickly that, um, no, this man had been, uh, buried alive.

Which is horrible way to go. Trying to think, think about, um, I don't know whether felt , you gotta hope afterwards or, or not, but you gotta hope the guy was at least like, [00:56:00] unconscious from his injuries and didn't, you know, wasn't aware of what was going on there as he was smothered essentially. 'cause that's just a horrible, that that's terrible.

It's one of the worst mob killings I'm aware of, really is. Buried alive. We'll probably get into this at some point, but the real person who Joe Pesci played in Casino, I think he was buried alive too. Him and his brother. Out in the desert. Yeah, or in a cornfield. I don't, but it was that, um, that's bad.

That's pretty, I mean, but it gets, I mean, that's, you're doing that full out of full hatred. Yeah. And then there's like other mob guys, uh, we've talked about them before. I mean, Anthony, uh, Gas Pipe Caso, where you go and this guy sounds like a serial killer. Like even the FBI, when they were thinking about using him as an informant, like they heard him like laughing about killing people.

And I think it was one. He claims to a, [00:57:00] some drug runner or whatever that, uh, he screwed up or he was going to inform or he was going to say something. And it was like down in Florida. And he trying to remember this story correctly, but I believe he claimed that he buried this guy alive too. And he was like laughing about it.

And this is when the FBI goes, it said to them. So it's like, there's no, no, we can't do that. We can't do this with this guy. I'm like, we, I know we did it with Sammy the bowl. But, uh, like, this guy's just, it's too much. It's too far. It makes us look bad. I mean, Sammy the Bull Gravano made them look bad too, but this guy's going to make us like, look really bad.

Because they, you, I don't know, you talk, you read about, uh, somebody like, like, Gas Pipe Caso and you go, like, this guy was like, yeah, he was a mob, he wasn't a mob, but he was like, right underneath the mob boss, but it was kind of him and his, uh, partner were like, cold mob bosses. I mean, was this guy a serial killer or not?

Like, I've read his blog. Um, Philip Carlo wrote it, and you listen to this guy talk about himself, and he's, he sounds like a serial [00:58:00] killer because he's just completely delusional about who he is. Like, he's just like, just like, almost virtually zero self awareness. I could be, that's how it comes, came across to me.

Well, Frank snuck ahead right above at the got across the finish line and he wins at 5. 5 to 4. 5. Well, uh, I'm very interested to hear how our friends, the friends of ours at home did on this, uh, game. So definitely send in. On social media, email crime at a two z history page. com or all the other ways to get in contact because I'd be very interested to hear how you did on the game.

And if you'd like to hear more episodes like this. 5. 5 score to beat. Yeah. 5. 5. Let's got to be, got to be some experts out there that can do that. That's a, that's, that's not that difficult. [00:59:00] You know, what occurred to me as we're talking about this, that all of these folks are sociopaths. Um, maybe some of the hit men that.

Did it once or twice or whatever, backed into a corner sort of thing, you could make an argument that they weren't. But anybody who has a body count of any magnitude, they're sociopath. The biggest difference between these two hit men and serial killers is that when you make a movie about a serial killer, they're the bad guy.

When you make a movie about a mafia hit man, he's the good guy. Yeah, there's definitely something to say about, about that. Yeah, you know, pretty accurate observation. So we're going to leave it at that. Uh, we definitely would love to hear your feedback. And the biggest thing you can do to help us is tell your friends about organized crime and punishment so that your friends can become friends of ours.

Yeah. Forget about it, guys. Yeah, forget about it.[01:00:00]

You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, a history and crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today, find links to social media, and how to support the show, go to our website, AtoZHistoryPage. com. Become a friend of ours by sending us an email to crime at AtoZHistoryPage. com.

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Original Publication Date: 8/30/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/bkHR55zM1qY

Description: In this episode of Organized Crime and Punishment, Mustache Chris and Steve delve into the chilling tale of Roy DeMeo, a ruthless figure who left an indelible mark on the world of organized crime. Join us as we trace DeMeo's meteoric rise through the ranks of the Gambino crime family, his notorious "DeMeo Crew," and their involvement in a string of gruesome murders and criminal enterprises. From his reputation as a cold-blooded enforcer to his ties with powerful crime syndicates, we explore the factors that fueled DeMeo's dominance and the empire he built. However, as the walls closed in and law enforcement tightened their grip, his empire began to crumble, leading to his eventual demise in a hail of bullets. Tune in to unravel the complex web of power, violence, and justice in the underworld, and don't miss our expert analysis on the legacy that Roy DeMeo leaves behind. #OrganizedCrime #TrueCrime #RoyDeMeo #CriminalEmpire #GambinoFamily #DeMeoCrew #RiseAndFall #ColdBlooded #PodcastEpisode #TrueCrimeStory

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

Let's talk a little bit about Paul Castellano because Paul Castellano, he came up in our last episode about the Iceman. To me, he seemed like the... Really the most unlikeliest of mafia guys, because he had a huge legitimate business in meatpacking that, uh, the, his business was in selling meat and chicken, and he made tons and tons of [00:01:00] money.

If I'm not mistaken, both of his sons were involved in the business and they were completely legit. And I. Don't understand why someone like Paul Castellano would want to be involved in this really dirty, nasty. Underworld element of the, the mafia when he could have just been involved completely in the white collar part of the mafia, which in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s.

Sure. If you were. In labor unions, or if you were in something like meatpacking, yeah, you were connected to the mafia, but you didn't have to be in the nitty gritty of being around people like Roy DeMeo and the Westies, and the really gritty, nasty part of the mafia and the organized crime. No, I just, I think.

It's because he just kind of grew up with it and kind of got pulled into it. And [00:02:00] because he was such a good earner, I mean, it, it would make kind of sense that you would want that guy to be the head of the family because nobody knew how to like make as much money as Paul and do it somewhat. I mean, do it legitimately for the most part and not attract like police attention, but.

I don't like Paul wasn't really cut out for the job to like, I don't think he really understood like stuff that was coming down the pipe in terms of like week, uh, Rico and like wiretapping. Cause he would have all the dude, you would have all the guys like show up at the, I believe it was like the veterans club that they called every two weeks, every week to sit down and talk about, you know, what was Gambino family.

And it's the cops are just kind of sitting there laughing at them and say, well, I mean, really, they're all going to show up at the same time. We're just. I'm going to stand out here and take pictures and, you know, and his own house was wiretapped at one point. He just doesn't seem, it seemed like probably like a good idea in theory.

This guy's a great [00:03:00] earner and he seems to keep his nose pretty clean. Like who better to run the family, but. In practice, it didn't really work out all that well. And I mean, he was so like white collar too, that he, he really kind of pissed off the guys that were, you know, like the street guys. And if you're going to be the head of a mafia family, you have to be able to strike a balance between the two where.

The street guys are happy because you do need them. At the end of the day, the mafia is kind of built on muscle. If you don't have that, um, the threat of violence, if, um, the rest of it doesn't really work all that well. I mean, especially in like, you know, labor unions and like the construction business and even.

I mean, even Paul's chicken and poultry business was built on kind of loan sharking where, you know, he was successful at it and then he would lend out loans to like other, you know, butcher shops and what have you. And then they obviously wouldn't be able to pay. And then he would just take like, 25 or 50% of their business.

And that's kind of how it grew up. That doesn't work. If you don't [00:04:00] really have the guys like Roy DeMail showing up at, you know, Joe Schmoe's butcher house saying, you know, this is how it's going to go down. If it doesn't go down in the next couple of days like this, um, you know, we're going to take care of business.

If they're not afraid that these guys are going to take care of business, the whole thing doesn't really work. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think that, uh, definitely in somebody like Paul, he was perfect as the boss in that he had this really. Good knowledge of the, um, of the white collar part. But at that point in the Gambino family, you had the Gambino family was really the Mafiaa in New York City.

There was still the five families. And if we go a little bit further, the de Caval canes in New Jersey right next door. But it was really, the Gambinos were the game. They were the biggest family and they were divided between the Manhattan. Faction under Neil Della [00:05:00] Croce and Nino Gaggi in the, uh, the Brooklyn Faction.

It was a family that was really split between these two regional factions, plus the white collar faction and the more blue collar faction. So they, it was a. It was a very tough, or it was a huge umbrella, you might say, and it was maybe too big for its own good. Yeah, and it's, there's a lot of different theories about, like, if Neil Delacroix had been made boss instead of, uh, Paul Castellano.

Oh, like, how history would have been different, like, does John Gotti come around? And, you know, like, there's... It's interesting, but, yeah, like, Paul... Paul just wasn't the guy for the job, in my opinion. He didn't, you can't look down on the street guys because without them, the rest of it just doesn't work. And the, the, the intimidation of is like essential to the mafia.

That doesn't, you [00:06:00] can't, you got to treat those guys fairly because they're just as important as the guys, you know, doing, you know, running the concrete business, which is pretty much. The mob ran the entire concrete business. It's crazy to think that in New York, if you poured any concrete, you're the that was the mob's concrete.

You're paying the mob one way or another. Now, the other thing. So we have this really that somebody it's Paul Castellano is like one of those people with the plates trying to like, spin them on sticks and keep this whole thing of the Gambino crime family going. Then you have, if we zoom in on Paul DeM or on Roy DeMeo, looking at his personal life, he was somebody who, for the most part, Kept lived two separate lives that he didn't live in Brooklyn.

He lived in the suburbs. He lived a completely normal suburban lifestyle at the same time of being a brutal street criminal in New [00:07:00] York City. You know, he would do like firework shows for house parties. Uh, He practice and for, you know, every in house with the mom, the peddling, the pornography and all that stuff.

And he tried to like his family life was completely stopped, not want any of the stuff kind of truly involved in all the craziness. I don't, how do you think some, it seemed that it, Roy was able to hold those two lives together for a long time, but then it really did start breaking down for him. Yeah, well the, I, the thing that kind of starts it is Chris Rosenberg.

Should, is that, should we start talking about that? Yeah, let's, because that's kinda where it kind of all starts falling apart. Yeah. Let's get into that. Yeah, so Chris Rosenberg, who we had mentioned earlier, was kind of like, uh, a son almost to Roy DeMille, you kind of viewed him as like a son or a little brother, comes up with this, uh, harebrained idea that he [00:08:00] was going to do, uh, a massive coke dealer with some, uh, Colombians that were living in Florida.

Colombians, uh, sorry, Cubans that were in Florida at the time and Chris, yeah, Chris comes up with this great idea. It's like, well, I'm going to do the deal and I'm going to show up and but I'm going to take the coke and I'm also going to take the money. And so how is Chris going to do this? Oh, he's just going to kill them.

And As opposed to, like, introducing himself as, like, Chris Rosenberg, which is who he is, he was, he would, he introduced himself as Chris DeMeo. And, where it gets, I believe he was, like, the, the guys who were, he ended up killing were, like, cousins to some, oh, I think it was El Negro. With some Cuban, um, uh, some big time, like Cuban drug Lord and they put, uh, basically say that the, uh, the, uh, only, uh, form that the only way that this is going to go away is if Chris Rosenberg is killed and it's [00:09:00] made publicly.

So, you know, God, he goes to Roy de Mayo. It's like, I understand that, you know, how much Chris means to you, but he like really messed up. And if we don't do anything about this quickly, we could have a full on, you know, war between the Gambino family and a Cuban, uh, drug cartel. And to be quite honest to the Gambinos are really powerful, but I don't really know if they could have, uh, taken on a, a drug cartel, which, uh, I mean, anybody who's like looked into narcos, there's the mafia and then like the narcos are a whole nother level above the mafia in terms of just, you know, power and influence Roy.

For obvious reasons is, you know, apprehensive. He really doesn't want to do this and this kind of shows a different kind of side of Roy where a lot of the stuff you read about Roy, you get the impression that he's just this like cold blooded, ruthless killer. And he definitely was that. But this to me shows, I think it was like two weeks or a couple of [00:10:00] weeks.

He was holding off trying to killing Chris because he really didn't want to do this. And uh, Roy, in the meantime, you know, he's like getting paranoid and there is a kid hanging out in front of his house. Um, can't remember his name right now, but he would, he looked cute. Uh, Roy DeMille thought it was a Cuban hit man.

So, you know, he chases him down for a couple of blocks and catches up to him and basically shoots dead, you know, right in the middle of the street, middle of the day. Turns out that the kid was just selling vacuums and, you know, gets a word of this and freaks out and says like, okay, that's enough. Like you, you, uh, take care of Chris right now, or you're, you're done yourself.

We're, we'll take care of you. And so they get, um, Chris to go back to the Gemini lounge, which they had done many, many times. I'm surprised that Chris knowing the circumstances would agree to go to the Gemini lounge, but he does. And Roy [00:11:00] shoots. Um, and from the information that we have, he shoots them once and, uh, in the head, but Chris didn't die.

I guess he didn't get a clean enough shots and he's up on one knee. Roy can't finish the job. And I believe in the job for Roy, but this and Roy's son talks about this and period and Chris's, I mean, in a Roy's life and how it, it really messed him up, like when he shot that Cuban kid, he was. I believe was didn't leave his room for a couple of days.

It really affected them. And then on top of, you know, with Chris, it really affected him too. And it, it shows that he wasn't like a psychopath. He actually did feel like he actually didn't care about people and deeply and. Unlike say, like somebody like a Ted Bundy who was a sociopath and didn't really have any empathy for anybody.

Clearly Roy did. He was just able to [00:12:00] compartmentalize the, um, what he was doing with the, the murdering. Cause for the most part, the guys that he was killing were going to either. Gonna rat on him and his crew and, you know, like ruin his family's life. And for the most part, the guys who were going to be ratting weren't like exactly good guys either.

They probably would have done the same thing to Roy if the roles were reversed. I mean, I can see in a way how you would justify. Uh, justified to yourself that, like, these murders are okay because they, you know, because of the situation I just laid out, but Chris, that's my best friend, and this kid, he had nothing to do with it.

I was just being paranoid, and I killed an innocent person for no reason. Steve here again. We Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like Josh Cohen's Eyewitness History and many other great shows. Go [00:13:00] to Parthenon Podcast to learn more. And now, here's a quick word from our sponsors.

That's the big thing with Roy, and I think, you have to try and understand Roy, I think, even though it's hard to, and it's hard for, me to wrap my mind around, Roy is like a, um, somebody in the military who, They, they kill the enemy. I think that first for Roy, he took a lot of glee in it and a black humor, but I think it was black humor in a lot of ways to cover up for how insane it was, how much killing they were doing and the way they were killing it, killing people.

But like you said, that Roy really was upset that he had to kill his. Best friend for a good chunk of his life and is the person we mentored in Chris, uh, Chris Rosenberg and [00:14:00] that, uh, you know, inadvertently killing that kid who was selling the vacuums that really wasn't Roy. Roy was a killer, but he, he wasn't a serial killer.

I think that that's really the difference. Yeah. It's like the military is, is, is a really good comparison. That's kind of how I view is Roy saw himself as a soldier in the Gambino family. And he excelled at doing. This type of dirty work and he viewed it as no different than say, like a soldier going into battle and having to kill the enemy.

Let's talk, let's shift gears a bit to, um, the biggest score really that Roy had in his whole career. And it was this whole thing about stealing cars in New York. Cleaning them up, you might say, and then shipping them over to [00:15:00] Kuwait. It was really the score that made him a lot of money. And if it had really come to full fruition, what it probably had made him one of the biggest gangsters in, of all times.

Yeah, the. It's called, well, it's referred like Empire Boulevard and they had this, this whole elaborate system in terms of stealing these cars where they had it down to such a science where his, uh, Kuwaiti buyers would say, we want, I'll just use it. We want a caddy, you know, 72 caddy red with these types of rims.

And Roy has a whole, you know, had a whole army of kids. police cars. And they had a system where he basically had like an on demand car stealing service where, you know, people would like write down to the color of the paint, the type mileage, the whole nine yards. And yeah, they would bring them back to the empire [00:16:00] Boulevard and they would change the VIN number and, you know, stuff so that the car wasn't, uh, wasn't traceable and.

I'm trying to remember the amount of cars that were stolen like in a year, but it is astronomical and there was just nothing done about it. I mean, at the time, like the police force in general was understaffed, but, you know, roundabout way, you know, the The, the, you know, the chubby kid from school was like a butcher apprentice and like was always known for these like blue collar type crimes as become an international criminal, because that's basically what it is.

This is committing international crime, trading stolen cars from, you know, New York and shipping them out to Kuwait. It's mind boggling that it got this big. The, the thing that, because I was kind of going into this with the. Modern mindset on how hard it is to really steal a car for and resell it in the U.

1. with VIN [00:17:00] plates and each car has a unique identifier called a vehicle identification number of VIN, and if I'm not mistaken, that this is kind of your business. The VIN number is all over everything, if I'm not mistaken, like it's really hard to take a car and just resell it because then you can't get it registered.

You can't do anything with it because of this VIN number. Yeah, that's why a lot of the times like the cars they would end up stealing for the, I mean, they would steal like. Cars hold sometimes they tell them to love just, uh, you know, shady or like used car lots. I wouldn't have you and they would buy it for cheap But for the most part you would steal the car and it goes to what we call In the the business kind of I'm in i'm not In the chop shop business, but we call them chop shops and they would, they would steal a car and they chop the car ups.

They take all the parts out of all the valuable parts off the car and then [00:18:00] sell the parts and then those become untraceable for the most part. And then they would just get rid of the car, no car, no crime. And this, this thing took it to a whole nother level though, cause they were selling like an entire cars and I assume parts too, but like entire cars to these, uh, Kuwaiti businessmen.

And I guess at the time that they did have VIN numbers on the cars, they just, Roy was able to like. Come up with new VIN numbers and he would double check with his contacts in the police department to, you know, make sure that the, this didn't accidentally just like duplicate a VIN number or what have you.

And then that would like trigger off, like, uh, if this car had ever been got pulled over or what have you, um, cause he had a whole sophisticated business too, in terms of like. You know, police on the payroll, basically, because none of this would work unless the police were turning a blind eye to a lot of it.

And he, and he was really kind of threading the needle [00:19:00] because the, the local, the MIPD cared about the stolen cars, but the federal authorities like customs. They didn't particularly care because the paperwork was clean enough for them that they didn't really, nothing, it didn't raise any huge alarms to them of these cars and a lot of them had really, you know, they were getting sloppy with the VIN plates and they were getting sloppy with a lot of elements with it, but it didn't really matter because the Kuwaitis didn't care.

They were just getting flooded with it. Extremely cheap cars, and Roy was making a fortune off of it, I think they were saying that just when they were getting ramped up, they were stealing four to five cars a night, every night of the week, for weeks and weeks and weeks, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of cars, they had to expand their Enterprise from only from being able to process four cars at a [00:20:00] time to 20 cars at a time.

And that was at a time when it was a lot easier to steal cars than it was today. So they, it was just like, boom, boom, boom, boom. You know, cars were just vaporizing off the street. Yeah, well, it goes to show you to that, like the cops were, he had to have enough of the police force paying paid off the police force with nothing to really be done about for as long as it's this was going on, you'd imagine, like, just say for 20 cars a day or getting stolen in New York, 20 cars, the point where they, like, I pointed it out, they had, like, an on demand service where you could just kind of go to Roy and be like, I want a red caddy.

Oh, yeah, no problem. I'll get it for you tomorrow. And he just sends out like some kids to go steal the car from, you know, because they would use kids because of the most part they nothing would really happen to them. They just get sent home like they wouldn't throw them and the kids don't, you know, steal a car again.

For the most part, that's what they would do. And for the most part, you could teach a kid how to steal [00:21:00] those cars. A kid could steal one of those cars in minutes. Yeah, yeah, easily. And then there's like, you don't have to worry about a lot of the other stuff of like an adult was caught stealing the car.

They'll be like, who are you stealing the car for? You know, most people are stupid. They'll start blabbing. What really was the cause of Roy's fall? Because Roy eventually does it, everything crumbles, uh, underneath him, his whole foundations. What happens to Roy? Crazy as it sounds, you'd think once Roy was made a, like a main guy, he would just kind of slow down a bit.

It's like, okay, uh, you know, I'm, I'm good, but no, I apparently the exact opposite happened. He ramped up the killing and he took more contracts and like to the point he was like doing them at like discounts and It's crazy, I figured you would slow down and you know, you've made it, you're not gonna, like his, Roy wasn't gonna get any higher than that, you know, [00:22:00] he was a made guy, he wasn't gonna be a capo, he was never gonna be a head of the family, that was never gonna happen.

He figured I reached the pinnacle of everything I worked for, but no, that's not what happened at all. But like the, I, the one particular situation that happened that kind of like accelerated his downfall was there was James Eppolito and James Eppolito jr. Right. I'm saying that I'm remembering this correctly.

And yes, there is, they're actually related to that famous mafia cop. Yeah. Yeah. They're, it's a really fat, those guys. Fascinating story. They go to Paul Castellano saying that Roy, uh, and Nino are dealing drugs. And officially the ruling in the Gambino family, it was different from family to family, but in the Gambino family, Paul Castellano said, had like a zero tolerance policy for dealing drugs.

This is what he would say, right? And it was like, Death penalty for anybody caught dealing drugs. [00:23:00] Now people say like, Oh, you know, it wasn't that like moral and virtuous for the mafia family to be like, Oh, we're above, we're not going to be dealing drugs. It wasn't like anything to do with morals. It was guys.

We get caught dealing drugs and the charges for dealing drugs were. Really high. So the guy dealing just a bit of heroin or a bit of coke would be looking at 20 years in prison. Most people don't have enough willpower to not talk when they're looking at 20 years in prison. They're probably going to talk and it causes, you know, so people talk and then.

But then if you're having to worry about people talking because they got busted for drugs, you're going to have to take care of them. You take care of them yourself, and it just leaves all kind of problems. It's just in the long run. There's a ton of money to be made in drugs, but Paul and certain mafia guys.

It's not worth all the extra trouble. Like we're, we're making tons of money doing our loan sharking and stealing cars and, you know, our labor unions and construction rackets. [00:24:00] And, you know, we don't, we don't need that type of money, but Paul was, Paul was a hypocrite, he knew that Roy and Nino were dealing drugs and he, he took the money, right?

Um, Paul goes to Nino and says, well, the. You know, these Epilito guys have, uh, came to me saying that you were doing this. He goes and basically gave Roy and Nino the, you know, go ahead, just take care of it as you want. And so, Roy and Nino, they do, they, they find out where these guys are, I believe it was in a, like a parking garage or what have you.

And they, um, they go and kill 'em. But there happened to be an eyewitness nearby. That's all 'em do. And they waved, I guess she waved the cop that was nearby and the cop came down and Nino and Roy get into a gunfight with a cop, Nino gets hit, he ends up in the neck, he gets arrested, Roy ends up, ends up, uh, getting away.

But, [00:25:00] this This is where one of the more infamous, uh, Roy DeMeo stories, and was that hair, like, can you explain this, this hair brain scheme that they had? Because they end up taking the bullet out of, like, Nino's neck and try to put a different bullet in his neck. Oh, I'm, it was, it was so... Dumb, but if it worked, it would have been genius.

I think they, yeah, I didn't completely understand what they were trying to do because I don't think they really understood what they were trying to do, but they wanted, they wanted it to make it look like Nino was, they wanted to make it look. Like, Nino had been shot earlier, I think, to give him a defense that it was a self defense or something.

It was just, it was a really, really, if it, because I think you have to look at it that juries and lawyers and that whole, the, the whole criminal thing, you're just trying to prove some. [00:26:00] Tiny doubt in one juror's mind that maybe it didn't happen the way the prosecution said it and, but it was just, I think that it was to me, that was so emblematic of Nino it's Nino, let's come up with this airbrained idea and throw it up in the air and let's see if it, if it takes off or not.

Yeah, what ends up happening is Nino ends up going to jail for, I believe it was five to 15 years, probably would have got more, but there was like jury tampering involved. And I mean, the whole situation is just not good, you know, you know, Roy killed that innocent kid. And then now on top of this, they're getting into shootouts with cops and being really sloppy about that was the thing with the Eppolito.

Murders is just, it doesn't seem like Roy, he, I don't know. It's almost [00:27:00] like hubris. He's going to a parking lot, you know, out in the open. It just doesn't like Roy from a couple years ago, probably would have came up with a more intelligent way of going about this and not getting caught. But I think it was just kind of hubris and maybe it was just getting tired of the whole.

Lifestyle, I think, because it, it, it is really sloppy and it doesn't seem, I don't know, like, like I pointed out, like, a couple of years ago, Roy wouldn't be doing this, but, you know, the whole situation isn't good. Your capo's in jail, it puts a huge red light on your, uh, huge, like, uh, light on all the illegal stuff that you're up to and.

It just puts a lot of heat on the Gambino family, because, I mean, getting into shootouts with your, you know, inter mafia guys is one thing, but getting into shootouts with cops? Yeah, it's just so much heat. It's, it's can, it's so unnecessary. And I think that was a major unforced error [00:28:00] for them. That whole situation.

Yeah, because they could've just, I mean, okay, whatever, you wanted revenge at the, uh, at these, uh, polito guys, you could've just waited. There was no reason you had to take immediate revenge. They could've just waited for a better, really, you probably could've waited, like, a couple years, and these guys probably would've had their guard down at some point.

They just weren't thinking straight. They were thinking impulsively.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. I wonder with the, with the mafia at this point, like, maybe the smarter people like Paul saw that with dealing drugs, they were dealing with people like with the Colombians and the, the Cubans and these, these other groups who were really, really bad hombres, you might call them, they were not criminal Headline Anybody to trifle with and [00:29:00] sure, maybe the mafia could have taken them on, but it was so unnecessary to take these on.

And it would be just constant warfare when really drugs was just a sideshow for them, for the mafia, the five families. Yeah, I mean, I would. Yeah, I would. Yeah, I would agree with that. Like, I mean, some of the cooler heads and some of the, you know, I guess maybe higher IQ people in the month, you kind of looked at the drugs and thought, like, this is just inviting.

It's not to mention, like, you end up having guys who end up getting addicted to the drugs and and, you know, like, if you're dealing drugs in the neighborhood and people are all walking around like zombies in the neighborhood, like, the cops start looking into it. It's just and, like, the charges that come with, you know, getting busted dealing drugs.

It's just. I mean, yes, there's a lot of money that can be made into it. But I mean, if you look at a lot of the big time drug dealers in [00:30:00] American history, they kind of were, um, I don't know, like they would shine really bright for a bit and then it would all come crashing down really quickly where the mafia was kind of like the opposite, where it was just slow, slow, gradual buildup.

There was just so much more money to be made, too, with things like Paul's legitimate businesses. Sure, legitimate businesses that have connections to organized crime get investigated, and sometimes there's fines, but there's so much more avenue to obfuscate and move money around on the books and things like that.

With drugs, it's so much easier for prosecutors to start sniping people, and it Brings down everyone. I just, I, I have to agree with, with Paul. Yeah. You're not going to, well, Paul, I mean, Paul loved the money though. So Paul, he could have started whacking people to stop it, but he really didn't because he loved taking in all that money.

I guess [00:31:00] that's the thing, like you were saying that you can make so, so, so much money off of the drugs, but then it brings down. All the heat. It brings down heat from the people they're buying the drugs from. It brings down heat from every layer of government. I, I think that they, they really did miss something by just staying out of the drugs altogether.

Yeah, I agree with that, but I mean, the temptation is just, it's so, there's so much money to be made, it just seems, the temptation seems to be too much, especially with like, the cast of shady characters that is the, uh, Italian Mafia, but, I mean, That's the thing with drugs too is it doesn't like you could like take a low end street dealer and all of a sudden he's, you know, talking about, you know, he's the next Joe Valachi talking about, you know, this is how this whole thing works and, you know, it's just like a street guy, right?

That could potentially [00:32:00] facing 20 years in jail. Like it's if Paul was consistent in the sense of, Like, he actually did just kill people that were in the Gambino family that were caught dealing drugs. Then, yeah, but he tried to like have best of both worlds, or he would just pick and choose who he would do that to.

Eventually, Roy's whole world falls apart around him. How, what's the end of Roy look like? Well, the heat's Starts coming down for the car Stealing business, but the whole how the whole epilido thing went down paul castellano just comes to the conclusion It's like yeah, roy's bringing in a lot of money But all the other trouble that he's bringing is just not worth it.

He puts out a contract to uh on roy And this is what I found pretty interesting is apparently nobody would really take the contract because they were all just terrified of Roy Tamayo and his crew like, uh, apparently John Cotty wouldn't take the job for this reason because, you know, Roy had a whole like [00:33:00] psychotic killer crew with him and Roy himself was, you know, had a reputation of, you know, well founded for being pretty insane himself and yeah, nobody would take the job and eventually it came down to his own crew was the one that decided they would Take the job and do it.

Uh, and that's exactly what happened. Anthony center and Joseph test. Uh, are the prime suspects are the ones who took down Roy to mail. But people think that, you know, God, who was out of prison at this time, uh, was there as well. They shot Roy a bunch of times and stuff them in his trunk of his car. And where he was found, I think it was like a couple of days later, frozen to the spare wheel.

Do you think in the end that Roy, because Roy, his career is really very parallel with John Gotti and this is the time period of the rise of John Gotti. Do you think that Roy was a serious competitor to John [00:34:00] Gotti to have to take over the Gambino crime family? No, I don't, I don't think so. Just because of the way, I mean, it's possible.

I mean, Albert Anastasia had became like a, you know, a head of the family himself, right? And he was pretty and he was like Roy DeMille in the sense of like, he enjoyed killing and. was pretty insane himself. Um, but I just don't think, I don't know, I just don't, I just can't see Roy becoming a head of the family.

But I mean, he was a great earner, and he didn't mind getting his hands dirty. So I mean, it's possible, but everything that I've read, I don't think many people thought that was a realistic positive possibility. And now in our next episode, we're going to tie together Richard Kuklinski and Roy DeMeo. The one thing that sticks with me with Roy DeMeo, and I think that how Richard Kuklinski got drawn into his orbit, is that Roy DeMeo really did [00:35:00] surround himself with a varied crew, a diverse crew, you might say, and I think that, not to give away too much of next week, but My thought is that Richard Kuklinski was an admirer of Roy DeMeo from afar.

Yeah, I would agree with that, and I think Richard, it kind of, yeah, I kind of almost like, I don't worship Roy DeMeo in a lot of ways. I noticed it when I was, uh, reading Into the Iceman. I had already known a little bit about Roy DeMeo, but like, really getting into, like, Roy DeMeo's story. It really kind of, and we'll get into this more next week, but it really kind of looks like Richard really wanted to be Roy DeMeo or, um, admired Roy DeMeo so much that he mixed, uh, he mixed, uh, his story and Roy DeMeo's story.

Together. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I think in a lot of ways it goes even deeper than that. So I think [00:36:00] that I'm I know I'm going to really enjoy discussing this story. And I hope people join us next week when we talk about the Iceman at movie and how that draws in Richard Kuklinski with the story of Roy DeMeo because I think you're going to people out there are going to see a lot of parallels.

Between their story, their two stories. And I think it's going to be interesting to compare and contrast them and see maybe where some of those similarities come from. Yeah, for sure. I guess my like last word on like Roy DeMille would be John Gotti and tough guys in the Italian mob, you know, some of the toughest guys in the world or in New York at the time looked at, had a contract.

Put out on Paul, the boss put a contract out on Roy and they looked at Roy and said, no, I'm not really interested in taking that contract. So that just kind of shows you the, uh, the, uh, the reputation that Roy [00:37:00] had in the, you know, in that tough guy world where he was like the toughest of the top and the craziest of the craziest.

Then yeah, I'm going to, I've had a blast. You know, learning about Roy and learning about Richard Kuklinski. And, you know, I guess it's going to come to a conclusion next week. We're going to leave it at that for today. I just want to mention though, the best thing you can do to help us in this podcast is if you enjoy what you're hearing, tell a friend, tell a couple of friends about the Organized Crime and Punishment Podcast so that your friends can become friends of ours.

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Original Publication Date: 8/23/2023

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Description: In this episode, Mustache Chris and Steve delve into the intriguing early life and career of the notorious Roy DeMeo, whose journey into organized crime paved the way for an empire built on fear and brutality. From his humble beginnings on the streets of Brooklyn to his calculated entrance into the Gambino crime family, we uncover the pivotal moments that shaped DeMeo's transformation into a ruthless enforcer and prolific contract killer. Join us as we unravel the layers of deception, ambition, and ruthlessness that defined DeMeo's ascent to power, and explore the shadowy world of organized crime that he would come to dominate with an iron fist. #TrueCrimeTales #MafiaChronicles #CriminalMasterminds #roydemeo #serialkiller

You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places:

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email: crime@atozhistorypage.com

www.organizedcrimeandpunishment.com

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Music Provided by:

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime, with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

I'm excited again to be joined by Chris to talk about the background of a really infamous and in a sick way. Intriguing Mafia figure Roy DeMeo. Chris and I are jumping into a really the deep end of the Mafia pool here, and we're really glad you joined us today. This episode and the previous episode on Richard Kuklinski, the Iceman, is going to build a lot of background that we'll use to talk about the 2012 movie Iceman.

So let's really get into [00:01:00] it. And I think Roy DeMeo is maybe not a Mafia. He's probably not one of the names that really comes up as one of people's first, like, most known Mafia figures, especially, uh, compared to his contemporary of somebody like John Gotti, but he was really extremely influential in his time, and maybe one of the most intriguing Mafia characters of all time.

What do you think, just like, your first brush and your first blush, I guess you might say, of Roy DeMeo? Yeah, as Luke pointed out, Roy DeMeo isn't, um, as particularly, particularly well known as some of these other Mafia guys. I think one of the reasons is where Hollywood and popular culture tries to present the Mafia as kind of glitz and glamorous to a degree where it almost seems like kind of like a fun thing.

Where, like, when you start reading about Roy DeMeo, it's the exact opposite of that. It's the... Kind of really, [00:02:00] really what the mob is, you know, boiled down to its essence and Roy kind of perfectly represents that where it's, it's not glitz and glamour, uh, glamour, it's, it's rough, it's dirty, it's kind of vile and disgusting.

It's a horror story, really. I mean, if you, if you took away and said that this wasn't real and you just told somebody about a, I mean, not to give away too much, but a place where people go in, they get murdered, and dismembered, and just disappear. It's literally a scene from a horror movie, Ray D'Ameo's life.

Yeah, you know, and it's, it really does come across, yeah, his entire life is, it's like a, kind of like what you would think would be like, almost like a cheesy B kind of horror film. Um, where, you know, this guy is, he's one thing, uh, to certain group of people, but then like when he's not away, when he's [00:03:00] away from those people, he's, he's an upstanding citizen.

It's a really, but you know, this is real. It's a, it's a hundred percent real. I am doing a little bit of ancestry. com. I knew from my family that there was de Mayo's that sort of overarching, uh, family that my family belongs to as my. Great grandmother was, her maiden name was DeMeo, and I tried so desperately to see if I was some connection to Roy, I didn't find it, but it's not that uncommon, it's not that common of a name, I, I'm gonna keep finding out, maybe we'll do an update at some point and see if there's, in some weird way I'm distantly related to Roy DeMeo, but um, really the, the best way to start out trying to dig into Roy DeMeo and try and learn something about him is, His kind of messed up childhood.

Tell us, tell us about Roy DeMeo's really screwed up childhood. Yeah, it [00:04:00] wasn't as bad. It wasn't like, don't get, it wasn't anything like Richard's, but it's, it's, yeah, it's a pretty weird childhood. Like, Roy was, uh... I mean, he would struggle with weight issues his entire life, but growing up, he was picked on for being overweight, but from the other kid, his brother was kind of looked upon as the golden child.

He was going to become the doctor and the family kind of devoted their attention to him and Roy really looked up to him too. And pretty early on, he went to go serve in Vietnam. I believe he volunteered. He wasn't drafted or anything. And he was, uh. He was killed in Vietnam and Roy had a really hard time dealing with this because he didn't really have his older brother there to protect him from the bullies.

So he learned to protect himself. This is he started weightlifting and took up boxing and became. You know pretty known as pretty ruthless street fighter, [00:05:00] but then, you know shortly after his brother, uh passes away he uh, his father dies unexpectedly, too And this is a really weird thing is his mother came up with this idea that she was gonna go back to Italy, you know to be around friends and family and kind of left roy by himself and his you know What was he in his early 20s at the time not even right?

Yeah, that whole thing with Roy's childhood, he's the de Mayo's and they, they kind of spell this out and it's, it's hard to psychoanalyze somebody who's been dead for 40 years and, uh, you know, things that happened 60 years ago, but he, um, he's. His family was successful. His one uncle was a, uh, uh, high ranking prosecutor in Brooklyn.

Another was the head medical examiner of New York City or some part of New York City government. [00:06:00] Uh, so doctors, lawyers. Roy's father was working class, and they lived in a pretty rough and tumble, rough and, uh, rough part of Brooklyn, but a lot of successful people came out of there, so you can't necessarily just say that Roy came from a rough family like Richard Kuklinski, like you had mentioned, but you also can't say it.

So it wasn't all just his background. There was something in Roy, I think, that he, he was mean. And all these things like his brother getting killed in Vietnam and the, the mafia thing that was kind of floating around this rough part of Brooklyn that he lived in, it all kind of got boiled down in him and just.

Brought out the very worst in Roy, I think. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, he, he had to learn to take care [00:07:00] of himself at a pretty young age. And, you know, in comparison to Richard, yeah, this seems like a cake walk, but I mean, that's pretty tragic. His brother died. In Vietnam, and then his father passing away pretty, uh, when he was still young, and then his mom leaving for Italy, and I mean, that to me, I really, I just can't understand the logic in her head, but I mean, maybe she talked to Rory, and Rory told her, you know, just go, but it seems like a really weird choice to make, and Yeah, you know, and he, I believe he ends up becoming like a butcher's apprentice and a delivery driver.

And he does really good at that. And he actually becomes like the best, like, delivery, meat delivery guy. And he ends up earning extra money and learning quickly that he can use this extra money to do, you know, Some, you know, low tier loan sharking. Did you maybe, when I was, when I read that Roy DeMeo's mom brought, I think it was his younger [00:08:00] brother to Italy to go live.

Did you think that maybe there was just some kernel that she was trying to get the younger brother away from Roy? It's, it's very possible. I mean, their mothers know their sons. Probably better than anybody, right? And maybe she saw the direction that Roy was going in and didn't want her youngest son to fall in those, uh, fall in that, uh, type of crowd.

It's very possible. That's another one, you know, the what ifs, but what if Roy's brother had come back from Vietnam as a hero? And Roy, I think that that could have been something where Roy goes and joins the Marines too, and goes to Vietnam, and then we don't have Roy DeMeo, like, I honestly think that it could have been that Roy became so embittered with everything that at that just really critical time in his development, he sees his brother do something [00:09:00] that A lot of people, like, I think the father wasn't so much into the brother joining the marines, but it really, it really did, like, open up all this anger that Roy had clamped down inside of him.

It just gave him a, an escape valve to just say, you know what, screw everything. Steve here again. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like Josh Cohen's Eyewitness History and many other great shows. Go to Parthenon Podcast to learn more. And now, here is a quick word from our sponsors.

Yeah, for sure. Especially at a young age, the that type of, uh, tragedy, uh, you know, losing, losing a young brother can trigger those types of emotions. And some people, I mean, it's fairly common for [00:10:00] that to come out of people. Most people are able to, like, reign it back in over time, which they, they go through, like, the that just never happened.

Then I think one other element to the whole story is that the Mafia was really never that far away from where they were, where they were living. I mean, they were living in an area that there was mobsters all over the place. And was it Roy's mom who wound up going to live with Joe Profaci's One of the biggest mafia guys of all times, widowed wife.

Yeah. And it wasn't like, this might get me in a little bit of trouble, but like many Italians, Italian Americans at that time, uh, that we're talking about kind of, they viewed the mob where those are our bad guys. You know what I mean? Where they, it was just something that people grew around with and they grew up around with, and they just kind of accepted it.

It's like every group [00:11:00] has their. You know, quote unquote bad guys and the mob just happens to be our bad guys and you know, it's kind of, um, it's a, I use a comparison. It's kind of like the hell's angels a little bit up here in Canada where, especially in like the Quebec area where it's just something that's just, it's not as bad as it used to be, but it used to be like, really, like All over the place, and it was just everybody kind of knew somebody who was kind of part of the Hells Angels, you know, even if they were just on, you know, the very edges of it, or they're, they knew somebody that knew somebody and I mean, this is kind of how the mob was, and especially in like areas like Brooklyn at the time, where I mean, everyone just kind of, especially if you were Italian, you probably knew somebody who was You know, some, you know, somewhat related to the mob to one degree or another.

And it was, um, you know, you also didn't really trust the federal government and state authorities at the time, too. So you didn't really talk to them about it either. And everybody knew. Kind of what happened to [00:12:00] people that I talked to. I know. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I think especially somebody like Roy who had this legitimate part of his family who were at the highest levels of government.

But like you said, nobody in Brooklyn in the 1950s or the 1960s was that far away from some connection to the mafia, even as straight as people wanted to be that it was still, you were. In school, I think, um, I can't remember who was the mobsters that were, that lived just down the street from Roy DeMeo and he would hang out with them.

It might have been the Profaci kids, and I think both of those Profaci kids wound up becoming doctors or lawyers or something legit, but it was, that was it. It was never that far away from being from some connection to the Mafia. Now, Roy clearly doesn't go into the legitimate direction. He fully [00:13:00] embraces the Mafia.

What's kind of his early career? And crime, well, it's like I pointed out, he was a apprentice butcher and he was very good at that. And he was like a delivery boy. And he, you know, we do more deliveries and everybody else. And, you know, he, with the extra cash that you earned from doing this, he would loan money out to, you know, early loan sharking at exorbitant interests.

And then quickly he got into auto car. theft, basically, you know, stealing car parts, stealing cars, um, chop shops. And he was doing this under the Casey family, which is one of the five families, but who are actually more known for, this is the kind of weird part about this story, like the glue Casey family were kind of known more for like these blue collar kind of crimes or the like auto theft and what have you, but, uh, Somebody in the Gambino family, um, named Nino Gaggi sees Roy DeMeo and sees, [00:14:00] you know, this guy's really good at what he does.

He's really effective and he's a good earner and says, well, come join, you know, come with me, come join the Gambino family. You'll make even more money. And this is kind of how his criminal career starts. Yeah, he, Roy, starts off, and like you said, there was the five families, and we've talked about the five families a little bit, but at this point, not all families are equal, and the Lucchesis are kind of a low end mafia doing these things that are kind of low end crimes.

And then Nino Gaggi comes in, and I think that Nino really saw the potential in Roy DeMeo, that Roy DeMeo could make a lot of money. Yeah, and he makes a lot of, makes a ton of money, uh, doing this and this is also the time period where he starts setting up the early part of like the DeMeo crew. And this is where he meets, uh, Chris Rosenberg, who is a pretty [00:15:00] fascinating character.

He's this Jewish guy that grew up in an Italian neighborhood and hated the fact that he was Jewish. You know, you know, basically. Thought of himself as Italian. I mean, he was Italian and anything, but, you know, I guess genetics or race or however you want to view it. And he had this dream that he was going to be the first Jewish guy that was going to be made in the Italian family.

And I mean, I mean, it's pretty ambitious. I mean, they didn't even make, they didn't even make a Meyer Lansky. So he's like, he's, he's a funny guy, not. But not really, because he's, we'll get into it later, he's completely ruthless, but Roy takes him under his wing and kind of views him as his kind of little brother or kind of like a son sort of, and you know, Roy would line up, uh, Chris was also into big into drug dealing, and they'll Roy would loan him out money so he can buy more amounts of drugs.

And Roy would make money and Chris would make money and Joseph and [00:16:00] Patrick Testa and Anthony center. And there were a couple other guys, but those are the three, those are like the, the main guys in the demo crew. And yeah, he goes from there. And I mean, somehow during this time period too, somehow Roy wounds up being like.

Uh, part of the board of directors of a credit union that he uses to, uh, launder money and, um, from his car theft, uh, operations, but also like the drug dealing, uh, operations that he has going on with, uh, Chris Rosenberg. I don't think it's too far to say that Roy was really a criminal genius. He really understood how to make money with all these different things that he did.

I mean, it's really, it's crazy. All the different ways that he was earning money. One thing though, is that at this point in the, the mafia in the seventies, early seventies, the, they say opening up the books is that they weren't. Making a [00:17:00] lot of new mafia members at the time. So there was a lot of people like Roy DeMeo who were not strictly by, by definition in the mafia, they were attached to people like Nino Gaggi, who was a made man, but they weren't, a lot of new people weren't being made at that time.

So you had people like, uh, Roy DeMeo making fabulous amounts of money, but they weren't. Directly a part of the Mafia, which gave them a lot of latitude to do things like drugs and working with with Jews and Irish and all these different other gangs in a way that if they were fully made members of the Mafia, they wouldn't be allowed to do.

Yeah, and it would in the book Murder Machine, they get into this where like Nino we've been is trying to when we get to it, we'll get to when we get to that part. But like Nino is trying to would tell Roy sometimes, you know. You're probably better off not being made because if the, you know, the guys at the top of [00:18:00] the family found out some of the stuff that you were up to, it would, you know, cause a lot of problems for yourself.

But, you know, that we'll get into that, um, um, a little bit later into the podcast. Well, why don't we talk about a little bit right now about Nino Gaggi because he is a really interesting character in this whole thing. Yeah. So. Yeah, Nino, he's a mate guy in the, uh, Gambino crime family. And he, he grew up around the mob, right?

And this has basically been his, uh, his entire life. And he ends up becoming a capo, which is the boss of the, like a crew kind of how it works in the mafia after Gambino dies and Paul Castellano takes over. And. He's like a weird guy because he's, he's, he's old school, but he's not really old school. And I don't know, how would you describe him?

He's, I think that really is, he's the old school in a lot of [00:19:00] ways, but he's also, um, I think he's very American in a lot of ways too. Yeah, I mean, and there's this great story. I don't know if you want to consider it great or not, but like, he got into, uh, an argument with, I believe it was a boxer. I'm trying to remember this guy's name right now.

Oh, Gennaro was his last name. Yeah, Gennaro, and he, like, broke his nose or roughed him up a little bit, and Nino Gaggi just swore revenge, and it took about... 12 years and got his revenge after repeated, repeated attempts of trying to get his revenge on this guy. This is just the type of person like, you know, was an example like the story.

It shouldn't be funny, but it is kind of funny. It seems like something that you would, you know, that would come out of a comedy. You kind of Nino just seemed to a guy like he wanted to think he was Vito Corleone from the Godfather. I mean, he even talked about a lot about that, but he was [00:20:00] Really, a small time hood in a lot of, in most every way, he made a lot of money, but he wasn't very well thought out with it or anything like that, and he wasn't hitting, hitting guys all the time, or, and he screwed up a lot of things, he just, he's a low end.

To me, a low rent mobster. And I'm, I'm glad he's not alive to hear me say that, but he's just not very impressive. Yeah, I would, yeah, I would agree with that, but I mean, he definitely knew he's very like as much, he might not probably wouldn't like this, but he's very much a street guy. Right. Um, and doing like low end crimes and, you know, stuff that's not particularly glamorous.

But I mean, if you do read this book, Murder Machine, I suggest you look into it too. Is the, it might not sound sexy, you know, doing chopped cars and selling used car parts and stealing cars, but you would [00:21:00] not believe the amount of money that's involved in these types of operations. And, uh, I mean, I think Nino would probably, is probably the best boss that Roy would have because Nino's the type of guy, he's just going to turn a blind eye to most of the stuff that Roy was up to, um, minus maybe one thing that we'll get into a little bit.

But even then, you know, just kind of, you know, yelled at Roy a bit and then just kind of let Roy do his own thing again. I think Nino, all Nino was concerned with was money, whatever was happening, he just wanted. And he was a really bottom line kind of guy. He didn't want a lot of stuff getting in the way of the bottom line.

Loan sharking is a really interesting part of the mafia because it really is the nitty gritty. And like you said, it's the not very sexy part of the mafia, but that's where they made a Loaning money out at these [00:22:00] exorbitant rates where people would have to pay huge interest balloon payments. We might call them now called the VIGs once a week of.

You know, huge percentages of the, of the, uh, base amount that the, the people would take out. And they would really have to take out another loan shark loan to be able to just pay the interest on these loans. And it was kind of a, once you got into that system of taking out a loan shark loan, you were never gonna get out of it.

Yeah, and people like Roy would use it too, or, okay, like, okay, whatever, you're never gonna pay, be able to pay your loan again. Okay, so I'm part of your business now, 50%, or in the case of the Gemini Lounge, the guy who had actually owned the bar. The time had a loan out, uh, for Roy and he was never going to be able to pay it off.

So Roy said he saw an opportunity. It's like, oh, this is where I can do my business. It's got an apartment in the [00:23:00] back and you know, it's, uh, it's a nice place. I like it. I don't get whatever, give me your bar, just send your bar off to me. And that's it. We'll call it even. And that, that a lot of the times, this is how these mob guys would build up.

These little bars, these people would take loans out of 5% of the business or 50% or just the entire thing.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. Let's talk about Andre Katz. That was one of the first big murders that Roy DeMeo was involved with. And it was one of the first ones that really got a lot of police attention put on him. Yeah, so Andre Katz was he was involved in the chop shop business with Roy and it's not exactly sure what happened or he ends up getting busted with and Chris Rosenberg was there too and some People say it was like related [00:24:00] to the drugs that Chris Rosenberg was selling at the time.

And, but Andre Katz just kind of comes to the conclusion. He's like, well, I'm not going to jail for these guys and, you know, volunteers to go talk to the authorities about, you know, the chop shop and the drug, the drug business that was going on in his, uh, in his, uh, facilities. Roy finds out that he was doing this because Roy had paid, uh, police officers off in the stolen vehicles department of the NYPD.

I'm not exactly sure what the department's called, but this is what they, they specialize in stolen vehicles and said that, you know, Katz is talking and Roy comes up with this plan. Well, we can, he knows too much, we got to get rid of them. So they, they hired this, this young lady to lure. Cats into I believe it was like a hotel or something and Roy and his crew kidnap them and then they end up, um, killing them at [00:25:00] the this meet at this, uh, supermarket and dispose of the body.

And this is where the Gemini methods kind of. Slowly starts where, you know, they chop the body up and they start, you know, depositing parts and various dumps around the city, but they don't do it quite well this time because apparently some pedestrians saw like a leg, um, sticking out of a trash can or something.

And then, um, they end up learning that they have to become, you know, more efficient, cleaner at this. And this is, um, we're going to be getting into some things that are definitely not family. Friendly, so to speak. And we're not going to be graphic with it at all, but this is very brutal stuff and I would definitely suggest that maybe for the next, uh, couple of minutes you screen this for content if you're listening in the minivan, but the Gemini method, that Gemini was the name of the club that Roy had.

Taken over [00:26:00] through his loan sharking and so the, this crew of really psychotic killers that Roy gathers together and the very broad strokes and we don't really need to get into all the nitty gritty people can read a murder machine and there's plenty of other information out there on, uh, on the specifics on how they killed people at the Gemini, but in general, what were they doing?

At the Gemini. Yeah. So they use the jump. They was called the Gemini method because it took place in the Gemini lounge and they would lure people into the back apartment, which was at the, you can look up pictures. You can see the Gemini lounge. You can see this for the apartment building was they would lure people back there and.

Basically, without getting into like a ton of the details, because it's, it's rough stuff. Um, they came up with, they pretty much the most efficient way and cleanest way of getting rid of somebody who was [00:27:00] trouble and disposing of the body. So there was, there was really no way to, if there was no body, there was no crime at the end of the day.

They, they, the cops could be like, well, we, we saw him go into the Gemini, Gemini lounge. Roy could be, well, you know, he left. You know, a couple hours later, and then the cops just let, if they can't find a body, they have no, they have nothing to pursue. And this was highly effective. You know, there's different reports about, you know, did Roy and his crew kill up to 200 people, 100 people.

I didn't think it was probably around 100. I think it was 47 or 49, they can officially confirm we're done by the DeMayo crew, but, you know, to kind of put this in perspective, nobody really had taken industrial murder. Um, nobody had done this since pretty much, you know, Murder Incorporated. Yeah, they would, um, they would really dispose of the bodies.

They had a garbage dump and... [00:28:00] Nobody's going, those garbage dumps, like in New York City, they're getting feet of garbage piled every single day in there. And so, I mean, if you don't know about something, if you want to look for something that happened a week ago, you could be digging through hundreds of feet of garbage.

It's just never going to happen. You know, no police department in the world has the tools to do that. Yeah, and they were at one point they did think about, like, start digging through this garbage later on when they were trying to find some of these bodies so they could pin more, you know, crimes on Roy and they, I, they looked at and they said, like, this is just not possible.

There's no way to do it. I mean, and if you know, you look into how they came up with the Gemini method and then the disposal of the body is, is School ish, but I mean, it is brilliant. It worked for the amount of murders that these guys were [00:29:00] doing, you know, and Roy was personally, personally did a lot of these murders himself.

I mean, so if we're looking at like a hundred people. Let's just say, let's just say, let's just say it's a hundred people. I mean, how many did the Green River killer kill? Nowhere near that, I don't think. I mean, you could say that, like, Roy was one of the worst, if not the worst, like, serial killers in American history, depending on how you look at it.

I wouldn't say Roy was a serial killer just because there's a little... I don't really want to, you know, compare and contrast, but I mean, in terms of just the body count, yeah, it's like a hundred people. That's in Ted Bundy wasn't anywhere near that. It's also, I think that this is a good place to really mark that Roy, the Roy, the businessman as a mafia guy, he saw within this time period, if I'm not mistaken, he does get his button.

Or he gets, becomes a maid member of the mafia, kind of [00:30:00] against, not everybody wanted him to become a maid man. No, uh, well, so, Bino dies, and Paul Castellano becomes the head of the family, and so the books open up. And Roy is bonding, you know, get me, you know, get me my button, get me my button. I've earned and I've earned it.

I mean, and for the family, he, you know, he was taking murder contracts and he was doing all the dirty work that nobody else really, well, it's not that nobody else really wanted to do. It was just nobody else was doing it as good as Roy was. And Paul kind of looked down at these street guys. He didn't really like being associated with them.

And I mean, that's not. But, I mean, that's not fair from, you know, from Paul to be saying that, because he would take their money anyways. Uh, but the 1 thing that Paul was like, Roy, he's uncontrollable. He's this guy is a loose cannon and I can't really. I can't really trust him so Paul didn't [00:31:00] really want to make him a made man and so Roy comes to the conclusion well I just got to make even more money and then they can't possibly deny me.

And he opens up an alliance with the Westies who are a pretty infamous gang of the, I believe it's the Hell's Kitchen area of New York. They're like the Irish mob and by opening up this alliance with The Westies, he's able to, um, he opens up like construction contracts, which is what Paul was really into.

He was more into like the labor union type stuff, the more white collar crimes. And the Westies end up becoming kind of like a, an arm of the Gambino family because of. Uh, Roy DeMeo and, uh, Nino Gaggi setting up a meeting between, I can't remember the head of the Westies at the time, him and Paul Castellano, and later on, Roy ends up becoming the, the, the goal between, between the Gambino family and the Westies in terms of [00:32:00] just all business deals.

And this is like a pretty huge deal because the Westies are infamous game because of their brutality, but they also controlled like a. They had a lot of power in New York at the time, and this is basically, because Roy's able to pull this off, Paul really can't deny making him a, a maid guy anymore, and he gets his maid status.

We're going to leave it at that for today. I just want to mention, though, the best thing you can do to help us in this podcast is if you enjoy what you're hearing, Tell a friend, tell a couple of friends about the Organized Crime and Punishment podcast so that your friends can become friends of ours.

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Original Publication Date: 8/16/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/xgTnsXwkc7o

Description: In this episode of Organized Crime and Punishment, Mustache Chris and Steve delve deep into the chilling world of the critically acclaimed movie "The Iceman." This episode dissects the mesmerizing portrayal of the notorious contract killer Richard Kuklinski by Michael Shannon and disentangles the intricate web of organized crime he was a part of. From the gritty streets to the suspenseful courtroom scenes, we analyze how the film captures the chilling reality of a man leading a double life – family man by day and ruthless hitman by night. Tune in to explore the moral dilemmas, the complex characters, and the parallels to real-life criminal enterprises. As we explore the shades of gray in the criminal world, we raise questions about justice and punishment. Join the conversation using #RichardKuklinski #TheIcemanMovie #ColdBloodedKiller #ContractKiller #RealLifeCrime #TrueCrimeStory #OrganizedCrimeSaga #CriminalMastermind  as we unravel the cinematic portrayal of organized crime and its consequences. You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places:

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime, with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

In the last couple of episodes, Chris and I talked about the real history and background of mobsters Richard the Iceman, Kuklinski, Roy DeMeo, and his famous crew. Today, we're going to talk about the 2012 film based on these events, the Iceman starring Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder, Ray Liotta, and more. So I really want to share a quick comment from our last YouTube live stream from one Wolfgang Schmuck.

That's a great, [00:01:00] that's a great, uh, YouTube name. So, um, he says the guy on the right has the most perfect, clean looking mustache I've ever seen. Uh, mustache. How you doing? Oh, doing good. I'm pretty, uh, like the rest of my friends and family make jokes about the mustache. I've had it for so long now. I just, I'm just going to keep it.

I'm never getting rid of it. And apparently, uh, somebody else pointed out that I look like, uh, Chris Rosenberg. And then I just, we were just looking at a picture and I was like, yeah, it's actually a little bit uncanny. Like his eye, like his hair is longer and stuff like that. But. I mean, I see it in the eyes, and then the mustache, I mean, there is definitely some similarity there.

Wait, when did Chris Rosenberg die, and when were you born? Are you Chris Rosenberg reincarnated, maybe? I don't know, it'll be for the people to decide. Now this movie, uh, The Iceman, I have to say, it has, [00:02:00] I watched it probably more or less when it came out, and I liked it. This movie has so grown on me, to, to maybe it's one of my favorite mob movies.

Of all time, because I wouldn't say just overall, it's not the most accurate movie I have ever seen, but it really captures something about the times, about Richard Kuklinski, and about what else was going on in the New York mafia scene in the 70s and the 80s. What did you think in your first couple of watches of this movie?

Like you, when it first came out, I watched it right away because I heard about Richard Kuklinski. Michael Shannon, I always kind of, I've always enjoyed his acting, so I just, I watched and I enjoyed it, but, and I knew a little bit about Roy DeMeo and like a little bit of the history, but not a ton. But like, since doing like the 2 kind of deep dive background episodes and really [00:03:00] reading about that particular area and time period of the mob, I've.

Like yourself, I actually kind of appreciate this movie more than I did before, which is, I've heard opposite, I've heard the opposite from people where they, they read more about Richard and they're like, Oh, this movie doesn't, doesn't do it properly. And it's, well, I mean, we'll get into that a little bit later.

I think, like you pointed out to me and you were talking earlier in the week, it, it really captures the whole feel of that era that you get from when you do some research into, uh. Because it's a very particular era, like, era of the mob, especially like the DiMeo and Kuglinski, like, even location of like where they were doing a lot of their work, it's um, it's a very particular feel to it, and I believe the movie captures it really well.

Yeah, we'll get into some of it. We'll talk about some of the scenes that we really enjoyed and talk a little bit about the historical, historical accuracy of it. But I think people will see that even [00:04:00] though some things weren't exactly historically correct and they changed some names and they, they did some weird stuff with the, with the timing, it really was, each scene was something that Richard Kuklinski Talked about or that had actually happened.

Yeah, so let's maybe talk a little bit about some of those details that were changed right off the bat. If we look at some of the main characters. So Michael Shannon played Richard Kuklinski. Winona Ryder played Richard's wife. They called her Deborah. But, um, her real name was Barbara Kuklinski, and I think she might be the first person to talk about because I think she really nailed something with Barbara Kuklinski.

You can watch some interviews she did on some shows in the 90s and in the early 2000s, and I think she captured something. So [00:05:00] specific about and so accurately about, uh, Barbara Kuklinski. What did you think? I agree with that, too, but no, the writer really captures that kind of working class, like home, like homeless.

And I'm trying to what's the word I'm thinking of, like that working class. Like she's working class, but she, you know, she's very wholesome. Yeah. I think that's the best way I can describe it. I think she also, you, you get through her acting and several of the scenes that. She knows there's something up with Richard, but she's willing to turn a blind eye to it, and I think that that's what I really got from the, from the real Barbara.

She knew, somewhere deep inside of her, obviously she knew Richard had a Hair trigger temper and he would trash the place, but I think she intrinsically knew that there was something way darker to Richard than even [00:06:00] what she saw in the house. Yeah, and it you see it right up like the first scene with them when they're on their first date.

She notices he's got a grim Reaper tattoo on his. On his hand and it's all you know, I had this one back in the day. I was trying to look tough and you get a sense that she's, she's attracted to it because she probably, you know, is attracted to the, the tough guy, the bad boy, the reformed bad boy. I know it's a cliche, but it's the truth.

Um, in actuality, the tattoo wasn't a grim reaper was, um, come, it was Yeah. It was a tattoo that him and this gang that he, when he was pretty young, coming up with the coming up roses gang, they all got the same tattoo on the hand. Um, but I mean, the grim reapers says, you know, serves the same purpose now that, um, I think it's probably good we talk about the Gemini crew of Ray Liotta playing Roy DeMeo, James Frank, or not James Franco, he'll come in later.

But David Schwimmer playing, [00:07:00] they called him Josh Rosenthal, but he was really representing Chris Rosenberg. And then Robert Davi playing, Leo Merckx, but who was actually Anthony Gaggi, Nino Gaggi, and I think there was something about each one of those that so masterfully just absolutely grabbed who they were supposed to be, especially Ray Liotta.

I've been saying this for weeks that we've been talking about this. Roy DeMeo was the role. Ray Liotta was born to play. Oh yeah, for sure. Like, and just watching this movie and, you know, going and doing the back research for the Roy DeMille episode, it just makes me want to go, it's terrible to think that we're never going to get a Ray Liotta.

Roy DeMeo movie because it would have been perfect. Um, yeah, he was born to play this role and I mean, I, this might be a little because he doesn't have like a ton of screen time in the movie, but if you had somebody else playing Roy DeMeo, I just don't think the [00:08:00] movie would have worked as well. Because you need somebody with the same kind of intensity that Michael Shannon has to play off back and forth off each other because, you know, reading the movie that seemed to, I mean, reading for the movie that seemed to kind of be the relationship that Roy DeMille and Richard had in real life, according to Richard, depends on who you believe, but Yeah, there used to, there was like a certain level of intensity between the two of them.

Then, um, the, the interplay of Chris Rosenberg, uh, Josh Rosenthal and Roy, uh, I thought that they got that really well too. I know some people criticize that it seemed that they played down Chris, Chris's role, but I think that he Really, they really got something with that in that David Schwimmer looked close in age to Ray Liotta.

I don't know how close they are in actuality. They're probably fairly close in age. [00:09:00] Um, and, uh, Chris Rosenberg was just a little bit younger than Roy, but they really had a father son relationship. Yeah, and David Schwimmer, just as an actor, I thought was a perfect choice to play Chris Rosenberg. I know that sounds kind of crazy because he's like the guy from Friends, but when you read Chris Rosenberg, he comes across as a guy that tries really hard to be funny.

To not be what he is, which is like a Jewish guy, uh, like tries really hard to be really Italian and it comes across when you read it that he comes across almost as like a try hard and David Schwimmer plays that type of role. That was basically the role that he played on friends and it comes comes across perfectly in this movie, but you get to see him as this brutal killer to like.

Chris Rosenberg had absolutely no problem killing people. And I And didn't you get that? I think that came through with [00:10:00] David Schwimmer. Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, and like Chris Rosenberg was like his, well, I don't know. We won't get into it. It's pretty, pretty graphic. But, uh, yeah, you definitely get that sense with David Schwimmer in this movie.

But when he shoots out the, the two, uh, coke dealers, right, you see the ruthlessness there, uh, for sure. But it, you know, I would have liked to have seen more of them in the movie, but I mean, there's time constraints and. But yeah, I thought David hit it out of the park.

And here is a quick word from our sponsors.

And then, uh, I loved Robert Davi as, uh, Nino Gaggi. [00:11:00] Even though his role was tinier, uh, smaller than even, uh, Ray Liotta's or David Schwimmer's. I think he, again, he captured something of the pompousness and... Maybe the foolishness of Nino Gaggi, like the pettiness, how pompous and petty Nino was. I think Robert Davi really grabbed that.

Oh, yeah, for sure. It's, I'd like to, I don't really know why they didn't use Nino Gaggi's name. I, I assume it's probably some legal stuff, like maybe descendants of like Gaggi or something, the friend of Sue, and that's why they use Leo Marx. Uh, it's probably nice. I would assume it has something to do with that.

Um, yeah, he like he really does capture just like the pettiness of Nino and the cheapness and there's a couple scenes that illustrate that and this is the thing with this movie Like we pointed out like yeah, it's not historically accurate in some ways, but it really it Captures everything that you need to know about, like, Nino Gaggi, like, in terms of not [00:12:00] wanting to pay for work that he said he was gonna pay for, and, like, the pettiness, some guy, you know, they get into a little, you know, scuffle, or what have you, and then he hires a hitman to go kill him, you know, that's something Nino would do, we know that, because Nino, Ends up killing that boxer that got a, he got into a fist fight with like 12 years later, he's still steaming about it.

You know, just like pettiness over a broken nose. And then the last one I think we have to, we have to mention is Chris Evans. He played Robert, Mr. Softy Prongay, and they called him Mr. Freezy in the movie. That might've been because Mr. Softy is a trademarked, uh, name. I didn't know, I had never seen much with Chris Evans, but he captured.

Magnificently, the craziness of Robert Prange. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's, I guess he's most famous for playing like Captain America, right. And like the all American boy. And I mean, he plays that really well. Cause he kind of does [00:13:00] look like the part, but. He, I'm totally surprised at just how well he did Robert, I didn't even know it was Chris Evans when I first watched the movie, but then upon multiple viewings, I realized it was him and, you know, and researching the movie and he.

Based off what Richard told us about Robert ProE. Chris Evans, yeah. Hits it out of the park. Like he captures that certain, that craziness that is, uh, that Robert ProE was, let's take it. So we, I mean the acting was really out of this world and we, we didn't even, I guess we should mention Michael Shannon as Richard Kuklinski.

I think one thing that you had mentioned, what did you think about, you mentioned earlier. You know, just talking now that you thought you loved the intensity he brought, but you didn't feel that he brought the physicality of Richard Kuklinski. No, I like the intensity for sure. Um, but when you see [00:14:00] pictures of Richard Kalinsky and you read about people describing Richard Kalinsky, he is like literally a monster, right?

Like he's six five over 300 pounds. I mean, Michael Shannon's pretty tall, but he doesn't look like he's over 300 pounds in this movie. Uh, and I mean that to me, that's like a little nitpicking thing, I guess, because I'm, how many actors are you going to be able to find that would match like the talent of Michael Shannon and the intensity and plus be six, five, you know, 300 plus pounds is not many.

There's not many actors that probably out there that you could hire to pull it off. But that's one little thing I would have liked. I would have liked to. A guy that was more physically intimidating. Yeah, I looked at Michael Shannon. He's tall. I think he's well over six feet tall, but he's thin. He's, you know, even when they showed him in the movie, like a, uh, up next to Winona Ryder, he was much large, taller than her, but he didn't physically dominate her [00:15:00] and or even, um, Ray Liotta as Roy DeMeo, like standing next to him.

He was. Tall, but he didn't physically just completely dwarf these people like he did. I think I even noticed one of the scenes he was clearly wearing lifts to make himself a little top, probably to make him look a little taller. I mean, they look like seventies shoes too. So it could have been just that.

Yeah, yeah, that's just my, my, I don't know. That's one, that would have been like something they could have done maybe differently, but then it's not that big of a deal. I think Michael Shannon did the role very well. So let's talk about a couple of those individual scenes that really stuck with us. What's maybe one scene that really stuck with you?

I mean, um, I would say like the, the, like the, the scene in the porn lab between Richard and Ray, because according to Richard, this is kind of the way he met, um, sorry, Richard and Roy DeMeo. This is kind of, uh, [00:16:00] how they met was Richard was working at this porn lab. And I think there was, if I'm remembering correctly, there was some problem with.

Uh, I don't know. There wasn't the shipment was going to make out make out on time. And, you know, Roy just smacks him around a bit. And according to Richard, like he. Said to himself like he swore revenge. He was gonna get revenge on uh, Roy for ever putting his hands on him and it just really captured the the intensity of Richard and the Intensity of Roy and you have like these two You know psychotic guys staring each other down it was uh, perfect and It kind of shows like the stuff that Richard and Roy were into we didn't really get into it Uh so much in the background episodes, but like Roy was funding a ton of this Pornography that was going around in the United States at the time.

And it wasn't a lot of, it wasn't just like normal pornography. There was some pretty vile stuff that we were, um, um, shipping [00:17:00] around and Richard was right into it too. And you know, it's yeah. So I don't know, to me, that was one of the better scenes in the movie. I liked the scene and it really, I think it like it, it, it got to me and I think I didn't really understand it when I saw it and I probably didn't even understand it the last couple of times I watched it.

I was just watching it today and it hit me that scene where Richard meets with his brother. Joseph in the prison, and that's the scene where I think we get the real hint of Richard's childhood. That's something that they don't show at all in the movie, except for one five second flashback in that scene.

And it really gets dropped after that, but I think that for me, that's what made me think that this movie you really need to know the story of Richard Kuklinski going into it, or else I think you can go on a kind of a false narrative. And I don't know if that's what [00:18:00] the filmmakers were trying to get.

It's to get, they built this narrative of Richard being like the typical classical family man who maybe starts to fall apart where, um, Richard had all this background before he even met Barbara, which if you go back to the previous episodes, you'll hear. And that one scene gave us a little taste of that.

A little taste, yeah, and it was something that we had, we didn't get into on the Richard, uh. Podcast two is that that's accurate. His brother was murdered. Um, I believe it was a young lady and he was in that he was in jail for that. Um, and then the Iceman, uh, Philip Carlo book you hear about Richard talks about like trying to help.

He was trying to help his brother and they were actually pretty close. And then after his brother Joseph did that, he kind of cut him off. And that's what you see in the. And that scene is Richard basically just [00:19:00] saying, like, never call again, like, it's completely done. Um, but the one thing I really liked about that scene is his brother screaming at him saying, like, you're going to wind up in here with me.

And that's exactly what happened. I think it was a few cell blocks away from his brother. Yeah, when he was finally caught, then I think it was the very next scene after that, or maybe it was a little bit longer down when Richard Kuklinski gets into that road rage incident. Yeah, and I think you again, you see who the real Richard Kuklinski was that that whole.

facade and even the facade that the movie puts up that he's the all American family man, you know, dad of the year. And then he goes on this insane road rage. That's who Richard was a hundred percent. And that, and then if you, in the. The Iceman, like, documentaries and the books, he talks about, like, just going on these freak road rages, and I mean, that's pretty accurate to what Richard did in real, like, [00:20:00] in real life, he says he, he killed a few of these people that he went on road rages with, but I mean, it captures, it shows you that they This is something that triggers Richard off is like, uh, is, uh, certain road, uh, road rage, uh, episodes.

Were there any other scenes that really stuck out to you? Um, I like the mod, like, so when Roy DeMeo hires Richard to be his personal, his personal, like, side special assassin or what have you, like me particularly, I don't think that's. Exactly how their relationship was. But let's just say in the movie, this is how they show it.

They do a montage of Richard doing a bunch of jobs for Roy and a lot of the, the, uh, killing that he does in that montage is killings that we hear about in the Philip Carlo book. Like, I like that touch. So it's not historically accurate. How? All those killings went down or what have you but you know we get the he uses like the rope in one [00:21:00] scene and there was like a couple of other ones and I just liked it because it I don't know it was a certain attention to detail and they yeah they change things a little bit but I mean it is somewhat it is.

Accurate in spirit one that seemed that they switched around is, um, I think it was in both of the books. The two major books on Richard Kuklinski. He said that Roy pulled an Uzi on him at the Gemini and. Was probably gonna kill Richard, but Richard was so ice cold like he didn't move and he didn't, uh, he didn't give that fear factor back to Roy that Roy was really looking for and they kind of showed that in the car scene where, uh, Roy pulls a gun on Richard and I That scene they never really talked about in any of the books, but I think that was kind of a mashup of scenes to just show, like, how ice cold Richard Kuklinski was, that even somebody like [00:22:00] as psychotic as Roy DeMeo couldn't shake him.

Yeah, that, that's what When we talked about it earlier is like that's something that the movie did particularly well was changing the scene a bit to make it the movie flow a little bit better but still capturing the spirit like historically accurate right rich like Roy pulling out the Uzi as you pointed out yeah they changed it a little bit but they they kind of recreated it in a sense that made more sense in the movie the movie really got me thinking And this, I wanted to bump this theory off of you is, so we really, we, in that first Richard Kuklinski episode, the background episode, we really came to the conclusion that we thought he was full of it.

But I wonder if the way the timeline works out, if you look at it, Richard's doing really, really well up until the early 80s. And then Roy DeMeo dies in 83, I think it was somewhere in thereabouts. And [00:23:00] it's really after 83. And when you get into the mid 90s, that Richard really started screwing up. And I wonder if maybe.

There is some truth that Richard, maybe he was not an international, uh, hit man assassin. I mean, I think that's preposterous. And I think that that's stuff that Richard pulled out later just to get people going. And, uh, especially his last interviewer. I think maybe he was doing that just because he knew they would eat that up.

That's preposterous. But what do you think that about? Richard was earning under Roy, and once Roy died, that's when it really fell apart because Richard then had to make his own criminal enterprises after that. Well, that and it would, Richard, that was his connection to... Like hit contracts, right? I guess and Roy was kind of is his personal capo.[00:24:00]

Um, I, yeah, I can totally, I can see it. I personally think that, like, I think Roy was doing hits for the mob. I think he did special jobs for I think he did some special jobs for Roy, or Roy at the very least pointed people in Richard Kuklinski's, uh, direction if he didn't really want much to do with them and, you know, word got around, I, that's what I personally think, um, and I, I guess when he saw Roy go down, maybe he started thinking to himself, well, I mean, if they're going to take, they can take Roy out, then it's only a matter of time for me, maybe And maybe subconsciously he starts getting sloppier, knowing that he'll get caught, at least in prison, he'll be somewhat safe.

It's also that it could be that after Roy was killed, that Richard and everybody associated with Roy was such damaged goods, he couldn't just go work for John Gotti or for the Westies or for somebody else and make the [00:25:00] kind of, uh, money that he was making. Through Roy, and so he had to get, he had to push himself way further than he really was ever comfortable with and I think he had been stealing cars and stuff, but it was all such sloppy stuff.

I think he, because he had, in all the books, they say that he spent money faster than it came in, and once that Roy money dried up, and they kind of show that in the movie too, where Roy says everybody has to stop doing everything, and he essentially laid off Richard, that that's when Richard started getting really sloppy.

Because he had to earn, yeah, yeah, he had to earn and it's also implied in the movie that like he had to he had this urge to kill like that was one of the things is like, oh, I'm really good at what I do. And it's like, yeah, part of it's like, this is how I make my living. But part of it is if I can't just.

If I can't kill people, then I, [00:26:00] I'm going to start taking it out on my family and what have you. And you kind of see it in the movie where he freaks out, uh, in real life. This happened a lot more often, but I mean, in, in the movie, he freaks out. And that's when he comes to, Oh, I'm going to reach out to Robert Prange.

And we're going to start doing jobs in the side. Cause I think it was implying that he couldn't hold these urges back anymore. And he had to, um, he had to. You know, unleash them somehow, and he also had to start making some coin. Yeah, that's, I think, that's another thing that the movie shows. It's this whole thing with Robert Prange, and how much of it, how much of the things that he did with Robert Prange, do you believe, especially what they showed in this movie, industrialist.

Freezing, uh, set up going and that they're both just doing one contract after another. And I don't get that that was really what they were doing. I mean, from my [00:27:00] understanding, they did kind of work together. Did they non, they like shared tricks of the trade. Uh, they, they bring up the cyanide spray, which is apparent according to Richard, Robert Prong is the one who taught him that trick.

And I mean, he talks about it on the, uh, The tapes that they, uh, where he, I don't know, they used it as evidence against him in the, in the court case or whatever the wire tap, uh, he talks about like the cyanide spray. I mean, and we talked about Robert Pongay, like, they did find a guy who was like, shot up near, uh, inside his ice cream truck and, you know, he was an arsonist and like, sounded like a pretty insane person.

I mean. I would, I think this part's accurate. Like, I mean, a lot of, to me, a lot of it hinges, like, Richard's story hinges on Robert Prange. Like, I wish we could have known a bit more about the guy, because it just seems, if he had made it up, like, the whole Robert Prange thing, if he made [00:28:00] it up, it's I mean, what a waste.

He should have been a novelist. It's true. One thing that they did with Robert Prange is that whole, the whole, uh, discussion that they had that Robert or Richard and Robert had about Robert wanting to devise this plan where they kill each other's families. And, um, Richard kills him there, but then he leaves him on the bench.

I think the real Robert Prange, if I'm not mistaken, was found shot in his Mr. Softy truck. Yeah, he was shot. Yeah. He was saw that's where they found him was that he was shot up in, I believe it was in his truck or it was in his shop where his truck was parked. Um, but the, the, his idea of killing each other's families, according to Richard, That was, uh, that was the thing that Richard decided, Oh, this guy's so this guy's like, it's so crazy.

I'm going to have to take care of him myself. Um, I mean, in Robert Prongy's defense, I mean, in a weird kind of twisted [00:29:00] way, the logic makes a bit of sense. You know, Richard's not going to want to do that to his own family. And Robert's not going to want to do that to his own family. So, I mean, why not use each other's, you know, skill set, it really is something that's almost from like a Novel, a spy novel that a really high end Special Forces guy becomes a Mr.

Softy truck driver so that he can just scope out neighborhoods without being noticed so that he could be a hitman. Like, it's, it's so insane that it, it has to be true. It really, that's, that's what I mean. Like, it seems like if Richard made that all up, like, what a waste. He should have been a film director, a novelist, write comic books, something.

Yeah, he would have made millions. Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. Cause I can, I can only imagine the type of stories that he come up with in his head, you know, and we're supposed to believe that like Richard just kind of stumbled across this, [00:30:00] this Robert Progge's murder, uh, in like some, You know, obscure newspaper and, you know, put all the story together that, you know, with the ice cream truck and this is what he was actually doing.

I mean, I don't know, man. It seems pretty, it seems pretty far fetched. Maybe Richard exaggerated a bit of what Robert Prage was doing. Maybe, but I don't know. They must have, he must have been a hit man and Richard must have known them and they must have done some work together. Now, what were some things that you, I mean, I think in general, I really like this movie, but I had some, um, things to nitpick it.

What, what, what were some things that you didn't love so much about this movie? Um, to, to be honest with you, like the whole, they played up too much. Richard being like the perfect family man. And like trying to set that like dichotomy between the two. I mean, in the early interviews, this is he does present that kind of picture.

In the later interviews, he starts being a little [00:31:00] bit more honest. And I'm like, even Barbara talks a little bit more about what actually happened. It almost seemed like in the movie there. It was just convenience, like we're just going to use the first couple interviews and then we're just not going to deal, we'll deal with some aspects of the later interviews, but the first couple of interviews is a much more compelling story.

So we're just going to go with that. Uh, I mean, it's, this is where people kind of have like a serious problem with the movie because it presents this false picture of Richard Kuklinski, where he was like. He was able to just keep his ruthlessness, you know, as like a business. And he was a nice family guy when he came home.

And it's just not true. He was, well, you guys know from listening to the earlier Richard Kuklinski episode, he was a monster to everyone around him.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. It made a really compelling, compelling [00:32:00] narrative arc for a movie that he was a a family man who. Just kind of cracked once the stress came on too much, but I mean, this guy really was a monster. Barbara knew it. Barbara kept the sun away from which they cut out entirely the sun, which it didn't really matter, but they she really tried to insulate.

I think the son's name was Joseph, if I'm not mistaken, but she tried to insulate him from Richard as much as possible because she was worried that Richard would be become jealous of the son and try and take him out or, you know. Abuse him. And that's not necessarily portrayed at all in the movie that, you know, this that really vindictive and jealous side of Richard.

No, it's not at all. And I mean, somewhat in defense of the filmmaker, if you read the Philip Carlo book, I mean, I don't know, like, what [00:33:00] type of male lead do you have? To deal with there, I mean, they still capture that Richard was completely ruthless and I mean, they, you know, they show him killing that homeless person for no particular reason and killing that guy at the pool hall because he, you know, made a joke about his wife or, you know, I'm not his wife at the time, his girlfriend or what have you.

And I like, so they show, they show that he's a serial killer, really. Um, but like, You know, we're not going to get into all the details about the Carlo book, but I mean, how I mean, how would you depict that? Like, I don't know. I'm asking you, like, how would you do it? I don't think you could do it. You can't do it in that format.

I think you in a movie. You can't. I think it's too difficult to show those 2. Different sides of Richard that he more or less was a normal family man more or less. I mean, he did. I mean, he was absolutely violent and all [00:34:00] that stuff. But you got to also remember that this was in the. 50s, 60s, 70s, I think some of that domestic abuse sort of thing that he did was a lot more common than in suburbia, if you will.

Not to the extremes that Richard took it, but I think that if a cop came to that scene, I don't think that he would haul off the person. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn't. But, um, And the fact that on the other hand, that Richard Kuklinski was a, a mafia hitman serial killer. It's too hard to jam all that together in a two hour movie.

Yeah. And it's he, there's just literally nothing to like about Richard after reading the Carlo book too. Like there's nothing there's, I don't know. There's nothing to like, at least like, but this movie. He can walk away from and obviously Richard's despicable and an evil person, but you can walk away and go like, you can think to yourself, well, this guy was kind of a badass, right?

[00:35:00] He was a hit man for the mob. Do you know what I mean? Right. Um, but they almost, some people say they try to make them seem sympathetic. I don't really think the film does that. I don't know what's your opinion. I, I think sympathetic might be too far. I think they're trying, they're trying to turn him into an anti hero, I think.

To some degree, when he's just rotten to the core that I, he, in the, I think you're, I think you're, I agree with you at the, in the later interviews, he did a lot more to turn himself into the anti hero. Then. Even what he did when he was in the earlier, in his earlier story, but he's, he, he wasn't that at all.

No, there's nothing, there's nothing remotely heroic about Richard at all. I mean, you can walk away even after reading the Carlo book and go, I mean, at the end of the day, the guy's kind of a badass. Like he was doing hits for the mob and he was, you know, unlike a lot of these other [00:36:00] serial killers, he was actually killing tough guys and, you know, guys that could probably You know, compete with him in terms, in terms of physically and what have you.

I mean, you could walk away thinking that I know, I know I did. Um, but there's nothing, you know, there's no, you don't want to sit and talk to Richard. And, you know, I don't know, maybe I would, if he was still alive, just to kind of understand the guy a little bit better. But, um, yeah, there's nothing like you wouldn't want there's at no point do you go to yourself?

It's like, oh man, I wish I had Richard as a friend. No, no. I think then that leads us kind of to the end of what we could do to make this movie better. And I think that we'll get into one. We'll set aside the obvious one for a minute. I think anybody who's really watched this movie and followed Richard Kuklinski, there's one obvious thing that they could do.

But I think that one scene I would have loved to have seen them include was, um, It was in one of the Iceman tapes. I think it was the earlier one. Richard [00:37:00] explained this hit he did on, um, I think it was his friend even. And it was at some sort of nightclub, like 70s nightclub, and everybody's dancing disco and everything.

And Richard dressed up in the most outrageous disco outfit he could find. And so the six foot five 300 pound guy, he says he danced and shimmied all through the through this disco. And then he got up to the guy and the guy recognized them. But before he could do anything, Richard blew cyanide in his face.

And, um, They showed something of that scene, didn't they, in the movie? Yeah, like, Leo Merckx, Nino Gaggi, hires him, hires Richard to kill, uh, Sicoli, who's the henchman that Roy's with, which is, I never, I don't understand why they didn't just use, like, Joseph Testa or Anthony Senter. Um, and he goes into the club, and he does the [00:38:00] cyanide spray.

Kaila in the nightclub, but he's not wearing like the, the crate. They should have, I don't understand it. Why, when they just haven't put on that crazy suit and just recreate that, that scene, um, yeah, he, Richard, he just explains it so well, and he gives you such mental imagery and the movie just fell completely flat on that one.

Yeah, I guess maybe they tried filming it with the crazy disco suit and it just, they're like, no, we just can't do this. It looks ridiculous. It just takes you right out of the scene. I maybe that's their logic. But I mean, if you're going to watch a movie. About the Iceman, I don't know, most people would probably go in there thinking, knowing a little bit about the guy, I guess, right?

I, I would have just filmed it with the crazy suit on it because that's part of Richard's story is, you know, these, you know, him wearing these crazy suits and like disguises and, you know, it sounds like he had like a whole room just full of disguises with like fake noses and [00:39:00] wigs and. Different suits and now I think, and I'll leave it to you.

What would you love to have seen them do with this movie? I, to be honest with you, I would have, me and you were talking earlier. I, I would have liked to have done like a, like a mini series, to be honest with you, where you have, uh, Roy de Mayo's and Richard's story running parallel. Uh, we were mentioning it earlier.

I would have loved to have seen, uh, Ray Liotta do the Roy DeMeo story, but I also would have loved to have seen Richard's story, you know, running parallel to Roy's because they're, they're connected, but they're not connected and they're connected enough that, and they Thank you. Around there at the same time that you could tell Richard story and you can tell Roy story and be like, you know, we're all we're spending 20 minutes here and then 20 minutes there.

And there's episode 1 and do, I don't know, like a 5 part mini series where you show. The entirety [00:40:00] of Roy's story and the entirety of Richard's story, I think it would have worked really well. They could have really played it up too because Roy was almost in competition with John Gotti. There was all that was going on pretty much in parallel too.

I think to have the Gotti story, the Roy story, with Richard Kuklinski in there, and all the stuff with Neal Delacroix, and uh, Nino Gaggi, all of that bouncing off of each other at the think that's the story that really needs to be told. And unfortunately, Ray Liotta can't do it because I mean, that was, that's one of the, I think one of the things where we'll all have to live with is that Roy Ray Liotta couldn't play, uh, Roy de Mayo more if you were to do it now, who would you have play Roy just out of curiosity?

I can't think, especially once Ray Liotta played him, I don't think anybody, I think that's just an idea that'll never [00:41:00] happen. Yeah, the only person I can think of off the top of my head, I know it sounds weird because he's not really Italian, is, uh, Tom Hardy, because he has that certain level of intensity.

But still, I think, Ray Liotta, I mean, he was just the, the king of the Mafia movie, and, it, it just, I don't think it would end, just out of respect for Ray Liotta, I think it has, it's, It's done now. Yeah, it's just the more I think about this mini series and the two, the two stories running parallel, like, oh, my God, would have been brilliant.

I think that that might be something that comes back around because we're kind of in a low spot of mafia movies that, you know, there was a big. A lot of them in the 90s, the early 2000s, and that genre has lost popularity a little bit. I think when it comes back around, I think we'll see some good things come out that may be like that.

Yeah, well, we need a new crop of actors to be able to play [00:42:00] some of these roles. A lot of these guys are, you know, they're dying now. Ray passed away, I believe. Paul Servino passed away recently. Yeah, I mean, Martin Scorsese is not getting any younger. Um, I mean, there's Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro. Like, these are old men.

We need a new crop of mob guys. I think it's maybe another, it's maybe a genre that'll be revisited and viewed in a different way, too. I think that This, this Iceman movie, in a way, was kind of a throwback to an earlier kind of movie, kind of like what, I mean, we haven't talked about it yet, and we probably will, the Irishman was an, a throwback movie, but I think we need something new out of the mob genre.

Yeah, I would agree with that. Like the Irishman was kind of like Martin Scorsese's swan song to the whole mob genre, which I mean, really, I wouldn't say built his career on it, but it was a huge part of his career. [00:43:00] Um, I don't see him doing another mob movie. I don't see any of those guys ever doing another mob movie.

That was like their farewell and we're good. We're gonna end up doing that movie. But, um, you know, it was quite. Quite well done, but I, yeah, we need, I don't know, something, yeah, we need somebody, we need some different actors, we need some fresh blood into the genre. We're going to leave it at that for today.

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Original Publication Date: 8/16/2023

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Description: In this chilling episode of Organized Crime and Punishment, we delve into the life and career of Richard Kuklinski, famously known as "The Iceman." Our hosts explore the chilling details of Kuklinski’s journey from a seemingly ordinary family man to a ruthless contract killer responsible for over 100 murders. Discover the method behind his madness as we analyze his notorious use of freezing techniques to confound forensic investigations. Join us as we uncover the sinister secrets of this enigmatic figure and shed light on the cat-and-mouse game he played with law enforcement. Tune in to this gripping episode and explore the dark world of one of history's most notorious hitmen. #TrueCrimePodcast #OrganizedCrimeChronicles #TheIcemanCometh #ColdBloodedKiller #MurderMystery #CrimeWorldRevealed #CriminalMastermind #UnmaskingTheIceman #ForensicInvestigation #LawEnforcementPursuit

You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places:

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime, with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

The whole story of Richard Kuklinski, the Iceman, meeting Barbara is really interesting because everything to me screamed that Barbara should have stayed a million miles away. And it was really, she, this is my impression. I got of it. She got caught up in his gravity. He's like, he was like a black hole.

And once she got too close to him, there was no escaping him. Yeah. Like he was working [00:01:00] at, I believe it was a, it was like a shipping and receiving thing. And. At first, he just kind of bumped into Barbara and they talked for a little bit and the manager, the boss told Richard, you got to stay away from her.

Don't you talk to her ever again? And Richard wasn't even thinking about her romantically in that sense. But as soon as the boss is like, you couldn't, you can't have her. That was like, okay, Richard, like Richard's like, I got to have her and pretty much almost kind of starts like stalking her and they start dating a little bit and then.

At one point, Barbara's family, because they're picking up kind of weird vibes from him, they hire a private investigator to kind of look into Richard and they start, you know, seeing things that, uh, not the murder, but just a bunch of other like low end crimes and stuff that he'd been doing and just words on the streets.

And at one point, like Barbara steps back, but she's, she says to herself, like, well, that's in the past. He's not doing that anymore. And then. You know, this whole [00:02:00] time he's still married to his first wife, which is another wild thing. And that's like a big thing in the, uh, in the confessions of a hitman book where people are really focused on her family's really focused on like, well, you got to get a divorce.

You got to get a divorce. And Richard kind of struggles, like to get the money to get the divorce. But we talked about this earlier. He has like low impulse control with that. Eventually he ends up getting her pregnant and. She starts seeing the real Richard, and she doesn't like what she sees, and she runs away, I believe, to live with her father in Florida, and he goes and talks to her mother, and her mother's like, well, I'll tell you where she is, but you gotta show, you gotta prove to me that you got the divorce, he ends up getting the divorce, and she shows him, she tells him, um, um, um, Where Barbara is, and he finds her and they end up getting married because I guess it's the right thing to do in that time.

And, um, it's probably the worst. Just while Barbara will tell you it was the worst [00:03:00] decision she ever made in her life that and the fact that once he was in, he. There was just no leaving and Barbara knew it that there was no leaving him that either he went to jail somehow, or somebody was going to die her mom, her dad, her, and how many times did he cause her to miscarry?

I think it was three times through beating her or... Yeah, it was like three times and like, even before they got married, he was like poking her with knives and like threatening her entire, like, I shouldn't laugh, but I mean, it is like, it's insane. Um, and she like. She told her mother this and her mother's like, Oh, no, so this is where she is in Florida.

And, you know, I got like, and during their relationship, um, because like Richard refused to like do any contraceptive or what have you, they would, she would get pregnant all the [00:04:00] time. And like the first three times that she was pregnant, as you mentioned the, she had miscarriages because of Richard's insane temper.

Yeah. That's I. I've really tried to think of what could Barbara have done to get away from him. And then you think in so many cases with the, with the abused wives and there's gotta be something, but in a lot of cases, especially I think in this most extreme case, There was nothing she could do period. No, nothing she could do.

Well, yeah, because I mean, you can get in this particular case, he, he would have, he would have killed her entire family. Yeah. You know, she could have gone, you know, say it wasn't nowadays with, you know, there's social services for the, for, uh, abused women and all sorts of things. Even if that was available to her, he was going to kill her entire family and probably her.

I, and at that time she [00:05:00] was young, she might've even still, Barbara still may have been in her teens at that point or early twenties. She had zero choices. I mean, you hate to say that, but she really ditched. There was zero she could do to stay away from Richard, even her uncle. Um, Who was, I think, a police officer and somewhere in New Jersey, he went and talked with Richard and Richard, Richard terrified him and made him worried that he was going to kill him and he was a cop.

And this is the one that we haven't mentioned this yet, but like Richard Kuklinski was literally a monster, like in terms of like the stuff he did, but like he was a monster physically. He was like six, five, 300 pounds. Yeah. Just built like, like, uh, strong as a strong man. And I mentioned this to you earlier.

Like I was at the gym earlier in the week and I saw a guy and I'm like, Oh, he kind of reminded me of Richard just because we were talking [00:06:00] about it. And I, like, I'm not a small guy at all. Like I'm, you know, like I'm short, but I'm pretty thick, right. And well built. And I saw this guy and he was like six, five, he must've been like two, like three 30 and there's nothing I could have done if you really wanted to do something.

He was just a freak of nature. And yeah, that's just something like that. We need to, we didn't really mention at the beginning of the show is like, like, not only is he insane, but he's also like a monster physically. He's like the incredible Hulk. Yeah. I mean, they have. Stories where he literally ripped the door off of a car, ripped the door off of the hinges, and I believe it.

Oh yeah, because it is, it is one, it is possible to do it, you know, and he's picking up like, uh, I think it was like, at one point it was like a marble table they just bought, and he throws it out the window, and Barbara... Mentions like it took like four guys to just get [00:07:00] that up the stairs and Richard just picked it up himself and just threw it out the window just because he was angry.

And you think about it, somebody who is that strong just naturally and then when somebody's enraged and pumped full of adrenaline and they're even, you know, that magnifies their strength like that. He is. Dangerous of a person with the, you know, absolute as short of a fused temper as you can possibly get, and they're a physically a monster like, I mean, this guy was as he was a bad dude.

Oh, yeah, you know, and that was and we mean, you were talking about it earlier. This is what kind of like separates Richard from. Some of these other type of serial killers were like Richard was we'll get into it like his hitman like a career and shortly is he was like, you know, he's doing hits against, you know, other tough guys and Richard was like a legitimately like tough guy.

And physically strong and where, like a [00:08:00] lot of these other guys, they're kind of, I don't know, they're kind of pathetic and they're weakly and they prey on, you know, women and like the elderly, like in terms of like Richard Ramirez, and they weren't like really fighting and taking on guys that were maybe could have gave them a chance.

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that leads us really into this mid part of his life where Richard, he's established. Eventually, Barbara and Richard have three children, two girls, Marck Chris, and then a boy Duane. Richard's absolutely over the moon over his [00:09:00] first, his eldest daughter, Merrick, eh, with his daughter, Chris, and he has a pretty cold relationship with his son.

So that's his family life. They move into a nice suburb in New Jersey. But really, Richard's career this whole time... It's mostly just small time rackets that he's into, but what he claims is that he's making his money as a hitman and as an enforcer, uh, either killing people or collecting money for the mafia.

People like Nino Gaggi, uh, who's somebody who's as a name, keep that name in mind because Nino Gaggi is a, uh, capo in the Gambino family and his name will come up as we talk about Roy DeMeo and Richard, but I get the feeling that. It's almost, you have to believe that Richard was [00:10:00] probably just making his money through the pornography at this point, and maybe as an enforcer for the mafia, but it just seems to me like there's not a ton of independent evidence to support this being a hitman.

No, there's not, and I mean, he claims that he got into contact with Ro Well, back it up a little bit. He claims that he was doing hits for the Devacanto. How do you pronounce that? The, the Jersey family. It's the, um, is it the Devacanti family? They were the ones who the Sopranos was based on and they were the big family of New Jersey.

Oh, yeah, he claims that he was doing hits for that family and I'm trying to remember. I can't remember the life of me. I can't remember the guy's name that he was doing the hits for and he did that for a bit. And then he stopped doing that. And that at the point that we're talking about right now. He's doing his [00:11:00] pornography, peddling stuff, and this is kind of where he claims he gets into contact with Roy DeMaio, because Roy DeMaio was basically the one funding all of this, and I know Roy takes a shine to him, and kind of sees this is what Richard claims, and kind of sees that Richard, they're like kindred spirits, and hires, hires him for special jobs that, um, You know, he can't really get involved in or, you know, people within his crew really can't be taught, can't, uh, getting, uh, can't get involved in.

So I don't know. People claim that this seems like this is a stretch that Roy DeMille would have a guy like this because, you know, when we get into Roy DeMille, he didn't mind getting his hands dirty himself. Um, You know hundreds of times so I mean but this is like a big part of Richard's story that he claims happened it wasn't just like he was just he was like a freelance guy too so he was like doing work for all the for all the different families right because he was polish so [00:12:00] he could never get made and he was always kind of like kept on the outside he was like a distant associate I somewhat believe that this was the case um just because If you look at something like, say, like Murder, Inc.,

one of the reasons they hired a lot of Jewish and Irish guys, and there were Italians in it, but they hired a lot of Jewish and Irish guys, was because it gave them a little bit of distance from the inner, the inner, uh, Italian circle of the five families, and I mean, I don't find it's a stretch that they would pay them a fair amount of money to do some of the hits that um, They talk about in the book, a lot of these hits were like kind of personal jobs to, you know, so and so, uh, broke my cousin's heart.

And, uh, so I heard that this guy, you know, uh, did some things to his sister and things of that nature and like collecting debt. It depends. Maybe you just don't have the time and you hire it out to make sure that it gets done. Yeah, it, um, it's the DeCavalcanti family of New [00:13:00] Jersey. So we were pretty close with the name.

And it doesn't, it's not super important, but, um, I think the, the only, the, probably the most important fact is that he, the, if we believe Richard, that was his in to the mafia. The, the boss of the De Conti really liked him and Richard says he did a lot of work for him and that got that guy Richard's name in with these other families in, in New York City proper.

Some of the other things that, I think in the Carlo book, and I think a lot of this is based on Richard's interviews is that he makes himself out like he's an international hitman, like, um, almost like the movie assassins or that video game. I can't think of the video game. Is it called the hitman where the guy's bald?

Yeah. Yeah, I know who you're talk Yeah, I know what you're talking about. It just, it's, it's kind of insane. Like, there's one where he [00:14:00] supposedly went to Rio de Janeiro to, um, initially work out a drug deal with, uh, these, uh, Brazilian, uh, gang members who were, uh, in. competition with the Colombian drug lords, but then eventually Richard kills them.

And the, so the story is so preposterous. It's either so preposterous it's true, or it's just total garbage. I don't think there's any gray in there. I think in particular, like his international travels, like there's like a whole section in the Carlo book. Where I don't he's doing like the Nigerian money scheme and he's going to like Zurich and he's doing these like international like drug deals with the Colombians and Brazilians.

I, me personally, I don't, I don't, I think he's just kind of telling fibs about that, but I do think I do believe that he did was. He did, did hits [00:15:00] for the mob and I do believe that he had more than just a kind of a passing relationship with Roy DeMille. Like, I think Roy DeMille knew who he was and either hired him to do work or told other people to hire this guy to get certain things done if you wanted to, you want it done correctly and you would be able to keep a certain amount of distance away, uh, distance between yourself and the, the crime.

Um, being committed. I mean, and at the same time, Roy would never, you never would have been really part of the DeMayo crew anyways. I mean, he, him being Polish and, uh, various other reasons. I mean, that's not necessarily, I mean, Lansky was Jewish and we'll get him when we get into good fellas, uh, Robert De Niro's character was Irish.

Um, but you know, Polish, Polish seems. I don't know like the jews and irish had always been doing work with the italian mob. Anyways, the polish thing was I don't know. Probably what I don't think I don't think it's a stretch to [00:16:00] think that that that was like something else Entirely and they really kept him to the outside and only used him for special hits And I mean, and he also claims like he killed like hoffa and I don't know I find that hard to believe and he was like part of the paul castellano hit but then he gets like certain details wrong about the about how that hit actually went down.

I mean, I mean, it's possible that he was part of those hits. Um, but I don't think, I don't think he had anything to do with that. I don't know. Maybe do you have a different opinion? I think it's, I really, my strong sense is that he was always peripheral to the, to the real, the real mafia that he was running his own scams and his own operation in New Jersey.

Enough to make money and he would supplement his income with things that were going on through New York City. But I, and I think he probably did have some [00:17:00] connection with, uh, Roy DeMeo's crew. What did they call them? The Gemini. We'll get into that. At a different point, but that with his with Roy DeMaio, but I just don't think he was ever central to any of it that he was always just a useful pair of hands that for certain jobs as far as the Zurich thing, I think maybe he could have been involved in some small time early.

Money, wire fraud type deals, but I do not think that Richard was going to Zurich acting like he was some sort of, um, international businessman and it's just, it couldn't be, could you picture somebody, but if you go and listen to the Iceman tapes, he has the. Thickest Jersey, North Jersey, working class accent.

He's six foot five, three hundred pounds. He's just not passing himself off [00:18:00] as a high end businessman in Zurich. I don't buy it. Maybe it's true, but I think that maybe he was involved in some sort of early 80s.

Wirefraud type scam is just one of as many ways to earn. Yeah, that's, you know, that's very possible. And like you pointed out, like, he was always kind of on the periphery, like, during this whole time, he's doing, like, B& Es and other, like, he's constantly doing, like, different scams, um, you know, and. I'm sure it was like pornography distribution.

He probably did travel around the United States. It would make sense. I mean, LA, like going to places like LA and like some other bigger cities. But, um, I mean, like, I don't know, it seems going to, I like the image of him going to like. Being like this high, like, financial, like, scammer guy with that thick Jersey accent going to, like, Switzerland and, like, just talking to these people.

It's just, it is a funny image. Yeah, and, and then [00:19:00] going over to Zurich and I think he claims to have killed at least two people in Zurich and, like, to see that and to think of that image, it's so crazy. It's like a, Like you said, like a Bond villain or something, so that comic. Yeah, it's, it's so crazy. So then that really leads us into, um, his relationship with another person, this Robert Prongay, who was called Mr.

Softy. He was the, um. He's the one who supposedly taught Richard to freeze the bodies and he, uh, Robert Pongre, if I'm not mistaken, he was a something with the army. I heard a couple of different things. He had some sort of military service. He could have been as much as a, um, a Navy, not a Navy SEAL, a Green Beret or something, special forces.

But then I thought I read somewhere else that he may have been in the Air Force, which is not known generally for its. [00:20:00] Assassin style killing. But anyways, the, they really laid Robert set Robert Prongay out as he sort of a, um, mentor assassin for Richard that brings them up to the next level. Yeah, it's, it's really, yeah, this is to me as one of the more kind of thing, one of the, one of the aspects of Richard's story really hinges like is if Robert Prongay is real.

Then it lends a lot more credence to some of the other stuff that he says. And well, we know that Robert Prongate was a real guy and, um, because there is a newspaper article about a guy that was, you know, pretty much sounded like he was insane and was shot and killed like at an ice cream truck. Um, Yeah, so Richard bumps into Robert.

I guess they were doing a job, um, two separate jobs at the same hotel or something like that. And they bump into each other at the bathroom. This is how [00:21:00] Richard describes it. And they just kind of stare each other down because they both kind of realize that they're the same person where they're doing the same thing.

And they just kind of strike up a relationship, almost kind of like a friendship where they're You know, they're like showing each other just different ways of how they get their jobs done. And Richard had been fooling around with poison, um, like stuff like cyanide, just because it's really quick and it's efficient.

Apparently, Robert Prong had created this cyanide spray and. Various other ways of having to use it, uh, using it and, um, using like explosives, I guess that was from his military background. And, but the thing that makes Robert Prange really stand out is he would drive around in an ice cream truck and with the full like regalia and everything that, and he would use this ice cream truck for surveillance.

And I mean, it is kind of a brilliant idea because nobody would think that they're being surveilled by. You know, a good dude and an ice cream truck serving kids ice cream. Cause he would actually, he would [00:22:00] serve kids ice cream too. And they seem to strike up kind of a, a pretty good friendship. And it's the way Richard describes it is this kind of sounds like the only friend that he ever really kind of had.

You know, somebody that he, they both really kind of understood each other because they were essentially the same person in a lot of ways. And if you believe Richard's story, it's that Robert Prange said he wanted to have Richard kill his own family for some reason. And I think there was a, it was kind of a convoluted reason of somebody who was.

Pretty insane, and Robert claimed that he, Robert Prangay claimed that he was going to poison a reservoir that it would, uh, to kill one person, but the, an entire community fed off of this reservoir that it would have killed an entire town or something, supposedly, I mean, I don't know, and then Rob, [00:23:00] so I think that, I don't know if Richard, it, I think he did wind up getting convicted for Robert Prongay's murder after he had been in jail.

He copped to it for, um, something else. I think he copped to it so that he, uh, he, he wouldn't get the death penalty or something. And it was pretty, I mean, but I think that Richard probably killed him, but I don't think it was necessarily that important that he did kill him. No, but it's, it. The thing is, it's like we, we have that one newspaper article and I mean, it checks out, like apparently he was threatening to kill his family and he was like an arsonist and like, was pretty insane person.

And this kind of checks out with what Richard is saying. And I mean, it kind of lends a little bit to some of the other stuff he's saying, or like, I, I do think that this Robert Prong a character did exist and [00:24:00] was somebody like Richard that did, you know, hits for the mob and did hits for various people and used his military training background and, uh, to you.

To his advantage and was, you know, like a serial killer, like Richard was. And the, the rice and thing is interesting. You mentioned that. Cause he, his logic was like, well, if I just poison this whole reservoir, then they can't like pin, they can't say like, Oh, it was just directed at the two people that I was trying to kill.

So they would just have no idea. It's so smart. I guess it's so stupid. It's, it's so smart that it's stupid. Do you know, do you understand what I'm saying? Like, like, I understand his logic. But it's interesting that like even Richard was looking at Robert and going, yeah, this guy's insane. So how insane do you have to be for Richard to go if this is too much?

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. [00:25:00] Before we go to the end of his career. And, and how he's eventually caught. Let's quickly talk about the, the Jimmy Hoffa murder, because that hit, that's a, that's a key one there that I think we need to talk about. Nobody knows who killed Jimmy Hoffa and a whole bunch of people have claimed to have done it.

Uh, most recently, probably the two that really the most famous one is that Frank Sheerman, who was, um, the wrote, I think it was a. His biography was called, and we'll, we'll probably talk about this later, was called So I Hear You Paint Houses, which was turned into the Irishman movie. He claims that he's the one who actually was the one who killed Hoffa, and then they had his body incinerated, and that was pretty much it.

Richard Kuklinski says that he was a part of a hit team, and some of the details line up, actually, with what Sheeran says, that they [00:26:00] lured him to this house. Hoffa to this house, but in, um, Kuklinski's, they, rendering of the story, they load Jimmy Hoffa's body into a car, drive him back to Jersey. They bury him somewhere and then they dig him up and then they put him in the trunk of a car, which is compacted.

And then it was sold off as scrap. So Hoffa was. Incinerated when they melted down the car. Presumably. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Like, it's possible, but everything that I've read about people saying, like, it was, you know, it was Richard there when hopper was scale. I don't know. They seem they seem to think it's ridiculous, but.

I mean, I mean, if he's telling the truth about Robert Prongay, maybe he knows a thing or two about this, right? Like, that's, that's, that to me is what's so fascinating about this story is you're reading it and it's like, well, where does the truth start and where does the truth end? And like, like, is he telling the truth here?

Is he not telling the truth here? [00:27:00] It's, um, I don't know. What's your opinion on his? Connection with Hoppa, because I think you had a slightly different take on it. I think it's not entirely impossible. There, there were some things that seem believable on the story that maybe as, especially as opposed to Frank Sheernan, that Frank Sheernan was really good friends with Hoppa.

And Frank Sheernan, Will's also really good friends with Russell Bufalino, so maybe he would do the hit. But if, if we believe everything, that's what we have to do, is if we believe everything that, uh, Richard said about him being a hitman, then he would be a really good person to do it. If he's full of it, then he's really, he's completely full of it.

Um, and so, or maybe Frank and, sorry, and then maybe Frank and Richard. Kind of did it together and like not no, I assume they probably had no idea who [00:28:00] they, each other were, but you used Frank to, you know, cause Frank and Jimmy were best friends to get them in the house. Cause Jimmy didn't think that Frank would, you know, backstab them.

And, you know, then the rest is history now. Eventually, Richard is caught in the mid 80s by a task force, uh, federal and New Jersey state law enforcement. And I kind of wonder what were your thoughts about this? It's a, it's a pretty complicated story of, um, undercover officer who went by the name of Dominic Provenzano.

He was an ATF agent who was in deep cover and Technically speaking, it, this had nothing to do with his job as an ATF. He was loaned out to New Jersey because he was such deep cover inside of the mafia. It's just so weird to me that the murders that Richard did, that he winds up eventually getting [00:29:00] convicted of, they had very little evidence.

That he did it. There was, I think, for one, there was only a body of all the murders that he was eventually convicted of the four or five of them. There was really only one that could definitively be attached to Richard. Yeah, I mean, it's. I just, well, and you mentioned Dominic Provenzano, I think, so, in the book, he talks about how he wears this wig, and it just seems to really bother him, and he just keeps on talking about this guy wearing, wearing this bad wig, um.

It is interesting that they only got him for, I mean, I think he was charged with the five and that there was only the one 100% for sure, but they do have them on tape talking about using poison. Um, this is, I mean, at the, I don't know, there's different theories about why Richard was being so like, kind of sloppy near the end.

And I, [00:30:00] I, I tend to think that maybe he was just getting tired of it and he just kind of wanted to just have to be over with. But there's also the theory that like, he was just talking so openly because who cares? It didn't matter. He was going to kill Dominic anyways. That was, that's what he was going to do.

He was going to kill Dominic and the, I believe he made up this Jewish kid that was.

Um, and this is why he needed Richard to, he needed Richard to kill this Jewish kid and he was going to get them the cyanide. And, and it's a, it is funny because like Dominic's like, oh, it's got to get done right now. And Richard said, well, it takes a couple of days to make the spray. And he's like, no, we're We'll put it in egg salad sandwiches.

And Dominic provisional comes up this whole story about like how this Jewish kid likes loves egg salad sandwiches. If you put an egg salad sandwich in front of him, he's going to eat it. And like, right now I just, that was just, uh, just something that he comes up with on the fly just to make sure he gets it, [00:31:00] um, yeah, it is interesting.

And I like it, it is interesting how sloppy Richard kind of gets near the end where he's just kind of openly talking about killing people and using different poisons. I think that in all, I, I never completely understood why they were so hot to get Richard. I don't understand where the pressure was coming from because he really criminal wise, if Dominic Provenzano, uh, I can't remember his, uh, his real name, but that was his undercover name.

If he was so deep into the mafia, It seems like there's a lot bigger fish to fry than Richard, because I think they must have honestly believed that he was the serial killer hitman that he was. I mean, that could be a piece of evidence to say that he really was the person that he claimed to be. That's what I personally, that's what I tend to think.

[00:32:00] Um. Because it is kind of weird that they would be such this hoopla about even at the time like this was before Richard talked about anything if you can go back and look at the news stories It was like a big deal when they got richard glinsky. Um, this mafia hitman So like that the story about him being a mafia hitman goes Way goes way before he started doing the HBO before he did the HBO documentaries, um, which is why I find it hard to like people say that he's just like making it all up.

Like, I find that I don't know. I think that's that's not believable at all. I do do. I think he made up some stuff. Yeah, but he was definitely. I think he was definitely a hit man for the mob, and he definitely killed a lot of people.

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