Speaker 1: Hi there.
Speaker 2: This is Steve Fishman, creator of The Burden and most
Speaker 2: recently Empire on Blood the Director's Cut. Today, we're featuring
Speaker 2: an episode from another podcast. This one's called The Confessions
Speaker 2: of Anthony ray Mundy. It's hosted by Mark Smirling, our
Speaker 2: friend and an Emmy Award winning filmmaker who you might
Speaker 2: recognize as one of the creators of The Jinks and
Speaker 2: the podcasts Crooked City and Crimetown. This time, Mark investigates
Speaker 2: the story of Anthony ray Mundy. He's a former mafia
Speaker 2: enforcer who claims that Pope John Paul the First, who
Speaker 2: died just thirty three days after being elected in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight, didn't die of natural causes, even though the
Speaker 2: Vatican said he did. Anthony says the Pope was assassinated
Speaker 2: by the mob and that he witnessed it. I've listened
Speaker 2: to the Confessions of Anthony Ramundy, and I'm sure you're
Speaker 2: going to love it just like I. Here's the first episode, Genesis.
Speaker 3: Where is the closest Catholic church to you right now?
Speaker 3: I bet you could get there in less than twenty minutes,
Speaker 3: whether at home or at work, in your car or
Speaker 3: out for a walk, whether in a big city or
Speaker 3: small town, any place in the world, either hemisphere, it
Speaker 3: doesn't matter there's a Catholic church nearby. There are almost
Speaker 3: a billion and a half Catholics in the world, a
Speaker 3: population equal to China. Administering to all those Catholics are
Speaker 3: more than four hundred thousand priests who report to more
Speaker 3: than five thousand bishops, who report to around six hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty archbishops and cardinals. And they all report to
Speaker 3: one man, the Pope. He oversees a vast empire of wealth.
Speaker 3: His church is one of the largest landowners in the world.
Speaker 3: The pope has the power to influence world leaders. Popes
Speaker 3: have changed the course of history. Anyway. I've been thinking
Speaker 3: about all of this way too much lately. I have
Speaker 3: a stack of books on the subject next to my bed.
Speaker 3: It's been keeping me up at night. And it's all
Speaker 3: because of this guy.
Speaker 4: You.
Speaker 5: I wish you guys could have seen this neighborhood years ago.
Speaker 5: If you guys would have seen this neighborhood years ago,
Speaker 5: usually I loved it.
Speaker 3: Believe me, this is Anthony.
Speaker 1: We're Monday, okay.
Speaker 3: Anthony ram Mundy. Anthony has a story to tell about
Speaker 3: a pope in the Catholic Church. And we'll get to that.
Speaker 3: But today Anthony has invited my producer Zach and I
Speaker 3: on a tour of his old neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.
Speaker 3: He wants to show us something.
Speaker 5: I always just want to come in to call with me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to go. Yeah, when of you guys
Speaker 1: are ready, whatever you want to do.
Speaker 3: Anthony's a big guy, approaching seven years old, with slick backed,
Speaker 3: salt and pepper hair, and he dresses like a gangster
Speaker 3: because Anthony was a gangster. He says, he used to
Speaker 3: be a made member of the Italian mafia in Brooklyn. Today,
Speaker 3: Anthony's sporting a shiny black track suit, a gold bracelet,
Speaker 3: and dark sunglasses. Think of Big Pussy from the Sopranos.
Speaker 1: All right, is it ready?
Speaker 5: Yep, We're ready.
Speaker 1: We hop in.
Speaker 3: Anthony's muscle car, a Dodge Challenger, all black.
Speaker 1: That's good.
Speaker 3: When Anthony grew up here in the nineteen fifties, this
Speaker 3: was a working class neighborhood. He calls it South Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: By the time I moved here in the early nineties,
Speaker 3: people had started calling it Park Slope.
Speaker 1: We slip right down there.
Speaker 5: Call you in the carriage house. Yeah, oh wow, right
Speaker 5: across you were really in the neighborhood.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, And the neighborhood has changed a lot over
Speaker 3: the years. These days your kid will need to be
Speaker 3: on a wait list to get into daycare. And everywhere
Speaker 3: you look there seems to be an artisanal coffee shop
Speaker 3: where you can buy a six dollars cup of coffee.
Speaker 5: I was talking with somebody about it, say, Anthony's called progress.
Speaker 5: Has everybody killed the neighborhood.
Speaker 3: But one place hasn't changed, The local Catholic church, like
Speaker 3: the one I got married in. I got married, but
Speaker 3: the church was the one down on sixth Avenue, big,
Speaker 3: big stone church, beautiful Catholic.
Speaker 1: It might have been Santaugustine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it might have been Sustins. And it turns out
Speaker 3: that Saint Augustine's Church is where Anthony is taking us
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's Sant Augustine's Church. That's the Stone church where.
Speaker 2: I got married.
Speaker 1: So weird.
Speaker 5: What a small worlds I did my communion, dad, I
Speaker 5: did my confirmation there.
Speaker 3: Also, Anthony pulls into a parking spot.
Speaker 5: Now Saint Augustine School is connected right onto it.
Speaker 1: I show you.
Speaker 3: He struggles out of his car. He's had some health
Speaker 3: issues lately, so he walks slowly with the help of
Speaker 3: a cane. He leads us towards the building behind the church,
Speaker 3: Saint Augustine School.
Speaker 5: See that right there, you see there's the open window
Speaker 5: over there, and then right next to you see the
Speaker 5: open windows.
Speaker 3: Anthony has brought us to Saint Augustine's to tell us
Speaker 3: a story about something that happened here. Not a crime
Speaker 3: story about a mob hit or a famous heist, a
Speaker 3: more personal story from when he was just seven years old.
Speaker 1: That's where our class was at.
Speaker 5: I was at the last window over here, one two three,
Speaker 5: right up there.
Speaker 3: Nine days before Christmas in nineteen sixty, Anthony was sitting
Speaker 3: in his second grade classroom.
Speaker 5: There was a big blackboard in front, and then there
Speaker 5: was all the all the seats with the benches.
Speaker 1: If you were bad, you had to sit near the window.
Speaker 3: And that day Anthony was sitting by the window.
Speaker 5: I remember it was in the morning. Missus Piccarelly, she's
Speaker 5: writing something on the blackboard and we heard this explosion. Me.
Speaker 5: I want to see what's on there. I want to
Speaker 5: see what's there. It sounded like a rocket kept coming
Speaker 5: and getting louder and louder.
Speaker 3: And that's when Anthony says he saw something unbelievable, a
Speaker 3: passenger jet flying by his classroom window so close. He
Speaker 3: says he saw the passengers inside.
Speaker 5: You heard people screaming on the plane. You can actually
Speaker 5: hear people screaming. Oh yeah, you can hear him screaming.
Speaker 5: And it hit the window and I got the glass
Speaker 5: came in my face, that's how close it was.
Speaker 1: That's when the building shook. The nuns caiming said, eybody's
Speaker 1: gotta leave the build.
Speaker 5: We have to leave the building. There was fire engines
Speaker 5: all over the place. Alarms were going off. You couldn't
Speaker 5: see the sun. You couldn't see the light of from
Speaker 5: all the smoke. The sky was totally black.
Speaker 6: In nineteen sixty, only a few days before Christmas, two
Speaker 6: commercial airliners collide in the sky above New York City.
Speaker 6: One plane carrying eighty four passengers falls on the park
Speaker 6: Slope section of Brooklyns. Many thought that nearby Saint Augustine's School,
Speaker 6: where seventeen hundred children were attending classes, had been bombed.
Speaker 5: The jet fuel was coming down the block this way,
Speaker 5: and you could see the snow actually melt that was
Speaker 5: on fire.
Speaker 1: When it came down.
Speaker 5: It took out the pillar of fire church. That took
Speaker 5: part of their move off. There was the laundromat, the
Speaker 5: candy store, the funeral parlor, and there was fourteen Brownstones
Speaker 5: that went out. I'll tell you there was a guy
Speaker 5: I'll show you the spot who was selling Christmas trees
Speaker 5: when the plane hit. They never found his body. The
Speaker 5: ambulance that took me to the hospital, it was parked
Speaker 5: over there, the ambulance. They looked at me and they
Speaker 5: seen all the glass in my and then I see
Speaker 5: they put another kid in the ambulance with me. This
Speaker 5: kid was burnt so bad you did not know if
Speaker 5: he was black or white. That's how bad he was burnt.
Speaker 5: And his kid was still alive. He actually fell out
Speaker 5: of the plane between six and seventh Avenue. He died
Speaker 5: the next day.
Speaker 3: And this is when Anthony takes a beat and his
Speaker 3: story takes an unexpected turn.
Speaker 5: Now, when they put me into the ambulance as I'm
Speaker 5: going down, and I think you could think I'm crazy.
Speaker 1: People think I'm crazy when they hear this. Whoever, I kept.
Speaker 5: Telling them that I've seen somebody standing on the plane,
Speaker 5: just to.
Speaker 3: Be clear Anthony's saying that he saw a man riding
Speaker 3: on top of a crashing plane.
Speaker 5: First time I seen him on the plane standing on
Speaker 5: the plane, cause I was looking at the window. The
Speaker 5: second time I seen him was when they were bringing
Speaker 5: me in the ambulance. He was walking down the block
Speaker 5: and I kept telling him, Dabby is he is? He said,
Speaker 5: who is the guy on the plane? They all thought
Speaker 5: I was the guy on the plane. He just went
Speaker 5: kept on going down the block and they faded away.
Speaker 3: Anthony believes that the man he saw standing on that
Speaker 3: plane and then walking down the street that day wasn't
Speaker 3: a man at all.
Speaker 5: That was death on the plane. I don't care what
Speaker 5: anybody tells me. Where do you want to call him Debt?
Speaker 5: Where do you want to call him? The angel of Debt?
Speaker 5: And the Jewish religion they call him the Macho moves
Speaker 5: they call him.
Speaker 1: He wasn't a skeleton.
Speaker 5: His skin was pulled so tight on his face that
Speaker 5: you could see, like you know, like the bone, the structure,
Speaker 5: the bones and everything. My mother and father they had
Speaker 5: sent me to psychiatrists Jesus for what three years? My
Speaker 5: father took me to psychiatrists in Manhattan Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn.
Speaker 5: They all said the same thing. It's one or two
Speaker 5: things happened. Either I had from the shock of the
Speaker 5: plane that I put this in my head what I
Speaker 5: supposedly seen, or they said he really seen it. That's
Speaker 5: the only two edges they could give. Nobody could give
Speaker 5: another answer. I'm telling I know what I saw.
Speaker 3: As I've gotten to know Anthony, he's told me a
Speaker 3: lot of stories like this. One story's rooted in truth,
Speaker 3: there was a plane crash in park Slope back then,
Speaker 3: but his stories often grow to biblical proportions. Death appears
Speaker 3: to seven year old Anthony like one of the four
Speaker 3: horsemen of the Apocalypse, only instead of the pale horse
Speaker 3: Death rides in the Bible, Anthony's version of Death rides
Speaker 3: a crashing airplane.
Speaker 5: I know he's the one that's gonna come for me
Speaker 5: one of the times when at nighttime comes, he's gonna
Speaker 5: come and get me. It ain't gonna be my mother
Speaker 5: or my father. No, it's gonna be him. I'm telling you,
Speaker 5: it's gonna be him. When I go that much, I
Speaker 5: don't know.
Speaker 3: And Anthony tells another unbelievable story, one that he thinks
Speaker 3: will come back to haunt him on Judgment Day. It's
Speaker 3: the story that's been keeping me up at night about
Speaker 3: corruption and murder at the highest level of one of
Speaker 3: the world's Oh, this is the most powerful institutions, the Vatican.
Speaker 5: You know what's going to happen to me when I die.
Speaker 5: I'm going to go to heaven Gods. I'm gonna say, Noah,
Speaker 5: fuck you, you killed one of my popes. You're talking
Speaker 5: about killing a fucking pope.
Speaker 3: I'm Mark Smirling And these are the confessions of Anthony
Speaker 3: Ramundi just.
Speaker 5: After Fast seven.
Speaker 6: And is Lorian macmillan with the summary.
Speaker 7: Of the news, John Poll thet is dead.
Speaker 3: The public speculation that this death was not natural grow
Speaker 3: by the minute. Men and women were heard shouting as
Speaker 3: they passed the body.
Speaker 5: Who has done this to you?
Speaker 4: Who has murdered you?
Speaker 1: When is a central bank not a central bank? When
Speaker 1: is a.
Speaker 2: Private bank public DNA, public bank, private, sound, mistief, arrious
Speaker 2: and full of secrets?
Speaker 1: Well that's the Vatican Bank.
Speaker 5: The Vatican Bank over the last hundred years or so
Speaker 5: is not being without scandal.
Speaker 3: You know, certain dirty dealings, certainly money laundering.
Speaker 8: If the mafia wished to bring some of their clean
Speaker 8: money into Italy.
Speaker 4: They used Vatican bank channels.
Speaker 7: Luchani was contemplating cleaning up the Vatican Bank.
Speaker 4: Well, obviously he passed away before he was able to
Speaker 4: do it.
Speaker 1: He only lasted thirty three days.
Speaker 5: He may have seen the movie god Father three. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's sort of loosely based on what happened during that time.
Speaker 1: You don't mess with the Mafia.
Speaker 3: Chapter one Genesis. Let me tell you how I first
Speaker 3: heard about Anthony Ramundi. A few weeks before that day
Speaker 3: in Brooklyn, I got an email from a guy at
Speaker 3: NBC Universal named Josh. He worked some podcasts there. It said, Hi, Mark,
Speaker 3: we're green light fascinating series involving the Mafia and Vatican,
Speaker 3: a deathbed confession from a mafia enforcer, and an alleged
Speaker 3: papal assassination. It's the kind of story that I think
Speaker 3: is right up your alley and would love to discuss.
Speaker 3: I gave Josh a call, and that's when I learned
Speaker 3: that Anthony had published a book about his life as
Speaker 3: a made member of a New York mafia family. It's
Speaker 3: called When the Bullet Hits the Bone subtitle The Incredible
Speaker 3: and possibly True Stories of the Last mafia enforcer. In it,
Speaker 3: Anthony puts himself in the center of mafia folklore. He
Speaker 3: says he's related to Mafia Royalty, a Sicilian mobster named
Speaker 3: Lucky Luciano, who many people believe founded American organized crime,
Speaker 3: and Anthony says as a kid, he was close to
Speaker 3: Lucky's partner, a guy named Meyer Lansky. Lansky was the
Speaker 3: model for the character Hymen Roth in The Godfather Too,
Speaker 3: And toward the end of his book, Anthony tells a
Speaker 3: story about the murder of a pope. I'll be honest,
Speaker 3: it's a really fun read. Then I check out Anthony online.
Speaker 3: I find articles in tabloids from around the world, The
Speaker 3: New York Post, The Daily Mail, the New Zealand Herald
Speaker 3: with headlines like meet the mobster who says he helped
Speaker 3: whack a pope. After he published his book, Anthony went
Speaker 3: on kind of a publicity tour. Only instead of appearing
Speaker 3: on the morning talk shows, Anthony did interviews on a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of mafia fan YouTube channels. I never knew existed.
Speaker 3: Your uncle was no ordinary, I mean he's one of
Speaker 3: the most famous.
Speaker 1: Oh, uncle Lucky.
Speaker 3: Some of these videos got millions of views.
Speaker 5: Uncle Lucky.
Speaker 8: Yeah, this is Lucky Luciano for those of you who
Speaker 8: haven't figured it out, and he's one of the most
Speaker 8: famous gangsters.
Speaker 5: Uncle Lucky was my grandmother's my father's mother, that was
Speaker 5: her half brother.
Speaker 3: In all of these interviews, Anthony sports his black track suit,
Speaker 3: his gold chains, dark sunglasses, and he carries a huge
Speaker 3: unlit cigar.
Speaker 2: You said, uh, Lansky taught me so many ways of
Speaker 2: shaking down a guy, but he also taught me a
Speaker 2: lot of ways to actually kill a guy because Mile
Speaker 2: Lansky was deadly.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. I had told me a lot
Speaker 5: of things.
Speaker 3: And these interviewers all ended up asking Anthony the same thing.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's crazy with the hold the Pope stuff.
Speaker 5: I mean basically what you're saying is the mob killed
Speaker 5: the Pope.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I decided to call my producer Zach and make a
Speaker 3: date for us to meet Anthony Ramundi for the first time.
Speaker 3: Feel the guy out. See what's what.
Speaker 1: It's in the corner of your mouth there? Yes, Oh,
Speaker 1: I wanted to speak that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's a sunny afternoon when Zach and I meet Anthony
Speaker 3: in a conference room in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Speaker 5: How you've been feeling some days ago, some days bad.
Speaker 1: I got done with my chemo.
Speaker 3: Anthony sporting his usual attires and the cigar.
Speaker 5: It's crazy. Ever since I got the COVID, I haven't
Speaker 5: been right. I got I was in the hospital for it.
Speaker 5: I don't remember my first six days. They didn't think
Speaker 5: I was gonna make it. Meanwhile, I had to get
Speaker 5: two transfusions because my blood levels keep dropping. I wound
Speaker 5: up getting an infection. Then they put the pacemaker in.
Speaker 5: But it's like my father says. Well, my father used
Speaker 5: to say, no matter what you're doing this world, you're
Speaker 5: gonna pay a price. After he died, I realized what
Speaker 5: he was talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is he talking about?
Speaker 5: It don't make a difference if he turns around upstairs
Speaker 5: and says, yeah, you did this good, but I don't
Speaker 5: like what you did here. Well, you're gonna have a
Speaker 5: little bit of a problem.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: After Anthony talks about his latest health problems, I asked
Speaker 3: him to start at the beginning when he was growing
Speaker 3: up in Brooklyn.
Speaker 5: Now, my grandfather had the house on Balton Street between
Speaker 5: Third and Fourth Avenue. It was eight family, but his
Speaker 5: only family living in dead there was like me, my
Speaker 5: mother and my father, my grandfather, my grandmother, my aunt
Speaker 5: Nanny and her husband May and Julian husband, uncle.
Speaker 1: Frank and his wife.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, everything goes back to the old country.
Speaker 3: By old country, Anthony means Sicily.
Speaker 1: Now we had an uncle Ralph guy though Uncle Ralph
Speaker 1: was a member of the Black Hand.
Speaker 3: And by black Hand, Anthony is talking about the Sicilian mafia.
Speaker 5: My grandfather, Frank Castle was, my grandfather Antonio was. They
Speaker 5: were all schooled, these guys, and I'm telling you, seriously,
Speaker 5: old school. Whatever they say they've done, they said, who
Speaker 5: said they're killers?
Speaker 1: And they killed this guy and that guy. To me,
Speaker 1: it was my family. This is all I knew.
Speaker 3: As Anthony goes on, I start to wonder if I'm
Speaker 3: really looking at an old mobster or if this is
Speaker 3: some kind of elaborate performance and I'm his captive audience.
Speaker 8: But they put me with my cousin Mac because I
Speaker 8: was getting into a lot of trouble. Anthony drops the name.
Speaker 8: I recognized Mac as in you Macintosh, a notorious mob enforcer.
Speaker 5: And he brought me down to the diplomat and Joe
Speaker 5: Colombo came in one day, and Tom de Bella was
Speaker 5: there because that was the Colombo family.
Speaker 1: Scappy, everybody's there, so first time.
Speaker 3: It quickly becomes clear that Anthony remembers every mobster he
Speaker 3: ever met.
Speaker 1: I saw Joe Shawana Mayo. They called him.
Speaker 3: Yogi and their nicknames.
Speaker 1: They called him Top because he was top. Sat what
Speaker 1: he done. This guy they called him the garage.
Speaker 5: They called him Catfish, Frankie, I forgot his last name,
Speaker 5: but they call him Frankie blue Eyes.
Speaker 1: In the Witness Protection program.
Speaker 3: He remembers every spot in Brooklyn for all his stories
Speaker 3: took place.
Speaker 5: The Stabbor Club was on thirty Avenue between eighty Fish
Speaker 5: and we went to Honey's garage. Honey had a place
Speaker 5: on Cattle Street between thirty and seven. It was the
Speaker 5: Desiree after Owl Club. Cousin Max says he was commanded,
Speaker 5: says seventh Street and.
Speaker 3: Street and Anthony got into a ton of trouble.
Speaker 1: I got invested, My uncle, Frank got invested in. His
Speaker 1: girlfriend got arrested, My uncle got represented Miami. He opens
Speaker 1: up his jack and I see he grabs the gun.
Speaker 1: I just picked him in and I just entered the
Speaker 1: hole gun.
Speaker 5: Okay on the school, they plug the headline on the
Speaker 5: mother's cast and the guy with an adult maybe crazy.
Speaker 1: If I ain't freaking stupid.
Speaker 5: You're losing me.
Speaker 1: So so this guy.
Speaker 3: These stories fly by and I have a lot of questions,
Speaker 3: but before I can say anything, Anthony has moved on
Speaker 3: to the next chapter.
Speaker 5: So I'm at the house and my father says, she
Speaker 5: had a call. That's amove. It goes from Italy.
Speaker 3: It's the story we came here for folks.
Speaker 1: Calling me from Italy. Her cousin Luigi. He's in the Vatican.
Speaker 3: Back in the conference room in Brooklyn, Anthony Ramundi describes
Speaker 3: how we first got involved in crimes with a Vatican.
Speaker 3: His story starts in nineteen seventy five with a call
Speaker 3: from another family member, a Catholic cardinal also named Ramundi.
Speaker 3: Luigi Ramundi tell me about Luigi's actually.
Speaker 5: Actually yeah, Luigi Vermundi. Yes, so he is in a
Speaker 5: vacant he was. He was one of the guys that
Speaker 5: was becoming a what do you call it?
Speaker 1: The cardinals.
Speaker 3: He lived in the Vatican, and Anthony says the Cardinal
Speaker 3: Ramondi had called him with an offer he couldn't refuse.
Speaker 5: They got the forger from de' mafia from one of
Speaker 5: the mafia guys. They got the stocks the at and
Speaker 5: t Ibma.
Speaker 3: According to Anthony, Luigi and some of his friends in
Speaker 3: the Vatican were running a counterfeiting scam.
Speaker 5: He goes, if you got somebody in the stock market,
Speaker 5: I can send you a ton of stocks.
Speaker 1: You keep your end, you give us our ends.
Speaker 3: And they needed help selling these forged stocks in the
Speaker 3: United States.
Speaker 1: He says, yeah, we'll make a ton of money.
Speaker 5: Because I was the guy that they were bringing up
Speaker 5: in the family to be the gangster, you understand, and
Speaker 5: they liked me. What the fact is, they loved my
Speaker 5: grandfather Antonio. Now he sends me a badge, one hundred
Speaker 5: thousand dollars, certificates and stocks.
Speaker 1: Every one of those a forged met.
Speaker 3: With the help of some of his mafia connected friends,
Speaker 3: Anthony says, he gave the forged stocks to shady brokers
Speaker 3: who then sold them to unwitting investors.
Speaker 5: They were bringing them a ton of money, and what
Speaker 5: we're doing was sending the money overseas to Italy.
Speaker 3: Now and Anthony says that his cousin told him that
Speaker 3: the counterfeiting scam went right to the top of the Vatican.
Speaker 5: So now I find out that Paul Paul the Six
Speaker 5: knew about this.
Speaker 3: They're working together and everybody was making a lot of
Speaker 3: money until Anthony got some news about one of his
Speaker 3: connected friends.
Speaker 1: And guess what he done. He fucking rated us all out.
Speaker 5: Scam was over at that point, Oh yeah, scam was over.
Speaker 3: According to Anthony, his partners in the Vatican shut the
Speaker 3: scam down, and the cops never showed up at his door.
Speaker 3: Then just three years later.
Speaker 5: What happens is Pope pulled the six diys, Pope John
Speaker 5: Pulled the First gets in. Now he becomes the Pope.
Speaker 5: They go through the whole process of boom, okay, here's
Speaker 5: the Pope.
Speaker 3: Anthony says that Pope John Paul the First was a
Speaker 3: very different kind of pope, an honest one.
Speaker 9: Pope John Pulled the First said, and neither his words
Speaker 9: everybody and anybody who was involved in the stock fraud
Speaker 9: and the scam, I am defrocking them and excommunicating them
Speaker 9: from the Church, which meant now they're falling under the
Speaker 9: Italian law.
Speaker 3: And that's when Anthony says, his grandfather got another call
Speaker 3: from the Vatican.
Speaker 5: My grandfather, he goes, we got to give it the Pope.
Speaker 1: We got to kill him.
Speaker 5: What do you fucking crate killed the pop Are you
Speaker 5: out of your fucking mind? Excuse my language, But he said,
Speaker 5: let me tell you something.
Speaker 1: He goes.
Speaker 5: For as long as we've had popes, we've been killing
Speaker 5: pope's whoiut history. If we didn't like him, we kill
Speaker 5: him and we put our own guy in there. I said,
Speaker 5: Jesus Christ, they're gonna kill a pope. I said, i'm
Speaker 5: a said, good luck with it. My grandfather goes, no,
Speaker 5: he goes, you gotta go with him.
Speaker 1: I gotta go with him. I'm not killing no fucking
Speaker 1: Paul Papa. I mean, I don't care.
Speaker 5: On the streets, on the street, your loan, shock and shadlock,
Speaker 5: and you got a problem with the guy.
Speaker 1: The guy gets whacked. Who gives a shit?
Speaker 5: You know we're talking about the pope. This is the
Speaker 5: guy who couldn't like supposedly directly talks to God. But
Speaker 5: my grandfather turned around and says, you got my grandson,
Speaker 5: I love you.
Speaker 1: You gotta go. Just when he said it like that,
Speaker 1: I knew I had to go.
Speaker 3: A few days later, Anthony says, the mastermind of the
Speaker 3: entire conspiracy showed up at his door is.
Speaker 5: Paul Jacob Marsinkus, who is the head of the Vatican Bank.
Speaker 5: I said, okay, I said, what am I going there for?
Speaker 5: Because show us how to.
Speaker 1: Take him out in a nice way.
Speaker 3: Anthony says that reluctantly he flew with Marcinkus to Rome
Speaker 3: to come up with a plan to take out the
Speaker 3: new pope in a nice way.
Speaker 5: These guys are nothing like New York guys. Let me
Speaker 5: tell you, he says, Now, how do we you know,
Speaker 5: how do we put him at rest? We want you
Speaker 5: to tell us how we can do it without pain
Speaker 5: and without him suffering. And you're going to love this,
Speaker 5: and you are going to be our uh what is
Speaker 5: that word to use our witness before God? I'm going
Speaker 5: to be your witness before God? What the fuck you
Speaker 5: talk about? When we die, God is going to say
Speaker 5: you killed one of my popes. He never suffered, He
Speaker 5: went peacefully. And then we can stay in they called
Speaker 5: we'll call the paradise, we'll call it every but we can.
Speaker 1: Stay with God.
Speaker 5: And I'm saying to myself, how did I get into
Speaker 5: this mess? I said, what's his whole schedule? He goes here,
Speaker 5: he goes dare God at nighttime. He always liked tea,
Speaker 5: but he liked it extra sweet, and it's okay. I says,
Speaker 5: here's what we can do. I says, can you get
Speaker 5: liquid value? He says, yeah, all right, bring him his
Speaker 5: tea and you have liquid valume in it.
Speaker 1: But the tea's got to be really sweet. He goes,
Speaker 1: he likes it really.
Speaker 5: Sweet because you know, liquid volume doesn't have a taste,
Speaker 5: but sometimes it's a little hint that this doesn't taste right.
Speaker 3: According to Anton, the volume would put the Pope in
Speaker 3: a deep sleep so he wouldn't feel what was coming.
Speaker 5: Next, I says, can you get cyanide? Potassium cyanide. If
Speaker 5: you have a high level of potassium in your body,
Speaker 5: you're gone.
Speaker 1: You're dead.
Speaker 3: That night, Anthony says, the Pope went to bed as
Speaker 3: he usually did, after he had his tea.
Speaker 5: The Pope is out like a light. The captain of
Speaker 5: the Swiss guards comes over. They shake hands, and I
Speaker 5: can see the thing bottle.
Speaker 3: And now Anthony says that it was Paul Jacob Marcinkus's
Speaker 3: job to get the deadly deed done.
Speaker 5: He gets the bottle, he opens it up, fills up
Speaker 5: the eye dropper, puts it like this in between it
Speaker 5: and just squeeze it once, put the back on, walks
Speaker 5: out and closed the door. Now we're standing there, all right,
Speaker 5: he says, the guy's got to come back and check
Speaker 5: on him, to popish it all. A sudden, doctors, this one,
Speaker 5: that one comes over. They examine him. They're doing a
Speaker 5: like CPR on his chest. They're doing this to everything.
Speaker 5: Pope is dead. Yeah, I had to stay. I had
Speaker 5: to stay co I had to.
Speaker 1: See this to be a witness before God for them.
Speaker 1: Now he's dead.
Speaker 3: At this point, I look over at Zach and notice
Speaker 3: the Florida ceiling window beyond him. It's dark outside. I
Speaker 3: glance at my phone and see a screen filled with
Speaker 3: miscalls and text messages, and I realized we've been talking
Speaker 3: for five hours. But Anthony just keeps going. It's starting
Speaker 3: to feel like he's auditioning for a role he's always wanted.
Speaker 1: I have to call it for yes.
Speaker 3: As we leave, we share the elevator to the lobby.
Speaker 1: You have to lift this up and push it down
Speaker 1: before we.
Speaker 3: Reach the ground floor. Anthony takes out an old switchblade
Speaker 3: and hands it to me.
Speaker 5: It's a switchblade that belongs to my uncle, Lucky.
Speaker 3: As in Lucky Luciano, one of the most famous wise
Speaker 3: guys of all time.
Speaker 5: That Ti, it's not his names in Marenzano's with the tip.
Speaker 3: Of the blade is broken off. He says it's from
Speaker 3: when Lucky stabbed a guy and it broke off in
Speaker 3: his ribs. I snapped the knife closed and hand it
Speaker 3: back to him. As we exit the elevator and walk
Speaker 3: out of the building, Zack and I stand in the
Speaker 3: dark watching Anthony limp away down the sidewalk toward a
Speaker 3: waiting black car. The next day, I start looking for
Speaker 3: someone who can vouch for Anthony. Anthony says he was
Speaker 3: a member of the Columbo crime family. There aren't many
Speaker 3: of those guys left, but I managed to find one
Speaker 3: guy high up in the Columbos and I write him
Speaker 3: a letter. It wasn't too hard to find him. He's
Speaker 3: serving a life sentence in federal prison. I write, I'm
Speaker 3: researching the connection between organized crime and the Vatican. My
Speaker 3: interest begins with a possible associate of yours, Anthony Ramundi,
Speaker 3: who wrote a book in which he claims that he
Speaker 3: was a member of the Columbo crime family and that
Speaker 3: he helped murder a Pope. I was sure this guy
Speaker 3: would know you. Macintosh, the Columbo enforcer Anthony says, was
Speaker 3: his cousin. So I mentioned mac in the letter. Then
Speaker 3: I make my pitch. You may be the only guy
Speaker 3: around who could tell me who Anthony really is or isn't.
Speaker 3: So I'm asking for your help. I seal the envelope,
Speaker 3: address it not forgetting the inmate number, and drop it
Speaker 3: in the mailbox.
Speaker 4: Hey, Mark, what's up? Hey, listen, I'm gonna record this
Speaker 4: phone call. Okay oo okay.
Speaker 3: A week or so later, I call Zach.
Speaker 4: I got some news. So remember I sent a letter
Speaker 4: to Oh, yeah, the guy in the Columbo family. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he texted me from prison.
Speaker 3: Apparently gangster's context from prison.
Speaker 4: Now, yeah, apparently they have phoned in prison. Can you
Speaker 4: read it?
Speaker 7: He says, As a small courtesy, I'm replying to request
Speaker 7: received six six twenty three.
Speaker 4: I do not recall the person you mentioned.
Speaker 3: At first, the guy texted back that he had no
Speaker 3: memory of Anthony Ramundi. But as I predicted, he did
Speaker 3: know you McIntosh, and he remembered that you had a
Speaker 3: cousin named Anthony. After a few back and forth, I
Speaker 3: realized that the Anthony this guy remembers is not Anthony Ramundi.
Speaker 3: Then he asked me if I know Anthony's nickname. He says,
Speaker 3: back then, everybody had a nickname.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 7: So then I looked through Anthony's book and found his
Speaker 7: nickname back when he was in the Columbo Crime Family,
Speaker 7: and it was Pluto. So I write back that Anthony's
Speaker 7: nickname was Pluto, and he writes back to me, yes,
Speaker 7: I found out that was who you were referring to.
Speaker 7: I was thinking of another cousin to Macintosh. Obviously he
Speaker 7: knows who Pluto is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely. So he's kind of an a roundabout way
Speaker 4: of saying two days he's saying, yes, I remember Anthony Raymundy,
Speaker 4: and yes he was a cousin to Hugh McIntosh exactly.
Speaker 4: That's something that is I guess you're not you're not convinced.
Speaker 7: No, no, But then he wrote me back he says,
Speaker 7: as I'm not a fan of any books on such
Speaker 7: a topic because most are inaccurate to various degrees. I
Speaker 7: cannot wish you any type of luck or success in
Speaker 7: your endeavor.
Speaker 4: Well, it's kind of intense. Maybe just remindy podcast gets
Speaker 4: me killed.
Speaker 3: Later that night, this guy sent me one final text message.
Speaker 3: It simply said, I do request that you do not
Speaker 3: contact me again for any reason.
Speaker 5: Stay safe.
Speaker 3: Next time. On the Confessions of Anthony Ramundi, we learn
Speaker 3: a lot more about Anthony.
Speaker 5: Joey mate the man, and he just started to get
Speaker 5: wiser and wiser, and why they're doing more and more
Speaker 5: and more, and he wound up with them.
Speaker 1: What can I say? Do you remember your sinking Udo?
Speaker 3: And we learn a little about Pope John Paul.
Speaker 5: The first huge mount claimer.
Speaker 4: Oh was he really?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: He scaled his last was it a mountain outside of
Speaker 6: Trento about six or seven months before he died?
Speaker 1: So he was a fit guy, right.
Speaker 3: The Confessions of Anthony Ramundi is a ust audio and
Speaker 3: truth media podcast in partnership with Clockwork Films. The show
Speaker 3: was produced by Lexa Burke, Kenny Cuziak, and Kevin shep
Speaker 3: Zach Saint Lewis is our senior producer. Mark Smirling That's
Speaker 3: Me is your host and story editor. Executive producers are
Speaker 3: Josh Block from USG Audio, Jamie Cohen, Naomi Harvey and
Speaker 3: Rob Huxley from Clockwork Films and Me Mark Smirling. Scott
Speaker 3: Curtis is our production manager. Production support from Josh La
Speaker 3: Longi at USG, Audio fact checking by Donnie Solimon, sound
Speaker 3: design and mixing by Kenny Cuziak. Music by Universal Production,
Speaker 3: Music Marmoset and Kenny Cuziak. Our title track is Big
Speaker 3: Fish by Kenny Cuziak. Legal review by Linda Steinmann and
Speaker 3: Abigail Overdale at Davis Wright Tremaine. If you've enjoyed the
Speaker 3: Confessions of Anthony Ramundi, leave us a review on iTunes.
Speaker 3: It really helps other people find the show, and thanks
Speaker 3: for listening.