WEBVTT - I'll Stop the World and Melt with You: Joe Colombo Jr.

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<v Speaker 1>Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.

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<v Speaker 2>Zaren Burnette, Elizabeth Dunnan, How you doing, girl?

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<v Speaker 3>Good?

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<v Speaker 2>How are you You look good? You look like you're

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<v Speaker 2>really happy. You're enjoying the summer. You a little red

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<v Speaker 2>from against some sun well Son?

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, how about you? You look you look fit in

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<v Speaker 3>as a fiddle.

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<v Speaker 2>Thank you. I'm in fine, in fine fiddle. I'm in

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<v Speaker 2>fine feddle. Yeah whatever it is. Was that old Henry

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<v Speaker 2>Miller thing, I'm in fine feddle, meaning like I'm I'm

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<v Speaker 2>crapping good. There you go. I like it. You're crapping good.

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<v Speaker 2>I'm regular.

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<v Speaker 3>They're just gonna do a gut check on everybody.

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<v Speaker 2>Terry, Terry, how's your guy? How's you got, biome? Terry?

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<v Speaker 2>You still got that bubble gut going up? Terry? No,

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<v Speaker 2>come back out, Terry gone again? Yeah? Do you know

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<v Speaker 2>it's ridiculous? Oh I'm so glad you do ask me,

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<v Speaker 2>because I have an answer for you. Thank you. And

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<v Speaker 2>it's my version of a mashup for you, Elizabeth, what

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<v Speaker 2>and evolves my man Dick Vandyke. Okay, so when he

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<v Speaker 2>was doing a like the world premiere of Chitty Chitty

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<v Speaker 2>Bang Bang in New York. He said this very interesting

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<v Speaker 2>quote in my world. He said, most kids love hot dogs,

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<v Speaker 2>at least my kids do. We often broil corn on

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<v Speaker 2>the cob and hot dogs over the coals. I don't

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<v Speaker 2>eat dogs myself, except in salad. Marjorie, my wife makes

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<v Speaker 2>a salad with macaroni, mayonnaise, pickles and onions and lots

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<v Speaker 2>of hot dogs cut up. It's a great combination. That's

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<v Speaker 2>a very mid century thing, right, just missing the aspect.

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<v Speaker 2>So he basically pointed out that you know, he'd been

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<v Speaker 2>over in England and really enjoyed the cooking over there,

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<v Speaker 2>which you don't hear very He was like, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>hyping up. We had a Charles dickenstyle Christmas. Anyway, he

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<v Speaker 2>was saying. Every year on his birthday, she prepares his

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<v Speaker 2>favorite dish. She soaks some navy beans, then boils him

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<v Speaker 2>in a big hunk of ham for the longest time. Meanwhile,

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<v Speaker 2>she has baked some corn bread and puts a layer

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<v Speaker 2>of crumpled up corn bread and a bowl ladles the beans,

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<v Speaker 2>soup over it and tops it with some diced onions, tomato,

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<v Speaker 2>and a few dashes of tabasco. It's a mess, but

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<v Speaker 2>I love it. Right anyway. The Dick Van Dyke Macaroni

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<v Speaker 2>hot dog salad. Yeah, I've got the recipe for you.

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<v Speaker 2>Uh huh. Ten hot dogs cooked cut in one eighth

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<v Speaker 2>inch rounds, two cups of cooked macaroni, chilled, three tablespoons

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<v Speaker 2>of sweet pickle relish, one and a half tablespoons of

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<v Speaker 2>minced white onion, one third cup chopped celery optional, three

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<v Speaker 2>tablespoons mayonnaise, one teaspoon prepared mustard, salt, freshly ground pepper

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<v Speaker 2>to taste. So there, you'ld a whole lot of mayonnaise

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<v Speaker 2>for that.

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<v Speaker 4>No, no, you know, I think I would try it.

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<v Speaker 2>You combine the hot dog rounds with the macaroni, the

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<v Speaker 2>sweet pickle, the relish, onion, celery, mayonnaise, and mustard, and

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<v Speaker 2>then season to taste, mixed well served.

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<v Speaker 3>Chilled, two cups of pasta and three tablespoons.

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<v Speaker 2>And he recommends you pair it with corn cooked over

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<v Speaker 2>the grill. I've got an I'm gonna give you. Want

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<v Speaker 2>to make some for us, I'm gonna give Terry this menu. Also,

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<v Speaker 2>he's got a whole Nathan's famous hot Dogs ov So

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<v Speaker 2>hot dogs wine, And yes.

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<v Speaker 4>He's your guy.

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<v Speaker 2>That's my idea of a mash up, Elizabeth, there you go.

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<v Speaker 2>Macaroni and hot dogs my main man. We dance a

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<v Speaker 2>lot of like so.

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<v Speaker 3>I do kind of like macaroni salad.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, you're not into it. No, I mean pasta

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<v Speaker 2>salads I like, but so often they have too much mayonnaise.

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<v Speaker 2>And like that one it's light and it's got hot dogs. Yeah, exactly,

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<v Speaker 2>Like that's two good wins. It is that is That

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<v Speaker 2>is also ridiculous.

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<v Speaker 3>It's ridiculous that he's like recounting all these very mid century,

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<v Speaker 3>middle of the road recipes.

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<v Speaker 2>My favorite birthday dinner, it's a hot dog salad.

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<v Speaker 3>Well, and then the like pork be ye yeah, totally

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<v Speaker 3>bless God bless.

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<v Speaker 2>By the way, do you see how my mashup didn't

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<v Speaker 2>make you sick? Yeah? I did see that. Just take notes. Okay,

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<v Speaker 2>do you want to.

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<v Speaker 4>Know what else is ridiculous?

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<v Speaker 3>Big Crime Family, Small Time Crime. This is Ridiculous Crime,

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<v Speaker 3>A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, ice and cons.

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<v Speaker 3>It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one ridiculous.

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<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah yeah. Silver coins, Zarin, Oh, I like those?

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, you ever get into coin collecting other than the

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<v Speaker 3>pennies that ruddu Rose, ain't you.

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<v Speaker 2>Oh no, I have like right over there, and I

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<v Speaker 2>brought them in actually to the office.

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<v Speaker 4>Because I was asked to carry them with you.

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<v Speaker 2>I have these books and my grandfather gave me that

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<v Speaker 2>are all of the pennies in the last century and

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<v Speaker 2>some and some from the nineteenth century. Why did why

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<v Speaker 2>did you bring them up? I found some new pennies

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<v Speaker 2>and I had some time, so I wanted to look

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<v Speaker 2>at them and add them to the book. It only yeah, anyway,

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<v Speaker 2>I was rolling around, okay, whatever I used to. I

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<v Speaker 2>used to with rolls of pennies in my car, and

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<v Speaker 2>I used to have like all this change on my

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<v Speaker 2>dashboard like where you're like speedometer readout is. It was

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<v Speaker 2>just like two inches thick and change.

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<v Speaker 3>But that wasn't like a coin collection.

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<v Speaker 2>It was sure, it was a collection pins, but honestly

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<v Speaker 2>all honestly, yes, I do. I like Buffalo Nichols. I

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<v Speaker 2>like a bunch of the World War two era coins

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<v Speaker 2>because they had like the metal shortages. So I have

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<v Speaker 2>a lot. And I also have lucky coins that I've

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<v Speaker 2>collected from around the world. I've got, you know, a

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<v Speaker 2>bunch of like I went to Europe back before the

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<v Speaker 2>EU had made the the Euro. So I have all

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<v Speaker 2>of their coinage, okay, So, and I've got a bunch

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<v Speaker 2>of Asian coins that even though I have not been

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<v Speaker 2>to Japan, I've got a bunch of Japanese coins because

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<v Speaker 2>I like the way they look. So yeah, I've got

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<v Speaker 2>a bunch of coins. Nice, I call it a coin.

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<v Speaker 3>Collect I like those nineteen seventy six quarters.

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<v Speaker 2>Oh that was cool. Yeah, those are cool. I also

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<v Speaker 2>I liked the updated the state quarters when they had

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<v Speaker 2>the series.

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<v Speaker 3>They tried to collect those various state quarters, but then

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<v Speaker 3>I realized I didn't care, and I gave up.

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<v Speaker 2>You need a book?

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<v Speaker 3>Well, I think I also needed money for parking meters.

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<v Speaker 3>I was like, you know, dip in Iowa.

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<v Speaker 2>We had a good run. But a bunch of my favorites.

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<v Speaker 3>Do you what's your favorite?

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<v Speaker 2>That's interesting? State quarters? What's your third favorite?

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<v Speaker 5>Oh?

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<v Speaker 2>Man, that's interesting. I mean obviously I have a lot

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<v Speaker 2>of like sentimental biases like Georgia.

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<v Speaker 3>George pretty right doesn't have a good Yeah.

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<v Speaker 2>It's really cool, so nice.

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<v Speaker 3>Well, coins the whole hobby a whole business, quite frankly,

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<v Speaker 3>and like stamps, there are things that make certain coins

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<v Speaker 3>special sometimes it's the material from which they're made, gold, silver, styrophoone.

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<v Speaker 2>I threw in that last one. See if you were

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<v Speaker 2>listening to me syrophone, I heard it. I just thought

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<v Speaker 2>you were having a stroke, and I didn't want to

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<v Speaker 2>call that.

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<v Speaker 3>Don't pay it, don't don't call attention to that when

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<v Speaker 3>it happens. But what if the value of the metal

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<v Speaker 3>This is the question I posed unto you today. What

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<v Speaker 3>if the value of the metal in the coin goes

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<v Speaker 3>through the roof. Whenever the metal in a coin becomes

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<v Speaker 3>worth more than its face value, those coins disappear into

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<v Speaker 3>crucibles totally.

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<v Speaker 2>Well, yeah, so that's very true. And we've had this

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<v Speaker 2>problem right now with the minting of like nickels, is

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<v Speaker 2>that they're more valuable than the nickels, right right.

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<v Speaker 3>And so for a couple hundred years, the US government

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<v Speaker 3>went back and forth on how to prevent folks from

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<v Speaker 3>just melting coins down.

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<v Speaker 2>Can't stop us? Now that you can't.

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<v Speaker 3>Sometimes they decrease the percentage of silver in coin, and.

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<v Speaker 4>So that forced wayfer thin, yeah, force the phase.

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<v Speaker 3>Value higher than the value of the metal within. The

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<v Speaker 3>most interesting, I think chapter in all of this was

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<v Speaker 3>the Pittman Act of nineteen eighteen. It's the single largest

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<v Speaker 3>deliberate destruction of US silver coinage. So under the Pittman Act,

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<v Speaker 3>about two hundred and seventy million silver dollars, mostly Morgan dollars,

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<v Speaker 3>got melted down. The bullion was sold to Britain because

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<v Speaker 3>they were using it to shore up confidence in the

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<v Speaker 3>rupee in India during wartime.

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<v Speaker 2>I'll just say I didn't make the Indian.

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<v Speaker 3>So the Act also required that the silver would be

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<v Speaker 3>replaced eventually, which is why Morgan dollars were then struck

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<v Speaker 3>again in nineteen twenty one after this seventeen year gap,

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<v Speaker 3>and then they followed that with the Peace dollar design.

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<v Speaker 3>So there are several Morgan dates that are super scarce

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<v Speaker 3>today because the mintages went into the Pittman melt. So

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<v Speaker 3>that's what makes them very valuable. Over the years, rising

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<v Speaker 3>industrial demand and a growing coin shortage pushed silver toward

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<v Speaker 3>the point where a quarters metal exceeded twenty five cents,

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<v Speaker 3>and so the Coinage Act of nineteen sixty five removed

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<v Speaker 3>silver entirely from dimes and quarters, and they switched to

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<v Speaker 3>a copper nickel clad and they cut the half dollar

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<v Speaker 3>down to forty percent silver. So the public immediately began

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<v Speaker 3>pulling pre nineteen sixty five coins from circulation, like people

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<v Speaker 3>wanted to keep their hands on this, and the Treasury

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<v Speaker 3>was like, we have to stop this. So starting in

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<v Speaker 3>May of nineteen sixty seven, it prohibited melting and exporting

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<v Speaker 3>silver coins.

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<v Speaker 2>Now I'm going to be all about the pre nineteen

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<v Speaker 2>sixty five quarters, A new thing to worry. Well, I've

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<v Speaker 2>got a new collection going for you.

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<v Speaker 3>So the ban was lifted in nineteen seventy once enough

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<v Speaker 3>of that clad coinage was in circulation. Oh yeah, So

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<v Speaker 3>by the nineteen seventies, silver coins were basically gone from

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<v Speaker 3>the tills.

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<v Speaker 2>It was all clad.

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<v Speaker 3>So let's hold that time from May of nineteen sixty

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<v Speaker 3>seven until nineteen seventy in our heads. Yes, I have

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<v Speaker 3>another thread in this tapestry of a tail that we

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<v Speaker 3>need to follow. We're following the threads from the spool

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<v Speaker 3>to the loom. Here's eron like that, seeing what elements

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<v Speaker 3>contribute to this story. So let's talk about Joe Colombo.

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<v Speaker 2>Mafia.

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<v Speaker 3>Don really took a hard one of your favorite topics.

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<v Speaker 2>I do like Joe Colombo. You love the Mafia.

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<v Speaker 3>Joseph Anthony Colombo, Senior Boss of what became known as

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<v Speaker 3>the Colombo crime family, one of New York's.

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<v Speaker 2>Five families on the Commission.

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<v Speaker 3>Yes, he was an unusual figure in mafia history because

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<v Speaker 3>he deliberately sought publicity. Yes, you know, this was something

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<v Speaker 3>unheard of among his peers, totally.

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<v Speaker 2>Carlo Gambino was like, what the hell, Yeah, what are

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<v Speaker 2>you doing?

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<v Speaker 3>He went on Dick Cabot, he spoke to the press,

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<v Speaker 3>He was everywhere, absolutely everywhere. Yes, and so he was

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<v Speaker 3>born in Brooklyn to Anthony Colombo, a member of the

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<v Speaker 3>Profaci crime family.

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<v Speaker 2>Yes, a great one.

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<v Speaker 3>And he grew up around the organization that his father

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<v Speaker 3>belonged to. Nineteen thirty eight, when Joe was fifteen, he

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<v Speaker 3>lost his dad. And I'm going to preserve our percentages

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<v Speaker 3>here and just keep going.

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<v Speaker 2>Imagine we're doing that a couple of times. N It's

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<v Speaker 2>about it.

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<v Speaker 3>So Colombo though, Joe Senior, he enlisted in the US

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<v Speaker 3>Coast Guard during World War Two, got discharged in forty

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<v Speaker 3>five after he was diagnosed with a nervous condition.

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<v Speaker 2>O colleg Yeah, who're talking like shell shot kind of thing,

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<v Speaker 2>like PTSD or nervous condition like my handshake.

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<v Speaker 3>I don't know, who knows who's to say. Afterward, he

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<v Speaker 3>worked like a series of legitimate looking jobs a longshorman,

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<v Speaker 3>the dogs meat company salesman, Okay, real estate salesman. That

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<v Speaker 3>was like his eventual thing with the distributor Cantalupo Realty

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<v Speaker 3>in Brooklyn, Oh, Okay. And this was the job that

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<v Speaker 3>he kept listing as his occupation like well into his

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<v Speaker 3>years as a crime boss. So he worked his way

0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:41.240
<v Speaker 3>up through the Profaci family as an enforcer. He remained

0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:44.880
<v Speaker 3>loyal to the leadership during this bloody Gallo Profacci war

0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:48.840
<v Speaker 3>in the early ser Gallo Yeah. So his break came

0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:53.640
<v Speaker 3>in nineteen sixty three. Joseph Maloco, who had taken over

0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:58.960
<v Speaker 3>after Joseph Profacci's death, ordered Colombo to carry out the

0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:03.800
<v Speaker 3>murders of rival bosses Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lukesey the Gentleman.

0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:06.800
<v Speaker 3>These are the names right that you hear all the time.

0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:10.600
<v Speaker 3>So this was a plot that was instigated by another

0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:16.960
<v Speaker 3>crime boss, Joseph Banano, oh Joe Bananas. So Colombo was

0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:20.040
<v Speaker 3>told to do this. Instead, he tipped off the intended

0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:25.520
<v Speaker 3>targets and the Mafia Commission spared him. They forced Malyoco

0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:29.240
<v Speaker 3>into retirement and they handed Colombo, the whole family.

0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:31.520
<v Speaker 2>I love. By the way, these are like my bedtime stories.

0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:35.600
<v Speaker 2>Growing up right is like okay. And then Carlo Gambido

0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:37.439
<v Speaker 2>gets the word that the hit is off. This is

0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:38.800
<v Speaker 2>a very insightful thing.

0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:44.440
<v Speaker 3>So he's like forty one years old now he Joe

0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:46.280
<v Speaker 3>Senior is the youngest boss.

0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:48.240
<v Speaker 2>In New York. Wow, forty one.

0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:51.679
<v Speaker 3>So he's got his wife Lucille. They have five kids,

0:12:51.720 --> 0:12:57.680
<v Speaker 3>three sons, Christopher Colombo, Joseph Columbo Junior, I know, and

0:12:57.880 --> 0:13:02.480
<v Speaker 3>Anthony Colombo. Anthony. Indeed, what I really want to do

0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:06.600
<v Speaker 3>today is tell you about Joseph Columbo Junior, Joe Junior.

0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:10.800
<v Speaker 3>He's our focus. He and his crime are the crazy

0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:14.000
<v Speaker 3>tapestry before us. So it all starts with a Brooklyn

0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:18.840
<v Speaker 3>coin dealer having a bad year, Richard Salamone. He ran

0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:21.440
<v Speaker 3>a coin shop in Bay Ridge and it's still I

0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:23.560
<v Speaker 3>looked at the address. It's still a coin shop to

0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:24.000
<v Speaker 3>this day.

0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:24.480
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.

0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:28.520
<v Speaker 3>By late nineteen sixty eight, he was somewhere between fifty

0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:31.240
<v Speaker 3>and sixty thousand dollars in the hole, depending on who

0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:35.000
<v Speaker 3>you believed back then. So instead of like sulking about it,

0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:38.439
<v Speaker 3>he did some quick arithmetic and you know, a lot

0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:38.880
<v Speaker 3>of other.

0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.040
<v Speaker 2>Coin dealers at the time. We're doing this quick arithmetic.

0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:42.400
<v Speaker 2>I got a lot of money in this place.

0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:46.040
<v Speaker 3>He's a Yeah, if I melt these things down, the

0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:48.760
<v Speaker 3>silver and all these old US coins that I have

0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:51.839
<v Speaker 3>are worth more than the printed face value, as I

0:13:52.000 --> 0:13:55.200
<v Speaker 3>just explained. So it was illegal, sure, but it was

0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:59.679
<v Speaker 3>also on paper. Elizabeth, who's to say it was a

0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:00.640
<v Speaker 3>tie prophet?

0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:00.840
<v Speaker 5>Oh?

0:14:00.920 --> 0:14:03.360
<v Speaker 4>I bet so when you're faced with this debt.

0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:05.120
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, when you got a coin shop, you got a

0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:05.600
<v Speaker 2>lot of corn.

0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:06.439
<v Speaker 4>There's a lot of coin.

0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:10.600
<v Speaker 3>So Salamone pitched the idea to this regular customer of his,

0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:12.400
<v Speaker 3>Joseph Columbo Junior.

0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:13.480
<v Speaker 2>He was a collector.

0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:15.480
<v Speaker 3>He was a coin collector. He like hung out the

0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:19.640
<v Speaker 3>coin shop. So the operation itself was like really almost

0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:21.040
<v Speaker 3>charmingly small time.

0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:21.480
<v Speaker 2>Okay.

0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:24.680
<v Speaker 3>So the original plan was that they were gonna smelt

0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:27.920
<v Speaker 3>two hundred thousand dollars in coins and turn it into

0:14:28.320 --> 0:14:32.320
<v Speaker 3>fifty thousand dollars in silver ingots. Wow, So that was

0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:36.040
<v Speaker 3>the that was they exchange they were looking at. That

0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:39.760
<v Speaker 3>was a bit ambitious. Junior wasn't sold on that. Instead,

0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:42.920
<v Speaker 3>He's like, look, I'll give you twenty grand and I'll

0:14:43.000 --> 0:14:45.040
<v Speaker 3>chip in on it. This isn't the only thing you're have,

0:14:45.040 --> 0:14:47.680
<v Speaker 3>but I'm going to funnel it to you through an

0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:53.480
<v Speaker 3>associate of mine, Joseph Ayanaki. So the coins themselves then

0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:57.280
<v Speaker 3>went to a fourth man, David Leonard, and he's the

0:14:57.280 --> 0:15:00.280
<v Speaker 3>one who actually did the melting. So he got a

0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:03.360
<v Speaker 3>flat feet twenty dollars for a bag of coins which

0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:07.160
<v Speaker 3>generally contained between five hundred and one thousand dollars. And

0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:10.240
<v Speaker 3>then Leonard perc Yeah Leonard then, and they also gave

0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:13.359
<v Speaker 3>him like a few cents an ounts once the resulting

0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:16.400
<v Speaker 3>and gets were sold into this Manhattan refinery.

0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:18.120
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and maybe he had like a gambling problem we

0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:19.240
<v Speaker 2>don't know about, and that's why.

0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:23.640
<v Speaker 3>He's working it off exactly its value added. So the

0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:27.680
<v Speaker 3>scheme ran from roughly November of nineteen sixty eight into

0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:31.480
<v Speaker 3>nineteen sixty nine, right up until the melting ban itself

0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:34.840
<v Speaker 3>was lifted May nineteen seventy. But here's the thing. The

0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:40.119
<v Speaker 3>market didn't cooperate. Silver prices dropped and the crew reportedly

0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:44.280
<v Speaker 3>ended up about four grand in the red. So they

0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:47.840
<v Speaker 3>melted these coins and lost value.

0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:51.480
<v Speaker 2>None of that silver fluctuates so hard, I know.

0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:55.240
<v Speaker 3>None of that stopped the government from indicting Joe Junior

0:15:56.200 --> 0:16:01.680
<v Speaker 3>Knack Leonard Slamone in late nineteen seventy for violating the

0:16:01.720 --> 0:16:05.800
<v Speaker 3>Treasuries coin melting statute. Joe Junior was looking at five

0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:07.600
<v Speaker 3>years if he was convicted.

0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:10.280
<v Speaker 2>Salamone. He pleaded guilty.

0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:12.880
<v Speaker 3>He got ahead of it and he pleaded guilty to

0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:17.120
<v Speaker 3>conspiracy charges. He testified for the prosecution at the grand

0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:19.840
<v Speaker 3>jury trial, agreed to testify during the criminal trial.

0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:22.000
<v Speaker 2>Were they throwing like Rico Adam with a conspiracy?

0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:26.320
<v Speaker 3>Who knows Joe Senior. He's convinced that Joe Junior was

0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:29.160
<v Speaker 3>targeted pretty much because of the family from whence he came.

0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:34.040
<v Speaker 3>So Joe Senior started a movement that the Italian American

0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:35.240
<v Speaker 3>Civil Rights League.

0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:37.880
<v Speaker 6>Oh oh yeah, so.

0:16:37.800 --> 0:16:38.640
<v Speaker 4>The Italian.

0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:43.040
<v Speaker 3>Was that was what started at to get Joe Junior

0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:48.040
<v Speaker 3>out of trouble, the Italian American Civil Rights Christopher. It

0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:52.160
<v Speaker 3>was an advocacy organization and its stated mission was to

0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:57.880
<v Speaker 3>fight ethnic discrimination against Italian Americans, particularly the popular assumption

0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:03.160
<v Speaker 3>that Italian heritage implied menality. Yes, they protested what they

0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:08.520
<v Speaker 3>called selective ethnically motivated federal law enforcement. So Joe Senior

0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:14.160
<v Speaker 3>he organized picketers outside the FBI's Manhattan Field office protesting

0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:15.439
<v Speaker 3>the charges against Joe.

0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:17.520
<v Speaker 2>Junior heard the signs holding up.

0:17:17.560 --> 0:17:17.720
<v Speaker 5>Well.

0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:21.440
<v Speaker 3>The picketing ran for months and like there was all

0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:22.719
<v Speaker 3>this press coverage.

0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:24.640
<v Speaker 2>We won our civil rights.

0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:27.000
<v Speaker 3>And all it did was just the organization just grew crazy.

0:17:27.040 --> 0:17:31.719
<v Speaker 3>There were tens of thousands of members, dozens of chap

0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:33.960
<v Speaker 3>I mean, they kind of inflated some of the figures, but.

0:17:33.920 --> 0:17:36.240
<v Speaker 2>Sure, sure, but I can see the people.

0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:41.120
<v Speaker 3>Then here's the funding to the league drew criticism from

0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:45.520
<v Speaker 3>other Italian American organizations and public figures who thought that

0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:49.280
<v Speaker 3>the you know, the league being run by an actual

0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:54.280
<v Speaker 3>mafia boss was like the worst messenger for the argument

0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:57.320
<v Speaker 3>that Italian Americans aren't mobsters.

0:17:56.920 --> 0:18:00.000
<v Speaker 4>Is kind of yeah, more than ironic other crime bosses.

0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:03.960
<v Speaker 3>Carlo Gambino first and almost he was furious.

0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:04.720
<v Speaker 2>Oh I bet he.

0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:09.720
<v Speaker 3>Hated because the publicity violated omerta, the code of silence,

0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:14.640
<v Speaker 3>tradition of invisibility, and it invited exactly the federal attention

0:18:14.680 --> 0:18:15.600
<v Speaker 3>that they were trying.

0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:17.080
<v Speaker 2>To avoid and kind turns them into a joke.

0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:18.560
<v Speaker 3>Joe Senior unbothered.

0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:20.280
<v Speaker 2>You're going to be on like the late night talk show.

0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:23.760
<v Speaker 3>Senior didn't care even knew what he was doing. So

0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:27.440
<v Speaker 3>back to Joe Junior. Jury selection begins. Joe Senior and

0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:31.280
<v Speaker 3>this brand new Italian American Civil Rights League. They show

0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:34.399
<v Speaker 3>up to make their displeasure known, and they framed the

0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:38.919
<v Speaker 3>whole prosecution as harassment of the family. The presiding judge

0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:40.800
<v Speaker 3>could kind of see where this was going, so he

0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:43.680
<v Speaker 3>asked the press to hold off on trial coverage until

0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:45.280
<v Speaker 3>a verdict came down.

0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:49.560
<v Speaker 2>He's like, you're going to spook the jury. They didn't.

0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:53.440
<v Speaker 3>He didn't have to worry about leaks. The jurors were

0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:56.399
<v Speaker 3>just reading the paper, you know, and they it was

0:18:56.440 --> 0:19:00.000
<v Speaker 3>in the paper. So the very next day a miss

0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:04.280
<v Speaker 3>trial was declared after five jurors admitted that they ignored

0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:07.600
<v Speaker 3>the instructions to avoid media about the case. And then

0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:09.840
<v Speaker 3>there was one juror who was like, yeah, I read

0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:14.520
<v Speaker 3>about Joe Colombo Senior as like an organized crime figure.

0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:17.359
<v Speaker 3>I might that's gonna have an effect on how I

0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:17.840
<v Speaker 3>judged that.

0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:19.720
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, give a little bias NOWLS. So I saw

0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:21.760
<v Speaker 2>it on Carson the Monologue.

0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:26.040
<v Speaker 3>A new trial was set for February in a bit

0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:30.240
<v Speaker 3>of scheduling that only nineteen seventy could produce. Father and

0:19:30.400 --> 0:19:33.879
<v Speaker 3>son then more or less swapped courtrooms. What do you mean,

0:19:34.359 --> 0:19:38.600
<v Speaker 3>So Junior's mistrial was going on in Brooklyn. Senior was

0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:42.840
<v Speaker 3>on trial in Manhattan for perjury. He was accused of

0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:45.840
<v Speaker 3>lying to a state licensing board about who he'd spent

0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:48.760
<v Speaker 3>a nineteen sixty five labor Day weekend with at a

0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:51.639
<v Speaker 3>Catskills resort. So he said, oh, I just had this

0:19:51.760 --> 0:19:54.520
<v Speaker 3>quiet evening of a dinner in a show, and detectives

0:19:54.560 --> 0:19:56.840
<v Speaker 3>were like, no, you were in the hotel lounge with

0:19:56.920 --> 0:20:01.200
<v Speaker 3>all of these reputed gangland figures. Got convicted on two

0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:03.840
<v Speaker 3>of the five counts just before Christmas, got convicted.

0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:06.440
<v Speaker 2>Let's stop for ads. When we return, we're going to

0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:07.160
<v Speaker 2>go back to court.

0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:33.399
<v Speaker 3>Zaren Joe Colombo junior, son of a mob boss, a

0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:37.520
<v Speaker 3>son of a gun busted for conspiracy to melt down

0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:38.520
<v Speaker 3>coins for their silver.

0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:40.040
<v Speaker 2>It's it's petty stuff.

0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:44.720
<v Speaker 4>It's so really it's like Jersey City totally.

0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:47.359
<v Speaker 3>And the crazy part is that by the time the

0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:50.520
<v Speaker 3>charges were filed, what they had done was like about

0:20:50.560 --> 0:20:53.800
<v Speaker 3>to be legal. And then the other crazy part is

0:20:53.840 --> 0:20:56.639
<v Speaker 3>that they did didn't have a sense of the silver

0:20:56.760 --> 0:21:00.600
<v Speaker 3>market and so they lost money. Were like, you know what,

0:21:00.680 --> 0:21:03.040
<v Speaker 3>we're still going to make a case against you insult,

0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:08.600
<v Speaker 3>meat injury. So the coin melting retrial, when it finally

0:21:08.640 --> 0:21:12.600
<v Speaker 3>opened in February nineteen seventy one, had like a twist

0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:16.800
<v Speaker 3>that you'd find in a cliche mob movie. Yes, Salomone

0:21:17.119 --> 0:21:20.879
<v Speaker 3>took the stand and testified more or less as expected.

0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:22.240
<v Speaker 2>Remember he turned states out.

0:21:23.600 --> 0:21:26.680
<v Speaker 3>He was like, Junior joined the scheme because I had

0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:30.120
<v Speaker 3>this big financial loss. You know, Junior is a longtime

0:21:30.200 --> 0:21:32.600
<v Speaker 3>customer of the shop. He's a loyal guy, you know

0:21:32.680 --> 0:21:37.920
<v Speaker 3>the drill. But then overnight Salomone reversed course entirely. Back

0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:40.720
<v Speaker 3>in court the next day, he now claimed that the

0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:43.959
<v Speaker 3>FBI had renigged on a bundle of promises that he

0:21:44.160 --> 0:21:46.480
<v Speaker 3>you know, that were made in exchange for his original

0:21:46.480 --> 0:21:50.520
<v Speaker 3>grand jury test. And he was like, they promised me cash.

0:21:50.640 --> 0:21:54.760
<v Speaker 3>They gave me cash. They said they'd help me find work.

0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:58.000
<v Speaker 3>They were going to get me back my pistol permit

0:21:58.040 --> 0:22:01.160
<v Speaker 3>that had been confiscated. We're going to get my fifty

0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:02.880
<v Speaker 3>g's back that I was in the hole.

0:22:03.119 --> 0:22:04.800
<v Speaker 2>I don't think they can do all that I know.

0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:08.679
<v Speaker 3>And a pardon the whole thing, everything last part. And

0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:12.480
<v Speaker 3>so with those promises supposedly off the table, he recanted

0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:16.679
<v Speaker 3>his story like wholesale, and he insisted, you know what,

0:22:16.880 --> 0:22:21.000
<v Speaker 3>Junior never personally put up any money. The funds had

0:22:21.000 --> 0:22:22.040
<v Speaker 3>come from Inachi.

0:22:22.119 --> 0:22:24.000
<v Speaker 2>I only met him once, was at a birthday party

0:22:24.000 --> 0:22:24.760
<v Speaker 2>for a little kid.

0:22:25.600 --> 0:22:28.399
<v Speaker 3>According to the New York Times quote, he said that

0:22:28.440 --> 0:22:31.639
<v Speaker 3>the twenty thousand dollars for the coins came from mister Ionachi,

0:22:32.000 --> 0:22:35.520
<v Speaker 3>and that mister Colombo told him later, listen, Ianachi gave

0:22:35.560 --> 0:22:37.760
<v Speaker 3>you that money. If you owe him, give him the money.

0:22:37.800 --> 0:22:40.560
<v Speaker 3>I have nothing to do with it. Did you write

0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:41.240
<v Speaker 3>that part down?

0:22:41.520 --> 0:22:42.560
<v Speaker 4>Yeah?

0:22:42.720 --> 0:22:46.480
<v Speaker 3>But he didn't throw Ionachi under the bus. According to

0:22:46.520 --> 0:22:50.560
<v Speaker 3>the Times again quote, he also absolved mister Ianachi of

0:22:50.600 --> 0:22:54.240
<v Speaker 3>participating in the scheme, testifying that he only knew that

0:22:54.320 --> 0:22:57.320
<v Speaker 3>he was quote buying bags of silver coins for investment

0:22:57.359 --> 0:22:59.960
<v Speaker 3>in trading in a rising silver mark.

0:23:00.359 --> 0:23:02.720
<v Speaker 2>It was for uniforms with the local Catholic Boys scot

0:23:02.760 --> 0:23:03.720
<v Speaker 2>exactly so.

0:23:03.760 --> 0:23:08.359
<v Speaker 3>According to the Times quote, Spectators including the defendant's father,

0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:13.600
<v Speaker 3>relatives and friends, whispered excitedly at Salomony's turnabout. The father,

0:23:13.840 --> 0:23:17.600
<v Speaker 3>reputedly a leader of organized crime in Brooklyn, quickly referred

0:23:17.600 --> 0:23:20.800
<v Speaker 3>to a picketing demonstration he had helped to organize against

0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:23.760
<v Speaker 3>the Federal Bureau of Investigation last summer to protest his

0:23:23.840 --> 0:23:26.960
<v Speaker 3>son's indictment. We would never have went the distance we

0:23:27.080 --> 0:23:32.080
<v Speaker 3>went if my son was not framed. He said, Yes, Salomone,

0:23:32.160 --> 0:23:35.280
<v Speaker 3>he just like reiterates, look this, I just made all

0:23:35.320 --> 0:23:38.600
<v Speaker 3>this stuff up because the FBI pressured me they needed

0:23:38.640 --> 0:23:41.800
<v Speaker 3>a case, needed to keep it all afloat. And then

0:23:41.840 --> 0:23:43.560
<v Speaker 3>he turns he tells the judge, you know, I lied

0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:47.320
<v Speaker 3>to the grand jury, and the judge responds, quote, I

0:23:47.359 --> 0:23:50.200
<v Speaker 3>think you better get yourself. An attorney says it in

0:23:50.280 --> 0:23:55.160
<v Speaker 3>open court because just admitted to exactly in open court.

0:23:55.440 --> 0:23:59.159
<v Speaker 3>So because of the lying, the original prosecutor, Dennis Dillon,

0:23:59.200 --> 0:24:00.960
<v Speaker 3>he had to step down to become a witness.

0:24:01.160 --> 0:24:01.680
<v Speaker 2>Oh wow.

0:24:02.040 --> 0:24:04.640
<v Speaker 3>So he swore up and down that Salomone had been

0:24:04.720 --> 0:24:09.600
<v Speaker 3>court case. He's like, he was truthful the first time around.

0:24:10.320 --> 0:24:14.359
<v Speaker 3>And so the prosecution tried to salvage things. They introduced

0:24:14.400 --> 0:24:18.880
<v Speaker 3>a last minute witness who would supposedly testify that Salomone

0:24:18.920 --> 0:24:23.040
<v Speaker 3>had privately expressed serious fear for his safety and for

0:24:23.119 --> 0:24:24.040
<v Speaker 3>the safety of his.

0:24:24.000 --> 0:24:26.800
<v Speaker 4>Family threats from them all yeah, And they even.

0:24:26.640 --> 0:24:29.760
<v Speaker 3>Hinted that there were like incriminating tapes that this secret

0:24:29.760 --> 0:24:32.000
<v Speaker 3>witness had like stashed away as insurance.

0:24:32.080 --> 0:24:33.520
<v Speaker 2>Oh, the judge wasn't.

0:24:33.359 --> 0:24:38.199
<v Speaker 3>Having it inadmissible, never brought the witness forward. So the trial

0:24:38.560 --> 0:24:41.399
<v Speaker 3>it's hitting its final stretch and things are about to

0:24:41.440 --> 0:24:46.560
<v Speaker 3>get wild. Yeah, Zarin, close your eyes, I want you

0:24:46.600 --> 0:24:47.199
<v Speaker 3>to picture it.

0:24:47.280 --> 0:24:53.359
<v Speaker 6>Hell yeah.

0:24:53.400 --> 0:24:57.399
<v Speaker 3>It's February twenty sixth, nineteen seventy one. You're seated in

0:24:57.440 --> 0:24:59.800
<v Speaker 3>the gallery in a courtroom in the Federal Courthouse, and

0:25:00.880 --> 0:25:04.280
<v Speaker 3>it's eight thirty at night, but the place is packed.

0:25:04.800 --> 0:25:06.959
<v Speaker 3>Word has just come down that the verdict is in

0:25:07.000 --> 0:25:10.520
<v Speaker 3>at the trial at Joe Columbo Junior. You aren't attached

0:25:10.560 --> 0:25:12.600
<v Speaker 3>to this case in any way. You're just big into

0:25:12.680 --> 0:25:17.000
<v Speaker 3>mob stuff. You love the stories. You find everyone involved fascinating.

0:25:17.480 --> 0:25:19.560
<v Speaker 3>You heard about the trial, and you don't live too

0:25:19.640 --> 0:25:21.800
<v Speaker 3>far away from the courthouse. You stay in a basement

0:25:21.880 --> 0:25:24.800
<v Speaker 3>studio at the end of Pineapple Street, by the East

0:25:24.840 --> 0:25:27.040
<v Speaker 3>River and spitting distance from the Brooklyn Bridge.

0:25:27.080 --> 0:25:28.639
<v Speaker 2>It's a short walk to the courthouse.

0:25:29.280 --> 0:25:33.439
<v Speaker 3>This has been fantastic in here. You've been able to

0:25:33.440 --> 0:25:36.840
<v Speaker 3>see Joe Senior and the family sitting up front, and

0:25:36.880 --> 0:25:39.240
<v Speaker 3>a host of other members of the Columbo crime family.

0:25:39.560 --> 0:25:42.240
<v Speaker 3>You're sitting next to a woman holding a rosary. She

0:25:42.400 --> 0:25:46.640
<v Speaker 3>murmurs Hail Mary's, her eyes closed. The bailiff orders everyone

0:25:46.680 --> 0:25:49.879
<v Speaker 3>to rise. The judge glides in his robe as stern

0:25:49.960 --> 0:25:53.040
<v Speaker 3>as his facial expression. You all stand and then take

0:25:53.040 --> 0:25:56.280
<v Speaker 3>a seat again. Just as the judge is about to speak,

0:25:56.359 --> 0:25:58.080
<v Speaker 3>a man rushes up to the bench.

0:25:58.560 --> 0:25:59.920
<v Speaker 2>It's that guy, Dennis.

0:25:59.600 --> 0:26:01.280
<v Speaker 4>Dillon, original prosecutor.

0:26:01.680 --> 0:26:04.879
<v Speaker 3>He testified the other day about how Salomone lied about

0:26:04.920 --> 0:26:08.879
<v Speaker 3>lying crazy stuff. Dylan reaches the bench and slaps his

0:26:08.960 --> 0:26:12.800
<v Speaker 3>hands against the lacquered wood. He breathlessly tells the judge

0:26:12.800 --> 0:26:15.439
<v Speaker 3>that he'd just been threatened outside the courtroom. It was

0:26:15.480 --> 0:26:17.200
<v Speaker 3>one of Columbo's guys, he says.

0:26:17.440 --> 0:26:18.280
<v Speaker 2>People gasp.

0:26:19.000 --> 0:26:22.439
<v Speaker 3>Joe Senior blows the dismissing exhale through his lips, a

0:26:22.480 --> 0:26:25.600
<v Speaker 3>soft shaw. The young guy next to him just rolls

0:26:25.640 --> 0:26:28.280
<v Speaker 3>his eyes. Another looks at the ceiling and mutters mud.

0:26:29.520 --> 0:26:33.280
<v Speaker 3>The judge asks what the man said to Dylan. Dylan replies,

0:26:33.600 --> 0:26:36.200
<v Speaker 3>he asked whether I'd prefer to be dealt with.

0:26:36.240 --> 0:26:37.840
<v Speaker 2>By knife or by fist.

0:26:38.640 --> 0:26:41.480
<v Speaker 3>Joe Senior and his son Anthony quickly stand and make

0:26:41.560 --> 0:26:42.240
<v Speaker 3>toward the bench.

0:26:42.480 --> 0:26:43.520
<v Speaker 2>Your heart is pounding.

0:26:43.880 --> 0:26:46.639
<v Speaker 3>This is unlike anything you've ever seen, and has exceeded

0:26:46.640 --> 0:26:50.400
<v Speaker 3>your wildest expectations. The woman next to you reaches over

0:26:50.440 --> 0:26:53.320
<v Speaker 3>and grabs your hand, her knuckles white, the rosary still

0:26:53.320 --> 0:26:56.480
<v Speaker 3>clutched in her other hand. Bailiff's spring into action, but

0:26:56.560 --> 0:27:01.040
<v Speaker 3>not fast enough. Dylan spins around as Joe sor Anthony approach.

0:27:01.560 --> 0:27:05.240
<v Speaker 3>Senior raises his hand and lands a satisfying slap across

0:27:05.359 --> 0:27:09.600
<v Speaker 3>Dylan's face. The gallery gasps akin, men shout. A woman

0:27:09.640 --> 0:27:12.520
<v Speaker 3>in the back cries out. More people stand. The sound

0:27:12.560 --> 0:27:15.240
<v Speaker 3>of chairs scraping the floor and papers falling to the

0:27:15.280 --> 0:27:19.359
<v Speaker 3>ground adds to the chaos. Bailiff's restrained the columbos and

0:27:19.480 --> 0:27:22.600
<v Speaker 3>Dylan has whisked out a side door. The judge bangs

0:27:22.640 --> 0:27:27.199
<v Speaker 3>his gabbled. After some settling, the courtroom grows silent. The

0:27:27.280 --> 0:27:31.760
<v Speaker 3>judge says, this has been an emotional day, and I

0:27:31.840 --> 0:27:35.560
<v Speaker 3>don't have to remind anyone about threats to federal officers.

0:27:36.280 --> 0:27:39.040
<v Speaker 3>The woman next to you with the rosary shouts out.

0:27:39.000 --> 0:27:40.600
<v Speaker 2>What about vice versa?

0:27:41.720 --> 0:27:44.400
<v Speaker 3>The crowd erupts again with shouts of agreement.

0:27:44.720 --> 0:27:46.520
<v Speaker 4>The judge bangs his gavel again.

0:27:46.920 --> 0:27:49.400
<v Speaker 3>Two police officers make their way down to your row

0:27:49.440 --> 0:27:52.080
<v Speaker 3>and snatch up the woman with the rosary, hauling her off.

0:27:52.440 --> 0:27:55.160
<v Speaker 3>She looks at you and whispers, I'd say it again too,

0:27:55.560 --> 0:27:58.960
<v Speaker 3>and winks as she's dragged away. You settle in and

0:27:59.040 --> 0:28:02.440
<v Speaker 3>watch the jury file into their seats ready to announce

0:28:02.480 --> 0:28:05.800
<v Speaker 3>their verdict. This is better than going to the pictures.

0:28:05.840 --> 0:28:08.600
<v Speaker 2>You think, oh, that was awesome.

0:28:08.240 --> 0:28:11.080
<v Speaker 4>Saren this all happened, no doubt.

0:28:11.840 --> 0:28:16.320
<v Speaker 3>The late okay, so yeah that she did yielded up

0:28:17.320 --> 0:28:22.040
<v Speaker 3>order was eventually restored. Jury delivered its verdict, Joe Junior

0:28:22.200 --> 0:28:27.320
<v Speaker 3>and Ianachi were acquitted, and Leonard, the one guy who'd

0:28:27.320 --> 0:28:32.199
<v Speaker 3>actually done the melting, he got convicted. Salomone flip flopping

0:28:32.280 --> 0:28:34.800
<v Speaker 3>his way through two trials. He got hit with a

0:28:34.800 --> 0:28:38.200
<v Speaker 3>perjury charge on top of the conspiracy plea that he'd

0:28:38.240 --> 0:28:42.760
<v Speaker 3>already entered guilty to, so he got nine months. Junior's

0:28:42.800 --> 0:28:46.720
<v Speaker 3>walking free, but he's not going straight. In nineteen eighty five,

0:28:46.760 --> 0:28:50.760
<v Speaker 3>he got indicted alongside Anthony and his brother and like

0:28:50.840 --> 0:28:53.680
<v Speaker 3>a dozen others as part of what prosecutors were calling

0:28:53.720 --> 0:28:58.440
<v Speaker 3>this new Columbo family crew, and June eighty six, all

0:28:58.520 --> 0:29:03.040
<v Speaker 3>three brothers pleaded guilty to racketeering. Anthony, who was like

0:29:03.160 --> 0:29:06.640
<v Speaker 3>head of the crew, he got a fourteen year term

0:29:07.280 --> 0:29:10.000
<v Speaker 3>plus two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in fines and

0:29:10.040 --> 0:29:13.440
<v Speaker 3>two hundred fifty thousand dollars restitution, and the others took

0:29:13.520 --> 0:29:17.120
<v Speaker 3>terms arranging from like five to fourteen years fourteen years.

0:29:17.400 --> 0:29:23.040
<v Speaker 3>At Anthony's October eighty sixth sentencing, UPI noted that Joe Junior,

0:29:23.080 --> 0:29:25.640
<v Speaker 3>who was thirty nine and living in Windsor, New York,

0:29:26.800 --> 0:29:29.720
<v Speaker 3>he got five years, so we know we have it there.

0:29:30.600 --> 0:29:36.680
<v Speaker 3>A seventy two count indictment had charged the crew with murder, robbery, extortion, gambling,

0:29:36.760 --> 0:29:41.960
<v Speaker 3>drug trafficking, and the guilty police covered only racketeering, conspiracy

0:29:42.000 --> 0:29:43.760
<v Speaker 3>and like certain specified acts.

0:29:43.800 --> 0:29:49.040
<v Speaker 2>Everything else was dismissed, even murder. Yep, brush that one off.

0:29:49.800 --> 0:29:54.280
<v Speaker 3>Anthony's lawyer, Barry Slotnik, said publicly that his client denied

0:29:54.320 --> 0:29:54.760
<v Speaker 3>being a.

0:29:54.640 --> 0:29:57.120
<v Speaker 2>Member of organized crime. Don't we all.

0:29:56.960 --> 0:30:02.200
<v Speaker 3>Denied any involvement in drug trafficking or murder, And he

0:30:02.280 --> 0:30:04.640
<v Speaker 3>also said the brothers pleaded guilty because they wanted to

0:30:04.680 --> 0:30:08.080
<v Speaker 3>spare their family along track doing it for my ma.

0:30:08.800 --> 0:30:11.120
<v Speaker 3>Joe Junior he got out around nineteen ninety.

0:30:11.320 --> 0:30:12.760
<v Speaker 2>You're breaking your mother's time.

0:30:14.840 --> 0:30:17.280
<v Speaker 3>By available accounts, it looks like he stayed out of.

0:30:17.320 --> 0:30:19.560
<v Speaker 2>Legal trouble and out of the press from that point on.

0:30:19.760 --> 0:30:22.920
<v Speaker 2>Oka good for him. Yeah, the press park.

0:30:22.880 --> 0:30:26.920
<v Speaker 3>Well, notably when federal prosecutors brought the well publicized two

0:30:26.960 --> 0:30:32.040
<v Speaker 3>thousand and one Columbo Brothers crew indictment involving the double

0:30:32.080 --> 0:30:35.760
<v Speaker 3>click kickback scheme. That's a whole other thing to get into. Yeah,

0:30:35.920 --> 0:30:38.920
<v Speaker 3>it was just Anthony and Christopher. Who was Christopher.

0:30:39.160 --> 0:30:41.120
<v Speaker 2>So Joe Junior's like, look, I'm trying to keep my mind.

0:30:41.200 --> 0:30:44.120
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, he was out of it and so locked my coins.

0:30:44.160 --> 0:30:46.600
<v Speaker 3>I'm not doing Joe Junior, not part of it.

0:30:46.960 --> 0:30:48.640
<v Speaker 2>You're looking out for Italian civil rights.

0:30:48.760 --> 0:30:53.000
<v Speaker 3>Christopher was the brother who later became a minor media

0:30:53.040 --> 0:30:56.680
<v Speaker 3>figure on his own. There was a two thousand and

0:30:56.720 --> 0:31:03.640
<v Speaker 3>five HBO show called House Rest starring Chris Colombo. Really yeah,

0:31:03.680 --> 0:31:06.160
<v Speaker 3>and it was like a reality show with him on House.

0:31:06.040 --> 0:31:08.680
<v Speaker 2>Arrest, House to Rest. Yeah, Joe Junior wanted nothing to

0:31:08.720 --> 0:31:09.520
<v Speaker 2>do with that kind of stuff.

0:31:10.280 --> 0:31:15.160
<v Speaker 3>Joe Junior passed away October twenty ninth, twenty fourteen, in Newburgh,

0:31:15.160 --> 0:31:18.240
<v Speaker 3>New York, at the age of sixty seven. It wasn't

0:31:18.240 --> 0:31:23.640
<v Speaker 3>a bullet that got him. He died from neurological lime disease,

0:31:24.360 --> 0:31:28.480
<v Speaker 3>neurological lime disease. Yeah, I know that you are terrified

0:31:28.480 --> 0:31:29.320
<v Speaker 3>of lime disease.

0:31:29.800 --> 0:31:31.480
<v Speaker 2>Yes, I'm terrified of a couple of things that are

0:31:31.520 --> 0:31:34.800
<v Speaker 2>just absolutely bizarre. Ticks and lime disease is one. The

0:31:35.200 --> 0:31:38.040
<v Speaker 2>bat and dog bites for rabies is another. But I

0:31:38.080 --> 0:31:40.520
<v Speaker 2>do not want the hydrophobia that just scares the hell

0:31:40.520 --> 0:31:42.680
<v Speaker 2>out of me, and the lot of the conditions. I've

0:31:42.720 --> 0:31:44.360
<v Speaker 2>known a couple people had lime disease and had it

0:31:44.400 --> 0:31:47.600
<v Speaker 2>real bad, yeah, and I was like, that is horrendous.

0:31:47.680 --> 0:31:49.600
<v Speaker 2>That's like up there. It's not quite like my fear

0:31:49.640 --> 0:31:53.080
<v Speaker 2>of like a like a pyroclastic flow from like Pompeii,

0:31:53.120 --> 0:31:55.440
<v Speaker 2>which is like one of my absolutely insane fears. I

0:31:55.440 --> 0:31:59.320
<v Speaker 2>don't have to worry about most volcanoes like boiling my brains,

0:31:58.840 --> 0:32:02.080
<v Speaker 2>butme disease is definitely up there. So that's why I

0:32:02.080 --> 0:32:05.360
<v Speaker 2>pretty much will always be wearing long sleeves and pants

0:32:05.440 --> 0:32:07.400
<v Speaker 2>no matter how it can be one hundred and ten degrees.

0:32:07.600 --> 0:32:09.760
<v Speaker 2>You will catch me in long sleeves and pants if

0:32:09.800 --> 0:32:13.200
<v Speaker 2>I'm anywhere near grass. When I go mountain biking, people

0:32:13.240 --> 0:32:15.400
<v Speaker 2>will mock me for the fact that I'm always out

0:32:15.400 --> 0:32:17.400
<v Speaker 2>there in long sleep but I'm like, look, I was

0:32:17.440 --> 0:32:19.520
<v Speaker 2>a housepain. I dressed like this. I'm used to being

0:32:19.560 --> 0:32:22.400
<v Speaker 2>one hundred degrees fully covered. And also then I don't

0:32:22.400 --> 0:32:23.760
<v Speaker 2>have to worry about my other thing, which is I'm

0:32:23.760 --> 0:32:24.520
<v Speaker 2>allergic to bees.

0:32:24.720 --> 0:32:26.640
<v Speaker 3>So well, yeah that's a big thing too. But you know,

0:32:26.680 --> 0:32:30.040
<v Speaker 3>there's a new thing with a strain of limes disease

0:32:30.040 --> 0:32:31.360
<v Speaker 3>where you get a meat allergy.

0:32:31.560 --> 0:32:34.360
<v Speaker 2>Oh the red meat. It's red meat. Yeah, you become

0:32:34.640 --> 0:32:36.640
<v Speaker 2>and a lot of people there's even now a conspiracy

0:32:36.680 --> 0:32:39.840
<v Speaker 2>theory that there are tick boxes being released so that

0:32:39.880 --> 0:32:42.480
<v Speaker 2>people become allergic to red meat and we can bring

0:32:42.560 --> 0:32:46.840
<v Speaker 2>down the red meat consumption. I just se TikTok or whatever. Yeah,

0:32:48.040 --> 0:32:52.920
<v Speaker 2>they got it's conspiracy theory for the red mething. I know.

0:32:53.120 --> 0:32:54.120
<v Speaker 2>I don't thought.

0:32:53.920 --> 0:32:56.280
<v Speaker 3>That was interesting that there was lime disease that took

0:32:56.360 --> 0:32:59.480
<v Speaker 3>them out in a family. Yeah, known for the mob,

0:33:00.240 --> 0:33:04.040
<v Speaker 3>a lot of violent catching, metal poisoning. Let's pause for

0:33:04.080 --> 0:33:06.840
<v Speaker 3>some ads. Now the crime section is pretty much over,

0:33:07.840 --> 0:33:10.800
<v Speaker 3>but I want to circle back to something that caught

0:33:10.800 --> 0:33:11.360
<v Speaker 3>my interest.

0:33:11.560 --> 0:33:33.800
<v Speaker 6>Okay, cool, all right, zareny.

0:33:34.280 --> 0:33:37.160
<v Speaker 3>So you know, if you're really all about crime and

0:33:37.240 --> 0:33:40.320
<v Speaker 3>you don't like ridiculousness, like you see yourself out.

0:33:40.480 --> 0:33:44.760
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so you came ridiculous, there's not really. I don't know.

0:33:44.800 --> 0:33:48.120
<v Speaker 3>Maybe there's a little bit anyway, So I told you

0:33:48.160 --> 0:33:50.480
<v Speaker 3>about the Italian American Civil Rights League.

0:33:50.320 --> 0:33:52.280
<v Speaker 2>Yes, which I'm still laughing at on the inside. Right.

0:33:52.320 --> 0:33:56.920
<v Speaker 3>So Joe Columbo, as I said, MLK, who's our Malcolm X.

0:33:58.480 --> 0:34:02.840
<v Speaker 3>He started it to fight against Joe Junior's legal troubles

0:34:02.920 --> 0:34:07.840
<v Speaker 3>with Coen Melting like the whole it's anyway ridiculous, okay,

0:34:07.880 --> 0:34:10.319
<v Speaker 3>But then the movement grew and it got tied in

0:34:10.400 --> 0:34:13.400
<v Speaker 3>with one of the most well known pieces of entertainment

0:34:13.560 --> 0:34:18.799
<v Speaker 3>to feature the Mafia ever. Hu that's right, Zarin the Godfather.

0:34:19.160 --> 0:34:23.279
<v Speaker 3>Oh snap, yeah, oh snap. So most know it is

0:34:23.320 --> 0:34:27.120
<v Speaker 3>a movie, but started as a book work of crime fiction.

0:34:27.200 --> 0:34:31.239
<v Speaker 3>It was written by Italian American novelist Mario Puzzo. It

0:34:31.440 --> 0:34:37.439
<v Speaker 3>follows an invented mafia dynasty or is the brit Say dynasty? Yeah?

0:34:38.120 --> 0:34:39.840
<v Speaker 2>Same language, yeah, same language?

0:34:39.880 --> 0:34:43.120
<v Speaker 3>Who knew? Operating out of New York City and Long Island,

0:34:43.200 --> 0:34:48.680
<v Speaker 3>under the leadership of the patriarch Vito Corleone, the godfather

0:34:49.120 --> 0:34:51.640
<v Speaker 3>of the title Olive Oil Merchant, all of the King

0:34:51.680 --> 0:34:54.360
<v Speaker 3>of the Olive Oil Okay, So the main narrative runs

0:34:54.360 --> 0:34:57.880
<v Speaker 3>through nineteen forty five to nineteen fifty five, and there

0:34:57.880 --> 0:35:01.239
<v Speaker 3>are all these extended flashbacks Tree seeing Vito's life from

0:35:01.280 --> 0:35:04.600
<v Speaker 3>his boyhood onward. So it was the first entry in

0:35:04.680 --> 0:35:08.359
<v Speaker 3>what eventually grew into like a multi book series, and

0:35:08.400 --> 0:35:15.560
<v Speaker 3>it was often credited with bringing Italian terms such as consiglieri, kappa, regime, cosinostra,

0:35:16.120 --> 0:35:19.960
<v Speaker 3>omertas I mentioned earlier into common usage among English.

0:35:20.239 --> 0:35:22.560
<v Speaker 2>Also hit the mattresses, like hit the mattresses.

0:35:22.760 --> 0:35:25.879
<v Speaker 3>But people didn't know all these Italian words until then.

0:35:26.440 --> 0:35:28.080
<v Speaker 2>People in the US totally.

0:35:28.440 --> 0:35:31.759
<v Speaker 3>Mario Puzzo, he wrote The Godfather while deep in debt,

0:35:32.440 --> 0:35:36.240
<v Speaker 3>so in debt. Paramount bought the film rights in nineteen

0:35:36.320 --> 0:35:38.360
<v Speaker 3>sixty seven for like not a lot of money. It

0:35:38.440 --> 0:35:40.959
<v Speaker 3>was like twelve thousand dollars up front.

0:35:41.040 --> 0:35:42.840
<v Speaker 2>It just like off the back of the popularity of

0:35:42.840 --> 0:35:46.040
<v Speaker 2>like the Valacchi Joe Valacci like criminal, like you know,

0:35:46.080 --> 0:35:48.759
<v Speaker 2>he goes before the Senate and testifies and really not

0:35:48.880 --> 0:35:50.839
<v Speaker 2>really so I thought they were looking for a new crime.

0:35:51.040 --> 0:35:52.839
<v Speaker 3>Yeah no, no, no, So they paid this out, just

0:35:52.880 --> 0:35:55.000
<v Speaker 3>a little bit of money. They pay him out before

0:35:55.040 --> 0:35:56.600
<v Speaker 3>the book came out, before it was published.

0:35:56.680 --> 0:35:58.800
<v Speaker 2>Huh they got the galleys. Yeah, it came out.

0:35:58.680 --> 0:36:00.839
<v Speaker 3>In nineteen sixty nine and it was on the best

0:36:00.880 --> 0:36:05.640
<v Speaker 3>seller list for months, sold in the millions. Suddenly the

0:36:05.680 --> 0:36:08.920
<v Speaker 3>studio has this property they hadn't planned for because like

0:36:08.960 --> 0:36:12.760
<v Speaker 3>their enthusiasm was kind of limited their previous mob picture,

0:36:12.840 --> 0:36:16.080
<v Speaker 3>The Brotherhood in nineteen sixty eight, Yes, with Kirk Douglas,

0:36:16.120 --> 0:36:19.040
<v Speaker 3>it was a flop, total flop. So I think that

0:36:19.120 --> 0:36:23.360
<v Speaker 3>they bought The Godfather anticipating that The Brotherhood would do

0:36:23.400 --> 0:36:27.080
<v Speaker 3>really well and they have their own. Yeah. The internal

0:36:27.160 --> 0:36:30.360
<v Speaker 3>read in the industry was like, gangster films are dead.

0:36:30.520 --> 0:36:33.880
<v Speaker 2>Were past that point. No one, Watson, it's not the syndicid,

0:36:33.920 --> 0:36:34.799
<v Speaker 2>it's not cool, right.

0:36:35.239 --> 0:36:39.560
<v Speaker 3>Robert Evans had a production and Charles Bludorn this like

0:36:40.160 --> 0:36:45.640
<v Speaker 3>volatile chairman of Paramount's parent company, Gulf Western. They wanted, look,

0:36:45.719 --> 0:36:48.640
<v Speaker 3>make it cheap, make it fast, like we don't want anything.

0:36:48.719 --> 0:36:50.759
<v Speaker 2>And Bob Evans is like a taste maker. So you

0:36:50.800 --> 0:36:53.120
<v Speaker 2>have like basically a bean counter and a tastemaker. How

0:36:53.160 --> 0:36:55.759
<v Speaker 2>do you make both of them happy? Exactly? And then

0:36:56.120 --> 0:36:57.520
<v Speaker 2>enter Albert Ruddy.

0:36:58.480 --> 0:37:01.600
<v Speaker 3>He's the producer who's main credit at the time was

0:37:01.640 --> 0:37:03.680
<v Speaker 3>the sitcom Hogan's Heroes.

0:37:03.400 --> 0:37:05.600
<v Speaker 2>Get Out of Town. I did not know that was

0:37:05.600 --> 0:37:06.320
<v Speaker 2>his main cab.

0:37:06.719 --> 0:37:09.480
<v Speaker 3>And he got the job partly because he pitched it

0:37:09.520 --> 0:37:15.520
<v Speaker 3>as like a really inexpensive contemporary picture. And Francis Ford

0:37:15.520 --> 0:37:19.480
<v Speaker 3>Coppola was hired rather reluctantly, very young. But yeah, they

0:37:19.480 --> 0:37:21.799
<v Speaker 3>weren't really sure, and they nearly fired him a bunch

0:37:21.800 --> 0:37:24.560
<v Speaker 3>of times, like it just was not so Evans and

0:37:24.600 --> 0:37:27.480
<v Speaker 3>Copola They're like, we have to shoot it in New York. Oh, yeah,

0:37:27.560 --> 0:37:29.200
<v Speaker 3>like it has to be so we have the tastemaker

0:37:29.200 --> 0:37:33.279
<v Speaker 3>and the director seeing the vision. And that decision put

0:37:33.360 --> 0:37:37.120
<v Speaker 3>the production directly into the hands of the city's unions.

0:37:37.200 --> 0:37:43.120
<v Speaker 2>Oh its location permits yes, and you saly.

0:37:42.560 --> 0:37:46.640
<v Speaker 3>Less officially the people who controlled both of those huh so.

0:37:46.719 --> 0:37:50.479
<v Speaker 3>By early nineteen seventy one, the Italian American Civil Rights

0:37:50.560 --> 0:37:55.560
<v Speaker 3>League was at its peak. They had a benefit concert

0:37:55.600 --> 0:37:58.680
<v Speaker 3>at Madison Square Garden that featured Frank Sinatra.

0:37:58.680 --> 0:38:01.760
<v Speaker 2>The chairman of the board. Chair out for the Italian.

0:38:02.520 --> 0:38:06.320
<v Speaker 3>Unity Day rally at Columbus Circle June twenty ninth, nineteen

0:38:06.400 --> 0:38:08.239
<v Speaker 3>seventy They were like fifty thousand people there.

0:38:08.320 --> 0:38:11.680
<v Speaker 2>The Christopher Columbus Statue with the fountain and yes, oh my.

0:38:11.600 --> 0:38:16.480
<v Speaker 3>God, exactly so. Because of pressure from the League. At

0:38:16.480 --> 0:38:20.360
<v Speaker 3>this point, Attorney General John Mitchell told the Justice Department

0:38:20.400 --> 0:38:24.840
<v Speaker 3>to stop using the words mafia and cosinostra in press releases.

0:38:24.920 --> 0:38:26.279
<v Speaker 2>Mixon's Attorney general, Yeah.

0:38:26.480 --> 0:38:32.080
<v Speaker 3>New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller issued similar guidance to state agencies, like, look,

0:38:32.120 --> 0:38:37.360
<v Speaker 3>you can't use these words mafia or cosinostra. The League

0:38:37.800 --> 0:38:40.520
<v Speaker 3>showed that it could, like put bodies on the sidewalk

0:38:40.520 --> 0:38:42.720
<v Speaker 3>at a short notice, and that's not in a murder sense,

0:38:43.000 --> 0:38:43.960
<v Speaker 3>but in a picket line.

0:38:44.000 --> 0:38:47.279
<v Speaker 2>So I got youa yeah, So the God premiere with

0:38:47.280 --> 0:38:51.239
<v Speaker 2>the godfother obvious target totally so. The league's position, even

0:38:51.239 --> 0:38:54.200
<v Speaker 2>though the filmmaker is Italian Coppola, doesn't matter, we don't trust,

0:38:54.200 --> 0:38:54.920
<v Speaker 2>it doesn't matter.

0:38:55.120 --> 0:38:59.120
<v Speaker 3>And the author of totally So, the League's position was

0:38:59.120 --> 0:39:03.359
<v Speaker 3>that there's this like, lavishly produced, widely distributed movie is

0:39:03.400 --> 0:39:08.040
<v Speaker 3>going to cement the association between Italian ancestry and organized

0:39:08.080 --> 0:39:10.680
<v Speaker 3>crime in a way that like no news.

0:39:10.440 --> 0:39:13.200
<v Speaker 2>Story could even do. And little do they know? Do

0:39:13.239 --> 0:39:13.480
<v Speaker 2>they know?

0:39:13.800 --> 0:39:14.000
<v Speaker 4>So?

0:39:14.040 --> 0:39:18.279
<v Speaker 3>Some of the pressure was ideological, some of it, I

0:39:18.320 --> 0:39:22.720
<v Speaker 3>would say most of it was the league's leadership seeing

0:39:22.880 --> 0:39:26.040
<v Speaker 3>a large corporation with a lot to lose and an

0:39:26.160 --> 0:39:30.560
<v Speaker 3>urgent shooting schedule, a shakedown, shakedown, you're back into crime.

0:39:30.680 --> 0:39:31.040
<v Speaker 4>Boom.

0:39:31.040 --> 0:39:32.319
<v Speaker 2>You found it, thank god.

0:39:32.600 --> 0:39:36.840
<v Speaker 3>So the League they're saying, look, we've got tens of

0:39:36.880 --> 0:39:41.640
<v Speaker 3>thousands of members. They start organizing letter writing campaigns. New

0:39:41.719 --> 0:39:46.000
<v Speaker 3>York state legislators of Italian descent they raised their objections.

0:39:46.040 --> 0:39:51.840
<v Speaker 3>There's picket lines. Location shooting in New York dependent on

0:39:51.920 --> 0:39:55.600
<v Speaker 3>teamsters and other unions and.

0:39:55.560 --> 0:39:56.560
<v Speaker 2>So the electricians.

0:39:57.960 --> 0:40:02.120
<v Speaker 3>So the production starts encountering trouble, and so the permits

0:40:02.120 --> 0:40:06.399
<v Speaker 3>get stalled. Locations are falling through. The cruise are like

0:40:06.440 --> 0:40:10.080
<v Speaker 3>there's problems with them, there's no shows. Robert Evans Bob

0:40:10.120 --> 0:40:13.960
<v Speaker 3>Evans described receiving threatening phone calls at his hotel.

0:40:14.239 --> 0:40:16.080
<v Speaker 2>Was about to say, okay, do you know they're getting

0:40:16.080 --> 0:40:16.919
<v Speaker 2>anonymous phone calls.

0:40:17.040 --> 0:40:21.160
<v Speaker 3>Ruddy's car was reportedly shot at well parked outside of

0:40:21.200 --> 0:40:23.120
<v Speaker 3>his office, like all the windows were shot out.

0:40:23.160 --> 0:40:25.720
<v Speaker 2>Oh damn. Sure would be a shame of something that happened.

0:40:27.120 --> 0:40:31.000
<v Speaker 3>Gulf Western Manhattan offices. They got bomb threats. Oh yeah,

0:40:31.040 --> 0:40:36.600
<v Speaker 3>they I mean it was yeah. Accounts vary in the details,

0:40:36.640 --> 0:40:40.200
<v Speaker 3>and the participants obviously had reasons to like embellish their

0:40:40.239 --> 0:40:44.720
<v Speaker 3>own stories, but the production genuinely believed it was in trouble.

0:40:45.719 --> 0:40:50.680
<v Speaker 3>So contact came through Anthony Colombo, Joe Colombo's son, Joe

0:40:50.719 --> 0:40:54.360
<v Speaker 3>Junior's bretta. So he reached out and arranged a meeting.

0:40:54.400 --> 0:40:58.080
<v Speaker 3>How to sit down, Ruddy shows up in like a

0:40:58.120 --> 0:41:01.960
<v Speaker 3>beat up Chevy instead of studio car, because he was like,

0:41:02.000 --> 0:41:03.920
<v Speaker 3>that's going to send the right signal. I don't know

0:41:03.960 --> 0:41:04.440
<v Speaker 3>what that is.

0:41:04.480 --> 0:41:06.920
<v Speaker 4>I don't know, but he thought it was the right signal.

0:41:07.320 --> 0:41:08.640
<v Speaker 2>So he meets with Colombo.

0:41:08.680 --> 0:41:10.719
<v Speaker 3>I mean, these guys, what do you think that these

0:41:10.760 --> 0:41:13.160
<v Speaker 3>guys are driving the mobsters are driving around.

0:41:13.000 --> 0:41:15.160
<v Speaker 2>And beat up because trying to show it on blue collar.

0:41:15.360 --> 0:41:15.879
<v Speaker 2>I don't know.

0:41:16.400 --> 0:41:22.200
<v Speaker 3>So he meets with Colombo and league representatives and eventually

0:41:22.760 --> 0:41:27.440
<v Speaker 3>hands over the shooting script for them to review. Oh so,

0:41:27.680 --> 0:41:32.120
<v Speaker 3>what Anthony and Joe Senior wanted turned out to be

0:41:32.400 --> 0:41:37.080
<v Speaker 3>surprisingly narrow. So they didn't want the film canceled, they

0:41:37.120 --> 0:41:40.440
<v Speaker 3>didn't want it rewritten. They just wanted the words mafia

0:41:40.560 --> 0:41:44.240
<v Speaker 3>and cosinostra to be taken out of it. And Ruddy

0:41:44.400 --> 0:41:47.799
<v Speaker 3>checked and it's like those terms only came up once

0:41:47.920 --> 0:41:50.000
<v Speaker 3>or twice in the entire screenplay.

0:41:49.520 --> 0:41:51.520
<v Speaker 2>As I say, only like with either reporters or like

0:41:51.560 --> 0:41:52.680
<v Speaker 2>senate hearings. Yeah.

0:41:52.719 --> 0:41:56.760
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, And Puzzo's book had never really leaned on those words.

0:41:56.800 --> 0:41:59.360
<v Speaker 2>They were just you know, incidental that down and like

0:41:59.400 --> 0:42:01.880
<v Speaker 2>his underball were like, you know, as members of the mafia,

0:42:01.960 --> 0:42:06.719
<v Speaker 2>we got to always remember our thing. You remember what

0:42:06.760 --> 0:42:07.840
<v Speaker 2>that means everybody.

0:42:08.719 --> 0:42:13.320
<v Speaker 3>So, I mean the story works through family and business

0:42:13.440 --> 0:42:14.560
<v Speaker 3>and euphemisms.

0:42:15.000 --> 0:42:16.960
<v Speaker 4>So Ruddy's like, yeah, that's totally fine.

0:42:17.000 --> 0:42:19.360
<v Speaker 2>We'll take all that out. It's going to cost them nothing.

0:42:21.640 --> 0:42:22.480
<v Speaker 2>In exchange.

0:42:22.800 --> 0:42:27.600
<v Speaker 3>The League withdrew its objections so miraculously the union and

0:42:27.640 --> 0:42:30.320
<v Speaker 3>the location problems they suddenly evaporated.

0:42:30.719 --> 0:42:32.880
<v Speaker 4>Who knew, I mean, those things weren't.

0:42:32.680 --> 0:42:33.960
<v Speaker 2>Related, surprise. Yeah.

0:42:34.160 --> 0:42:38.040
<v Speaker 3>Ruddy also agreed that proceeds from the New York premiere

0:42:38.200 --> 0:42:41.000
<v Speaker 3>of the movie would go to the league's hospital fund,

0:42:41.680 --> 0:42:42.600
<v Speaker 3>which I don't know what that was.

0:42:42.760 --> 0:42:45.160
<v Speaker 2>I'm surprised Sinatra didn't get in there, being like, this

0:42:45.320 --> 0:42:47.359
<v Speaker 2>character is clearly based on me. I want to make

0:42:47.400 --> 0:42:48.120
<v Speaker 2>sure well.

0:42:49.120 --> 0:42:52.719
<v Speaker 3>So League members had to be hired as extras. That

0:42:52.840 --> 0:42:57.560
<v Speaker 3>was another provision. March nineteenth, nineteen seventy one, Ruddy appeared

0:42:57.640 --> 0:43:01.480
<v Speaker 3>at a press conference at the Park Share Hotel, standing

0:43:01.520 --> 0:43:05.160
<v Speaker 3>next to Anthony Colombo and League officials to announce the agreement.

0:43:06.120 --> 0:43:07.759
<v Speaker 2>This did not go well.

0:43:08.160 --> 0:43:10.279
<v Speaker 4>Really, yeah, this story the press.

0:43:10.400 --> 0:43:12.080
<v Speaker 3>The story ran on the front page of the New

0:43:12.160 --> 0:43:15.320
<v Speaker 3>York Times. And so here we have a Hollywood studio

0:43:15.920 --> 0:43:19.560
<v Speaker 3>publicly announcing that it had reached terms with an organization

0:43:20.080 --> 0:43:25.440
<v Speaker 3>headed by a crime BOSSU was alablactic.

0:43:26.360 --> 0:43:29.799
<v Speaker 4>Oh god, the optics for a publicly.

0:43:29.320 --> 0:43:35.080
<v Speaker 3>Traded conglomerate, golf and Western stock and reputation are all

0:43:35.120 --> 0:43:40.800
<v Speaker 3>he's concerned about, not Ruddy's location permits. Ruddy gets fired,

0:43:41.400 --> 0:43:45.000
<v Speaker 3>he gets canned. So the firing lasted somewhere between a

0:43:45.120 --> 0:43:47.560
<v Speaker 3>day and a few days, depending on who you listened to.

0:43:47.600 --> 0:43:48.680
<v Speaker 2>But then he got reinstated.

0:43:50.120 --> 0:43:53.040
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, so the practical argument was that he was the

0:43:53.080 --> 0:43:55.520
<v Speaker 3>only person that the League was going to deal with,

0:43:56.120 --> 0:44:00.279
<v Speaker 3>so replacing him meant reopening a settled problem. Than we

0:44:00.320 --> 0:44:04.880
<v Speaker 3>have the political blowback, right. Frank Sinatra, among others, publicly

0:44:04.920 --> 0:44:09.280
<v Speaker 3>criticized the arrangement. So there were some Italian American figures

0:44:09.640 --> 0:44:11.960
<v Speaker 3>pointed out the obvious, As I said before, like a

0:44:12.040 --> 0:44:16.160
<v Speaker 3>real mafia boss negotiating the depiction of a fictional mafia.

0:44:16.239 --> 0:44:19.880
<v Speaker 3>Mafia boss and yeah, it kind of undercuts that central

0:44:19.920 --> 0:44:23.360
<v Speaker 3>claim that no organization exists, like there's no mafia.

0:44:23.440 --> 0:44:24.640
<v Speaker 2>But hold on a second.

0:44:25.560 --> 0:44:29.759
<v Speaker 4>Talking about being in the exactly, So the Colombo.

0:44:29.360 --> 0:44:32.680
<v Speaker 3>Vibe was baked into the movie at this point. So

0:44:32.880 --> 0:44:36.080
<v Speaker 3>Lenny Montana, he was a former professional wrestler. He was

0:44:36.120 --> 0:44:39.600
<v Speaker 3>working as a bodyguard and an enforcer associated with the

0:44:39.640 --> 0:44:42.799
<v Speaker 3>Columbo family and he was hanging around the film set

0:44:42.880 --> 0:44:47.800
<v Speaker 3>as part of the league's involvement. Copola spots him this enormous,

0:44:47.880 --> 0:44:50.359
<v Speaker 3>like heavy featured man is going to give him a part.

0:44:51.000 --> 0:44:51.600
<v Speaker 2>You know who he is.

0:44:52.040 --> 0:44:57.720
<v Speaker 7>You know he is Luca Brose. This guy, he's incredible.

0:44:57.760 --> 0:45:00.960
<v Speaker 7>You look at like, oh my god, that is a

0:45:01.000 --> 0:45:04.200
<v Speaker 7>mafia enforcer. Was an enforcer of the mafia.

0:45:04.320 --> 0:45:09.439
<v Speaker 3>In the scene where Brazi rehearses his congratulations to Don

0:45:09.520 --> 0:45:15.160
<v Speaker 3>Corleone at the wedding, yeah, Montana was reportedly so nervous

0:45:15.200 --> 0:45:18.640
<v Speaker 3>acting opposite of Marlon Brando that he stumbled over his lines,

0:45:18.920 --> 0:45:22.440
<v Speaker 3>and Coppola liked the effect enough to keep it. And

0:45:22.480 --> 0:45:25.680
<v Speaker 3>then right in the preceding shot of him anxiously practicing

0:45:25.680 --> 0:45:27.440
<v Speaker 3>the speech to himself, brilliant.

0:45:27.239 --> 0:45:27.720
<v Speaker 2>So good.

0:45:29.960 --> 0:45:33.400
<v Speaker 3>Yes, then there are the wedding extras. A number of

0:45:33.520 --> 0:45:35.920
<v Speaker 3>League members and associates ended up on screen.

0:45:36.040 --> 0:45:36.760
<v Speaker 2>Oh, I bet.

0:45:37.000 --> 0:45:41.960
<v Speaker 3>Gianni Russo who played Carlo Ritzi. He had genuine connections.

0:45:41.360 --> 0:45:43.120
<v Speaker 2>In that world. Yeah, the son in law.

0:45:43.320 --> 0:45:44.840
<v Speaker 4>He lobbied for that part.

0:45:45.280 --> 0:45:49.240
<v Speaker 3>Al Martino cast as the singer Johnny Fontage.

0:45:49.280 --> 0:45:50.839
<v Speaker 2>It was character. Yeah.

0:45:50.880 --> 0:45:54.040
<v Speaker 3>He reportedly secured and then held onto his role, partly

0:45:54.080 --> 0:45:58.279
<v Speaker 3>through pressure applied by connected friends. After the production tried

0:45:58.320 --> 0:46:01.040
<v Speaker 3>to replace him with Vic Damone. Oh, They're like, oh,

0:46:01.080 --> 0:46:02.880
<v Speaker 3>put victim one in. No, and then they, you know,

0:46:03.719 --> 0:46:07.560
<v Speaker 3>shop on their doorstep. Predating the League business, but part

0:46:07.600 --> 0:46:10.800
<v Speaker 3>of the same climate. Frank Sinatra he thought that Johnny

0:46:10.800 --> 0:46:12.759
<v Speaker 3>Fontaine was a caricature of him.

0:46:12.960 --> 0:46:13.520
<v Speaker 2>It was.

0:46:13.760 --> 0:46:18.840
<v Speaker 3>It was when Puzso was introduced to him at Chasin's

0:46:18.880 --> 0:46:23.839
<v Speaker 3>in Los Angeles. Sinatra reportedly just like tore into him,

0:46:24.680 --> 0:46:27.200
<v Speaker 3>rated him at length and at volume. He called him

0:46:27.200 --> 0:46:31.279
<v Speaker 3>a pimp. He called him all James story, all in

0:46:31.320 --> 0:46:33.759
<v Speaker 3>front of the entire restaurant. Frank didn't care about that.

0:46:33.840 --> 0:46:36.319
<v Speaker 2>He'd say whatever we talked about that.

0:46:36.360 --> 0:46:38.960
<v Speaker 3>Huzzo wrote about the encounter afterwards, but was like kind

0:46:39.000 --> 0:46:40.640
<v Speaker 3>of amused by it. I mean it is one of

0:46:40.640 --> 0:46:48.359
<v Speaker 3>those things. Yes, exactly, By several accounts, Colombo, having read

0:46:48.400 --> 0:46:50.320
<v Speaker 3>the script, was not really bothered by it.

0:46:50.880 --> 0:46:50.960
<v Speaker 5>Uh.

0:46:51.120 --> 0:46:54.520
<v Speaker 3>The objection was to the vocabulary general principle rather than

0:46:54.520 --> 0:46:58.319
<v Speaker 3>the content. Ruddy in the Columbos maintained something like a

0:46:58.360 --> 0:47:03.520
<v Speaker 3>cordial relationship. After interesting, the whole arrangement effectively ended. On

0:47:03.920 --> 0:47:07.040
<v Speaker 3>June twenty eighth, nineteen seventy one, the League was holding

0:47:07.040 --> 0:47:10.160
<v Speaker 3>its second Unity Day rally in Columbus Circle in New

0:47:10.239 --> 0:47:12.520
<v Speaker 3>York when Joe Senior got shot in the head. Oh

0:47:12.520 --> 0:47:17.160
<v Speaker 3>that's right, So Godfather was still in production at this point.

0:47:17.440 --> 0:47:21.480
<v Speaker 3>Joe Senior survived, was permanently incapacitated, but the League just like.

0:47:21.480 --> 0:47:22.560
<v Speaker 2>Lost its engine.

0:47:22.960 --> 0:47:25.600
<v Speaker 3>So the film opened in March of nineteen seventy two

0:47:25.640 --> 0:47:28.799
<v Speaker 3>and became four a time, the highest grossing film ever made.

0:47:29.000 --> 0:47:31.680
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and pretty much till Star Wars, right or Jaws?

0:47:31.719 --> 0:47:32.280
<v Speaker 2>I think Jaws.

0:47:32.400 --> 0:47:35.480
<v Speaker 3>So here's the irony of it all. The League's campaign

0:47:36.080 --> 0:47:40.000
<v Speaker 3>produced a film with the words mafia and cosinoster removed,

0:47:40.320 --> 0:47:42.960
<v Speaker 3>and it made no difference whatsoever to the association it

0:47:43.040 --> 0:47:44.000
<v Speaker 3>was trying to break.

0:47:43.800 --> 0:47:45.960
<v Speaker 4>And they love the movie well.

0:47:45.960 --> 0:47:48.799
<v Speaker 3>In fact, you could argue that The Godfather did more

0:47:48.840 --> 0:47:52.600
<v Speaker 3>than any other single work to fix Italian American organized

0:47:52.600 --> 0:47:54.600
<v Speaker 3>crime in the popular match one percent.

0:47:54.680 --> 0:47:56.960
<v Speaker 2>I mean, like other than the Sopranos, I don't think

0:47:56.960 --> 0:47:58.920
<v Speaker 2>you can think of a thing that is more like

0:47:59.320 --> 0:48:02.799
<v Speaker 2>beloved version of the mafia exact. And it also elevated it,

0:48:02.880 --> 0:48:05.520
<v Speaker 2>so it wasn't like you're not comparing them to like

0:48:05.600 --> 0:48:09.280
<v Speaker 2>scarface and like organized crime that is more like drug

0:48:09.320 --> 0:48:12.120
<v Speaker 2>crime and like more modern crimes. They were like elevated

0:48:12.200 --> 0:48:15.160
<v Speaker 2>and given like almost exactly. It's like nights of the

0:48:15.200 --> 0:48:18.120
<v Speaker 2>past as opposed to like you know bad, like you know,

0:48:18.520 --> 0:48:20.000
<v Speaker 2>chewt them ups and alleys, you know in.

0:48:20.080 --> 0:48:22.600
<v Speaker 3>The family intrigue of it and the push.

0:48:22.400 --> 0:48:25.719
<v Speaker 2>Pull honor and like all the questions beautiful the old

0:48:25.760 --> 0:48:28.840
<v Speaker 2>world in the new world, think about all the quotable lines.

0:48:29.480 --> 0:48:33.160
<v Speaker 3>So this, yeah, exactly, what's your ridiculous takeaways?

0:48:33.200 --> 0:48:37.399
<v Speaker 2>Aaron oh Man, There's something it's so.

0:48:37.320 --> 0:48:40.160
<v Speaker 3>Hard to hold back because you know all this stuff

0:48:40.200 --> 0:48:41.000
<v Speaker 3>and then thinking.

0:48:40.800 --> 0:48:43.319
<v Speaker 2>It's very difficult for me at certain points. I think

0:48:43.320 --> 0:48:45.720
<v Speaker 2>you looked over when you were talking about Luca Razzi

0:48:45.840 --> 0:48:49.160
<v Speaker 2>and I was literally holding my mouth so I wouldn't

0:48:49.160 --> 0:48:51.239
<v Speaker 2>spit it out because I was like, she's getting there,

0:48:51.239 --> 0:48:58.279
<v Speaker 2>she's getting He's the best like, I mean, he the

0:48:58.360 --> 0:49:00.319
<v Speaker 2>fact that, yes, I was very well aware that he

0:49:00.360 --> 0:49:04.239
<v Speaker 2>was a real Mathia enforcer. And every time I watch

0:49:04.320 --> 0:49:06.719
<v Speaker 2>that movie, which is usually at least once a year,

0:49:06.840 --> 0:49:11.160
<v Speaker 2>I sit there and just marvel at like the reality

0:49:11.320 --> 0:49:13.440
<v Speaker 2>and the life in him. He's one of those actors.

0:49:13.480 --> 0:49:17.600
<v Speaker 2>It's just like he makes the movie that much more credible. Yeah,

0:49:17.719 --> 0:49:19.880
<v Speaker 2>so I guess we'll just say that's my Rideculo's takeaway,

0:49:19.920 --> 0:49:23.160
<v Speaker 2>how much I love Luca Bratzi. What is yours? Elizabeth?

0:49:23.160 --> 0:49:26.759
<v Speaker 3>I like that this is such a classic tale, like

0:49:26.880 --> 0:49:29.319
<v Speaker 3>something in the Godfather or in the Sopranos, where you

0:49:29.400 --> 0:49:32.200
<v Speaker 3>have the one son who's like trying real hard.

0:49:32.400 --> 0:49:34.360
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and he's doing.

0:49:34.160 --> 0:49:37.640
<v Speaker 3>A deal on melting down the silver coins and he

0:49:37.920 --> 0:49:42.040
<v Speaker 3>raises all this hubbub and the dad. Like the fact

0:49:42.080 --> 0:49:44.719
<v Speaker 3>that the Italian American League came out of that.

0:49:44.840 --> 0:49:46.080
<v Speaker 4>I didn't know it was.

0:49:47.840 --> 0:49:48.600
<v Speaker 2>To protect.

0:49:49.880 --> 0:49:52.720
<v Speaker 4>For smelting coin by Yeah.

0:49:52.760 --> 0:49:54.719
<v Speaker 3>So that's my takeaway is how much I loved that.

0:49:55.600 --> 0:49:59.600
<v Speaker 3>I think that said we need a talkback, Dave.

0:50:02.200 --> 0:50:14.480
<v Speaker 5>Oh my god much. I love Hey, Zaren, Elizabeth and

0:50:14.560 --> 0:50:17.160
<v Speaker 5>producer g I hope you're all doing well. I live

0:50:17.200 --> 0:50:20.319
<v Speaker 5>in Philadelphia and I thought I'd tell you, guys something ridiculous.

0:50:20.760 --> 0:50:24.960
<v Speaker 5>My first name is letter A, just letter A. It's

0:50:25.000 --> 0:50:28.480
<v Speaker 5>all my birth certificate. You can ask my mom. I'm

0:50:28.520 --> 0:50:31.600
<v Speaker 5>called Maggie though for my middle name. But I love

0:50:31.640 --> 0:50:35.960
<v Speaker 5>your podcast so so much, so much, so much. Thank

0:50:36.000 --> 0:50:38.360
<v Speaker 5>you for making me laugh. All right, bye, guys.

0:50:39.560 --> 0:50:42.560
<v Speaker 2>You and I Saron talk about great names, and A

0:50:42.960 --> 0:50:46.520
<v Speaker 2>is a great name, A Maggie last name.

0:50:47.080 --> 0:50:49.560
<v Speaker 4>So do you go by A?

0:50:50.840 --> 0:50:52.520
<v Speaker 2>I know, but I mean, like with anybody, is there

0:50:52.560 --> 0:50:55.640
<v Speaker 2>anyone who calls you? Ah? I'm wondering.

0:50:57.120 --> 0:51:00.040
<v Speaker 3>I gotta be a pain, like being you know, in

0:51:00.080 --> 0:51:01.520
<v Speaker 3>class and then or or.

0:51:01.560 --> 0:51:05.239
<v Speaker 2>Like online me most of my life by a lot

0:51:05.239 --> 0:51:07.640
<v Speaker 2>of people, so like, hey, Z, so I know what

0:51:07.680 --> 0:51:09.840
<v Speaker 2>it's like to be a single letter sure, but A

0:51:10.040 --> 0:51:11.960
<v Speaker 2>is a one where people wouldn't think that it's like Z.

0:51:12.160 --> 0:51:14.840
<v Speaker 2>Somehow sounds like a name because you have the ze.

0:51:16.520 --> 0:51:17.520
<v Speaker 2>What are you voting here?

0:51:17.640 --> 0:51:19.480
<v Speaker 3>Well, I'm just wondering too, Like when you have to

0:51:19.480 --> 0:51:22.200
<v Speaker 3>fill out online forms, is it ever like no, put

0:51:22.239 --> 0:51:23.280
<v Speaker 3>your full name not.

0:51:23.239 --> 0:51:25.480
<v Speaker 2>Just an initial. Yeah, it's interesting, you.

0:51:25.440 --> 0:51:31.280
<v Speaker 3>Know, because bureaucracy doesn't doesn't adjust for creativity.

0:51:31.400 --> 0:51:31.959
<v Speaker 2>Not at all.

0:51:32.120 --> 0:51:36.640
<v Speaker 3>That's cool though, I love that Magie. That's it for today.

0:51:37.160 --> 0:51:39.800
<v Speaker 3>You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com.

0:51:39.840 --> 0:51:42.680
<v Speaker 3>We're also at Ridiculous Crime on both Blue Sky and Instagram.

0:51:42.719 --> 0:51:45.760
<v Speaker 3>You can email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com.

0:51:46.200 --> 0:51:48.440
<v Speaker 3>Terry will take a look at that. Leave us a

0:51:48.480 --> 0:51:51.400
<v Speaker 3>talk back on the iHeart app. Please I love those

0:51:51.840 --> 0:51:57.520
<v Speaker 3>reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and

0:51:57.600 --> 0:52:01.760
<v Speaker 3>Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Capo Argento. Dave Cousten,

0:52:02.080 --> 0:52:05.200
<v Speaker 3>our Ridiculous Assistant, is chair of the Coin Collector's Civil

0:52:05.280 --> 0:52:06.799
<v Speaker 3>Rights League, Terry Maldonado.

0:52:06.840 --> 0:52:08.840
<v Speaker 2>Fon research is by Godfather.

0:52:08.920 --> 0:52:11.279
<v Speaker 3>Wedding scene extra thanks to an uncle who pulled some

0:52:11.360 --> 0:52:14.759
<v Speaker 3>strings Marissa Brown. The theme song is by Silver Smelters

0:52:14.760 --> 0:52:17.799
<v Speaker 3>Thomas Lee and Travis Duddon. Post wardrobe is provided by

0:52:17.800 --> 0:52:21.120
<v Speaker 3>Botany five hundred. Producer Dave Couston's wardrobe is by Mister

0:52:21.280 --> 0:52:24.520
<v Speaker 3>Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot

0:52:24.560 --> 0:52:28.279
<v Speaker 3>and Mister Andre. Executive producers are Underboss hanging out at

0:52:28.320 --> 0:52:32.200
<v Speaker 3>Craft Services, Ben Bolin and Federal prosecutor who got slapped

0:52:32.200 --> 0:52:35.319
<v Speaker 3>by Joe Banano on a fishing boat. Noel Brown.

0:52:40.840 --> 0:52:46.200
<v Speaker 5>Disquime say it one more times. Crime.

0:52:47.320 --> 0:52:50.680
<v Speaker 1>Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts,

0:52:50.800 --> 0:52:53.960
<v Speaker 1>My heart Radio, Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

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