Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: In December of twenty eighteen, a jury in Charlottesville, Virginia
Speaker 2: returned a guilty verdict in the trial of James Alexfields Junior.
Speaker 2: They recommended a sentence of life in prison for the
Speaker 2: murder of Heather Hire and another four hundred and nineteen
Speaker 2: years for the wounding of members of the crowd of
Speaker 2: peaceful demonstrators he'd rammed with his car after a Nazi
Speaker 2: rally the previous summer. I remember sitting in that courtroom
Speaker 2: when the verdict was read aloud. It was filled to capacity.
Speaker 2: I could barely write in my notebook for the lack
Speaker 2: of elbow room almost usually empty wooden benches. This was
Speaker 2: big news. Reporters from outlets all over the country, the
Speaker 2: world even had descended on Charlottesville to write about this trial,
Speaker 2: and beyond the walls of my local courtroom, reporters who
Speaker 2: couldn't make it to the trial in person were writing
Speaker 2: about it too. Every time, Charlottesville's back in the news
Speaker 2: for all the wrong reasons. Little newspapers and towns you've
Speaker 2: never heard of look for local angles. On the aftermath
Speaker 2: of that Nazi rally, they interview middle school classmates of
Speaker 2: men who were identified in photos of violent mobs that
Speaker 2: beat students with torches and bloodied members of the clergy
Speaker 2: in a public park. After that verdict was in in
Speaker 2: December of twenty eighteen, in a tiny town in May,
Speaker 2: eight hundred miles away from Charlottesville, a reporter from the
Speaker 2: Ellsworth American found her local angle as front pages of
Speaker 2: newspapers everywhere were once again filled with pictures of Nazis.
Speaker 2: She paid a visit to a Nazi who had been
Speaker 2: living in their midst in Maine for decades. He hadn't
Speaker 2: marched in Charlottesville. His marching days are long.
Speaker 1: Passed, but at ninety eight years old, Frank Smith still
Speaker 1: had fond memories of his close friendship with Commander George
Speaker 1: Lincoln Rockwell.
Speaker 2: I'm my conguered and this is weird. Little guys. You
Speaker 2: probably thought we were moving on from the American Nazi Party.
Speaker 2: I thought I was done too. I never even really
Speaker 2: had much interest in writing about the party's founder, George
Speaker 2: Lincoln Rockwell at all. I did four episodes in three
Speaker 2: weeks about his assassination and a whole episode about his
Speaker 2: weird funeral. How much could there really be left to
Speaker 2: say about the circumstances surrounding one man's death a lot,
Speaker 2: as it turns out, and I was willing to let
Speaker 2: it lie, to leave some stones unturned, to leave some
Speaker 2: stories for another day, move on for now, and put
Speaker 2: a pin in some of these events, to revisit down
Speaker 2: the road with a different weird little guy as our
Speaker 2: focal point. There are so many side characters in the
Speaker 2: story of the American Nazi Party who warrant their own episodes.
Speaker 2: I have no doubt that I will eventually subject you
Speaker 2: to God, probably at least a month's worth of episodes
Speaker 2: about William Luther Pearce. And obviously eventually we'll have to
Speaker 2: talk about James Mason. Before he was an elderly pedophile
Speaker 2: living in government housing in Denver and advising young terrorists,
Speaker 2: he was a teenage boy who joined the American Nazi Party,
Speaker 2: and Ralph Forbes had a long, strange career that I'd
Speaker 2: like to dig into. So I know we aren't done
Speaker 2: with these characters, and I know I can't get lost
Speaker 2: down every rabbit hole while I'm just trying to get
Speaker 2: across the finish line on one story. But there was
Speaker 2: one strange little side quest that I couldn't let go
Speaker 2: of Frank Smith. Something about Frank just wouldn't let me
Speaker 2: mark him down in my notes as something to come
Speaker 2: back to later. He was setting off my weird little
Speaker 2: guy radar in a way I could not ignore. And
Speaker 2: I'll tell you my instincts were not wrong. I found
Speaker 2: dynamite organized crime, FBI wiredtap memos about mafia hits, a
Speaker 2: fake church, a nazi's mistress having a secret baby under
Speaker 2: a fake name, And for some reason, the disgraced mayor
Speaker 2: of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, if he listened to the last
Speaker 2: five episodes, the ones about Rockwell's murder and his funeral,
Speaker 2: you heard a little bit about Frank Smith. You even
Speaker 2: heard from Frank himself in clips from interviews over the years.
Speaker 2: He very publicly insisted that John Patler was not guilty
Speaker 2: of the murder of George Lincoln Rockwell. He set it
Speaker 2: on the stand at Patler's trial in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: and he was still saying it fifty years later, in
Speaker 2: a rambling interview with a South African neo Nazi in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen. And you might remember him from the dramatic
Speaker 2: shootout with Christopher Vidyevitch in nineteen sixty eight, an incident
Speaker 2: that Frank believed was an attempted assassination to prevent him
Speaker 2: from getting to the real truth about Rockwell's murder. In
Speaker 2: the two biographies of Rockwell that I read while I
Speaker 2: was researching John Patler, Frank Smith really just gets a
Speaker 2: few passing mentions as a member of the American Nazi
Speaker 2: Party and as a witness at Patler's trial. But when
Speaker 2: I start started reading the actual trial transcripts, something caught
Speaker 2: my eye. I can't quite describe it. He talks like
Speaker 2: a con man. I don't know how else to put it.
Speaker 2: I've sat through a fair number of trials, and I've
Speaker 2: read thousands of pages of trial transcripts, over a thousand
Speaker 2: in this case alone. And most people aren't great on
Speaker 2: the stand. They're nervous. They give short answers, and when
Speaker 2: you press them, they sort of backtrack. They don't want
Speaker 2: to commit to a lot of specific, hard details, especially
Speaker 2: if you push hard and they get rattled on cross examination.
Speaker 2: Most people do, it's normal, But Frank Smith was chatty
Speaker 2: up there. I mean, he talked up a storm on
Speaker 2: the witness stand. He was giving answers that spanned multiple
Speaker 2: pages of the transcript without interruption from the attorney asking
Speaker 2: him the questions. He claimed to recollect specific verbatim quotes
Speaker 2: from long conversations, but he would never quite commit to
Speaker 2: the specifics when it came to exactly where he was
Speaker 2: at any particular time. Specifically, there's no proof of where
Speaker 2: he was or wasn't at three pm on June twenty seventh,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven. There's only so much they could ask
Speaker 2: him about June twenty seventh, nineteen sixty seven. At that trial,
Speaker 2: he wasn't on trial, and George Lincoln Rockwell didn't die
Speaker 2: on June twenty seventh. Rockwell died on August twenty fifth,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven, and John Patler killed him. But Rockwell
Speaker 2: had survived a prior assassination attempt just two months before
Speaker 2: his death. As he was pulling into the driveway with
Speaker 2: the Nazi Party barracks in Arlington, Virginia that afternoon, someone
Speaker 2: fired a single shot at him, but they missed, and
Speaker 2: I assumed, Well, that was John Patler, right, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: At his trial, a witness said that he saw him
Speaker 2: doing target practice in July, the month before the murder.
Speaker 2: In August, So you can see how it would make
Speaker 2: sense to assume that he tried to shoot Rockwell in June.
Speaker 2: He missed, he practiced some, he tried again. His aim
Speaker 2: was better the second time. Rockwell's dead makes sense. When
Speaker 2: Rockwell wrote about the assassination attempt in his newsletter, he
Speaker 2: said he didn't see who did it, But at trial,
Speaker 2: Mantius Cole testified that Rockwell had privately confined him that
Speaker 2: the shooter was John Patler. William Luther Pierce years later,
Speaker 2: told his own biographer the same thing. Rockwell told me
Speaker 2: he saw him, and it was Patler, And like I said,
Speaker 2: it makes perfect sense that that's who it would have been.
Speaker 2: But I don't think it was. I don't think John
Speaker 2: Patler was the only person who took a shot at
Speaker 2: George Lincoln Rockwall in the summer of nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 2: Now we've covered this, but Patler's alibi on the day
Speaker 2: of the actual murder was no good. His wife and
Speaker 2: his father in law testified to his schedule that morning,
Speaker 2: he'd been running errands with his wife. He couldn't possibly
Speaker 2: have gotten to the murder scene. But when push comes
Speaker 2: to shove, the times weren't right, and witnesses couldn't really
Speaker 2: be sure when and where they'd seen him. I still
Speaker 2: believe that he fired the shot that killed Rockwell, but
Speaker 2: on the day that someone shot at Rockwell and missed.
Speaker 2: On June twenty seventh, John Patler was in Washington, d c.
Speaker 2: Taking a drawing class. People saw him. His name was
Speaker 2: on the sign in sheet, and a witness testified to
Speaker 2: having taken attendance that day himself. This wasn't a member
Speaker 2: of the American Nazi Party or his wife. This is
Speaker 2: someone with no reason to lie for him. John Patler
Speaker 2: couldn't have been in Arlington on the afternoon of June
Speaker 2: twenty seventh when Rockwell saw this would be assassin sprinting away.
Speaker 2: I think he did recognize him. According to the college
Speaker 2: student who was in the car with him when this happened,
Speaker 2: he cried out in surprise when he saw the man,
Speaker 2: and what he said was the Holy Father. It's an
Speaker 2: odd sort of thing to yell, you know. It's not
Speaker 2: quite oh my God or Jesus Christ, things you might
Speaker 2: say if someone was shooting at you. But the Holy
Speaker 2: Father isn't really a thing people say, at least not
Speaker 2: as far as I know. I mean, it is what
Speaker 2: Catholics call the pope, but they don't use it as
Speaker 2: an exclamation. And Rockwell was raised Methodist anyway, The young
Speaker 2: man who heard him yell this didn't really think much
Speaker 2: of it. He didn't know that it was someone's name.
Speaker 2: It was a nickname that Rockwell had given Frank Smith,
Speaker 2: and it didn't have all that much to do with religion.
Speaker 2: Frank Smith really was holy in the sense that a
Speaker 2: mafia hit man had put five bullet holes in him
Speaker 2: right around the time he joined the American Nazi Party.
Speaker 2: But let's start at the beginning. Francis Joseph Smith the
Speaker 2: second was born in Massachusetts in December nineteen twenty, just
Speaker 2: a few months after his parents' marriage. According to the
Speaker 2: nineteen forty census, when he was nineteen, he was working
Speaker 2: as a waiter and living at home with his parents
Speaker 2: and two younger siblings in Medford, Massachusetts. It's hard to
Speaker 2: say what he got up to in the nineteen forties,
Speaker 2: but when he was arrested for bank robbery for the
Speaker 2: first time in nineteen fifty two, newspapers reported his occupation
Speaker 2: as a boxing promoter. Maybe everybody else already knew this,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to sound silly, but I never gave
Speaker 2: it much thought until I was writing about it this week.
Speaker 2: Boxing was run by organized crime. I mean, I had
Speaker 2: this vague notion about fixed fights and sports betting, but
Speaker 2: in the nineteen fifties, the mafia ran boxing top to bottom.
Speaker 2: I mean, they had a monopoly on the sport that
Speaker 2: the Department of Justice had to get involved with. They
Speaker 2: didn't just promote the fights, fix the fights, and profit
Speaker 2: off the fights. They also coerced young boxers to do
Speaker 2: a little work outside the ring, off the books, and
Speaker 2: they were recruited to work as street level enforcers. And
Speaker 2: not having that knowledge top of mind, as I was
Speaker 2: going over all these old newspaper clippings, it seemed so
Speaker 2: strange to me that every time Frank Smith got arrested
Speaker 2: in the nineteen fifties, all of his named associates seemed
Speaker 2: to be current or former boxers or boxing promoters. I thought,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe the boys met at the boxing gym.
Speaker 2: But given the context of New York and Boston in
Speaker 2: the fifties, the fact that all of these accused bank
Speaker 2: robbers and murderers are also boxers is really just short
Speaker 2: of absolute proof. That the crimes were mafia related. Admittedly,
Speaker 2: I did not have time this week to learn about
Speaker 2: a whole new genre of terrible guy. I mean, I
Speaker 2: saw every episode of The Sopranos, obviously, but I don't
Speaker 2: actually know that much about organized crime, especially outside of
Speaker 2: the big New York names, because we're talking about Boston
Speaker 2: and Providence and there is apparently a lot to know,
Speaker 2: And I bet the story would have made more sense
Speaker 2: faster if I had some pre existing knowledge of this world.
Speaker 2: But this isn't my usual kind of guy, so we'll
Speaker 2: have to make do. My apologies to any listeners from
Speaker 2: New England who know the deep lore. In February of
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty two, a twenty four year old pants salesman
Speaker 2: named Arthur Schuster was riding the subway in Brooklyn when
Speaker 2: he saw someone who looked familiar. It wasn't someone he knew,
Speaker 2: but he recognized the man from the wanted poster that
Speaker 2: had been sitting in his office for months. It was
Speaker 2: the missing bank robber Willie Sutton. He followed Sutton off
Speaker 2: the train and alerted the police to his location, leading
Speaker 2: to the arrest of a man who was on the
Speaker 2: very first FBI's most wanted the list. A few days
Speaker 2: after Willy Sutton was arrested, Arthur Schuster went to the press.
Speaker 2: He believed that he'd been cheated out of a cash
Speaker 2: reward for this tip. It turned out the seventy thousand
Speaker 2: dollars reward was just an urban legend, but it was
Speaker 2: too late in his quest for credit. Every newspaper in
Speaker 2: New York City had already run his picture. Two weeks later,
Speaker 2: he was shot in the head outside of his apartment.
Speaker 2: Police and FBI were scrambling to find the kiseller, and
Speaker 2: in May they thought they had. They arrested Harvey Bostani,
Speaker 2: a known associate of Willie Sutton's and a career bank
Speaker 2: robber in his own right. They didn't exactly have enough
Speaker 2: to charge Bastani in connection with the murder, but they
Speaker 2: were able to hold him for questioning because he was
Speaker 2: already wanted in connection with several armed robberies, a handful
Speaker 2: of burglaries involving safe cracking and the theft of nearly
Speaker 2: thirty thousand dollars worth of fur coats. And once they
Speaker 2: had Bastanian custody, they started rolling up his associates. Over
Speaker 2: the course of two weeks. In May of nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 2: the FBI arrested twelve men in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Chicago,
Speaker 2: all of whom were believed to have been in Bastani's
Speaker 2: bank robbery. Gay Arthur Schuster's murder was never actually solved,
Speaker 2: although years later a mob informant would claim that the
Speaker 2: hit had been ordered by a Gambino family boss. One
Speaker 2: of the first members of Bastani's gang to get picked
Speaker 2: up was William Smith, Frank's younger brother, a boxer and
Speaker 2: part time bartender. At William's house, police found several suitcases
Speaker 2: full of loaded guns and ammunition, a suitcase full of
Speaker 2: burglary tools, a sawt off shotgun, a machine gun, disguises
Speaker 2: including a clerical caller, investments and fake police uniforms, explosives,
Speaker 2: and a box full of stolen license plates. When they
Speaker 2: searched the bar where he worked nights, they found a
Speaker 2: cash of dynamite. Shortly after the raid at William's apartment,
Speaker 2: the FBI announced they were looking for his brother too.
Speaker 2: Frank was one of the last of the group to
Speaker 2: be arrested, and both brothers were charged in connection with
Speaker 2: a bank robbery in Medford Massachusetts. Despite Harvey Bestani turning
Speaker 2: state's witness and testifying against them, both Smith brothers were
Speaker 2: acquitted at trial for that Medford bank robbery. Unfortunately, for Frank,
Speaker 2: the acquittal in February of nineteen fifty three wasn't the
Speaker 2: end of his troubles, because after that first arrest, things
Speaker 2: kind of snowballed. In January of nineteen fifty three, just
Speaker 2: weeks before his bank robbery trial was set to begin,
Speaker 2: Frank Smith was indicted on new charges. New York City
Speaker 2: attorney Saul Rosenblatt identified Frank Smith as the man who'd
Speaker 2: fired three shots at him on Park Avenue in March
Speaker 2: of nineteen fifty two, hitting him once in the thigh.
Speaker 2: When he went to trial in New York for the shooting,
Speaker 2: Frank Smith admitted that sure he was in New York
Speaker 2: City on the day that Rosenblatt was shot, but it
Speaker 2: was for business. A longtime friend of Frank's testified that
Speaker 2: Frank and his co defendant, a mafia associate named Sammy Lindon,
Speaker 2: had showed up at his hotel room that night, bragged
Speaker 2: about shooting Rosenblat, and paid him to steal a car
Speaker 2: that they could use to leave the city. On the stand,
Speaker 2: the victim positively identified Frank as the man he saw
Speaker 2: shoot him in broad daylight, but the jury acquitted him.
Speaker 2: It's possible the jury was just confused about the lack
Speaker 2: of a clear motive presented at trial. Immediately after the shooting,
Speaker 2: newspapers in New York ran wild with speculation that the
Speaker 2: attempted murder was connected to Rosenblat's involvement in a particular
Speaker 2: high profile case. He'd recently been named the sole beneficiary
Speaker 2: in one of his clients' wills, and the dead woman's
Speaker 2: sister was contesting the will in court. It didn't help
Speaker 2: that the dead woman in question was Eleanor Morgan Satterly,
Speaker 2: the granddaughter of J. P. Morgan. Yes, that JP Morgan,
Speaker 2: the one whose name is on your bank. But as
Speaker 2: the investigation into the shooting continued, police were less convinced
Speaker 2: that Satterly's will had been the cause, and at trial,
Speaker 2: the judge reminded the jury that proving motive isn't necessary
Speaker 2: for a conviction. I think any criminal lawyer will tell
Speaker 2: you though, juries are troubled by a crime without a motive.
Speaker 2: But it's also very possible that those twelve New York
Speaker 2: City jurors knew well enough not to be seen in
Speaker 2: open court poking their nose into the business of organized crime.
Speaker 2: No one was ever convicted for shooting Saul Rosenblock, and
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure everyone involved is dead now, so I
Speaker 2: think it's safe to offer you my theory. Frank Smith
Speaker 2: and Sammy Lindon did shoot Saul Rosenblock, but it had
Speaker 2: nothing to do with J. P. Morgan's granddaughter. Saul Rosenblatt
Speaker 2: had other clients he was involved in other ongoing litigation,
Speaker 2: and there was one client he dropped as soon as
Speaker 2: he got out of the hospital after the shooting. He
Speaker 2: withdrew as counsel of record in a paternity suit. He'd
Speaker 2: been representing a nightclub singer named Virginia Summers in her
Speaker 2: lawsuit against a Boston lawyer named Joseph Sachs, and at
Speaker 2: his trial, Frank Smith was asked about a recent flight
Speaker 2: he'd taken to London. A month before the shooting. He
Speaker 2: flew to England, but he insisted that this had to
Speaker 2: do with his boxing promotion and nothing to do with
Speaker 2: following Virginia Summers, who had also recently flown to London. Now,
Speaker 2: I can't find any source that concrete, openly and plainly
Speaker 2: accuses Joseph Sachs of working for the mob, But you
Speaker 2: can make up your own mind what you think. Sax
Speaker 2: had previously represented Frank's co defendant, Sammy Lindon, in an
Speaker 2: armed robbery case that was definitely mob related, and Sax
Speaker 2: would later represent Frank in a case involving a bombing
Speaker 2: that was definitely mob related. Joseph Sachs himself was later
Speaker 2: accused of some pretty serious mob related crime. He was
Speaker 2: to be fair acquitted at trial, but in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: two he was one of several men indicted on charges
Speaker 2: of trafficking thousands of pounds of heroine. The bust was
Speaker 2: part of the investigation into the French Connection, a global
Speaker 2: network run by the Corsican mafia that moved heroin through
Speaker 2: France and into the United States, where it was then
Speaker 2: distributed by organized crime outfits in major cities. Sacks was
Speaker 2: arrested in connection with an operation that had been taking
Speaker 2: advantage of the diplomatic immunity afforded to ambassadors. The Guatemalan
Speaker 2: ambassador to Belgium, a man named Mauricio Rosal, had been
Speaker 2: acting as their courier bringing fifty kilos of heroin at
Speaker 2: a time into New York City in his suitcase and
Speaker 2: what I think is a pretty rare move. Mauricio Rosal
Speaker 2: was denied diplomatic immunity and he went to prison. But
Speaker 2: like I said, Joseph Sachs was acquitted. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of allegedly, a lot of maybe a lot of fill
Speaker 2: in the blank with your own most reasonable assumptions. The
Speaker 2: jury said Frank Smith didn't shoot Saul Rosenblat. A jury
Speaker 2: said Joseph Sachs wasn't in involved in a decade long
Speaker 2: scheme to move thousands of pounds of heroin between the
Speaker 2: Corsic and Mafia and the mafia in New York and Boston.
Speaker 2: And I guess, legally speaking, these are all just a
Speaker 2: series of unrelated facts about cases that never got solved.
Speaker 2: And maybe Saul Rosenblat dropped Virginia Summer's case because he
Speaker 2: wasn't feeling well after the gunshot wound, not because he
Speaker 2: thought Joseph Sachs had him shot. As far as I
Speaker 2: can tell, the prosecutor didn't argue at trial that it
Speaker 2: was a paid hit. But it is worth noting that
Speaker 2: at Frank's bail hearing, the prosecutor told the judge that
Speaker 2: Frank had been hired by people in Massachusetts to kill Rosenblatt.
Speaker 2: He called him a plain and simple killer for hire.
Speaker 2: When the jury returned a not guilty verdict for Frank
Speaker 2: in the Rosenblack case, the judge was visibly angry. Newspapers
Speaker 2: quote him scolding the jury, saying, it is my opinion
Speaker 2: that you have been fooled. It is strange to me
Speaker 2: how grown men can be so naive. Again, you never
Speaker 2: know why a jury makes the decisions they make. But
Speaker 2: I don't think they were fools or naive. I don't
Speaker 2: think they were tricked into thinking Frank was innocent. I
Speaker 2: think they knew exactly what they were looking at, and
Speaker 2: they didn't want to be involved in mafia business. The
Speaker 2: newspaper that quoted the judge's angry outburst doesn't say whether
Speaker 2: the judge looked amused when Frank Smith was arrested as
Speaker 2: he tried to leave the courtroom. He'd been acquitted in
Speaker 2: New York, but he was wanted in New Jersey for
Speaker 2: robbing a bank in Newark with a machine gun. So
Speaker 2: New York City held him in their jail for a
Speaker 2: few weeks pending extradition, which is pretty normal, and he
Speaker 2: fought the extradition, which is a little less normal. I mean,
Speaker 2: you have a right to try. It's just not typical.
Speaker 2: But it worked. He's in this jail in New York
Speaker 2: City for a couple of weeks, no news, and then
Speaker 2: suddenly there's just a passing mention in the Newark Star
Speaker 2: Ledger two days before Christmas that the prosecutor changed his mind.
Speaker 2: The charges have been dropped and there are no other suspects,
Speaker 2: so to put all of this in order. On March sixth,
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty two, someone who looked just like Frank Smith
Speaker 2: shot Saul Rosenblatt on Park Avenue. Two days after that,
Speaker 2: someone unknown shot Arnold Schuster in the head outside of
Speaker 2: his apartment in New York City. Two days after that,
Speaker 2: a couple of guys who might have been the Smith
Speaker 2: brothers robbed a bank in Medford, Massachusetts. In April, someone
Speaker 2: who looked just like Frank Smith robbed a bank in
Speaker 2: Newark in May. Smith and a dozen associates of known
Speaker 2: bank robber Harvey Bistani were all arrested in January of
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty three, Frank is charged for shooting Saul Rosenblatt.
Speaker 2: In February, he's acquitted on that first bank robbery. In November,
Speaker 2: he's acquitted on the shooting, but he's arrested for the
Speaker 2: New Jersey bank robbery, and by December of nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: three he's free and clear. He was accused of robbing
Speaker 2: banks in two different states and trying to murder a
Speaker 2: man in a third, crimes that all took place within
Speaker 2: mere weeks in the spring of nineteen fifty two, but
Speaker 2: he celebrated the new year as a freeman in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty four. I can't pick him back up again in
Speaker 2: the archives until May of fifty seven, when he's arrested again.
Speaker 2: But when he was arrested in nineteen fifty seven for
Speaker 2: bombing a home in Wooburn, Massachusetts, police in the neighboring
Speaker 2: towns expressed their interest in questioning him about similar unsolved
Speaker 2: bombings over the last few years. Now, no one was
Speaker 2: ever convicted in the first three bombings police suspected Frank
Speaker 2: Smith was involved in. In June of nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 2: four bombs exploded inside the Chelsea, Massachusetts home of boxing
Speaker 2: promoter Sam Silverman. If you know a lot about old
Speaker 2: school boxing promoters, you've heard of Sam Silverman. And if
Speaker 2: you don't know anything about old school boxing promoters, you
Speaker 2: don't care who Sam Silverman is. But he had recently
Speaker 2: cut ties with the International Boxing Club of New York,
Speaker 2: that corporation whose monopoly on boxing was almost entirely under
Speaker 2: the control of former murder inc hitman Frankie Carbo. A
Speaker 2: few months before the bombing, Ray Arcell, a promoter Silverman
Speaker 2: worked with to televise the fights he promoted, was beaten
Speaker 2: almost to death with a lead pipe. Arcell survived and
Speaker 2: Silverman and his wife weren't home when those bombs went off,
Speaker 2: but both men took these attacks as a clear message
Speaker 2: from the mafia stop promoting fights. In May of nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty five, Vincent Denuno, a regional director of the Building
Speaker 2: in Common Laborers Union with the AFL, was finalizing a
Speaker 2: report on organized crime activity within his union when suddenly
Speaker 2: his car exploded inside of his garage in East Boston.
Speaker 2: Police believed it was the work of a professional killer
Speaker 2: trying to take out the labour leader, but it was
Speaker 2: his twenty four year old son in law who was
Speaker 2: gravely injured instead. Then, in June of nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 2: John Sullivan, a booking agent in Medford, Massachusetts, narrowly escaped
Speaker 2: being blown to bits when he walked out his front
Speaker 2: door because he smelled smoke and he found a bomb
Speaker 2: on his front porch that hadn't gone off yet. None
Speaker 2: of these bombings were ever solved, least as far as
Speaker 2: I can tell, But Frank Smith was a very strong
Speaker 2: suspect in all three after his arrest in May of
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty seven. But this fourth bombing was pretty open
Speaker 2: and shut. They thought maybe he did those other three,
Speaker 2: but they saw him do this one. It was a
Speaker 2: little after midnight when two cops who were just sitting
Speaker 2: in their patrol car saw a man sprinting down the
Speaker 2: street in the dark. At first, they assumed the man
Speaker 2: leaving Everett Bixby's yard was a burglar and they were
Speaker 2: going to chase him, But just as the man disappeared
Speaker 2: into a nearby wooded area, the bomb went off. A
Speaker 2: description of the man they'd seen went out over the radio,
Speaker 2: and officers spotted him less than a mile away at
Speaker 2: a phone booth. He was filthy and soaking wet, as
Speaker 2: if he'd perhaps run in the dark through the thick
Speaker 2: underbrush of the wooded area the bomber disappeared into. He
Speaker 2: also had explosive residue embedded in burnmarks on his shoes.
Speaker 2: Police found him in a phone booth less than a
Speaker 2: mile away from the Bixby's house, and they found his
Speaker 2: car a mile in the other direction, parked outside of
Speaker 2: a friend's house. That friend happened to be a man
Speaker 2: named Louis Venios, a mafia associate who was due in
Speaker 2: court the following morning to face a federal mail fraud charge.
Speaker 2: Frank's story just kept changing, and honestly, none of the
Speaker 2: stories were very good. On the night of his arrest,
Speaker 2: he explained to the police that he's a prize fight
Speaker 2: trainer and he's just out doing some roadwork, which is
Speaker 2: apparently what boxers call r at three am in a
Speaker 2: town where he doesn't live, and they found him at
Speaker 2: the phone booth because while he was out running, he
Speaker 2: had this sudden thought that he needed to make a
Speaker 2: phone call to a friend again at three am. By
Speaker 2: the time he got to trial, he'd come up with
Speaker 2: what I guess he thought was a better story. He
Speaker 2: said that he couldn't have bombed the Bixby's house at
Speaker 2: twelve forty five am because he was at a bar
Speaker 2: with his friend Louis Venios from midnight and till around
Speaker 2: one am, and then after the bar they stopped back
Speaker 2: off at his apartment because he needed to wring out
Speaker 2: some wet laundry and that's why he was all wet.
Speaker 2: And then after he got all wet at his apartment,
Speaker 2: he didn't change his clothes. He got into his car
Speaker 2: and drove Louis Venios home to Wuburn, and then he
Speaker 2: left his car at Venios's house because he needed to
Speaker 2: borrow it, and when police found him in the phone booth,
Speaker 2: he was just calling his wife to come pick him
Speaker 2: up again at three am. I don't think he could
Speaker 2: make up a worse series of lies if he tried, right,
Speaker 2: Because if he and Venios were at his apartment and
Speaker 2: Venios needed to both go home to Woburn and borrow
Speaker 2: Frank's car, why wouldn't Venios just drive himself home in
Speaker 2: Frank's car and Frank would just stay at his apartment.
Speaker 2: And if he had to be the one to drive,
Speaker 2: but his wife was able to come pick him up,
Speaker 2: why didn't she just follow him? Why didn't he tell
Speaker 2: her before he left the apartment. If he hadn't to
Speaker 2: call his wife, why didn't he call from Benios's house?
Speaker 2: Doesn't he have a phone? Why would you walk a
Speaker 2: mile in the dark at three am to call your
Speaker 2: wife from a payphone. I just don't understand why he
Speaker 2: thought we would believe that he needed to walk a
Speaker 2: mile in the dark at three am to call his
Speaker 2: wife to come pick him up from the fakes sounding
Speaker 2: errand anyone has ever made up And at trial they
Speaker 2: didn't even put Louis Venios on the stand to corroborate
Speaker 2: the alibi. I just can't get over. Oh, I had
Speaker 2: to go home and wring out my wet laundry in
Speaker 2: between drinking at the bar and driving my friend home
Speaker 2: and then walking around in the dark, And that's why
Speaker 2: my shoes are all wet. I mean, got at that
Speaker 2: point just say you pissed on your own shoes. At
Speaker 2: least people might believe it. Reading between the lines and
Speaker 2: the appellate record in this case, it sounds like everyone
Speaker 2: in the courtroom knew that the Boston Police officer the
Speaker 2: defense put on the stand was lying. Joseph Sachs. Remember
Speaker 2: he's the lawyer who, according to the jury who acquitted him,
Speaker 2: was not at this time, seven years into a decade
Speaker 2: law international heroin smuggling operation for the mafia. Sachs put
Speaker 2: Boston patrolman John O'Neil on the stand to testify that
Speaker 2: he knew Frank Smith and Louis Venios and he remembered
Speaker 2: seeing them at the bar at the time of the bombing.
Speaker 2: The jury found Frank Smith guilty of the bombing, and
Speaker 2: he was given a sentence of fifteen to eighteen years
Speaker 2: in prison. Based on the admittedly limited information that we have,
Speaker 2: it seems very possible that Everett Bixby wasn't the intended
Speaker 2: target of this bombing. He was a funeral director with
Speaker 2: no known ties to organized crime. He was the chairman
Speaker 2: of the Woburn Licensing Board, so I guess it's possible
Speaker 2: that there was a dispute over a liquor license. But
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty seven, the city of Wooburn only issued
Speaker 2: liquor licenses to stores that sell liquor. In Massachusetts, they
Speaker 2: call them package stores, and a local newspaper that year
Speaker 2: said that the city of Wooburn had plenty of package stores,
Speaker 2: but they didn't actually have any bars, and Bixby told
Speaker 2: the newspaper that no one had even applied for a
Speaker 2: liquor license lately. There was nothing for there to be
Speaker 2: a dispute over it. Kind of looks like Frank got
Speaker 2: the wrong house. I saw a few news stories that
Speaker 2: made vague mention of the fact that the Bixby's lived
Speaker 2: pretty close by to several known gangland figures. That's all
Speaker 2: it ever, really says, just several known figures in this world,
Speaker 2: they're never named. Look is it possible to cross reference
Speaker 2: seventy year old property records with the names of known
Speaker 2: mafia associates in the Boston suburbs. Look? I thought about it,
Speaker 2: and I think I probably could do it if I
Speaker 2: had an extra day this week?
Speaker 3: Did I? No?
Speaker 2: I had to file my taxes this week. It's October,
Speaker 2: I know, but I was getting married in the spring,
Speaker 2: so I was like kind of busy. So I got
Speaker 2: an extension. So they're like, actually do now. So that's
Speaker 2: what I did this week instead of finding out which
Speaker 2: patriarch of crime family associates might have been ever at
Speaker 2: Bixby's neighbor in wober, Massachusetts. In nineteen fifty seven. So
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, but I think the fact that Frank Smith
Speaker 2: had parked his car at Louis Venios's house and Venios
Speaker 2: was due in federal court the very next morning, I
Speaker 2: think that does imply the possibility of a relationship between
Speaker 2: these things, you know. And finally, at the end of
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty seven, Frank Smith went to prison on some
Speaker 2: time in jail after his prior arrests when he couldn't
Speaker 2: make bail. But this was the real thing. He's guilty
Speaker 2: of a felony now, and he's staring down the barrel
Speaker 2: of fifteen years. He didn't end up serving his whole sentence.
Speaker 2: He was released in November of nineteen sixty four. And
Speaker 2: while he was in prison, he got his hands on
Speaker 2: some interesting reading material. Someone had been sending him copies
Speaker 2: of the Rockwell Report.
Speaker 3: The first week in January of nineteen sixty five, I
Speaker 3: went to Rolington, Virginia, Tom Command of Rockwell. I'd heard
Speaker 3: about him, I'd read some of the things about him,
Speaker 3: and I'd read some of his rock Werry reports, and
Speaker 3: we were akin in our thanking.
Speaker 2: Just weeks after he got out of prison, Frank Smith
Speaker 2: drove from Massa chooseys to Virginia to meet the man
Speaker 2: whose newsletter he'd been reading in prison. He spent the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties robbing banks and bombing houses for the Mob.
Speaker 2: He must have spent those seven years behind bars planning
Speaker 2: his next big move, because he really didn't hesitate to
Speaker 2: start taking big swings when he got out. Immediately upon
Speaker 2: his return from the Nazi Party headquarters, Frank Smith had
Speaker 2: a face to face meeting with Raymond Patriarca, the head
Speaker 2: of the New England Mafia. Frank wanted to cut Patriarca
Speaker 2: in on a deal, a mutually beneficial arrangement between the
Speaker 2: mafia and the Nazis. You'll have to wait until next
Speaker 2: week to find out how Frank ended up full of
Speaker 2: bullet holes in the midst of a gang war, and
Speaker 2: why Frank's name is on the birth certificate for George
Speaker 2: Lincoln Rockwell's i legitimate daughter. And maybe by next week
Speaker 2: Kull have made some more progress trying to sort out
Speaker 2: exactly what to make of the fact that a Nazi
Speaker 2: in his fake church show up in the financial record.
Speaker 2: It's a corrupt mayor who went to prison for racketeering.
Speaker 2: Weird little Guys is a production of cool Zone Media
Speaker 2: and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded by Me Molly Conger.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Sophie Littman and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 2: show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gaigan. The
Speaker 2: theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email
Speaker 2: me at Weird Little Guy's podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: I will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer.
Speaker 2: It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
Speaker 2: show with other listeners on me Weird Little Guy subreddit.
Speaker 2: Just don't post anything that's going to make you one
Speaker 2: of my weird Little Guys.