WEBVTT - Disorganized Crime, Pt. 1 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:02.880 Cool Zone Media. 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:08.200 In December of twenty eighteen, a jury in Charlottesville, Virginia 0:00:08.360 --> 0:00:12.399 returned a guilty verdict in the trial of James Alexfields Junior. 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:16.520 They recommended a sentence of life in prison for the 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:19.560 murder of Heather Hire and another four hundred and nineteen 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:21.880 years for the wounding of members of the crowd of 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:25.560 peaceful demonstrators he'd rammed with his car after a Nazi 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:29.520 rally the previous summer. I remember sitting in that courtroom 0:00:29.720 --> 0:00:33.040 when the verdict was read aloud. It was filled to capacity. 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:36.040 I could barely write in my notebook for the lack 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:40.280 of elbow room almost usually empty wooden benches. This was 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:44.519 big news. Reporters from outlets all over the country, the 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:48.720 world even had descended on Charlottesville to write about this trial, 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:53.040 and beyond the walls of my local courtroom, reporters who 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:55.800 couldn't make it to the trial in person were writing 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:59.720 about it too. Every time, Charlottesville's back in the news 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:03.480 for all the wrong reasons. Little newspapers and towns you've 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:06.720 never heard of look for local angles. On the aftermath 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:11.000 of that Nazi rally, they interview middle school classmates of 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:14.399 men who were identified in photos of violent mobs that 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:18.040 beat students with torches and bloodied members of the clergy 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:22.800 in a public park. After that verdict was in in 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:26.560 December of twenty eighteen, in a tiny town in May, 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:31.120 eight hundred miles away from Charlottesville, a reporter from the 0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:35.640 Ellsworth American found her local angle as front pages of 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:39.479 newspapers everywhere were once again filled with pictures of Nazis. 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:41.720 She paid a visit to a Nazi who had been 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:46.080 living in their midst in Maine for decades. He hadn't 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:49.840 marched in Charlottesville. His marching days are long. 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:56.080 Passed, but at ninety eight years old, Frank Smith still 0:01:56.120 --> 0:02:00.360 had fond memories of his close friendship with Commander George 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:01.240 Lincoln Rockwell. 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:22.600 I'm my conguered and this is weird. Little guys. You 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:27.120 probably thought we were moving on from the American Nazi Party. 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:31.880 I thought I was done too. I never even really 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:34.799 had much interest in writing about the party's founder, George 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:39.119 Lincoln Rockwell at all. I did four episodes in three 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:42.520 weeks about his assassination and a whole episode about his 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:46.480 weird funeral. How much could there really be left to 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:52.360 say about the circumstances surrounding one man's death a lot, 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:55.960 as it turns out, and I was willing to let 0:02:56.000 --> 0:03:00.240 it lie, to leave some stones unturned, to leave some 0:03:00.320 --> 0:03:04.639 stories for another day, move on for now, and put 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:07.280 a pin in some of these events, to revisit down 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:10.120 the road with a different weird little guy as our 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:15.720 focal point. There are so many side characters in the 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:18.760 story of the American Nazi Party who warrant their own episodes. 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:22.720 I have no doubt that I will eventually subject you 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:26.400 to God, probably at least a month's worth of episodes 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:31.720 about William Luther Pearce. And obviously eventually we'll have to 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:35.520 talk about James Mason. Before he was an elderly pedophile 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:39.600 living in government housing in Denver and advising young terrorists, 0:03:40.760 --> 0:03:44.040 he was a teenage boy who joined the American Nazi Party, 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:49.320 and Ralph Forbes had a long, strange career that I'd 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:52.160 like to dig into. So I know we aren't done 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:55.680 with these characters, and I know I can't get lost 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:58.680 down every rabbit hole while I'm just trying to get 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:02.440 across the finish line on one story. But there was 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:08.240 one strange little side quest that I couldn't let go 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:17.200 of Frank Smith. Something about Frank just wouldn't let me 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:20.720 mark him down in my notes as something to come 0:04:20.760 --> 0:04:25.359 back to later. He was setting off my weird little 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:29.599 guy radar in a way I could not ignore. And 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:34.400 I'll tell you my instincts were not wrong. I found 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:41.440 dynamite organized crime, FBI wiredtap memos about mafia hits, a 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:45.520 fake church, a nazi's mistress having a secret baby under 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:50.480 a fake name, And for some reason, the disgraced mayor 0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:55.279 of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, if he listened to the last 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:59.240 five episodes, the ones about Rockwell's murder and his funeral, 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:03.560 you heard a little bit about Frank Smith. You even 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:07.680 heard from Frank himself in clips from interviews over the years. 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:12.520 He very publicly insisted that John Patler was not guilty 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:16.680 of the murder of George Lincoln Rockwell. He set it 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:19.520 on the stand at Patler's trial in nineteen sixty seven, 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:23.400 and he was still saying it fifty years later, in 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:26.839 a rambling interview with a South African neo Nazi in 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:30.600 twenty sixteen. And you might remember him from the dramatic 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:35.120 shootout with Christopher Vidyevitch in nineteen sixty eight, an incident 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:39.400 that Frank believed was an attempted assassination to prevent him 0:05:39.440 --> 0:05:44.200 from getting to the real truth about Rockwell's murder. In 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:46.760 the two biographies of Rockwell that I read while I 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:51.599 was researching John Patler, Frank Smith really just gets a 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:55.360 few passing mentions as a member of the American Nazi 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:59.680 Party and as a witness at Patler's trial. But when 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:03.800 I start started reading the actual trial transcripts, something caught 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:09.960 my eye. I can't quite describe it. He talks like 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:13.120 a con man. I don't know how else to put it. 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:17.760 I've sat through a fair number of trials, and I've 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:22.440 read thousands of pages of trial transcripts, over a thousand 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:26.760 in this case alone. And most people aren't great on 0:06:26.839 --> 0:06:33.360 the stand. They're nervous. They give short answers, and when 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:37.520 you press them, they sort of backtrack. They don't want 0:06:37.520 --> 0:06:41.400 to commit to a lot of specific, hard details, especially 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:45.560 if you push hard and they get rattled on cross examination. 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:53.880 Most people do, it's normal, But Frank Smith was chatty 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:57.320 up there. I mean, he talked up a storm on 0:06:57.360 --> 0:07:02.520 the witness stand. He was giving answers that spanned multiple 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:06.520 pages of the transcript without interruption from the attorney asking 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:12.600 him the questions. He claimed to recollect specific verbatim quotes 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:18.440 from long conversations, but he would never quite commit to 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:22.960 the specifics when it came to exactly where he was 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:29.840 at any particular time. Specifically, there's no proof of where 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:35.800 he was or wasn't at three pm on June twenty seventh, 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:41.600 nineteen sixty seven. There's only so much they could ask 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:45.240 him about June twenty seventh, nineteen sixty seven. At that trial, 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:50.080 he wasn't on trial, and George Lincoln Rockwell didn't die 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:54.600 on June twenty seventh. Rockwell died on August twenty fifth, 0:07:55.080 --> 0:08:00.000 nineteen sixty seven, and John Patler killed him. But Rockwell 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:05.280 had survived a prior assassination attempt just two months before 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:08.480 his death. As he was pulling into the driveway with 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:13.000 the Nazi Party barracks in Arlington, Virginia that afternoon, someone 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:18.240 fired a single shot at him, but they missed, and 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:23.520 I assumed, Well, that was John Patler, right, that makes sense. 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:27.680 At his trial, a witness said that he saw him 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:31.200 doing target practice in July, the month before the murder. 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:34.559 In August, So you can see how it would make 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:38.160 sense to assume that he tried to shoot Rockwell in June. 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:43.800 He missed, he practiced some, he tried again. His aim 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:49.160 was better the second time. Rockwell's dead makes sense. When 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:53.600 Rockwell wrote about the assassination attempt in his newsletter, he 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:56.440 said he didn't see who did it, But at trial, 0:08:56.720 --> 0:09:01.600 Mantius Cole testified that Rockwell had privately confined him that 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:05.720 the shooter was John Patler. William Luther Pierce years later, 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:10.280 told his own biographer the same thing. Rockwell told me 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:14.120 he saw him, and it was Patler, And like I said, 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:17.760 it makes perfect sense that that's who it would have been. 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:22.680 But I don't think it was. I don't think John 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:25.040 Patler was the only person who took a shot at 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:27.680 George Lincoln Rockwall in the summer of nineteen sixty seven. 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:31.960 Now we've covered this, but Patler's alibi on the day 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:36.160 of the actual murder was no good. His wife and 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:38.800 his father in law testified to his schedule that morning, 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:41.400 he'd been running errands with his wife. He couldn't possibly 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:44.280 have gotten to the murder scene. But when push comes 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:49.240 to shove, the times weren't right, and witnesses couldn't really 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:52.880 be sure when and where they'd seen him. I still 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:56.400 believe that he fired the shot that killed Rockwell, but 0:09:56.480 --> 0:09:59.880 on the day that someone shot at Rockwell and missed. 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:05.480 On June twenty seventh, John Patler was in Washington, d c. 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:12.160 Taking a drawing class. People saw him. His name was 0:10:12.200 --> 0:10:15.160 on the sign in sheet, and a witness testified to 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:19.960 having taken attendance that day himself. This wasn't a member 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:23.880 of the American Nazi Party or his wife. This is 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:27.240 someone with no reason to lie for him. John Patler 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:30.920 couldn't have been in Arlington on the afternoon of June 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:38.200 twenty seventh when Rockwell saw this would be assassin sprinting away. 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:42.640 I think he did recognize him. According to the college 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:45.120 student who was in the car with him when this happened, 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:48.319 he cried out in surprise when he saw the man, 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:54.080 and what he said was the Holy Father. It's an 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:57.720 odd sort of thing to yell, you know. It's not 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:03.080 quite oh my God or Jesus Christ, things you might 0:11:03.160 --> 0:11:06.839 say if someone was shooting at you. But the Holy 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:11.200 Father isn't really a thing people say, at least not 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:14.679 as far as I know. I mean, it is what 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:18.160 Catholics call the pope, but they don't use it as 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:23.080 an exclamation. And Rockwell was raised Methodist anyway, The young 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:26.760 man who heard him yell this didn't really think much 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:30.840 of it. He didn't know that it was someone's name. 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:35.880 It was a nickname that Rockwell had given Frank Smith, 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:39.000 and it didn't have all that much to do with religion. 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:44.680 Frank Smith really was holy in the sense that a 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:47.640 mafia hit man had put five bullet holes in him 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:50.800 right around the time he joined the American Nazi Party. 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:57.240 But let's start at the beginning. Francis Joseph Smith the 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:01.680 second was born in Massachusetts in December nineteen twenty, just 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:04.880 a few months after his parents' marriage. According to the 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:07.600 nineteen forty census, when he was nineteen, he was working 0:12:07.640 --> 0:12:10.000 as a waiter and living at home with his parents 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:14.360 and two younger siblings in Medford, Massachusetts. It's hard to 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:16.360 say what he got up to in the nineteen forties, 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:18.840 but when he was arrested for bank robbery for the 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:22.800 first time in nineteen fifty two, newspapers reported his occupation 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:28.640 as a boxing promoter. Maybe everybody else already knew this, 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:31.760 and I'm going to sound silly, but I never gave 0:12:31.760 --> 0:12:34.600 it much thought until I was writing about it this week. 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:40.160 Boxing was run by organized crime. I mean, I had 0:12:40.160 --> 0:12:46.200 this vague notion about fixed fights and sports betting, but 0:12:46.280 --> 0:12:53.439 in the nineteen fifties, the mafia ran boxing top to bottom. 0:12:53.600 --> 0:12:56.280 I mean, they had a monopoly on the sport that 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:59.440 the Department of Justice had to get involved with. They 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:03.240 didn't just promote the fights, fix the fights, and profit 0:13:03.280 --> 0:13:07.880 off the fights. They also coerced young boxers to do 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:11.800 a little work outside the ring, off the books, and 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:15.600 they were recruited to work as street level enforcers. And 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:19.160 not having that knowledge top of mind, as I was 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:22.880 going over all these old newspaper clippings, it seemed so 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:26.320 strange to me that every time Frank Smith got arrested 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:30.800 in the nineteen fifties, all of his named associates seemed 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:36.400 to be current or former boxers or boxing promoters. I thought, 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:39.199 you know, maybe the boys met at the boxing gym. 0:13:40.040 --> 0:13:42.559 But given the context of New York and Boston in 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:46.000 the fifties, the fact that all of these accused bank 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:51.640 robbers and murderers are also boxers is really just short 0:13:51.679 --> 0:14:08.760 of absolute proof. That the crimes were mafia related. Admittedly, 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:11.080 I did not have time this week to learn about 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:14.960 a whole new genre of terrible guy. I mean, I 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:18.960 saw every episode of The Sopranos, obviously, but I don't 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:23.280 actually know that much about organized crime, especially outside of 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:27.000 the big New York names, because we're talking about Boston 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:31.640 and Providence and there is apparently a lot to know, 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:35.440 And I bet the story would have made more sense 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:40.840 faster if I had some pre existing knowledge of this world. 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:44.560 But this isn't my usual kind of guy, so we'll 0:14:44.560 --> 0:14:48.640 have to make do. My apologies to any listeners from 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:53.120 New England who know the deep lore. In February of 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:57.320 nineteen fifty two, a twenty four year old pants salesman 0:14:57.440 --> 0:15:01.880 named Arthur Schuster was riding the subway in Brooklyn when 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:05.680 he saw someone who looked familiar. It wasn't someone he knew, 0:15:06.760 --> 0:15:09.600 but he recognized the man from the wanted poster that 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:13.320 had been sitting in his office for months. It was 0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:17.640 the missing bank robber Willie Sutton. He followed Sutton off 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:21.400 the train and alerted the police to his location, leading 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:23.240 to the arrest of a man who was on the 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:28.560 very first FBI's most wanted the list. A few days 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:32.760 after Willy Sutton was arrested, Arthur Schuster went to the press. 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:35.760 He believed that he'd been cheated out of a cash 0:15:35.840 --> 0:15:39.960 reward for this tip. It turned out the seventy thousand 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:43.960 dollars reward was just an urban legend, but it was 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:49.000 too late in his quest for credit. Every newspaper in 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:53.600 New York City had already run his picture. Two weeks later, 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:55.960 he was shot in the head outside of his apartment. 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:01.320 Police and FBI were scrambling to find the kiseller, and 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:05.960 in May they thought they had. They arrested Harvey Bostani, 0:16:06.720 --> 0:16:09.720 a known associate of Willie Sutton's and a career bank 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:14.040 robber in his own right. They didn't exactly have enough 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:17.240 to charge Bastani in connection with the murder, but they 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:19.480 were able to hold him for questioning because he was 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:23.920 already wanted in connection with several armed robberies, a handful 0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:27.840 of burglaries involving safe cracking and the theft of nearly 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:32.200 thirty thousand dollars worth of fur coats. And once they 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:37.760 had Bastanian custody, they started rolling up his associates. Over 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:40.320 the course of two weeks. In May of nineteen fifty two, 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:46.400 the FBI arrested twelve men in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Chicago, 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:49.520 all of whom were believed to have been in Bastani's 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:54.960 bank robbery. Gay Arthur Schuster's murder was never actually solved, 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:58.880 although years later a mob informant would claim that the 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:04.600 hit had been ordered by a Gambino family boss. One 0:17:04.640 --> 0:17:07.080 of the first members of Bastani's gang to get picked 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:12.800 up was William Smith, Frank's younger brother, a boxer and 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:18.120 part time bartender. At William's house, police found several suitcases 0:17:18.160 --> 0:17:21.960 full of loaded guns and ammunition, a suitcase full of 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:26.840 burglary tools, a sawt off shotgun, a machine gun, disguises 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:33.399 including a clerical caller, investments and fake police uniforms, explosives, 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:37.560 and a box full of stolen license plates. When they 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:40.439 searched the bar where he worked nights, they found a 0:17:40.480 --> 0:17:44.800 cash of dynamite. Shortly after the raid at William's apartment, 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:47.600 the FBI announced they were looking for his brother too. 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:50.639 Frank was one of the last of the group to 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:54.040 be arrested, and both brothers were charged in connection with 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:59.359 a bank robbery in Medford Massachusetts. Despite Harvey Bestani turning 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:04.000 state's witness and testifying against them, both Smith brothers were 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:09.000 acquitted at trial for that Medford bank robbery. Unfortunately, for Frank, 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:13.560 the acquittal in February of nineteen fifty three wasn't the 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:18.320 end of his troubles, because after that first arrest, things 0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:22.879 kind of snowballed. In January of nineteen fifty three, just 0:18:23.000 --> 0:18:25.639 weeks before his bank robbery trial was set to begin, 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:31.440 Frank Smith was indicted on new charges. New York City 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:35.160 attorney Saul Rosenblatt identified Frank Smith as the man who'd 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:37.840 fired three shots at him on Park Avenue in March 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:41.040 of nineteen fifty two, hitting him once in the thigh. 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:44.320 When he went to trial in New York for the shooting, 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:48.480 Frank Smith admitted that sure he was in New York 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:51.280 City on the day that Rosenblatt was shot, but it 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:55.240 was for business. A longtime friend of Frank's testified that 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:59.719 Frank and his co defendant, a mafia associate named Sammy Lindon, 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:03.760 had showed up at his hotel room that night, bragged 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:07.320 about shooting Rosenblat, and paid him to steal a car 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:11.520 that they could use to leave the city. On the stand, 0:19:11.920 --> 0:19:15.440 the victim positively identified Frank as the man he saw 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:21.080 shoot him in broad daylight, but the jury acquitted him. 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:26.200 It's possible the jury was just confused about the lack 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:30.560 of a clear motive presented at trial. Immediately after the shooting, 0:19:31.240 --> 0:19:35.159 newspapers in New York ran wild with speculation that the 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:39.200 attempted murder was connected to Rosenblat's involvement in a particular 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:44.480 high profile case. He'd recently been named the sole beneficiary 0:19:44.720 --> 0:19:48.720 in one of his clients' wills, and the dead woman's 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:53.560 sister was contesting the will in court. It didn't help 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:57.640 that the dead woman in question was Eleanor Morgan Satterly, 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:03.320 the granddaughter of J. P. Morgan. Yes, that JP Morgan, 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:06.520 the one whose name is on your bank. But as 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:11.160 the investigation into the shooting continued, police were less convinced 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:14.959 that Satterly's will had been the cause, and at trial, 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:20.160 the judge reminded the jury that proving motive isn't necessary 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:23.800 for a conviction. I think any criminal lawyer will tell 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:28.879 you though, juries are troubled by a crime without a motive. 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:34.480 But it's also very possible that those twelve New York 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:38.240 City jurors knew well enough not to be seen in 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:42.480 open court poking their nose into the business of organized crime. 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:47.800 No one was ever convicted for shooting Saul Rosenblock, and 0:20:47.840 --> 0:20:51.720 I'm pretty sure everyone involved is dead now, so I 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:57.000 think it's safe to offer you my theory. Frank Smith 0:20:57.000 --> 0:21:01.640 and Sammy Lindon did shoot Saul Rosenblock, but it had 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:05.679 nothing to do with J. P. Morgan's granddaughter. Saul Rosenblatt 0:21:05.760 --> 0:21:09.960 had other clients he was involved in other ongoing litigation, 0:21:11.080 --> 0:21:14.640 and there was one client he dropped as soon as 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:17.760 he got out of the hospital after the shooting. He 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:22.040 withdrew as counsel of record in a paternity suit. He'd 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.920 been representing a nightclub singer named Virginia Summers in her 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:30.520 lawsuit against a Boston lawyer named Joseph Sachs, and at 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:33.920 his trial, Frank Smith was asked about a recent flight 0:21:34.000 --> 0:21:39.040 he'd taken to London. A month before the shooting. He 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:42.840 flew to England, but he insisted that this had to 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:47.280 do with his boxing promotion and nothing to do with 0:21:47.640 --> 0:21:56.000 following Virginia Summers, who had also recently flown to London. Now, 0:21:56.040 --> 0:22:03.199 I can't find any source that concrete, openly and plainly 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:08.679 accuses Joseph Sachs of working for the mob, But you 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:12.439 can make up your own mind what you think. Sax 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:16.040 had previously represented Frank's co defendant, Sammy Lindon, in an 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:21.119 armed robbery case that was definitely mob related, and Sax 0:22:21.160 --> 0:22:24.400 would later represent Frank in a case involving a bombing 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:31.800 that was definitely mob related. Joseph Sachs himself was later 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:37.520 accused of some pretty serious mob related crime. He was 0:22:38.200 --> 0:22:42.520 to be fair acquitted at trial, but in nineteen sixty 0:22:42.560 --> 0:22:45.439 two he was one of several men indicted on charges 0:22:45.480 --> 0:22:50.520 of trafficking thousands of pounds of heroine. The bust was 0:22:50.560 --> 0:22:54.520 part of the investigation into the French Connection, a global 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:58.200 network run by the Corsican mafia that moved heroin through 0:22:58.280 --> 0:23:01.640 France and into the United States, where it was then 0:23:01.720 --> 0:23:06.520 distributed by organized crime outfits in major cities. Sacks was 0:23:06.640 --> 0:23:09.320 arrested in connection with an operation that had been taking 0:23:09.359 --> 0:23:15.640 advantage of the diplomatic immunity afforded to ambassadors. The Guatemalan 0:23:15.640 --> 0:23:19.600 ambassador to Belgium, a man named Mauricio Rosal, had been 0:23:19.640 --> 0:23:23.480 acting as their courier bringing fifty kilos of heroin at 0:23:23.480 --> 0:23:28.040 a time into New York City in his suitcase and 0:23:28.119 --> 0:23:32.359 what I think is a pretty rare move. Mauricio Rosal 0:23:32.520 --> 0:23:37.760 was denied diplomatic immunity and he went to prison. But 0:23:37.920 --> 0:23:44.440 like I said, Joseph Sachs was acquitted. There's a lot 0:23:44.440 --> 0:23:48.840 of allegedly, a lot of maybe a lot of fill 0:23:48.880 --> 0:23:53.520 in the blank with your own most reasonable assumptions. The 0:23:53.600 --> 0:23:57.879 jury said Frank Smith didn't shoot Saul Rosenblat. A jury 0:23:57.880 --> 0:24:01.600 said Joseph Sachs wasn't in involved in a decade long 0:24:01.680 --> 0:24:05.080 scheme to move thousands of pounds of heroin between the 0:24:05.080 --> 0:24:08.240 Corsic and Mafia and the mafia in New York and Boston. 0:24:09.359 --> 0:24:13.359 And I guess, legally speaking, these are all just a 0:24:13.440 --> 0:24:16.960 series of unrelated facts about cases that never got solved. 0:24:18.280 --> 0:24:22.560 And maybe Saul Rosenblat dropped Virginia Summer's case because he 0:24:22.640 --> 0:24:26.159 wasn't feeling well after the gunshot wound, not because he 0:24:26.200 --> 0:24:30.560 thought Joseph Sachs had him shot. As far as I 0:24:30.600 --> 0:24:34.399 can tell, the prosecutor didn't argue at trial that it 0:24:34.480 --> 0:24:37.879 was a paid hit. But it is worth noting that 0:24:37.960 --> 0:24:42.280 at Frank's bail hearing, the prosecutor told the judge that 0:24:42.320 --> 0:24:47.919 Frank had been hired by people in Massachusetts to kill Rosenblatt. 0:24:48.840 --> 0:24:53.120 He called him a plain and simple killer for hire. 0:24:54.600 --> 0:24:57.359 When the jury returned a not guilty verdict for Frank 0:24:57.400 --> 0:25:02.199 in the Rosenblack case, the judge was visibly angry. Newspapers 0:25:02.240 --> 0:25:06.680 quote him scolding the jury, saying, it is my opinion 0:25:06.680 --> 0:25:10.080 that you have been fooled. It is strange to me 0:25:10.160 --> 0:25:14.080 how grown men can be so naive. Again, you never 0:25:14.160 --> 0:25:17.320 know why a jury makes the decisions they make. But 0:25:18.119 --> 0:25:22.240 I don't think they were fools or naive. I don't 0:25:22.240 --> 0:25:26.479 think they were tricked into thinking Frank was innocent. I 0:25:26.480 --> 0:25:29.080 think they knew exactly what they were looking at, and 0:25:29.160 --> 0:25:32.760 they didn't want to be involved in mafia business. The 0:25:32.800 --> 0:25:37.640 newspaper that quoted the judge's angry outburst doesn't say whether 0:25:37.680 --> 0:25:40.560 the judge looked amused when Frank Smith was arrested as 0:25:40.560 --> 0:25:43.639 he tried to leave the courtroom. He'd been acquitted in 0:25:43.680 --> 0:25:48.199 New York, but he was wanted in New Jersey for 0:25:48.320 --> 0:25:52.959 robbing a bank in Newark with a machine gun. So 0:25:53.040 --> 0:25:55.159 New York City held him in their jail for a 0:25:55.200 --> 0:25:59.320 few weeks pending extradition, which is pretty normal, and he 0:25:59.440 --> 0:26:03.400 fought the extradition, which is a little less normal. I mean, 0:26:03.960 --> 0:26:06.680 you have a right to try. It's just not typical. 0:26:07.720 --> 0:26:10.840 But it worked. He's in this jail in New York 0:26:10.880 --> 0:26:15.440 City for a couple of weeks, no news, and then 0:26:15.520 --> 0:26:19.680 suddenly there's just a passing mention in the Newark Star 0:26:19.760 --> 0:26:24.080 Ledger two days before Christmas that the prosecutor changed his mind. 0:26:24.400 --> 0:26:27.119 The charges have been dropped and there are no other suspects, 0:26:29.520 --> 0:26:33.119 so to put all of this in order. On March sixth, 0:26:33.240 --> 0:26:37.840 nineteen fifty two, someone who looked just like Frank Smith 0:26:38.640 --> 0:26:42.600 shot Saul Rosenblatt on Park Avenue. Two days after that, 0:26:43.560 --> 0:26:48.040 someone unknown shot Arnold Schuster in the head outside of 0:26:48.040 --> 0:26:51.680 his apartment in New York City. Two days after that, 0:26:52.160 --> 0:26:54.600 a couple of guys who might have been the Smith 0:26:54.680 --> 0:26:59.840 brothers robbed a bank in Medford, Massachusetts. In April, someone 0:26:59.800 --> 0:27:02.920 who looked just like Frank Smith robbed a bank in 0:27:03.000 --> 0:27:07.600 Newark in May. Smith and a dozen associates of known 0:27:07.640 --> 0:27:12.119 bank robber Harvey Bistani were all arrested in January of 0:27:12.160 --> 0:27:15.720 nineteen fifty three, Frank is charged for shooting Saul Rosenblatt. 0:27:16.280 --> 0:27:19.520 In February, he's acquitted on that first bank robbery. In November, 0:27:19.560 --> 0:27:21.760 he's acquitted on the shooting, but he's arrested for the 0:27:21.760 --> 0:27:25.399 New Jersey bank robbery, and by December of nineteen fifty 0:27:25.400 --> 0:27:29.679 three he's free and clear. He was accused of robbing 0:27:29.720 --> 0:27:32.439 banks in two different states and trying to murder a 0:27:32.480 --> 0:27:35.960 man in a third, crimes that all took place within 0:27:36.440 --> 0:27:39.800 mere weeks in the spring of nineteen fifty two, but 0:27:39.880 --> 0:27:44.159 he celebrated the new year as a freeman in nineteen 0:27:44.240 --> 0:27:47.679 fifty four. I can't pick him back up again in 0:27:47.720 --> 0:27:52.520 the archives until May of fifty seven, when he's arrested again. 0:27:53.400 --> 0:27:56.320 But when he was arrested in nineteen fifty seven for 0:27:56.400 --> 0:28:00.640 bombing a home in Wooburn, Massachusetts, police in the neighboring 0:28:00.680 --> 0:28:06.080 towns expressed their interest in questioning him about similar unsolved 0:28:06.119 --> 0:28:23.879 bombings over the last few years. Now, no one was 0:28:23.920 --> 0:28:27.760 ever convicted in the first three bombings police suspected Frank 0:28:27.800 --> 0:28:31.040 Smith was involved in. In June of nineteen fifty four, 0:28:31.920 --> 0:28:35.920 four bombs exploded inside the Chelsea, Massachusetts home of boxing 0:28:35.960 --> 0:28:40.280 promoter Sam Silverman. If you know a lot about old 0:28:40.320 --> 0:28:44.600 school boxing promoters, you've heard of Sam Silverman. And if 0:28:44.600 --> 0:28:47.280 you don't know anything about old school boxing promoters, you 0:28:47.320 --> 0:28:51.160 don't care who Sam Silverman is. But he had recently 0:28:51.200 --> 0:28:54.160