WEBVTT - Ep 5: Up All Night to Get lucky 0:00:06.519 --> 0:00:14.840 Novel. Before we begin, a content warning the following episode 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:17.040 contains difficult themes and violence. 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:24.760 The young and able lawyer Thomas E. Dewey appointed special 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:27.400 prosecutor to clean out the city's racketeers. 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:29.880 That's the Dowey. 0:00:30.680 --> 0:00:34.239 You have been given the most difficult task, but the 0:00:34.280 --> 0:00:36.600 opportunity of helping the people of this city. 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:41.559 In the late thirties, the Republican Party produces a promotional film. 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:46.159 It opens on a man, dark slick hair and a 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:50.840 carefully groomed and distinct mustache, talks into a heavy telephone. 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:55.560 According to the no nonsense voiceover, this is Thomas E. 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:56.240 Dewey. 0:00:56.880 --> 0:01:00.440 An office full of workers at their desks enters frame 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:06.399 arranged in neat lines like a classroom. They're all white 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:11.520 men in suits, their hair shiny with palmade. They're busy 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:15.120 going through paperwork, hard at their respective tasks for the day. 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:18.720 Dewey's small, hand picked staff began its attack on the 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:22.520 underworld by perroting out secret records and getting the frightened 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:24.120 victims of the rackets to talk. 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:26.160 The back of a witness's head appears. 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:29.319 The man at the next is the man who hit 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:33.200 my husband on the head with a pipe. The man 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:38.280 directly behind him is the man who's threatened to beat 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:40.720 me and cut my hands off. 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:45.479 This film is a re enactment of Dewey's investigation into 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:50.440 organized crime. Watching these films, you clearly see Dewey as 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:56.320 a man dedicated to showmanship, a man already deeply enamored 0:01:56.360 --> 0:02:01.360 with the creation of his own legacy. Unfortunately, Dewey's hypnotizing 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:04.000 baritone can't cover his stilted acting. 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:07.520 The cops who did that job work day. 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:09.160 And night for a year. 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:14.120 They're entitled to a promotion, and I think they ought 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:14.560 to happen. 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:17.560 Maybe it's a good thing he went into. 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:22.200 Law a mistakenly accumulating evidence. Dewey and his men, working 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:25.440 with city police, begin building up that cases. 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:30.280 Only it wasn't just Dewey and his men responsible for 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:35.120 the investigation. There was one person, one woman in particular, 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:39.320 who was really the mastermind. And for just a moment 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:44.360 so quick you may not even notice, I see her. 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:51.240 While Dewey holds court, face always clear. She sits at 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:56.880 a table with her back to the camera. Eunice hunting 0:02:57.000 --> 0:03:02.280 Carter Good is a seat at the table when no 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:10.079 one acknowledges that you built the table from the teams 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:14.240 at iHeartRadio and novel. I'm Nicole Perkins and this is 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:53.080 the Godmother Episode five, Up all night to get Lucky. 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:57.240 The daytime commute to the Woolworth Building must look familiar 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:01.520 but strange to Unis. She's used to arriving there in 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:05.040 the evening for her law school studies, but now she's 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:12.640 walking into the elevators during the bustle of the day, 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:16.400 and instead of the twenty eighth floor for classes, she 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:19.200 steps out onto the fourteenth floor for work. 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:22.840 When you just got off the elevator, I think she 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:25.120 would have seen a buzz of activity, but it was 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:30.160 pretty low key. There was this air of secrecy about it. 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:34.160 I mean there had to be. Dewey did not want 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:37.960 people to know where they were what they were doing. 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.839 From the plain closed police officers patrolling the building's lobby 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:46.120 to the telephone equipment secured against illegal tapping. There are 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:50.600 tamper proof file cabinets tucked inside a bank vault. Venetian 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:58.160 blinds keep people from spying. It's October nineteen thirty five 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:02.920 and a special prosecution is underway. Dewey has a hand 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:09.159 picked team of twenty attorneys plus investigators clerks, assistants, stenographers, 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:13.200 and a select group of NYPD officers, and of course 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:17.960 Eunice hunting Carter. As Unice walks toward her desk that day, 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:23.160 does she worry about trying to prove herself or does 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:27.200 she worry about appearing too confident? The news of her 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:30.400 appointment to Dewey's team arrived with whispers that it was 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:33.640 her connection to Harlem that earned her spot, and not 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:38.760 her skills or experience. In other words, what she hired 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:43.840 just because she's black. Maybe those whispers helped motivate her, 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:47.159 and there's nothing wrong with using her Harlem background to 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:47.880 move forward. 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:50.719 There were a lot of people in Harlem who were like, no, 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:52.839 I'm not going to talk to Thomas Dewey and his 0:05:52.960 --> 0:05:58.000 other nineteen white male prosecutors about this. Like I'm fine, 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:00.560 we can handle this in our own community. 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:04.040 Access to that community is crucial to Dewey in these 0:06:04.120 --> 0:06:07.919 first few months of his team's investigation, because they are 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:12.000 targeting the numbers racket and at its head the wild, 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:17.719 reckless mobster associate of Lucky Luciano's Dutch Schultz. 0:06:17.520 --> 0:06:20.040 Who would come in and take in control of the 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:24.760 Harlem numbers racket. Essentially strong armed a number of black 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:27.680 men and women in Harlem who'd run their own numbers games. 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:31.159 Dutch is still battling with numbers running Queen Stephanie Saint Clair. 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:35.080 Dutch is a figurehead of Dewey's crusade against organized crime. 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:39.720 His plan use one high profile mobster as the focus, 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:42.000 build him up in the press as the root of 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:47.560 all evil, then quickly take him down. Of course, that 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:51.960 only works if Dewey gets his target and fast. Dutch 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:54.240 is all too aware of this renewed heat on him, 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:57.760 so Dutch creates his own plan. 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:04.040 Hey, we need to kill Tomus Dewey. 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:08.640 But someone unexpected as watching Dewey's back. 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:12.480 Dutch Schultz went to Lucky Luciano and said, hey, we 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:14.080 need to get rid of him because he's trying to 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:14.760 get rid of us. 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:19.160 And Lucky gives Dutch a response that will alter the 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:20.280 course of his life. 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:25.600 Lucky Luciano said, no, we will not kill do it 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:28.880 because if we do that, then they'll really be after us. 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:32.239 Dutch Schultz did not listen. He hired a hitman. 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:41.880 One morning, October twenty fourth, nineteen thirty five, As Eunice 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:44.600 weaves her way across the bustling office to get to 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:48.560 her desk. The clanging sounds of phones ringing is even 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:52.840 more urgent and NonStop than ever before. There is a 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:55.040 shocking development in the mob world. 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:59.160 Unfortunately for dut Schultzer was Dutch Schultz who got assassinated. 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:14.160 Schultz's death was a huge blow for Dewey, Eunice and 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:18.200 Dewey's investigation into Dutch Schultz has hit a sudden dead end. 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:23.480 Literally difficult to imagine just how much of a like, 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:27.960 oh crap moment they had because they were building their 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:29.720 whole case on taking down Schultz. 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:33.400 Dewey needs a new public enemy number one, and it 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:36.640 has to be someone even more high profile than Dutch. 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:39.720 Because Dewey has wasted a lot of time and money 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:43.959 on the Dutch false start. He needs results and soon. 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:47.400 There is, of course, only one person who really fits 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:49.599 the bill as Dutch's replacement. 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:56.840 The new unofficial boss of bosses. 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:04.719 There is a new muck shot from that heroin in 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.959 a hat box drug dealing charge a few decades ago 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:11.800 that Dewey pens on the courtboard in that fourteenth floor office. 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:19.640 Dewey coughed out a prosecution against Charles Lucky Luciano. That 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:23.000 would garner a great deal of publicity, even in a 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:24.120 jaded city. 0:09:24.000 --> 0:09:32.439 Like New York. But what about Eunice, a rookie prosecutor 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:35.280 who's been selected for her a special knowledge about Harlem 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:38.800 and Dutch Schultz. What does she bring to the table now? 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:43.079 Thomas Dewey needs to figure out something to do with her. 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:46.880 He puts her on sort of this dead end project, a. 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:49.040 Beat no one particularly wants. 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:54.320 Carter is primarily tasked with talking to every member of 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:57.320 the New York community who comes in and has a 0:09:57.400 --> 0:09:59.160 complete about prostitution. 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:02.520 And it turns out one thing New Yorkers want to 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:04.319 talk about is prostitution. 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:09.000 It's really easy to say this is sexism or this 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:13.120 is racism. But I also think that Dewey knew that 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:18.120 they needed a woman to talk to people average regular 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:21.600 New Yorkers who walk into the office every single day 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:25.960 complaining about disorderly houses, as they're often referred to at 0:10:25.960 --> 0:10:29.280 the time period. I do think that Dewey respected her 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:33.200 enough to know, Hey, you know this stuff, Let's see 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:40.000 if you can make anything out of it. And she did. 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:43.680 During the fall and into winter of nineteen thirty five, 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:47.880 when citizens entered the Woolworth Building they received directions to. 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:53.000 Unice is listening to these complaints and the resultant paperwork, 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:57.680 supposed to be gruntwork for unis, something to keep her 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:01.840 precious little black female mind occupied while the big boys 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:04.800 did all the real work of the law. Whatever the 0:11:04.880 --> 0:11:07.880 motivation for pushing Units away from the action and into 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:13.000 glorified secretarial work, people from all walks of life are 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:19.200 landing at Unice's desk, businessmen, paroles, and perhaps most importantly, 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:25.120 sex workers themselves. The info coming in is almost overwhelming. 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:30.960 New York's sex work industry is thriving. Units needs to 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:34.800 connect these low level vice complaints to these big shot mobsters, 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:38.880 and she knows there's something and all those complaints she's 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:44.920 receiving something crucial. She just hasn't quite put the jigsaw 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:49.120 puzzle together yet. But Unice doesn't mind having so many small, 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:54.920 seemingly innocuous pieces of info spread across her desk. She 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:59.079 lives for the details, and as more and more tip 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:02.200 offs pile up in front of her, a pattern begins 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:05.720 to emerge. 0:12:07.600 --> 0:12:10.840 She hears about Louis Wiener. Everyone pretty much knew this 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:13.440 guy was a booker for the Brothels. 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:16.280 Eunice recognizes this name from her time at the Women's Court. 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:18.840 Other familiar names keep appearing. 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:21.560 People talk about Abe carp who is one of these 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:24.760 attorneys who she remembers from her time on Women's Court. 0:12:25.480 --> 0:12:28.160 This is a lawyer whose name appeared to be all 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.600 over the booking forms of the sex workers who managed 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:34.080 to avoid successful prosecution. 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:38.360 Carter starts piecing together all this information in. 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:42.959 The women's courts where they prosecute prostitution cases, Eunice Carter 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:46.360 had seen a pattern of corruption that led her to 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:50.480 believe that the world of New York prostitution had been 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:51.760 infiltrated by the mob. 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:58.640 Uni suspects. She's onto something, but she needs more proof. 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:02.319 The caared colleagues down the hall might be able to 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:05.600 get away with hunches and wild goose chases, but she 0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:10.120 knows she needs irrefutable evidence. She heads to the Women's 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:12.720 Court archives to try to tie together more threads. 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:19.800 Her Forte was going through documents and patient so when 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:23.240 she was in the Women's Court, in the prosecutor's office, 0:13:23.720 --> 0:13:28.560 many of the cases involved prostitution, and so she's going 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:32.040 through these records, she's processing them. 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:35.319 She's also reading through her old caseload when she was 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:38.080 at the Women's court and trying to figure out how 0:13:38.080 --> 0:13:41.240 many times certain names come up, how many times certain 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:44.920 alibis come up? How many times does she see the 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:48.400 exact same monetary figures being discussed. 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:53.560 She just starts every once in a while finding the 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:57.840 name of an attorney that isn't expensive attorney. There's two 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:01.080 or three of these. After going through hundreds of these, 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:05.240 she must have gotten to the point where she's thinking, 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:10.960 there's no way these prostitutes could afford these attorneys. She 0:14:11.160 --> 0:14:15.240 brings this up to another person on the team, What 0:14:15.320 --> 0:14:17.040 do you think of this? I think she was thinking, 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:19.440 am I crazy? What do you think of this? And 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:22.320 the other person on the team said, no, there's got 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:23.440 to be something here. 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:34.520 Unice keeps listening to the citizen complaints as they roll in. 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:39.120 She keeps squinting through chicken scratch and blurring ink. Everything 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:42.440 was handwritten or types on a typewriter then no pocket 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:45.400 sized devices with screens you can double tap to zoom in. 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:51.120 Unice is probably way down with file folders of complaints, pens, 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:55.280 writing pads, copies of court documents. I wonder if she 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:58.240 sometimes carries any of her work home before stopping at 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:01.600 the grocery store or butcher, while her coworkers stop at 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:04.400 a bar for a drink, or maybe even one of 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:08.360 the disreputable houses she's cross referencing in all her paperwork. 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:11.960 Painstaking, painstaking work. 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:16.240 But slowly the beginnings of a promising case have begun 0:15:16.320 --> 0:15:17.000 to develop. 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:22.240 She brought that suspicion to Thomas Dewey and said, this 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:25.480 is an area where maybe we can focus our investigation. 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:29.520 She probably knows every response Dewey's team could use to 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:32.800 discredit her idea to focus on VIIs It's just a 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:35.680 bunch of crazies, just a bunch of women. How can 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:38.520 we trust these prostitutes who are probably just trying to 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:41.840 get lesser charges. This is small time stuff compared to 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:46.600 the big mob guys. But she knows differently. Some men 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:49.960 need cameras and a spotlight to fail up in life, 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:53.040 and some women need the trust of their fellow citizens 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:57.360 and a quiet archive to succeed. And Yunis tells Dewey 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:01.880 she is convinced this is how they can get to lucky. 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:03.760 We're not going to charge you with murder, even though 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:06.240 Luciano murdered a lot of people, not even tax evasion. 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:09.720 We don't have the numbers, but we can go after prostitution. 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:11.760 Dewey was initially very skeptical. 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:16.200 Dewey says, no, come on, First of all, the mob's 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:22.160 not involved in prostitution. And second, Dewey, very public relations minded, 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:26.400 said I'm not going after a bunch of poor, penniless 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:28.280 prostitutes in a mob case. 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:29.320 Forget it. 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:34.480 Eunice does not forget it. This is not the first 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.800 time her hard work has been dismissed. If she accepted 0:16:37.800 --> 0:16:41.280 a no every time someone questioned her, she wouldn't have 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:43.520 even made it to Dewey's team in the first place. 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:49.560 Ambition doesn't believe in rejection. That's just a detour. Eunice 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:53.200 knows she's onto something, so she keeps working the leads 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:55.600 and keeps finding undeniable patterns. 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:58.760 She goes back to her friend on the team and said, 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:01.560 there's got to be something here. I just think there is. 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:05.760 Murray Gerfine is one of Yunus's colleagues. Maybe he's a 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:09.720 work friend. As a Jewish Man, he probably also knows 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:13.119 what it's like to have to prove himself constantly, and 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:16.560 maybe Eunice realizes she'll need the support of at least 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:20.560 one man to get Dewey to listen to her. Two outsiders, 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:24.760 one black woman, one Jewish man working together are better 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:29.000 than one, and, as too many working women know, sometimes 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:31.160 you have to get a man to repeat exactly what 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:33.960 you've just said to get other men to listen. 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:38.919 The two of them persuaded Dewey. I mean, they had 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:41.080 to go back to Dewey a couple times, and Dewey 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:43.080 finally said, Okay, maybe there's something here. 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:47.600 But Dewey wants even more evidence, because even if sex 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:50.920 work is connected to the mob, how does that help 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:56.359 tie it to their specific high profile investigation. Well, Eunice 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:57.480 has an answer for that too. 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:07.159 She gets his permission to start wire tapping to piece 0:18:07.200 --> 0:18:10.680 together who these people are, what they know, who works 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:12.919 for whom, and try to figure out who is. 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:13.440 At the top. 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:19.880 Because Luciano, unlike those more high profile flamboyant Irish and 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:23.879 Jewish mobsters of that era, he was surrounded by this 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:25.080 cone of silence. 0:18:27.040 --> 0:18:29.440 But this isn't a case of tapping a few phones 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:33.560 of a few gangsters. This is going to require extensive 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:37.600 wire tapping, and in nineteen thirties New York that means 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:40.240 something a little more complicated than calling up a phone 0:18:40.280 --> 0:18:41.360 company with a warrant. 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:48.120 Dewey ordered Eunice Carter and another man on the team, 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:52.600 Murray Gurfind to essentially create a list of dozens of 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:54.760 people that they wanted to wire tap, and. 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:57.560 Then they have to physically get hardware onto all these 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:02.120 people's phone lines across New York. Sometimes detectives pay or 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:05.800 strong arm telephone repairman to go into buildings and play 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:10.160 small microphones into mouthpieces, or replace old phones with newer 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:11.920 ones with Mike's already installed. 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:14.920 They wiretapped incredibly liberally. 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:19.600 They kick off by wiretapping the bookers and bondsman's offices 0:19:19.600 --> 0:19:23.320 of New York, but soon they're intercepting calls from offices 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:27.520 of mob members too. If there's a phone there, it's 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:31.160 not safe. 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:34.240 Wire tapping laws in the nineteen twenties and thirties were 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:37.440 still very much up in the air, and in New 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:41.840 York wiretapping laws are a lot looser than in most 0:19:41.880 --> 0:19:44.399 of the rest of the country. They took a lot 0:19:44.480 --> 0:19:48.760 of connections through these telephone conversations, thousands of hours of 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:51.920 wiretaps that Unice Carter and the rest of the team 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:54.800 had to sift through in order to do this. 0:19:55.119 --> 0:19:58.280 And as they do, Unice and the team discover more 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:01.959 evidence that unice is suspicions might be correct. 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:05.320 New York prostitution was in the process of being organized 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:07.119 by organized crime. 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:09.640 They're able to tie sex work to the. 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:13.200 Mob one man named Little Baby Pattillo and one man 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:14.840 named Tommy the Bull Pinocchio. 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:17.159 You might recognize that last name as one of the 0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:18.040 Mott Street Boys. 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:21.160 The suspicion was Little Davy and Tommy the Bull were 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:25.240 working for Lucky Luciano, that there was a sole cadrey 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:29.880 of middlemen who were running prostitution and victimizing the prostitutes 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:31.560 and the madams in New York City. 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:33.920 Unis may have felt like they were right on the 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:37.679 edge of the big breakthrough. Here are direct links to 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:40.960 the team's big target, Lucky Luciano. 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:46.879 What she realized is that the gangsters were very vulnerable 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:50.200 on this. Not only was prostitution illegal, but the whole 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:54.399 story of prostitution was fairly brutal and it had such 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:56.120 tabloid qualities to it. 0:20:56.640 --> 0:21:01.080 After months of building all of this up, they finally 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:03.440 talk Dewey into a raid. 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:09.680 The team begins planning in operation that will go down 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:13.480 in history. This isn't going to be the usual kind 0:21:13.480 --> 0:21:17.160 of raid cops running into a single location and arresting 0:21:17.200 --> 0:21:22.720 a handful of people. No, this is something much bigger. 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:47.159 There's so much going on. It is madness. It is chaos. 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:51.840 On the night of February first, nineteen thirty six, Eunice 0:21:51.920 --> 0:21:55.119 Carter arrives yet again on the fourteenth floor of the 0:21:55.119 --> 0:21:58.040 Woolworth Building. She may have been used to all the 0:21:58.040 --> 0:22:01.720 commotion on the floor, but nothing could prepare her for 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:03.800 the scene she sees that night. 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:09.000 Literally, there would have been people just all over floors, benches, 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:13.960 private rooms, not private rooms, everyone just sort of working feverishly. 0:22:14.400 --> 0:22:18.000 No one's got a laptop. In nineteen thirty six, twenty 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:21.800 stenographers are working around the clock with their giant legal 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:24.199 pads and their pencils, with their little notebooks. You've got 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:29.280 people who've brought their typewriters in with them, feverishly taking 0:22:29.359 --> 0:22:32.919 notes of their statements through the night and the early morning. 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:36.520 Keep in mind that this is February in New York, 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:40.960 so it is snowy and disgusting and wet, and people 0:22:41.000 --> 0:22:45.360 are freezing cold. You've got cops in uniform, You've got 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:49.080 plain clothes who were prepared to act as John's. There's 0:22:49.160 --> 0:22:51.400 so much going on. It is madness. 0:22:51.400 --> 0:22:55.520 It is chaos for once. The office is also full 0:22:55.560 --> 0:22:58.960 of other women, eighty eight of them in total, most 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:01.440 of them sex work madams. 0:23:01.840 --> 0:23:05.399 And many of these women have been arrested in the 0:23:05.440 --> 0:23:09.600 middle of a transaction, and so some of them are 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:12.080 wearing coats, and some of them are not wearing coats, 0:23:12.119 --> 0:23:15.520 and some of them have on thousand dollars furs. 0:23:16.080 --> 0:23:19.959 As Eunice stands in that room, absorbing the chaos, I 0:23:20.000 --> 0:23:22.800 wonder if she can tell that this case will be 0:23:22.840 --> 0:23:25.680 the one she'd be remembered for. I wonder if she 0:23:25.760 --> 0:23:29.080 felt proud of herself, if she thought she'd finally be 0:23:29.200 --> 0:23:34.760 recognized for her hard work. All of that night's madness 0:23:35.320 --> 0:23:41.920 starts at precisely eight fifty five PM. 0:23:41.960 --> 0:23:44.200 This is coordinated to the minute. 0:23:44.520 --> 0:23:48.280 One hundred and sixty plain clothes policemen from across New 0:23:48.359 --> 0:23:52.879 York gathered together in Manhattan. The cops are divided so 0:23:52.920 --> 0:23:56.440 that they're working with colleagues they've never worked with before. 0:23:57.000 --> 0:23:59.520 One would be on West fifty seventh Street, one would 0:23:59.520 --> 0:24:01.480 be on each It's thirty six. I mean they would 0:24:01.480 --> 0:24:02.760 just all over the place. 0:24:03.080 --> 0:24:07.680 They're split into teams of two and three. Each team 0:24:08.280 --> 0:24:10.040 is given an envelope. 0:24:09.600 --> 0:24:12.600 With their dress audit, and exactly five minutes of nine, 0:24:12.640 --> 0:24:15.679 they all opened their envelopes and read the instructions inside. 0:24:15.960 --> 0:24:20.480 These instructions dispatch the cops to top secret locations across 0:24:20.480 --> 0:24:23.480 the city, like something out of a modern day reality 0:24:23.520 --> 0:24:26.560 game show. None of them know what they're getting into 0:24:27.480 --> 0:24:29.359 until they open the envelope. 0:24:29.600 --> 0:24:32.920 The instructions said, go to this address and arrest everybody 0:24:32.960 --> 0:24:35.320 inside and bring them to the Woolworth Building. 0:24:36.280 --> 0:24:40.160 The police look at each other. This is clearly an 0:24:40.200 --> 0:24:41.840 operation like no other. 0:24:42.280 --> 0:24:44.480 They want to make sure that when they are arresting, 0:24:44.560 --> 0:24:47.320 they are not just taking women out of brothels. They 0:24:47.400 --> 0:24:51.679 want women across the city caught in the act. 0:24:52.280 --> 0:25:01.080 At nine pm, cops set off. Once they reach their locations, 0:25:01.600 --> 0:25:06.320 they start kicking down doors as they pour up stoops 0:25:06.359 --> 0:25:10.240 and staircases and into apartment buildings across New York. They 0:25:10.280 --> 0:25:16.199 emerge with men, but mostly women, in handcuffs. It's quickly 0:25:16.240 --> 0:25:20.080 apparent the element of surprise has been a success. 0:25:27.560 --> 0:25:31.159 Best we can tell, they do wind up arresting about 0:25:31.160 --> 0:25:35.320 one hundred and ten people. Those individuals are later detained. 0:25:35.640 --> 0:25:40.080 The other like twenty or so are mostly John's. They 0:25:40.080 --> 0:25:42.400 couldn't care less. These guys are not going to help 0:25:42.440 --> 0:25:44.119 them get to Luciano, so they let them go. 0:25:44.800 --> 0:25:49.560 Eighty eight arrests all together. It was a pretty wild night, 0:25:49.840 --> 0:25:51.720 even for a city like New York. 0:25:52.359 --> 0:25:56.000 And now back at the Woolworth Building, as Eunice and 0:25:56.080 --> 0:26:00.199 Dewey survey the scene before them, they're already contemplating the 0:26:00.240 --> 0:26:01.840 next mammoth task ahead. 0:26:02.600 --> 0:26:05.800 The idea was they were going to arrest the madams 0:26:06.160 --> 0:26:10.320 and the prostitutes and hold them as material witnesses and 0:26:10.400 --> 0:26:14.760 force them to give testimony against the middle management types 0:26:15.080 --> 0:26:19.040 Patio and Pinocchio, and ultimately force them to flip and 0:26:19.240 --> 0:26:22.920 implicate Lucky. Luciana was the head of prostitution in New York. 0:26:23.720 --> 0:26:27.760 Getting sex workers to snitch is no small feat because 0:26:27.800 --> 0:26:30.560 they've become used to a specific type of mob protection 0:26:30.720 --> 0:26:31.680 from law enforcement. 0:26:32.119 --> 0:26:34.280 The women were used to being arrested. They all had 0:26:34.280 --> 0:26:37.119 been arrested dozens of times, so they assumed it was 0:26:37.160 --> 0:26:39.959 business as usual. They weren't going to cooperate. They wouldn't 0:26:39.960 --> 0:26:42.880 give their real names. They were blowing the prosecutors off. 0:26:43.080 --> 0:26:45.520 A fair chunk of their earnings goes to the Mob 0:26:45.600 --> 0:26:48.960