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Speaker 1: Previously on Cook County, they're.
Speaker 3: Reporting this afternoon on the worst commercial air disaster in
Speaker 3: the United States history.
Speaker 1: A tragic plane crash gave Ken a new direction.
Speaker 3: That's when I decided wanted to be a paramedic firefighter.
Speaker 3: I figured that's my career. Now, I'm going to do this.
Speaker 1: And Ken fell for a club girl named Honey.
Speaker 4: I'd see that big smile on her. Everything went away,
Speaker 4: all the bad stuff went away.
Speaker 1: Ter force broke out across the city.
Speaker 4: There was a couple of times to take over the clubs. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it was a fucking gun battle that broke out.
Speaker 1: In amidst all the chaos, Kenny made his exit.
Speaker 4: So I knew that was my cue, and I took
Speaker 4: it and I was gone. I was gone.
Speaker 1: My name is Kyle Tequila. Welcome to Crook County.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, Crook County.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's no doubt about that. It's a den of thieves.
Speaker 6: The administration is a den of thieves.
Speaker 3: Technically, I'm out of the mob, but I'm still doing
Speaker 3: shaving ship with the fire department, cover up fucking rugs,
Speaker 3: and I raised my family doing.
Speaker 1: That episode seven. The devil won't leave me alone.
Speaker 3: I really wanted to get back in the civilian life.
Speaker 3: I was ready for it. I was ready for it. Man,
Speaker 3: I wanted to get back into civilian life. You have
Speaker 3: to understand that. No, it's like anything. It was just like,
Speaker 3: thank God it's here. I got a job and I'm
Speaker 3: in a fire department.
Speaker 4: I got a job. I got a W two. You know,
Speaker 4: I gotta pay taxes on the grid. Yeah, I'm on
Speaker 4: the grid, baby. You know. I was all excited.
Speaker 3: I was so I just because I didn't want to
Speaker 3: expose you guys, said any of that shit man to
Speaker 3: anywhere near that ship. So no, there was no nothing.
Speaker 3: I just fell right into it. It was natural. Got
Speaker 3: back together with your mom, lived together, got married. I said, listen,
Speaker 3: I I just finally decided, I'm gonna listen, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: spend the rest of my.
Speaker 4: Life with this girl. I know she wants to have kids,
Speaker 4: so let's just get this over with.
Speaker 3: I'm getting older. I'm with the departments now. Now, now
Speaker 3: I'm with the departments. Now I'm with fire department. And
Speaker 3: I said, let's start having a life, start having a
Speaker 3: normal life.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: He had a Friday night wedding, big celebration because people
Speaker 7: are off of work. You know, it's Friday night. It
Speaker 7: was a good night to have a wedding. I think
Speaker 7: everybody's in the party mood. And Kathy was there. She
Speaker 7: was one of my bridesmaids. And we were having fun, fun, fun.
Speaker 7: And finally after we were married, and Ken went to
Speaker 7: Minnesota for his paramedic you know training. He was there
Speaker 7: night once and then he came back. And when he
Speaker 7: came back, he says, let's start a family. And that
Speaker 7: night you were conceived. He was like king bang boom, yeah,
Speaker 7: and Kyle, my son, Kyle, was conceived. And nine months later,
Speaker 7: on January twenty ninth, nineteen eighty five, I gave birth
Speaker 7: to a beautiful baby.
Speaker 3: Boy, had you life went on for eighteen years or
Speaker 3: nineteen years, twenty years?
Speaker 1: And life did go on and it was good. A
Speaker 1: few years after I was born, we welcomed baby Corey
Speaker 1: into the family. Mom retired from work to focus on
Speaker 1: raising the kids, and Dad was full time at the firehouse.
Speaker 1: It couldn't have been more different from the nightmare Ken
Speaker 1: was living only a few years prior. Just a regular
Speaker 1: boring suburban family doing regular boring family shit, exactly how
Speaker 1: wanted it.
Speaker 8: I will always say that my childhood was fucking fantastic.
Speaker 1: You remember my brother Corey, our hockey days.
Speaker 8: I mean they would travel fucking hundreds of miles, you know,
Speaker 8: on weekends, get us hotel rooms and you know, we
Speaker 8: just we at the time, it was bliss.
Speaker 1: It was perfect, Well, maybe not exactly perfect.
Speaker 4: Do you remember him beating.
Speaker 8: The shit out of another dad, an opponent's dad.
Speaker 1: You know, I couldn't, I couldn't find the specifics though
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, he got pissed at one of like the kids
Speaker 9: on the other team, right right, because he was being
Speaker 9: like a little shit.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and the dad was the dad of that kid,
Speaker 9: was not happy that Ken because he Ken was coach.
Speaker 9: Coach Ken, he was the courts of your hockey team.
Speaker 9: So the dad on this other team was not happy
Speaker 9: that Ken was calling out his son. So he comes
Speaker 9: sauntering over to the bench to have borders of Ken,
Speaker 9: and he tries to dive over the bench. He tries
Speaker 9: to jump pull himself up over in to the bench
Speaker 9: like the other guy. Yeah, the dad tried to like
Speaker 9: jump into the box to go after Ken, and Ken
Speaker 9: just lay the motherfucker.
Speaker 1: Now could imagine.
Speaker 9: And and of course, like the whole place is going
Speaker 9: like bananas at this point, like it's pure chaos. And
Speaker 9: then the cops come, when the fire apartment comes and
Speaker 9: of course walks away.
Speaker 1: He knows there's witnesses.
Speaker 9: He's like, he tried to come in my box and
Speaker 9: protecting my kids, and they let him go and they
Speaker 9: arrested the other guy assault. It's just so amazing.
Speaker 1: He's like fucking just out there, man, holy.
Speaker 4: Shit, a total wild man.
Speaker 1: There were, of course, those occasional flashes of violence we
Speaker 1: experienced growing up that were shocking and confusing to us,
Speaker 1: but other signs, more subtle, yet even more dangerous, remained
Speaker 1: unknown to us at the time. Even though they were
Speaker 1: right under our noses.
Speaker 5: You wanted to keep this away from us?
Speaker 4: Oh god, yes, that was my primary. Yeah, and so
Speaker 4: I guess just talk talk about that you wanted to
Speaker 4: keep this away from us?
Speaker 1: Where were times where it got close? Because I remember
Speaker 1: once where you came home and you had a scar
Speaker 1: on your shoulder, like a fresh scar on.
Speaker 4: Your shoulder, and.
Speaker 1: It was very noticeable because you used to just wear
Speaker 1: Dago t's.
Speaker 4: All the time. And I was a gunshot.
Speaker 3: I think I told you I got something removed, like
Speaker 3: a mole or mole something removed, but I never had
Speaker 3: a mole there.
Speaker 7: But it was a gun shot.
Speaker 4: There was a gun shot. Roight, Yeah, it was a
Speaker 4: small caliber gunshot.
Speaker 1: What happened?
Speaker 4: I got shot?
Speaker 3: I can't remember what that incident was. I fuck, what
Speaker 3: was that? I'm gonna have to really think back on this.
Speaker 3: So I got shot twice, got shot in or left eroe,
Speaker 3: I got shot on the right shoulder and I got
Speaker 3: I get him both mixed up.
Speaker 4: But let me think about this for a minute. That
Speaker 4: got there, yeah right there, Yeah, came out wow out
Speaker 4: somewhere over here.
Speaker 3: They were both small calibers just on all the way
Speaker 3: through that one because it was buried. One of my
Speaker 3: shoulders buried had to be dug out.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you can forget the details of
Speaker 1: a gunshot wound, let alone two of them. But I
Speaker 1: guess when you've lived the life that he's lived, a
Speaker 1: couple shots to the arm don't really mean much. The
Speaker 1: troubling thing is these bullet wounds happened after I was born,
Speaker 1: after he had supposedly left the outfit.
Speaker 4: Well, I kept I was kept.
Speaker 3: I kept it very much away from my boys, and
Speaker 3: when I got on the fire department, finally I was
Speaker 3: bound and determined to get out of it completely. Of course,
Speaker 3: that never happened. That never really happened.
Speaker 1: I asked my mom about these gunshot wounds, and here's
Speaker 1: what she had to say.
Speaker 7: I just had no idea, And I'm shocked to this
Speaker 7: day that he let this double life for so long
Speaker 7: and without us really knowing about it.
Speaker 1: I just think it's so interesting that his job as
Speaker 1: a firefighter, you know, the hours are twenty four on
Speaker 1: and forty eight off, So it's the perfect excuse for
Speaker 1: him if he had to go do something for the outfit,
Speaker 1: to say, hey, I'm taking an extra shift and be
Speaker 1: gone for a day or two and go handle that,
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't even think twice.
Speaker 10: About it exactly.
Speaker 7: Yeah, who knows what he was doing. I have no idea.
Speaker 7: I mean, it makes me sick to my stomach, especially
Speaker 7: when you have children. I mean, my god, I mean,
Speaker 7: you're just you're making it so unsafe for your family
Speaker 7: being in a world like that and doing things like
Speaker 7: that and jeopardizing your family and our safety. And because
Speaker 7: I didn't know this was going on, you know, if
Speaker 7: I would have known this was going on, I definitely
Speaker 7: would have said bye bye and got out of there
Speaker 7: years ago. But this is pretty new to me within
Speaker 7: the last few years, so I can't take back those years.
Speaker 7: But I mean, just thank god that nothing ever happened
Speaker 7: to me and my family because of his responsibilities and
Speaker 7: his horrible ways of life.
Speaker 1: So what the hell was happening all that time? Why
Speaker 1: is my dad getting shot at if he supposedly left
Speaker 1: the mob.
Speaker 3: So I'm working as a paramedic firefighter. And just when
Speaker 3: you think you're away from all this shit, all right,
Speaker 3: You're done, You're done with all this fucking, this shady lifestyle.
Speaker 3: I'm covering up fucking murders that these cops are doing.
Speaker 3: Just why I think I'm getting.
Speaker 4: Out of his ship. I'm right fucking packing it.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I just like it.
Speaker 11: It's it's it's a double it's fucking it's foul me.
Speaker 4: We're over the fuck I go.
Speaker 11: I can't shake this out of a bitch. You won't
Speaker 11: fucking leave me alone.
Speaker 6: My name's Mike, and I was a partner with your
Speaker 6: dad at a private ambulance company and at two different
Speaker 6: fire departments that we worked together at, probably over the
Speaker 6: course of eighteen years, so it was quite a long
Speaker 6: time together. Your Dad's the one person I really felt
Speaker 6: comfortable with, you know that feeling, because you know, sometimes
Speaker 6: you have a shitty partner and you're on the ambulance
Speaker 6: and you're thinking, well, I hope, I hope nothing really
Speaker 6: bad happens today because I'm with this guy, you know.
Speaker 6: But when I was with your dad on the ambulance,
Speaker 6: whether it was at the private ambulance company or at
Speaker 6: the firehouse, I was like, doesn't matter what happens, because
Speaker 6: we can handle anything that comes down in the post.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing Mike along when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: Of all my dad's friends, he was my favorite. Sure,
Speaker 1: he was big and loud in the perfect picture of
Speaker 1: an eighties era Chicago firefighter. But I think it's because
Speaker 1: I've never seen my dad laugh as hard as when
Speaker 1: he was around his buddy Mike. Plus he rocked the
Speaker 1: best mustache I've probably ever seen.
Speaker 6: My earliest memory of you, you were small, like three.
Speaker 10: You were talking to me.
Speaker 6: I don't remember what we were talking about, and your
Speaker 6: dad was being an ass that day.
Speaker 10: You said something to me and I said.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's because daddy's a dick. And you said, Daddy's
Speaker 6: a dick, and Ken and I could not quit laughing.
Speaker 6: You kept repeating, Daddy's a dick, Daddy's a dick. Your
Speaker 6: mom was so mad at us for teaching.
Speaker 1: He's at Ken had only been a firefighter for a
Speaker 1: year or so before Mike was hired at the same station,
Speaker 1: but even that early in his career, he had already
Speaker 1: made a name for himself.
Speaker 6: I was brand new EMT they hired me. He wasn't
Speaker 6: there at the time. He was on a vacation in Arizona,
Speaker 6: and all these guys were like, Ken is this great guy,
Speaker 6: and he's a legend, and all of this shit they're
Speaker 6: telling me. And I was like, Okay, this guy must
Speaker 6: practically walk.
Speaker 10: On water, you know.
Speaker 6: And he came back from Arizona, and he was like
Speaker 6: telling everybody what to do, and I was just watching,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 10: And then one day they paired me up with him.
Speaker 6: We were working on the ambulance together, and before we
Speaker 6: went into a place to take care of a patient,
Speaker 6: he tells me, I do all the talking. I call
Speaker 6: the hospital, I take care of everything. I'll tell you
Speaker 6: what to do. You just listen to me and do
Speaker 6: what I tell you. And I told him, fuck you, man,
Speaker 6: I know what I'm doing. I'm not one of these
Speaker 6: mopes that you work with here. I said, I know
Speaker 6: what's going on. Don't talk to me like that. And
Speaker 6: we were friends ever since then. Sound was the first
Speaker 6: person that stood up to him.
Speaker 1: There. He tells me a story about Ken's first partner
Speaker 1: before he and Mike became partners.
Speaker 6: He had a partner who was a very strange person,
Speaker 6: and he was trying to tell Ken what to do,
Speaker 6: and Ken was yelling at him, and the guy started
Speaker 6: screaming at him.
Speaker 10: I know.
Speaker 6: The guy like lost his mind and started screaming at Ken,
Speaker 6: and Ken grabbed him by the neck and start choking
Speaker 6: and the guy's head turned purple and he passed out
Speaker 6: on the backstep of the ambulance.
Speaker 10: This was the guy that you worked with.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he was a paramedics that we worked with, and
Speaker 6: he just kind of turned his head turned purple and
Speaker 6: he was kind of slumped over on the ambulance bumper
Speaker 6: and then he wakes up. You know, your dad like
Speaker 6: go of his neck, and the guy like woke up
Speaker 6: right away and he goes you guys saw that. You
Speaker 6: guys saw that he assaulted me. I was like, I
Speaker 6: don't see nothing. I'm going home. And all the firemen
Speaker 6: were like, I didn't see nothing.
Speaker 10: What happened? We didn't see anything. He was the little
Speaker 10: mob boss.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know the old saying, you can take the boy
Speaker 1: out of the mafia, but you can't take the mafia
Speaker 1: out of the boy.
Speaker 10: You know. Taking it down a notch is not his
Speaker 10: specialty either.
Speaker 6: Once he gets cranked up, he pretty much doesn't care
Speaker 6: who's there.
Speaker 10: He's gonna say his piece.
Speaker 1: With Ken and Mike now partnered up, they quickly acquired
Speaker 1: a reputation as bossy and confrontational and probably a little psychotic.
Speaker 6: They wouldn't let us work together anymore, and the firemen
Speaker 6: were crying. They went to the chief, and the chief
Speaker 6: made the no more Mike and Ken rule because we
Speaker 6: weren't allowed to work together on the ambulance anymore.
Speaker 1: Rule or not, Mike and Ken are gonna do what
Speaker 1: Mike and Ken are gonna do.
Speaker 6: We would watch Doctor Who together on Sunday nights, and
Speaker 6: then it started getting busy on Sunday nights. We were
Speaker 6: having a hard time watching Doctor Who because we would
Speaker 6: have to do ambulance calls.
Speaker 10: So we both decided we weren't going to work.
Speaker 6: Sunday nights anymore because we want to be able to
Speaker 6: watch Doctor Who uninterrupted.
Speaker 10: So they were mad because we told.
Speaker 6: Them now, we can't do any more Sunday nights because
Speaker 6: we're missing Doctor Who and it's not right. So we
Speaker 6: made our own Mic and Ken rule for that one.
Speaker 4: It's about time.
Speaker 1: As fun as it is to hear these old stories,
Speaker 1: and it really is. It's been an absolute joy catching
Speaker 1: up with Mike. I now know that missing Doctor Who
Speaker 1: on a Sunday night was the least of the problems.
Speaker 1: And though Ken was no longer in a day to
Speaker 1: day relationship with the outfit, the crime and corruption of police,
Speaker 1: and a fish shows in Cook County would inevitably make
Speaker 1: its way back into his life.
Speaker 3: So a cop would fucking kill somebody, whether by accident
Speaker 3: or out of anger, I don't know. Anyway you kill
Speaker 3: a civilian. But and here's the sick twist here, Man
Speaker 3: Ken's got to come in as a paramedic, listen to
Speaker 3: the story that the cops are sticking to, and then
Speaker 3: I have to take I have to look at the
Speaker 3: injuries of the dead guy and tailor their story to
Speaker 3: fit the fucking injuries.
Speaker 4: And I got to document to shit.
Speaker 3: In a million fucking years that I ever think that
Speaker 3: was going to happen. I mean, I mean, who even
Speaker 3: thinks the shit like that?
Speaker 9: Was this just a given part of your new career now,
Speaker 9: or like were you getting paid?
Speaker 1: Like no, no, oh no, no.
Speaker 4: This is no this is this is the culture.
Speaker 3: It's the culture that this is the part of my job.
Speaker 4: That's part that's part of the job.
Speaker 1: I asked, Mike, what do you thinks about this?
Speaker 6: It's kind of, you know, a hard thing to deal with,
Speaker 6: but that's how everything worked at that time.
Speaker 10: One of the ones that stands.
Speaker 6: Out to me was there was a cop and he
Speaker 6: was wasted, and he crashed into a car and he
Speaker 6: hurt the people in their car, real bad and usually,
Speaker 6: you know, that would result in tickets and and arrest
Speaker 6: and stuff.
Speaker 10: And the cops, our cops came over.
Speaker 6: And told us, don't mention that you smelled alcohol on
Speaker 6: this guy's breast or anything. Don't put it in your report,
Speaker 6: don't mention it to the hospital. We don't want to
Speaker 6: get this guy in trouble. And I was like, he
Speaker 6: hurt people, he's wasted and he hurt people. And they
Speaker 6: were like, don't do it. And you know, you know,
Speaker 6: they did the wrong thing and no one's going to
Speaker 6: hold him accountable for it.
Speaker 1: He tells me a few other awful stories of police brutality,
Speaker 1: but this next one was so cruel and vile it
Speaker 1: truly shocked me.
Speaker 10: We had a guy and he was huge.
Speaker 6: He was like a four hundred pound guy, you know,
Speaker 6: like twenty two to twenty three years old who worked
Speaker 6: in the hospital cafeteria at a hospital in that area.
Speaker 6: And we knew this guy. He was a nice kid,
Speaker 6: you know, he didn't never hurt anybody. And he went
Speaker 6: to the bar one night and these off duty cops
Speaker 6: were harassing them and force feeding them shots. And then
Speaker 6: they strapped a feedbag on him and made him eat
Speaker 6: out of a feedbag and they were forcing food down
Speaker 6: his throat and they were just torturing a kid.
Speaker 10: And then the kid went home.
Speaker 6: And passed out, laid on his back in the kitchen
Speaker 6: and just kept bombiting, so he aspirated and he died.
Speaker 6: And that was another one where they were like, just
Speaker 6: put the facts into the thing. Leave out you know,
Speaker 6: any hearsay, like you know off duty cops were involved
Speaker 6: or anything.
Speaker 10: Don't even mention that.
Speaker 6: Your dad was furious that they bullied that kid and
Speaker 6: basically killed him. And there was no way to prove it.
Speaker 6: You know, there's nothing we could do to prove it.
Speaker 6: They killed a kid, They killed a young man. They
Speaker 6: ended his life. And he never hurt anybody. That's the thing.
Speaker 6: It's not like he was a terrible person or something.
Speaker 6: He is a nice kid, you know, that never hurt anyone.
Speaker 4: Now I got you know, you know, so Ken's gonna
Speaker 4: die one day.
Speaker 3: So and now Ken's got to talk, you know, sitting
Speaker 3: in front of the big guy and try to explain
Speaker 3: his way out of this one. All right, You know
Speaker 3: where I had every fucking opportunity in the world to
Speaker 3: do the right thing, but I chose not to.
Speaker 7: I mean, it wasn't much of the choice, though it
Speaker 7: was it.
Speaker 3: Oh, I had a family, Kyle, you guys were born
Speaker 3: I you know, I had a family to fucking raise.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to jeopardize my family.
Speaker 1: At first, I didn't understand why covering up murders for
Speaker 1: these cricket cops would be a required part of the job,
Speaker 1: and even more how not doing it could jeopardize our family.
Speaker 1: But Jeff Cohne of the Chicago Tribune isn't surprise and
Speaker 1: shared an interesting perspective on this sad reality.
Speaker 12: There was a significant issue in Chicago where the outfit
Speaker 12: had infiltrated the police department. They had operatives, you know,
Speaker 12: all the way up to you know, there's a guy
Speaker 12: who went down in a case who was the chief
Speaker 12: of detectives who wound up running his own sort of
Speaker 12: jewel theft ring. I mean, they had major, major corruption
Speaker 12: problems related to organized crime, and so they could basically
Speaker 12: operate with impunity more or less. And it got so
Speaker 12: bad in Cook County that you actually had a criminal
Speaker 12: court judge who threw a murder case on a guy
Speaker 12: who was in the outfit.
Speaker 10: So it went all the way to.
Speaker 12: Sort of cross the threshold that a lot of people
Speaker 12: never thought that it could get to.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Crook County, Yeah, there's no doubt about that. It's
Speaker 6: a den of thieves. The administration is a den of thieves.
Speaker 1: But these abuses aren't just a symptom of the Chicago
Speaker 1: crime family's clause within law enforcement, because there's another family
Speaker 1: with their own set of rules that enabled these types
Speaker 1: of injustices to thrive.
Speaker 6: So the brotherhood of the cops, you know, and you're
Speaker 6: so dependent on them. They saved my life a bunch
Speaker 6: of times that I wouldn't even be here today if
Speaker 6: I hadn't stayed on the right side of that, you know,
Speaker 6: because you don't want to be the guy that they're like, oh,
Speaker 6: they know you're working on this ambulance and then you're
Speaker 6: calling for police to come help you and they go
Speaker 6: slow because that could happen. I don't want to be
Speaker 6: the guy that they go slow to save their life,
Speaker 6: you know. So it's really a hard place and it's
Speaker 6: a tough decision to make, and you got to live
Speaker 6: with it. For some people, you know, that don't really
Speaker 6: have them, like a soul or a conscience.
Speaker 10: That's easy. You know, those are hard decisions to live.
Speaker 4: With, you know.
Speaker 9: The other side of this is.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you know any of this stuff.
Speaker 9: You know, he was a very private guy.
Speaker 1: But did you know of any of his involvement in
Speaker 1: organized crime?
Speaker 6: I know that he was in Cook County jail prior
Speaker 6: to when I met him, because he left his wallet
Speaker 6: on laying on the dresser. He threw his wallet on
Speaker 6: a dresser at the private ambulance company in the room
Speaker 6: where we would sleep, and he had a inmate card,
Speaker 6: you know, for when he was out on parole after
Speaker 6: getting out of jail. And I was like, okay, so
Speaker 6: that's one of the things I asked him about, and
Speaker 6: he gave me very little detail on it. I think
Speaker 6: he said like two sentences and then that story was done.
Speaker 6: He had said something about pimpin for the outfit and
Speaker 6: he wasn't going to do that stuff anymore, and that
Speaker 6: was it. That was the end of the conversation. He
Speaker 6: didn't want to say another word about it, and I
Speaker 6: already knew him well enough to not ask another question
Speaker 6: about it, because I wasn't going to get anything anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a charge for keeper of a house
Speaker 1: of prostitution, right.
Speaker 6: I actually read about it in the paper, you know,
Speaker 6: when it went down, when they busted the place. But
Speaker 6: you know, and then he told me about it, and
Speaker 6: it didn't click in my mind till like a year later.
Speaker 6: You know that that was probably the same thing, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Mike tells me. There were other hints too that
Speaker 1: Ken was probably connected. One incident in particular took place
Speaker 1: at my parents' wedding, which was right around the time
Speaker 1: Mike and my dad became partners, and a year before
Speaker 1: I was born.
Speaker 6: I actually went to their wedding and the I was
Speaker 6: a little drunk and got in a confrontation with some
Speaker 6: very Italian people there. Oh boy, yeah, And there was
Speaker 6: a guy with the I remember this guy. He was
Speaker 6: a smaller guy, you know, but he had a shiny suit.
Speaker 6: He had a very shiny, silvery suit. And I was
Speaker 6: laughing about it, and I was telling the people at
Speaker 6: my table how he's a thought of Gotti. That's a
Speaker 6: word that my sister and I use for real. Italian
Speaker 6: people would call him fot of Gottis, you know, And
Speaker 6: huh means no. I think it's just a made up word.
Speaker 6: He's a fought of Gotti, you know, so that's what
Speaker 6: we call him. And he heard me say it, and
Speaker 6: he thought I was making fun of him, so he
Speaker 6: came over and got confrontational with me. So I was
Speaker 6: off my chair in a hot second and got confrontational
Speaker 6: right back with him. Then his friends started coming over,
Speaker 6: and the people I was sitting with were getting off
Speaker 6: their chairs. And remember your dad coming over and diffusing
Speaker 6: the whole thing, Yeah, because that was about to get ugly.
Speaker 6: And that's not the thing to do with a wedding reception.
Speaker 6: It happens. It happens more than you would possibly think.
Speaker 6: I've been on that call a bunch of times where
Speaker 6: a wedding reception turned into a brawl or a stabbing.
Speaker 10: And uh, he didn't.
Speaker 6: I don't think he wanted his wedding reception to be that.
Speaker 6: So he came over and intervened. And I don't know
Speaker 6: if he thought he was saving my life or what,
Speaker 6: but you know.
Speaker 1: Those are probably some pretty serious people.
Speaker 6: Yeah, But I was young and strong and good for
Speaker 6: the scrap back in those days, and I was willing
Speaker 6: to get in it too.
Speaker 1: Whether Mike was good for the scrub or not. From
Speaker 1: what I've learned about my father's past, I think Mike
Speaker 1: was right. Ken probably did save his life that day,
Speaker 1: and as close as Mike and Ken were, I'm certain
Speaker 1: that my father did whatever he could to keep that
Speaker 1: dark world away from his friend, just like he kept
Speaker 1: it away from us, even though it was circling right overhead.
Speaker 3: I was working full time as a firefighter, paramedic and
Speaker 3: raising my family, but I was still connected, and I
Speaker 3: always had that pendulum swinging over my fucking head that
Speaker 3: I could be called in at any time. And I
Speaker 3: was called in a couple of times, but I always had.
Speaker 4: To keep that on the do I mean no, it
Speaker 4: could work. Couldn't know, family, couldn't know, nobody could know.
Speaker 3: I can remember heading off to work with the fire
Speaker 3: department still and I'm on the Eisenhower Expressway.
Speaker 1: I see him, that fucking guinea fuck, and I know
Speaker 1: who he is.
Speaker 4: He's a soldier, but he's a higher end soldier.
Speaker 3: I've had experience with them in the past, and I
Speaker 3: never liked him, never appreciated him, never even wanted to
Speaker 3: recognize him as a human fucking being, and that was
Speaker 3: my mission to snuff the fucking light out of this guy.
Speaker 1: Next week on Crook County.
Speaker 3: He saw me, he spun out of control and the
Speaker 3: race was on. That's how simple it can be to
Speaker 3: murder somebody.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying.
Speaker 1: Crook County is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot
Speaker 1: TV in association with Common Enemy. All episodes are written, produced,
Speaker 1: and hosted by Me Kyle Tequila. Executive producers are Donald
Speaker 1: Albright and Payne Lindsay. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Speaker 1: Main title song is called Crush by the band Stary Eyes.
Speaker 1: End credit song is called Aloha, also by the band
Speaker 1: Starry Eyes. Sound mix by Cooper Skinner. Thank you to
Speaker 1: Orn Rosenbaum and the excellent team at UTA for their support,
Speaker 1: and to my fearless attorney, Wendy Bench for her guidance.
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Speaker 1: continues next week,