Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: There was like four or fine people that he wanted
Speaker 2: to kill because he didn't know who the rat was.
Speaker 2: All that they knew is someone around them had been
Speaker 2: talking to the Feds for two years. They didn't know
Speaker 2: who it actually was.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
Speaker 1: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
Speaker 1: research for my many audio and book projects has taken
Speaker 1: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
Speaker 1: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
Speaker 1: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
Speaker 1: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
Speaker 1: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
Speaker 1: unpublished details behind their stories. FBI agent Seamus mcallarney had
Speaker 1: dreamed of investigating the mafia in New York when he
Speaker 1: first joined the Bureau, but of course, no one would
Speaker 1: flip on the families. No one had ever flipped on
Speaker 1: the families until mcallarney did some research and he offered
Speaker 1: a made man some orange juice, and then he made history.
Speaker 1: He tells me about his book Flipping Capo, how the
Speaker 1: FBI dismantled the real Sopranos. I will confess I don't
Speaker 1: know a lot about the mafia. I've seen parts of
Speaker 1: The Sopranos, but I am fearful of blood in movies,
Speaker 1: and I have not done a ton of research, even
Speaker 1: though you know I'm a crime historian. I've looked into
Speaker 1: murder Inc. You know in New York, the very old
Speaker 1: murder Inc. But I really don't know much about this.
Speaker 1: Can you give me a very short, little overview of
Speaker 1: what this is like, you know, especially in the time
Speaker 1: period you're working in.
Speaker 2: This time period relates to from nineteen ninety eight up
Speaker 2: until two thousand and four. Is the investigation. It focuses
Speaker 2: on the Decavalcanti family, and that is a Jersey family.
Speaker 2: There are five families in New York, which are the
Speaker 2: Banano family, Columbo family, Geneviez, Gambino, and Luczy family. So
Speaker 2: those are the main five families in New York, and
Speaker 2: the Jersey family is known as the six family. This
Speaker 2: book basically targets the Decavalcanti family because the Sopranos is
Speaker 2: based upon this family.
Speaker 1: Let's get the Sopranos part out of the way. Is
Speaker 1: this the creator or a writer on the show picking
Speaker 1: up on this and saying this is a great family
Speaker 1: for us to emulate and HBO is going to buy
Speaker 1: it in a second?
Speaker 2: Well, the director has said that he has not spoken
Speaker 2: to anyone. But one thing that we can get into
Speaker 2: today is the similarities between the real family and the show.
Speaker 2: There's many similarities between the show and the real family.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you consider this a memoir?
Speaker 2: Well, this is just part of my career. This is
Speaker 2: just the first park. So I was a brand new
Speaker 2: agent when I got assigned to this case. After this case,
Speaker 2: then I went on to basically run the Columbo squad
Speaker 2: for the FBI, and I was able to dismantle that
Speaker 2: family and also part of the Banano family as well,
Speaker 2: which I help dismantle them. So this is just the
Speaker 2: first part of my career.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, well let's jump into it. I know that
Speaker 1: you are a main character, and then your subject is
Speaker 1: a main character, but let's start with you, you know, and
Speaker 1: kind of where you grew up rough streets. I assume yes.
Speaker 2: I was actually born in New York City, raised in
Speaker 2: the Bronx, and then I eventually moved to Westchester, but
Speaker 2: in the Bronx. I was raised by two oh seventh
Speaker 2: in Bainbridge Avenue, which was a predominantly Irish type of
Speaker 2: neighborhood there. I've seen a lot of things happen during
Speaker 2: that time period, you know, when I was growing up.
Speaker 2: You know, I used to go to school and then
Speaker 2: after school you would do your homework as quick as
Speaker 2: you possibly can because there was a park across the
Speaker 2: street from me, and we would go play ball a lot.
Speaker 2: Even back then. We lived in an apartment building where
Speaker 2: it was the ground floor apartment back then. Actually it's
Speaker 2: pretty funny how you would play ball in the streets
Speaker 2: and the buses and cars would actually stop. I don't
Speaker 2: think that would happen nowadays, but they did back then.
Speaker 2: But then as you grew older, going through I would say, sixth,
Speaker 2: seventh and eighth grade, I saw friends, you know, get stabbed,
Speaker 2: get shot. You grew up rather quickly back then, so
Speaker 2: I saw a lot as a young person.
Speaker 1: Did you ever get tempted to steer into criminal activity?
Speaker 1: I would have to think it's sort of all over
Speaker 1: the place around there'd be easy for you to get
Speaker 1: scooped up.
Speaker 2: Yes, you know, throughout your life you're always there's a
Speaker 2: path that you can take it and go the right
Speaker 2: way or the wrong way. My parents who came from Ireland,
Speaker 2: they actually my mom left Ireland when she was seventeen
Speaker 2: and my dad left when he was twenty, so they've
Speaker 2: actually met in the Bronx themselves. They didn't go to
Speaker 2: high school to college, so all they could actually really
Speaker 2: tell you was to study hard, and they always tried
Speaker 2: to put you on the right path. So one of
Speaker 2: the traits that I think I actually had was common sense.
Speaker 2: So yes, I could have went the wrong way in life.
Speaker 2: I saw a lot of my friends not go the
Speaker 2: right way. But I was tempted at times, but I
Speaker 2: always chose the right, the right way in life. But
Speaker 2: I saw a lot of people not go not go
Speaker 2: the right way, especially in the area that I had
Speaker 2: had grown up in.
Speaker 1: What would that be? Would that be drug dealing or
Speaker 1: gambling or what was surrounding you.
Speaker 2: It could be taking drugs, it could be stealing things.
Speaker 2: It'd be getting involved with the wrong crowd. You know,
Speaker 2: I constantly saw that, so you know, I was able
Speaker 2: to actually just choose the right paths in life. And
Speaker 2: one of the things I think that helped me when
Speaker 2: I became an FBI an agent years later was I
Speaker 2: could always think like a purp. I think that actually
Speaker 2: helped me throughout my career.
Speaker 1: Now, is the Irish mob in your neighborhood or does
Speaker 1: the mob even exist?
Speaker 2: The Irish mob is known as the Westies. I guess
Speaker 2: back then they weren't in the neighborhood that I grew up,
Speaker 2: but it was a predominantly Irish type neighborhood in the
Speaker 2: sense is a lot of people came from Ireland, a
Speaker 2: lot of Irish immigrants that had gotten to that type
Speaker 2: of area that I had grown up in. So it
Speaker 2: really wasn't a gang or a mob though.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know I have written a lot about Tammany
Speaker 1: and eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, and so I'm so
Speaker 1: used to how prolific Irish police officers were on the
Speaker 1: streets of New York. Is that just a thread that
Speaker 1: gets pulled throughout history? Is that true even today? That
Speaker 1: it's just something that you know, it's a familiarity among
Speaker 1: that community.
Speaker 2: Yes, it seems that a lot of Irish people do
Speaker 2: try to gravitate to law enforcement. But my dad was
Speaker 2: an in law and law enforcement or anyone in his
Speaker 2: particular family either. My dad actually had a gas station
Speaker 2: in the Bronx. So I was the first one to
Speaker 2: go into law and to law enforcement. And also my
Speaker 2: brother followed in my footsteps as well. He was a
Speaker 2: mechanically worked for my father too, and then he actually
Speaker 2: joined the FBI himself and he's a supervisor there too.
Speaker 2: So my brother and I were the first ones to
Speaker 2: go into law enforcement from our family.
Speaker 1: That must have scared your mother to death two kids.
Speaker 1: As a parent, I would say that would scare me
Speaker 1: to death. Yes, she always worried about both of you.
Speaker 1: I have to assume yes.
Speaker 2: And you know I didn't tell her a lot of
Speaker 2: the things that that we went through either, you know,
Speaker 2: not to scare her.
Speaker 1: So when did you first start to become just an
Speaker 1: interested in law enforcement in general? And then when did
Speaker 1: this switch to the FBI.
Speaker 2: I went to college and I got a degree in finance,
Speaker 2: and when I got out of school, my dad actually
Speaker 2: helped me go throughout school without any having any student loans.
Speaker 2: So when I had graduated school. As a way to
Speaker 2: repay him, I worked at his gas station for about
Speaker 2: two years to kind of to repay him back, and
Speaker 2: to be honest, when I got out of school, I
Speaker 2: really didn't know what I had wanted to do. And
Speaker 2: then I got an offer or there was an opportunity
Speaker 2: to work in a bank to do audit. So that
Speaker 2: was my first job. And the thing that was funny
Speaker 2: when I went through the interview process for this bank,
Speaker 2: I got all the way up to the director of
Speaker 2: audit and I didn't even know this, and he didn't
Speaker 2: even know it either. But when I got to the
Speaker 2: director of audit, the gentleman who I was going to
Speaker 2: interview with, he actually worked at my dad's gas station
Speaker 2: years prior. So, needless to say, I got the job,
Speaker 2: and that was my introduction to the private sector. I
Speaker 2: worked there for a couple of years. I worked at
Speaker 2: a bank that I worked for, an insurance company called
Speaker 2: the IG. Then I actually worked at a French bank,
Speaker 2: but I didn't have a passion for it. And then
Speaker 2: suddenly I actually met an agent that worked for the FBI,
Speaker 2: and I was just fascinated by it. And during the
Speaker 2: early nineteen nineties there was a hiring phrase with the
Speaker 2: FBI from like nineteen ninety to ninety five, where they
Speaker 2: didn't hire people. So speaking to this agent, just hearing
Speaker 2: that every day was different. One day you could be
Speaker 2: doing surveillance. Another day you could be speaking to a CEO.
Speaker 2: I know that day could be going to court. It
Speaker 2: just seemed just fascinating to me. So at that point
Speaker 2: I just became interested in applying for the FBI. And
Speaker 2: I was constantly told that you don't stand a chance.
Speaker 2: You know, you don't have the background, and I was
Speaker 2: just determined to do it. And back then the whole
Speaker 2: process probably took about two years, and I applied in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six and I actually was accepted in ninety eight,
Speaker 2: and back then because there was a hiring frieze. When
Speaker 2: the hiring freeze was lifted, I was told that there
Speaker 2: was just about one hundred thousand applicants in New York alone.
Speaker 2: So again my odds are kind of stacked against me,
Speaker 2: and they said that they were only accepting like two percent.
Speaker 2: So I was very fortunate to be selected and I
Speaker 2: got chosen to go down to Quantico in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2: That's how it started in my class. I think we
Speaker 2: started with fifty people and at the end of our
Speaker 2: training training back then was four months. Our class graduated
Speaker 2: with thirty seven people.
Speaker 1: Well what scared off everybody else?
Speaker 2: Well, there's just because you get accepted to go there,
Speaker 2: there's still training that you have to do. There's the
Speaker 2: academic part, the physical part, and even when you first
Speaker 2: go the first week, just because you see the initials
Speaker 2: and you know it seems like it's a pretty cool
Speaker 2: job to work, there is some serious threats behind it,
Speaker 2: so that even the first week they show you the
Speaker 2: seriousness behind it, like they'll show you videos that people
Speaker 2: are getting shot and things like that. So there is
Speaker 2: a threat element to it, and sometimes people just scared.
Speaker 2: I'll get scared by that, so some people would just
Speaker 2: drop out. And then also what happens is around the
Speaker 2: seventh or eighth week that you're there, they tell you
Speaker 2: what office you're going to go to. And I have
Speaker 2: the time was single, but you can imagine if you
Speaker 2: were married with kids and say you're from Chicago, when
Speaker 2: that seventh or eighth week that you're there, they tell
Speaker 2: you what offers you're going to go to, and you're
Speaker 2: married with kids, you go up there, and you're not
Speaker 2: going back to the office that you came from. So
Speaker 2: if you're from Chicago, you might be sent to Texas.
Speaker 2: So that's an altering experience that you're going to go
Speaker 2: through that night when you go home and you tell
Speaker 2: your wife and kids that in six weeks you're going
Speaker 2: to move to the opposite end of the states, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. So people chose not to move too.
Speaker 2: So these are things that have and then, as I said,
Speaker 2: the academic portion of it or the physical portion of
Speaker 2: it would knock people out. I do remember one person
Speaker 2: in our class. He had gotten Lasik surgery and at
Speaker 2: that point in time, the FBI wouldn't allow you to
Speaker 2: get that type of surgery, and he hid it from
Speaker 2: the FBI. And one of the things when you go
Speaker 2: through training is you have to get sprayed with mace.
Speaker 2: Oh no, So right before he got sprayed with mace,
Speaker 2: he had to come forward and tell them that because
Speaker 2: if he didn't, he would have been blinded. So he
Speaker 2: couldn't get sprayed with mace. And they threw him out
Speaker 2: because of his lack of candor. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: And now you can have a Lisik surgery if you're
Speaker 1: in the FBI.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I actually had it in like two thousand
Speaker 2: and one.
Speaker 1: That's quickly as possible. Your time in Quantico was that
Speaker 1: your first exposure to, I have to believe, mafia stuff.
Speaker 1: Was that the first time you really get to see
Speaker 1: what you might have to deal with.
Speaker 2: Right. So when I was there, they give you all
Speaker 2: sorts of training, and to me, I was just excited
Speaker 2: about the mob because the mob is into everything whatever
Speaker 2: way they can possibly make money. When you study white collar,
Speaker 2: it's just white collar, or when it's drugs, it's just drugs.
Speaker 2: But with the mafia, wherever they can make money, they're
Speaker 2: going to be into that and it could be extortions,
Speaker 2: white collar, drugs, murder, and back then I would read
Speaker 2: about seeing me the bull or Gotti from the Gambino family.
Speaker 2: So I was just excited about that, and it's something
Speaker 2: that I had a passion for. Now with the FBI,
Speaker 2: you don't get to choose what you're going to work.
Speaker 2: It's always the needs of the bureau. They tell you
Speaker 2: what you're going to work. But I had a passion
Speaker 2: for that. And what happened was I had graduated in
Speaker 2: May of ninety eight. That year and I got sent
Speaker 2: back to New York. It was fortunate to be sent
Speaker 2: back to New York. No one wants to work in
Speaker 2: New York because the cost of living is so high
Speaker 2: and because crime is so high. And I was told
Speaker 2: before I went down there there was a ninety nine
Speaker 2: percent chance so I was going to be sent back
Speaker 2: to New York. So thankfully I was sent back to
Speaker 2: New York because it would have been a culture shock
Speaker 2: to me if I wasn't going to be sent back
Speaker 2: to New York. I got sent back to New York
Speaker 2: in May of nineteen ninety eight. And when you get
Speaker 2: sent back to New York, they put you through a rotation,
Speaker 2: and one of the rotations they put you through is surveillance.
Speaker 2: And at that point in time, I was assigned to
Speaker 2: a squad called SO two, and they just happened to
Speaker 2: be surveilling a gentleman who was known as a proactive witness.
Speaker 2: They were tailing him and he was investigating or they
Speaker 2: were investigating the Dicavalcanti family. And I was fortunate to
Speaker 2: be on that squad. And that kind of starts how
Speaker 2: I get assigned to this case, because then eventually I
Speaker 2: get assigned to a squad called C ten that in
Speaker 2: December of nineteen ninety eight, and that squad is responsible
Speaker 2: for the Banano family and also the Decavalcantis. And I
Speaker 2: know you're probably thinking, how does the New York FBI
Speaker 2: take down the Jersey family or kind of get involved
Speaker 2: with that? And I can kind of rewind and tell
Speaker 2: you how that happens. So this case starts in January
Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety eight, before I even go to Quantico.
Speaker 2: There's two events that Happennuary of nineteen ninety eight, I
Speaker 2: think it was the fourteenth, I believe of January. Three
Speaker 2: individuals actually rob the World Trade Center and they come
Speaker 2: out and they do rob it. They come out, but
Speaker 2: they take their mask off and they are immediately caught
Speaker 2: because the cameras are there. So two guys were caught
Speaker 2: that day. A third person fled to New Mexico and
Speaker 2: he was caught pretty quickly, in like two or three days.
Speaker 2: The mastermind behind the robbery sees the walls or starting
Speaker 2: to cave in, and he calls a legendary agent named
Speaker 2: George Hannah, and George is from Brooklyn and basically convinces
Speaker 2: Ralph Guarino, the mastermind, to become a proactive witness. When
Speaker 2: I say a proactive witness, what I mean by that
Speaker 2: is that's a witness who's going to stay on the
Speaker 2: street and make consensual recordings covert recordings.
Speaker 1: So an informant is that different than an informant.
Speaker 2: Yep, But he's going to be a cooperating witness as
Speaker 2: opposed to an informant, so meaning he's going to testify
Speaker 2: if need be. So that's the first event that happens.
Speaker 2: About nine days later, on January t twenty third, Joseph
Speaker 2: Conniglierro is killed. Joseph Connigliero is a decavalcant, the associate
Speaker 2: who was a ruthless person. He was confined to a wheelchair,
Speaker 2: but he was a very ruthless person who was a dicavalcant,
Speaker 2: the associate who tortured his crew. How he got confined
Speaker 2: to a wheelchair is in the seventies, him and a
Speaker 2: decaalalcanty soldier named James Gallo went to go collect loan
Speaker 2: short money and James Gallo accidentally shot Joseph Knnigliero and
Speaker 2: paralyzed them. But there was no hard feelings about that.
Speaker 2: It's just the cost of doing mob business. But Joseph
Speaker 2: Kniglier was in a wheelchair from nineteen seventies to up
Speaker 2: until his death in nineteen ninety eight. The reason they
Speaker 2: killed him was because he tortured his crew. And what
Speaker 2: he used to do, even though he was in a
Speaker 2: wheelchair is he would call you over and shoot you
Speaker 2: and have his crew clean up the body and put
Speaker 2: them in a rug or a tarp and get rid
Speaker 2: of the body. So he was killed because he tortured
Speaker 2: his crew. So those are the two events that happened
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety eight, right before I even go to training.
Speaker 2: So then, as I said, I just the stars are aligned,
Speaker 2: where I get assigned to a surveillance squad that is
Speaker 2: actually monitoring Ralph or trying to protect Ralph, and then
Speaker 2: I get assigned to C ten, which is handling this case.
Speaker 2: And when you have a proactive witness, you never know
Speaker 2: where he's going to go, meaning you don't know who
Speaker 2: he's going to ingratiate himself to or who he's going
Speaker 2: to infiltrate. And Ralph, at George's direction, infiltrated the Brooklyn
Speaker 2: faction of the Decavalcanti family. And that's how the New
Speaker 2: York FBI gets into the Decavalcanti family and Ralph basically
Speaker 2: was operated for two years from January nineteen ninety eight
Speaker 2: up until December of nineteen ninety nine. During those two years,
Speaker 2: he made about three hundred consentual recordings and the surveillance
Speaker 2: team was dedicated to Ralph. We probably had about one
Speaker 2: thousand surveillance locks where they would watch him like maybe
Speaker 2: twice a day for his safety. So George his main
Speaker 2: purpose is to keep Ralph safe. And as a new agent,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be a sponge and try to learn
Speaker 2: as much as I can from George. And George was
Speaker 2: my mentor, so I did all the admin work, learned
Speaker 2: as much as I could from George, and then what
Speaker 2: happens is we have our first round of indictments in
Speaker 2: December of nineteen ninety nine, because, as I said, Ralph
Speaker 2: was on the street for two years and there started
Speaker 2: to be whispers, why hasn't Ralph been arrested if he
Speaker 2: was the mastermind of the robbery, and there started to
Speaker 2: be whispers about that, and then they might try to
Speaker 2: hurt him. So for his safety, we had to take
Speaker 2: down the case. And as a new agent, I'm hoping
Speaker 2: to be part of an arrest team, and when you're
Speaker 2: a new agent, they kind of put you in rear
Speaker 2: security for your own safety. And we arrested thirty nine
Speaker 2: people in December of nineteen ninety nine. One of the
Speaker 2: individuals was a guy named Anthony Capo. Anthony Campo was
Speaker 2: a violent Decabocanty soldier from stant Nay and Lo and
Speaker 2: behold for all the hard work that I did, I
Speaker 2: was assigned to be the team leader, not to be
Speaker 2: only arresting, to actually be the team leader to arrest him.
Speaker 2: And that's how it start to take a monumental step
Speaker 2: in this case. So my job is to arrest him
Speaker 2: in December of nineteen ninety nine, which I do.
Speaker 1: Let's just close out Ralph's story. What was his supposed
Speaker 1: role when you all were surveiling him and he's making
Speaker 1: all of these recording secret recordings. What was his role?
Speaker 2: So he was an associate, right, So he's not a
Speaker 2: made member of the family, and he's trying to ingratiate
Speaker 2: himself to not just the Decalbocanties, but anyone that would
Speaker 2: listen to him. Now, Ralph was like a small time
Speaker 2: crook at the time who was always into swag like
Speaker 2: selling things, like stealing things and trying to sell things.
Speaker 2: So during that two year time period, the FBIO is
Speaker 2: always coming up with scenarios to actually ingratiate himself to
Speaker 2: the bad guys, like we would sell stolen cigarettes, we
Speaker 2: would sell stolen TVs like things like that. We would
Speaker 2: front him, and also we would give him authorization to
Speaker 2: do some criminal acts, right, because you just can't be
Speaker 2: suddenly turned yourself into a choir boy, right. So there's
Speaker 2: a certain authorization based upon coordination with the attorney's office.
Speaker 2: And in New York, in Lower Manhattan, there's two districts.
Speaker 2: There's the Eastern District in the Southern District. Right, this
Speaker 2: case was out of the Southern District of New York.
Speaker 2: So we're working hand in hand with the attorneys to
Speaker 2: get authorization for Ralph to do certain acts because, as
Speaker 2: I said, we're trying to give the impression that he's
Speaker 2: still a bed guy even though we're controlling him. And
Speaker 2: that's what he did. He did that for two years
Speaker 2: and made over three hundred recordings and one of the
Speaker 2: things that we even have the Sopranos starts in January
Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety nine, We have a consensu recording in
Speaker 2: March of ninety nine of the Dicavalcanties talking about the
Speaker 2: show and actually saying this is you, this is you,
Speaker 2: this is you, which was priceless for trial years later.
Speaker 2: But Ralph did a tremendous job. But there's always a
Speaker 2: safety aspect to it, because when you send a proactive
Speaker 2: witness out, he could get caught. You you know, I
Speaker 2: can't say what type of device he used or where
Speaker 2: the device was, but there's always that danger element that
Speaker 2: they might find out that he's a witness. And as
Speaker 2: I said, you know, there were always suspicious as to
Speaker 2: him being out there for two years and hasn't been arrested.
Speaker 1: Well, and also what if his situation escalates unexpectedly and
Speaker 1: he has to kill someone or who's you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: what does the FBI do in that kind of case.
Speaker 2: Well, that's why there we're constantly trying to monitor him
Speaker 2: and have a surveillance team there so it wouldn't get
Speaker 2: to that. You know, years later, I did have a
Speaker 2: situation when I was a supervisor of a Columbo squad
Speaker 2: where we didn't have a witness kill someone, but he
Speaker 2: did have to hurt somebody.
Speaker 1: So did Ralph testify then be sent into witness protection
Speaker 1: and then end up in Kansas somewhere most likely? Or
Speaker 1: how did that work?
Speaker 2: Okay, So we take that a case and we moved
Speaker 2: Rauph for his safety. Ralph chose because you have an option, right,
Speaker 2: you have an option to go into the Witness Security
Speaker 2: program or not. The Witness Security program is run by
Speaker 2: the US Marshall Service. Ralph chose not to go into
Speaker 2: the program. He chose to be relocated, which we did
Speaker 2: relocate him because the case was so successful, and we're
Speaker 2: going to get into how it kind of spiraled into
Speaker 2: effects of cooperation. Ralph at the end didn't need to testify.
Speaker 2: The tapes stood by themselves, and I'll start to explain
Speaker 2: how we started to unravel the case. So I'm tasked
Speaker 2: with arresting Anthony Capo, a violent Decavalcanti soldier who is
Speaker 2: hated by law enforcement and also not well liked within
Speaker 2: the mob himself. He was such a violent person that
Speaker 2: at that particular time, he was reporting to the acting
Speaker 2: boss of the Decavalcanti family, Vincent Palermo. So what I
Speaker 2: did is when I went to go arrest him, I
Speaker 2: had witnessed George how he treated Ralph for those two years.
Speaker 2: And despite the background that Anthony had of being hated
Speaker 2: by a law enforcement I wasn't going to treat him
Speaker 2: that way. I was going to treat him with respect.
Speaker 2: And I studied him like you would study for a test.
Speaker 2: So I knew everything about him. I knew everything about
Speaker 2: his family, his kids, their dates of birds, social Security numbers,
Speaker 2: phone numbers, I knew everything about his charges. So, as
Speaker 2: I said, when we went to go arrest him, he
Speaker 2: wasn't there, and all the planning that you do went
Speaker 2: out the window. And when we went to arrest him,
Speaker 2: his wife told us that he was at his mom's house.
Speaker 2: So when I went to his mother's house with the
Speaker 2: arrest team, I didn't see this hated person that I
Speaker 2: had learned about or that I was told about. I
Speaker 2: saw actually a very loving relationship that he had with
Speaker 2: his family, which threw me for a loop. So I
Speaker 2: did arrest him, and when we got him dressed and
Speaker 2: he came out, he was wearing a Dallas Cowboy jacket.
Speaker 2: Now I'm a Pittsburgh Steeler fan.
Speaker 1: It would neither of you support a football team in
Speaker 1: New York or New Jersey.
Speaker 2: Well, you see, in the seventies, the Steelers were good,
Speaker 2: and I'm a loyal person and I stayed with them.
Speaker 2: And I guess he had the same type of thinking
Speaker 2: as well. So when I did arrest him, I brought
Speaker 2: him out, and I had did my homework on him,
Speaker 2: and he was a diabetic, so I made sure that
Speaker 2: I had orange juice and cholcle with me in cases
Speaker 2: blood sugar dropped. And he saw that as a signed
Speaker 2: me being a decent human being. Right, And he had
Speaker 2: told me years later that no one had ever treated
Speaker 2: him with respect. All. His interaction with law enforcement was
Speaker 2: hostile too, And we always know that there's two sides
Speaker 2: to every story, right, So even though I had heard
Speaker 2: an aran that he was hostile to law enforcement, I
Speaker 2: guess the interaction on the other side was the same way.
Speaker 1: How would law enforcement interact with one of these guys
Speaker 1: who were arrested and associate or made person whoever? Is
Speaker 1: it with physical aggression? I mean, what is the best
Speaker 1: way beside your way to get information out of somebody
Speaker 1: like that?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think it's physical aggression. I guess I
Speaker 2: think it's it's your verbal tone. And I think it's
Speaker 2: how you interact with them. And I was always taught
Speaker 2: you get more bees with honey. That's the approach that
Speaker 2: you should take. And one thing that even years later,
Speaker 2: as I said, this is just a start of my career,
Speaker 2: I used to always tell people too, do not make
Speaker 2: this personal, because one day you're going to have to
Speaker 2: turn in your badge and your gun and the mob
Speaker 2: that doesn't forget, So don't make this personal. And also,
Speaker 2: the mob can size you up very very quickly. They'll
Speaker 2: know within a minute or two if you're a tough
Speaker 2: guy or not, So don't try to be a tough
Speaker 2: guy if you're not. That's always the approach that I took.
Speaker 2: So I decided to treat him with respect. And as
Speaker 2: I said, I studied him like left and right. So
Speaker 2: I had some banter back and forth with him, and
Speaker 2: then I read him his rights and he invoked his
Speaker 2: right to counsel and his right to remain silent, and
Speaker 2: that's exactly what I wanted him to do. So then
Speaker 2: there's some general questions that I can ask him, such
Speaker 2: as what's your day of birth? You know, where do
Speaker 2: you live and all this stuff. And when I was
Speaker 2: asking these questions, before he could answer, I would give
Speaker 2: him the answer, and I was playing with him, letting
Speaker 2: him know that I knew a lot more about him
Speaker 2: than he thought I knew. Then, when I started to
Speaker 2: talk to him about the charges, because he invoked his
Speaker 2: right to counsel and remained silent, I told him, do
Speaker 2: not say anything, because I can no longer ask him
Speaker 2: questions legally, that doesn't stop me from giving him a statement.
Speaker 2: So what I did is he was charged with two
Speaker 2: things at that particular time, conspiracy to murdered Charlie Majury,
Speaker 2: who is an acting panel boss, and mail fraud. So
Speaker 2: I said, related to your conspiracy murdered Charlie Majury, your
Speaker 2: plan was to ring his doorbell and shoot him in
Speaker 2: the face. The reason that you didn't do that was
Speaker 2: because there was a cop on the block. And again
Speaker 2: I said, don't say anything. Now Here I am. I'm
Speaker 2: giving him facts which I know are true. I know
Speaker 2: they're true because they were on a consensual recording where
Speaker 2: he's talked about it. Now, you got to put yourself
Speaker 2: in his shoes at six o'clock in the morning. He
Speaker 2: doesn't know where where this evidence is coming from. He
Speaker 2: doesn't know Ralph is a cooperating witness for the government,
Speaker 2: and he knows I'm not lying. And that's the thing is,
Speaker 2: if you lie to these guys, you're done. So that
Speaker 2: was the first thing. The second thing was the mail fraud. Now,
Speaker 2: back in the day, if you remember, you could rent
Speaker 2: a mailbox and it would say sweet and you would
Speaker 2: be led to believe that you would have this nice
Speaker 2: office building. Well that's what they did, related to a
Speaker 2: mail fraud that was going to lead to stock fraud.
Speaker 2: So I just a little shot saying, oh, that was
Speaker 2: really cute that you guys did that, and again told him,
Speaker 2: don't say anything, and then I would make him think
Speaker 2: for a little bit as I talked to the driver,
Speaker 2: and we had this banter back and forth all day,
Speaker 2: and I treated him with respect, and I treated his
Speaker 2: family with respect, and I treated his stepfather with respect,
Speaker 2: who I had to meet later that day. And this
Speaker 2: just went on all all day. And then about a
Speaker 2: week later, I got a phone call from his attorney
Speaker 2: and his attorney said he wanted to cooperate. Now, unbeknownst
Speaker 2: to me because I'm a new agent, but at that
Speaker 2: point in time, no main member in the decavalcantis your
Speaker 2: history had ever cooperated with the government before. This was
Speaker 2: kind of a shock to me. Right, I wasn't expecting this.
Speaker 2: I was just treating him with respect and treating him
Speaker 2: as a decent human being, not knowing where it was
Speaker 2: going to go. But that's when my world changed.
Speaker 1: Were your superiors giving you so much leeway that you
Speaker 1: were allowed to do this or did anybody look at
Speaker 1: you sideyed, like going, what are you doing with this jerk,
Speaker 1: this killer, this awful person who has tortured people and
Speaker 1: you're giving him orange juice?
Speaker 2: No, they kind of laughed that I was able to
Speaker 2: flip him by being sincere. What did happen was there
Speaker 2: was whispers and talk that I was too young and
Speaker 2: too new to run a guy like this as a
Speaker 2: maid member, that I didn't have the experience. But my
Speaker 2: supervisor at the time, Jack Stubing, he believed in me
Speaker 2: and he said, no, he flipped him. He deserves to
Speaker 2: run him. And that's what happened. I was able to
Speaker 2: run him. And what happens is when I got that call,
Speaker 2: I immediately called the assistant from the Southern District, Maria Barton,
Speaker 2: and she was a seasoned attorney, and she was immediately
Speaker 2: nervous as to what did I say to the attorney,
Speaker 2: And in situations like this, less is more. So I
Speaker 2: just told her that I told him that I would
Speaker 2: call you so and then what happens is And this
Speaker 2: is one of the things about the book that I
Speaker 2: try to explain is how the cooperation process starts and
Speaker 2: how it actually goes through. And actually I explain trials,
Speaker 2: and this is I don't think it's been done too
Speaker 2: much before. So you start a proffer, that's the first
Speaker 2: thing that you do. And a profit is an agreement
Speaker 2: between the government and defense attorney and the defendant where
Speaker 2: the defendant has to come in and he has to
Speaker 2: tell you the truth and he has to tell you
Speaker 2: all his crimes. So it's a very dicey situation because
Speaker 2: you're moving the defendant from prison in a very short
Speaker 2: period of time, and the bad guy's going to know
Speaker 2: that he's not in prison, and so he can't He
Speaker 2: has to come prepared, and you can't be half pregnant.
Speaker 2: You have to make sure that if you're going to
Speaker 2: do this, you're going to make sure you're going to
Speaker 2: honestly do it. So we schedule a profit with Anthony,
Speaker 2: and I'm in the session with the attorney. I'm in
Speaker 2: the session with George Hannah, the legend that I talked about,
Speaker 2: and another Southern District investigator, Kenny McCabe, another legend, and
Speaker 2: myself the attorney for Anthony Capo and Anthony, and Anthony
Speaker 2: comes clean. The first thing that you want to do
Speaker 2: when you have a profit is you want the defendant
Speaker 2: to admit the charges that he's charged with. So we
Speaker 2: want to make sure that what he's charged with were
Speaker 2: actually correct. So make him eat the indictment. It's called
Speaker 2: that he's going to tell us that the conspiracy to
Speaker 2: murdered Charlie Majury, that he's guilty of that and also
Speaker 2: guilty of the mail fraud. And he does. Then he
Speaker 2: blows us out of the water. The first three things
Speaker 2: that he tells us is there's a leak in the
Speaker 2: Southern District. That's why he wasn't home, That's why numerous
Speaker 2: people weren't home that day.
Speaker 1: Is that FBI leak or what kind of leak is that?
Speaker 2: So the case is out of the Southern District of
Speaker 2: New York, that's the prosecutor's office. So there was an
Speaker 2: alleged court reporter who was feeding information to the bad guys.
Speaker 2: And we'll get to all the arrests later, but that's
Speaker 2: what he tells us. That there's a leak in the
Speaker 2: Southern District and we knew you guys were coming, so
Speaker 2: you know that could have been a danger element where
Speaker 2: someone could have gotten hurt.
Speaker 1: Did anybody suspect Ralph.
Speaker 2: Well, they didn't know. They knew that there was a
Speaker 2: rat among them. They didn't know it was Ralph though.
Speaker 2: And during that time period, what happens is Bennie Palermo,
Speaker 2: the acting boss before the arrest, he wanted to kill
Speaker 2: a bunch of people because his paranoia story had to
Speaker 2: run rampant. Ralph was one of them. This other guy
Speaker 2: named Frank Scarabina was another one. There was like four
Speaker 2: or five people that he wanted to kill because he
Speaker 2: didn't know who the rat was. All that they knew
Speaker 2: is someone around them had been talking to the Feds
Speaker 2: for two years. They didn't know who it actually was.
Speaker 2: So that's the first thing that he tells us. The
Speaker 2: second thing that he tells us is that he was
Speaker 2: involved in the murder of a guy named Fred Weiss.
Speaker 2: Fred Weiss was a Jewish businessman from Staten Island who
Speaker 2: was killed on September eleventh, Horrible Day of nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2: The reason that he was killed is because John Gotti
Speaker 2: wanted him killed. John Gotty wanted him killed because John
Speaker 2: Gotty thought mister Weiss was cooperating with the government. The
Speaker 2: reason he thought he was cooperating with the government is
Speaker 2: because he switched lawyers. That's the only reason that he
Speaker 2: thought he was cooperating in the government, pure paranoia. He
Speaker 2: was not cooperating with the government. Now, from a new
Speaker 2: agent perspective, as I just told you before, I'm going
Speaker 2: from reading about the mob, Samuel the Bull and John Gotti,
Speaker 2: it's actually hearing about a murder that John Gotti has
Speaker 2: now authorized. All this within a year, so this is
Speaker 2: very surreal to me. Then, the third thing that he
Speaker 2: tells us is that he was the shooter in the
Speaker 2: murder of John Demotto, and John Dematto was the acting
Speaker 2: underboss of the Decalbalcanti family who was killed because he
Speaker 2: was going to sex clubs and having sex with men.
Speaker 2: That's another angle related to the Sopranos. So these are
Speaker 2: three things that he tells us out of the gate
Speaker 2: he has just exposed himself to a life sentence as
Speaker 2: opposed to twenty years. So we all have to huddle
Speaker 2: and basically determine if he's telling us the truth. Of course,
Speaker 2: we say he's telling us the truth because he just
Speaker 2: exposes himself to a life sentence. And then we have
Speaker 2: to move him. We have to plan to move him
Speaker 2: to another facility. We also, he didn't put the bodies,
Speaker 2: but he tells us where he thinks the bodies might
Speaker 2: be buried. So when this happens, you then have to
Speaker 2: get a search warrant and you have to do a search.
Speaker 2: Finding a body, even if it is in a basement,
Speaker 2: is very hard to do. Throughout my career, I've been
Speaker 2: extremely successful where I've been able to recover five bodies,
Speaker 2: but this is very hard to do. The area that
Speaker 2: he told us was in Marlboro, New York, and it
Speaker 2: was at a recycling plant. That recycling plant had been rebuilt.
Speaker 2: It was a very vast area. And this is in
Speaker 2: December of nineteen ninety nine, probably December like fourteenth or so.
Speaker 2: We start to do a search. We searched for three days.
Speaker 2: We can't find any of the bodies up there. Again,
Speaker 2: it's really really hard to find a body, and this
Speaker 2: area was umongous. Also during this time period, personally, I'm
Speaker 2: going through some tough things where my dad had gotten sick.
Speaker 2: My dad was diagnosed with brain cancer in March of
Speaker 2: ninety nine that year, and he was kind of at
Speaker 2: the end. What happened was when we finished digging for
Speaker 2: the bodies in Marlborough, New York. That night I went
Speaker 2: to go visit him. He was in a hospice home,
Speaker 2: and my mom, who was very religious, she basically told
Speaker 2: me and my brother that we shouldn't leave, and she
Speaker 2: had just a thought process that something might happen that night,
Speaker 2: and sure enough, we stayed and he passed that night.
Speaker 2: So all this is going on at the same time,
Speaker 2: arresting Anthony Capo, him flipping, my dad passing away, and
Speaker 2: one of the eerie things that does happen, like two
Speaker 2: days later when we have my dad's wake, is Anthony
Speaker 2: found out who we had moved to a different facility.
Speaker 2: Anthony found out that my dad passed, and he called
Speaker 2: me while I was at the funeral home to offer
Speaker 2: his condolences, which was very weird to me because just
Speaker 2: two days earlier we were at a gravesite looking for
Speaker 2: bodies that he helped put there. So just very very odd.
Speaker 2: But I was going through a lot at that particular time.
Speaker 1: I've said this on the show before. I've talked to
Speaker 1: forensic psychologists because you know, I'll talk about serial killers
Speaker 1: or murderers and I'll say, you know, they have no roles,
Speaker 1: they have no ethics, and they say, of course they do.
Speaker 1: They're just not the ones you have or general society has.
Speaker 1: They have boundaries, they have lines they won't cross, they
Speaker 1: have passions and all of this stuff. You just can't
Speaker 1: relate to it necessarily. And that's what I was thinking
Speaker 1: the whole time with Kapo, was there's so much of
Speaker 1: that respect and you know, wanting to not be minimized
Speaker 1: or anything. And so I could absolutely, one hundred percent
Speaker 1: see somebody like that wanting to respond to you with
Speaker 1: like kindness. So it sounds like a really good approach.
Speaker 1: And I do wonder if agents behind you end up
Speaker 1: doing the same kind of thing, if they learn from that.
Speaker 2: I went on to run the Columbo squad and we
Speaker 2: were extremely successful there, and we'd dismantle that family too,
Speaker 2: and we flipped a lot of people there as well,
Speaker 2: so related to Anthony, we get him in the door
Speaker 2: and again, as I said, this is the first mad
Speaker 2: member we have, and then Anthony basically opens up the floodgates.
Speaker 2: About three months later, as I said before, he reported
Speaker 2: to Vincent Palermo was the acting boss. Vincent Palermo is
Speaker 2: a businessman. Vincent Palermo did a lot of his criminal
Speaker 2: acts with Anthony. In March of two thousand, Vinnie decides
Speaker 2: to cooperate. Now, as we talk about the show, Vinnie
Speaker 2: had a strip club in Queen's called Wiggles. That's the
Speaker 2: real strip club as opposed to the one that's depicted
Speaker 2: in the show.
Speaker 1: So who is Anthony Soprano? Was that Vinnie Palermo.
Speaker 2: The real boss in the show would be Vincent Palermo.
Speaker 1: Okay, so did he have the same kind of conflicts,
Speaker 1: family conflicts or anything.
Speaker 2: He had family conflicts, but he would never go go
Speaker 2: to a shrink to discuss them. That would never happen.
Speaker 2: That's just a plot they have in the show that
Speaker 2: would never happen. The thing that's interesting in the show too,
Speaker 2: if you watched the first season, you have the boss
Speaker 2: dying of stomach cancer. The real boss dying of stomach cancer,
Speaker 2: even though, as we said before, the director didn't speak
Speaker 2: to anybody in real life. Jacob Mauri, who was the
Speaker 2: acting boss, dies of stomach cancer in June of nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety seven. That to me is just very ironic.
Speaker 1: What is the expectation of Vinnie Palermo when somebody like
Speaker 1: Capo is arrested. Is the expectation that they're going to
Speaker 1: let the mob attorneys take care of it, keep your
Speaker 1: mouth shut, will either try to get you out or
Speaker 1: you never say a word and nobody will shank you
Speaker 1: in prison.
Speaker 2: Well, Vinnie was arrested to that day. Oh yeah, so
Speaker 2: he was one of the thirty nine people that was
Speaker 2: locked up that day as well. So they expect everyone
Speaker 2: just to keep them outh shut, that's what they're expecting,
Speaker 2: and just to do your time and to move on
Speaker 2: and hopefully we can beat this case or maybe get
Speaker 2: to a juror so that the case gets thrown out
Speaker 2: because they've gotten the juries before.
Speaker 1: And Anthony and his attorney are not looking for some
Speaker 1: kind of a deal. What are they looking for and
Speaker 1: doing all of this, He's offering so much information.
Speaker 2: They're looking for a reduction in their sentence and they're
Speaker 2: looking for a second chance at life, but.
Speaker 1: They're he's going the opposite direction by, you know, admitting
Speaker 1: all of these things. And you said this would have
Speaker 1: all landed him life in prison when he how much
Speaker 1: would he have gotten if he had kept his mouth shut?
Speaker 2: He could have been exposed to twenty years, twenty to
Speaker 2: twenty five years? Okay, No, as I said, he's exposed
Speaker 2: himself to life, but he's rolling the dice and he's
Speaker 2: trusting me that he's going to get a reduction in
Speaker 2: a sentence.
Speaker 1: Is Benny aware that he's been moved? Does anybody suspect
Speaker 1: that Capo would be the one who would flip if anyone.
Speaker 2: Once we did the search wine up in Marlborough, New York,
Speaker 2: and once word travels extremely quickly when you don't go
Speaker 2: back to your prison cell. So then they knew Anthony
Speaker 2: was cooperating. So that's why Benny cooperated. So as I said,
Speaker 2: Bennie cooperated in March of two thousand. Then a month later,
Speaker 2: a gentleman named Victor de Kierra cooperates. So now we
Speaker 2: have three people cooperating rather quickly, an associate, a panel boss,
Speaker 2: and Anthony a soldier. And also Ralph. So we have
Speaker 2: four total people as opposed to having no one in
Speaker 2: one hundred years. We have four people rather quickly. So
Speaker 2: what we do is we do the same thing. We
Speaker 2: proffer and then you proffer, and that leads to a
Speaker 2: cooperation agreement. When you get to a cooperation agreement, you
Speaker 2: have to plead guilty. You plead guilty to all your crimes,
Speaker 2: basically every crime you ever did. So when Anthony played guilty,
Speaker 2: he played guilty in June of two thousand that year.
Speaker 2: He ended up pleading to two murders, eleven murder conspiracies,
Speaker 2: and every crime that you could think of, So that
Speaker 2: was his plea. Vinnie and Victor do the same thing.
Speaker 2: So we take all their information and now we want
Speaker 2: to have a superseding indictment where we're going to go
Speaker 2: out and use all their information and arrest more people.
Speaker 2: And that's what we do. In October of two thousand.
Speaker 2: We then arrest the official boss, the Consiglieri, a bunch
Speaker 2: of captains and soldiers who was known as the hierarchy.
Speaker 2: Arrest and from there that's when things get real real quickly.
Speaker 2: Associated comes forward. His name is Frank Scarabino. His nickname
Speaker 2: was Frankie the Beast. Frankie the Beast comes forward and
Speaker 2: says he wants to cooperate and that he's got the
Speaker 2: contract to kill Anthony Capo, to kill Anthony Capo's kids,
Speaker 2: and to hurt law enforcement. So I always say, hard
Speaker 2: work leads to good luck, thankfully. As you mentioned therefore,
Speaker 2: that some of these guys had boundaries. His boundary was
Speaker 2: he wasn't going to hurt kids. That was the line
Speaker 2: for him. So he decided to come forward, and now
Speaker 2: he wants to cooperate. So now we've got to move
Speaker 2: him and his family. So now we have five people
Speaker 2: total in in the door, this spiral effect of cooperation
Speaker 2: that Anthony has created for us. Then a month later
Speaker 2: we have a guy who was arrested in December of
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine. His name is Thomas Detrah, who is
Speaker 2: a mountain of a man. He sees that everyone is
Speaker 2: cooperating and he wants to cooperate. He's out on bail.
Speaker 2: Remember I told you one of the two that started
Speaker 2: us was Joseph Connigliero, the guy in the wheelchair that
Speaker 2: got killed. Well, he is part of the conspiracy to
Speaker 2: murder him, and he's trying to get out in front
Speaker 2: that he wants to cooperate because he's out on bail.
Speaker 2: We decide let's get him to make a consensual recording.
Speaker 2: What we do is we get everyone that's involved in
Speaker 2: the murder to kill Joseph Connigliero together, and Tommy Detore
Speaker 2: is going to record them. It's probably the best recording
Speaker 2: the FBI has, or one of the best, where he
Speaker 2: gets everyone together and they talk about their role in
Speaker 2: the murder. Now, as I said, Joseph Conigliero was in
Speaker 2: a wheelchair. He had his car rigged where he could
Speaker 2: actually drive it. So the shooter was a guy named
Speaker 2: Martin Lewis. Martin Lewis is on tape saying I shot
Speaker 2: him six times. I got out of the car and
Speaker 2: Joseph Connigliero pulled away, drove up the street, got to
Speaker 2: a stop sign and put his blinker on and drove
Speaker 2: himself to the hospital. This is all on tape. Now
Speaker 2: there's another guy named Joseph Brightson. Joseph Brightson was another
Speaker 2: mountain of a man. They used to call Brightson and
Speaker 2: Timy Detora at the Twin Towers because they were so big.
Speaker 2: So Joseph Conigileero stops at Joseph Brightson's house and beeps
Speaker 2: the horn. Joseph Brightson thinks that Joseph Canigileero is dead.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine the look on his face when Joseph
Speaker 2: Connegileero beeps the horn for Joseph Brison to come downstairs.
Speaker 2: Joseph Brison comes downstairs, jumps in the car and goes
Speaker 2: to the hospital with him, and then Joseph Conagilero dies
Speaker 2: at the hospital. When he's at the hospital, Joseph Brightson
Speaker 2: calls his cousin who's an NYPD detective, and unfortunately the
Speaker 2: detective goes through the car and removes all the case shells,
Speaker 2: so now he's in the case. And again also this
Speaker 2: is all on tape. It's probably one of the best
Speaker 2: tapes ever. And for trial, all you have to do
Speaker 2: is press play.
Speaker 1: What do you do with a cop who does that
Speaker 1: in prison? I mean, but police officers in prison already
Speaker 1: will have a hard time. Does he have to go
Speaker 1: in a special facility?
Speaker 2: Also, oh, he doesn't go in a special facility. And
Speaker 2: he wasn't a very tall man. He ended up. You know,
Speaker 2: we can talk about the trials when we get there.
Speaker 2: But he ended up going to trial, he got convicted,
Speaker 2: and he got sentenced to thirteen years horrible and I'm
Speaker 2: sure his time was hard, you know what I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So we have this tape and then we do more
Speaker 2: arrest and then we actually have another arrest related to
Speaker 2: the leak. So we couldn't arrest the alleged court reporter
Speaker 2: because we couldn't get any direct evidence that it was
Speaker 2: the person was supplying the information. We could only get
Speaker 2: the evidence who got the information. So we ended up
Speaker 2: arresting a Genevie's captain named Fritzy Giabnelli. So we arrested
Speaker 2: him in August of two thousand and one, and that
Speaker 2: was right before nine to eleven. That the book talks
Speaker 2: about my experiences through thro nine to eleven, which is
Speaker 2: some crazy times there. And then after nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: our investigations go silent for about four or five months
Speaker 2: where we have to divert all our resources to counter
Speaker 2: terrorism at that particular time, and then we slowly get
Speaker 2: back to working organized crime, and we get back to
Speaker 2: working organized crime. Then I start the trials. And what's
Speaker 2: different between the state and the federal is when you're
Speaker 2: in federal the agents actually sit at the trial, so
Speaker 2: you're working hand in hand with the prosecutors. And trial
Speaker 2: is the best experience because that's where you learn. You
Speaker 2: learn all the mistakes that you made, but it's the
Speaker 2: best experience. And it's twenty four to seven. You're prepping
Speaker 2: for trial. You have trial during the day, then at
Speaker 2: night you're going to work with the witness. It's constant.
Speaker 2: And I was basically on trial from December two thousand
Speaker 2: and two up until November two thousand and three, where
Speaker 2: I think during that time period for trial, so it
Speaker 2: was just a year of no life whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Do you have a lot of fears during this time period.
Speaker 1: I mean you're hearing that you know there are contracts
Speaker 1: out to hurt law enforcement. You must have been scared
Speaker 1: at some point.
Speaker 2: Well, you know you're used to threats, right, that's part
Speaker 2: of the job. But yes, it's like when we first
Speaker 2: heard that there was a contract out on our head
Speaker 2: on law enforcement. Of course I'm concerned because I was
Speaker 2: the handler for Anthony Kapolm. I'm the one that flipped them,
Speaker 2: so of course I'm concerned. As years went by, it's
Speaker 2: like I ended up working them all for fifteen years.
Speaker 2: There's actually a consensual recordings of them talking about me,
Speaker 2: that I'm a decent guy, that I know what I'm doing,
Speaker 2: and that I've always treated people with respect. You know,
Speaker 2: if I had you, I had you, even if I
Speaker 2: had you, but we didn't have it on tape. I
Speaker 2: didn't have you then. But I've always treated them with respect,
Speaker 2: and I think they actually saw that. So do I
Speaker 2: fear for my life now now, you know. But back then,
Speaker 2: when it first happened, here was a little concerned because
Speaker 2: it's a jolt, you know what I mean. But you know,
Speaker 2: because I worked them for so long, I think there's
Speaker 2: a level of respect. And as I said, after this case,
Speaker 2: I went on to work the Bananas and also the Columbos.
Speaker 1: Can you use Anthony Capo as an example of how
Speaker 1: you can look at someone who has done so many
Speaker 1: awful things and somehow it doesn't sound like you were
Speaker 1: acting when you were talking to him. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: read that you guys had some pretty personal exchanges, and
Speaker 1: I'm interested in a little bit about what he told
Speaker 1: you about his life. And then, of course you know
Speaker 1: how your PABs could have been parallel, but they very
Speaker 1: clearly split off. So how do you humanize somebody like that?
Speaker 2: Well, one thing that I learned is you kind of
Speaker 2: become a social worker a b. It's not up for
Speaker 2: me to judge. I mean, it's like they'll be judged
Speaker 2: by a higher power. And you know, it's a job.
Speaker 2: I've heard horrible things, not just from Anthony, but for
Speaker 2: all the witnesses that I've heard, and you know, you
Speaker 2: don't know how they were raised. Right, Again, it's not
Speaker 2: up for me to judge. And I think that's the
Speaker 2: biggest thing. And it's a job that I have to do.
Speaker 2: Right that The whole thing is this is a job,
Speaker 2: so and I have to get the job done. So
Speaker 2: And one thing that I've always said too is a
Speaker 2: happy witness is a good witness. And you'd be surprised
Speaker 2: if you can make people feel comfortable and relaxed. They're
Speaker 2: more apt to tell you things if you as opposed
Speaker 2: to making them feel uptight or anxious.
Speaker 1: Did he have regrets? Which, if he does, I have
Speaker 1: to think at least partially central on what he's putting
Speaker 1: his wife and his kids through.
Speaker 2: There is a murder I think I mentioned before. There's
Speaker 2: the murderer of Fred Weiss. That's the gentleman that god
Speaker 2: he wanted killed. So after that murder, his best friend
Speaker 2: Joseph Garafano was part of that murder as well. Joseph Garafano.
Speaker 2: After that murder, sorry to say, because there was a
Speaker 2: lot of heat because they kind of botched that murder.
Speaker 2: What Joey did was and I can't, for the life
Speaker 2: of me think about why he did this, but Joey's
Speaker 2: job was to steal plates from a car put it
Speaker 2: on a stolen car. For some reason, he took plates
Speaker 2: from Anthony Capo's wife's car. Very lazy thing to do,
Speaker 2: a very stupid thing to do. So after that murder,
Speaker 2: there was a partial tag that was seen at the
Speaker 2: crime scene. What they did is they killed him as
Speaker 2: soon they killed Fred Weiss as soon as he exited
Speaker 2: his apartment building, and Joey started talking saying, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to go down for this now, Anthony. He said
Speaker 2: this to Anthony, and Anthony made the mistake of telling
Speaker 2: his captain, Anthony Rotundo this. So in essence, Anthony got
Speaker 2: his best friend killed because they killed him. And that's
Speaker 2: something that haunted Anthony years later, and it took him
Speaker 2: probably two years for him to admit that to me,
Speaker 2: because I spent a lot of time with him, and
Speaker 2: it took him about two years to actually admit that
Speaker 2: he got his friend killed. And he used to tell
Speaker 2: me that he would have nightmares about it. That's something
Speaker 2: that hit him pretty hard.
Speaker 1: What about his wife and kids? I mean, I know
Speaker 1: what happens. He moves to a different facility to keep himself.
Speaker 1: Do they go into witness security also? I mean the
Speaker 1: impact on them must have been tremendous.
Speaker 2: Well, when the threat happened, you know, I had to
Speaker 2: go up there and tell Anthony that, and that was
Speaker 2: a very difficult thing to do because you had to
Speaker 2: put yourself in hissues. He's defenseless, so he's looking to
Speaker 2: me to protect his family. I was put in a
Speaker 2: very tough spot because his wife refused to move. So
Speaker 2: it's kind of hard for me to protect her when
Speaker 2: she's refusing.
Speaker 1: To move and she's in Staten Island? Is that right?
Speaker 2: Stetton Island. Now, they were having problems and they ultimately
Speaker 2: got divorced. Still, I'm concerned about her safety, but there's
Speaker 2: only so much I can possibly do. So we went
Speaker 2: we spoke to her, you know, try to get her
Speaker 2: to go into the program. She refused to do that.
Speaker 2: Offered her money to relocate. Initially she said no. Then finally,
Speaker 2: you know, after urging her over and over again to relocate,
Speaker 2: she relocated. But she relocated from one endo Staten Island
Speaker 2: to the next, which really is not a relocation, but
Speaker 2: she did. But yeah, it made my life very hard
Speaker 2: because she wouldn't relocate. Thankfully, nothing ever happened, but you know,
Speaker 2: it was very scary, and I felt bad for Anthony
Speaker 2: because he was defenseless. Even though they were having problems,
Speaker 2: He's still concerned about her and her kids. And thankfully
Speaker 2: nothing ever happened. Is like, the main thing is.
Speaker 1: There anyway some of the members of these families, the
Speaker 1: actual families, biological families or whatever, don't know what their
Speaker 1: husbands and fathers and grandfathers are doing for a living.
Speaker 2: Yes, really, I've had that a couple of times. When
Speaker 2: I worked the Columbos, we had a proactive witness and
Speaker 2: we had to abruptly take him off the street. He
Speaker 2: made tapes for us for quite some time, and an
Speaker 2: event happened where he was the guy who actually intervened
Speaker 2: where someone was going to get killed. They were going
Speaker 2: to kill these two kids, and the mob guys had
Speaker 2: guns in their mouths and they were going to kill them,
Speaker 2: and he happened to be there with a recording device
Speaker 2: and he was a decent sized guy, and he stepped
Speaker 2: in and he kind of beat the crap out of
Speaker 2: the two kids. Saved their lives, really, but as a
Speaker 2: result of that, we had to shut down the case,
Speaker 2: and he owned the night club, and we had to
Speaker 2: break the news to him. He didn't even know. We
Speaker 2: went to the nightclub at like four o'clock in the
Speaker 2: morning and said, Okay, it's over. We have to shut
Speaker 2: this down. And he had never told his wife anything.
Speaker 2: So just imagine four or five o'clock in the morning
Speaker 2: going back to his house with him and us telling
Speaker 2: her a pack your bags, we're moving right now, and
Speaker 2: her just being totally shocked at the whole thing. It
Speaker 2: has happened before. At the end of the day, I
Speaker 2: think we convicted seventy one people, eleven murders were solved,
Speaker 2: seven trials. And what's interesting is, as I said, during
Speaker 2: this short, little time period, we had seven people that cooperated,
Speaker 2: ranging from associate soldier, captain, acting boss. And since that
Speaker 2: time period, no one else has cooperated. No other made
Speaker 2: member and that family has cooperated. So we're at twenty
Speaker 2: five years plus since that happened, and for trial purposes,
Speaker 2: it was great in the sense is at that particular
Speaker 2: point in time, it was the first time that we
Speaker 2: were able to put a structure of a family to
Speaker 2: testify against their own family. Whereas I said, we could
Speaker 2: put an associate, a soldier, a captain, and boss up
Speaker 2: from the same family testifying and against their family. And
Speaker 2: people come to me and they say, why did you
Speaker 2: write the book? And you know, there's a couple of reasons.
Speaker 2: First of all, I was approached and I was very
Speaker 2: blessed to have a great career. When I tell people
Speaker 2: all the time, it's not just me, it's when you
Speaker 2: work organized crime, it's always a team. It's always a
Speaker 2: team of people. So I've had great partners, mentors, supervisors,
Speaker 2: and just great squads. And when they approached me and
Speaker 2: they heard my story, they were like, this is not
Speaker 2: one book. This is two books. So this is just
Speaker 2: the first part of my career. We'll see if I
Speaker 2: have the energy to write a second one. The thing is,
Speaker 2: as I mentioned before, this squad CEE ten we got
Speaker 2: tremendous press because we basically dismantled two families at the
Speaker 2: same time, the Banano family plus the Dicalbalcanti family. They
Speaker 2: were such a young group of selfless agents that just
Speaker 2: had each other's back. We got tremendous press. The press
Speaker 2: never put it together that it was the same squad.
Speaker 2: It was so funny where we were in the paper
Speaker 2: daily from two sides of the fence, and they just
Speaker 2: never put it together. So this is one way to
Speaker 2: get that out there. And then lastly, I don't know
Speaker 2: the relationship that Anthony had with his kids, and I
Speaker 2: just hope that by reading this book they see all
Speaker 2: the good that he did. Anthony testified for me seven times.
Speaker 2: He actually became like a professional witness where he enjoyed this.
Speaker 2: He loved the banter and he was good at it.
Speaker 2: And for someone that prior to being locked up, he
Speaker 2: never worked really a day in his life, he was
Speaker 2: always trying to scam. When he went into the witness
Speaker 2: security program, he used to always say he wanted to
Speaker 2: be a success story for me, and I would tell him,
Speaker 2: don't be a Suxcis story for me, be a success
Speaker 2: story for yourself. He worked hard and he really did
Speaker 2: change his life around and he tried to make the
Speaker 2: best of that second chance. So hopefully his kids, you know,
Speaker 2: years later now, can actually see that he did do
Speaker 2: some good. Yes, he did heinous acts and I do
Speaker 2: not condone those at all, and I feel horrible for
Speaker 2: the victims. But he did turn his life around and
Speaker 2: he did do some good.
Speaker 1: Well, tell me, aside from testifying for you so much
Speaker 1: and giving you a lot of information, tell me the
Speaker 1: way the rest of his life goes. Once the dust
Speaker 1: is settled and you have the seventy one convictions, is
Speaker 1: that what it was? Yeah, once you have these convictions
Speaker 1: and then you're moving on to the Columbo and wherever else?
Speaker 1: What happens with Anthony?
Speaker 2: All right? So basically Anthony does get bail. He did
Speaker 2: about four years in jail, and people are always of
Speaker 2: this mindset that they go into the witness security program.
Speaker 2: There are jails throughout the United States. There are roughly
Speaker 2: seven jails. I can't say where they are, but people
Speaker 2: go to jail first. So Anthony actually went to jail
Speaker 2: for four years and then he got bail, and then
Speaker 2: he went into the witness Security program. That's called Phase two.
Speaker 2: Phase two of the Winness Security program. As I said before,
Speaker 2: it's run by the US Marshall Service. That's when you
Speaker 2: get your fake ID, like your licensed Social Security number passport.
Speaker 2: And he went in there and he became a car salesman.
Speaker 2: I used to always joke that he could sell steamshit
Speaker 2: to a blind man because he had because he had
Speaker 2: the gift of the gap. So he did really well there.
Speaker 2: But he did have some health issues. You know, he
Speaker 2: was a bad diabetic, and you know, I think he
Speaker 2: lost some toes throughout his life there. But he did
Speaker 2: try to make the best of his second life.
Speaker 1: Okay. Now he ended up dying.
Speaker 2: A couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hey did it?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: Now, is there anybody else of note that had an
Speaker 1: interesting time once they either testified or took complete deal
Speaker 1: or whatever it was.
Speaker 2: There was another witness, Anthony Rotundo. Anthon Rotundo testified me
Speaker 2: for seven times as well. Anthony Rotundo actually went to college.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't rephrase that he graduated college. Anyone can go
Speaker 2: and can go to college. He actually, yeah, had to
Speaker 2: graduate college, and so he was a great witness for
Speaker 2: us as well. It's funny. What I try to do
Speaker 2: with the book is I tried to reach out to
Speaker 2: all the witnesses ahead of time to let them know.
Speaker 2: And Frank Scarabino, the one who had the contract to
Speaker 2: kill Kapito and his family and also basically to kill me,
Speaker 2: I couldn't get a hold of him, and sure enough,
Speaker 2: I'm not on any type of Instagram and things like that,
Speaker 2: but he contacted me through LinkedIn.
Speaker 1: Did that to scare the shit out of you? That
Speaker 1: would have scared me to death.
Speaker 2: So we were able to connect through LinkedIn with his
Speaker 2: new name, and you know, he was already supportive of
Speaker 2: like the book, and I told him, I said, I
Speaker 2: tried to reach out to you the old that I
Speaker 2: had for you. So it's it's nice to reconnect with
Speaker 2: him again. But he but he's doing well too. He's
Speaker 2: made the most of his second life. And as we
Speaker 2: talked about before, his wife knew nothing at all about
Speaker 2: his about his life too. Benny actually moved down to Texas,
Speaker 2: I believe, and there was a reporter who went down
Speaker 2: there and basically knocked on his front door, and I
Speaker 2: think it was in the paper. So Benny really didn't
Speaker 2: change like his ways. He I think went right back
Speaker 2: into the same type of business that he had before.
Speaker 1: You've spent so much time reading about these guys, interviewing
Speaker 1: these guys, knowing about the crimes. Has there been any
Speaker 1: kind of an evolution between when you started working these
Speaker 1: mafia mob cases until now? Have they, you know, diversified
Speaker 1: or is this Do they have the same control on
Speaker 1: in New Jersey and New York that they once had?
Speaker 1: Is a structure any different?
Speaker 2: Well, I think from a cooperation standpoint, I think Anthony
Speaker 2: opened up the floodgates. I'll start there in the sense
Speaker 2: is you know, if you look at the history of
Speaker 2: cooperation you had Sammy the Bull started in nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 2: Al Di Orco was behind him, and from ninety two
Speaker 2: to ninety nine there was really no there was no
Speaker 2: one that had tried to cooperate. Anthony started that and
Speaker 2: then after that, you know, between the Bananas and the DeCavalcantes,
Speaker 2: it just became the floodgates. Then after I was finished
Speaker 2: this case, I went down to the Columbo squad and
Speaker 2: we were extremely successful there. You know, I think the
Speaker 2: highlights of that was in January of twenty eleven, I
Speaker 2: spearheaded the largest FBI arrest ever against the mob, where
Speaker 2: we arrested one hundred and twenty seven people, and then
Speaker 2: I ended my career as a supervisor where we had
Speaker 2: a dig related to the Good to the Goodfellow's movie
Speaker 2: in June of twenty thirteen. So I think cooperation has
Speaker 2: started to become the norm. Related to your question on rackets,
Speaker 2: though you know even recently you've had arrest, the Mob
Speaker 2: has been around for one hundred and twenty five years.
Speaker 2: They're not going to go away. It's like they hated
Speaker 2: Gotty because Gotti was so flashy. They're supposed to be
Speaker 2: under the radar. So the rackets of sports betting and
Speaker 2: trying to gamble, they're going to be around forever. The
Speaker 2: extortions of unions, that's going to be around, it's always
Speaker 2: going to be around. You know. What they're starting to
Speaker 2: get into is technology though, right, that's what and also
Speaker 2: the crypto, So these are things you have to watch for, right,
Speaker 2: But they're going to evolve. There's a lot of smart
Speaker 2: people that work in the MOB, right, so they're always
Speaker 2: going to try to adapt, and that's what the Bureau
Speaker 2: always has to keep the resources on them because if
Speaker 2: they don't keep their eye on them, they're going to rebuild.
Speaker 2: It's like the Bureau has done a great job the
Speaker 2: last twenty years of really trying to decimate them. But
Speaker 2: the mob is always going to rebuild. They've been around forever.
Speaker 1: Are there still four or five main families or are
Speaker 1: there more factions than that?
Speaker 2: Yes, there's still the five main families in New York.
Speaker 2: You still have the Jersey family. You know, they're not
Speaker 2: going to go away. They're always going to be be there,
Speaker 2: you know, and I don't think they're as strong as
Speaker 2: they were, but they're not going to go away though.
Speaker 1: Okay, for you, you were tired and then you moved
Speaker 1: on to a different job and all of that. What's
Speaker 1: the biggest lesson you think you've learned from all of this? Again,
Speaker 1: if I were your mother, I would have been terrified
Speaker 1: for the more than a decade or two that you
Speaker 1: worked under this specific thing. My grandmother was always terrified
Speaker 1: because her son was ahead of swat here in Austin
Speaker 1: and she just was the worst thing ever, But she
Speaker 1: was so proud of him.
Speaker 2: Well, even in my current job, I give safety tip training,
Speaker 2: I give active shooter training. I just tell people all
Speaker 2: the time, be a be aware of your surroundings, at
Speaker 2: all times. You know, I think, just generally speaking, people
Speaker 2: are addicted to their phone, and it just it annoys me,
Speaker 2: especially when I'm walking down the street in New York City,
Speaker 2: how people are just glued to their phone. You make
Speaker 2: yourself vulnerable. It's like pay attention. It's like you look
Speaker 2: like you're easy. So just be aware of your surroundings
Speaker 2: at all times. Don't make yourself look like a victim.
Speaker 2: And I constantly say, just try to say that to people.
Speaker 1: So you made history right as an FBI agent. And
Speaker 1: it all started with a handful of chocolates and some
Speaker 1: orange juice and showing someone who it seems like much
Speaker 1: of his life is based on trying to get respect.
Speaker 1: You give him that respect, and it seemed I know
Speaker 1: you did a lot of hard work, but to start
Speaker 1: there and for it to be so successful so quickly,
Speaker 1: you know, it was amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the stars were just the line. As
Speaker 2: I said, you know, when I got to that surveillance squad,
Speaker 2: I was very lucky there. And then during that rotational
Speaker 2: process when you're a new agent, I just tried to
Speaker 2: volunteer as much as I could. I went to the
Speaker 2: head of the organized crime branch and just try to
Speaker 2: sell myself and all you have in the bureau is
Speaker 2: the reputation that you try to build. And thankfully they
Speaker 2: just just gave me a shot and I just made
Speaker 2: the most of that. I was blessed to get. You know,
Speaker 2: have George Hannah as my mentor, and I just became
Speaker 2: a spun and I'm still friends with Hin till today,
Speaker 2: and you know, I all a lot to him. And
Speaker 2: as I said, I just was blessed to work with
Speaker 2: some great people. And it's always about about like the team.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Sinners, All About the
Speaker 1: Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and
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Speaker 1: This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer
Speaker 1: is Alexis M. Morosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
Speaker 1: This episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is
Speaker 1: our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hartstar,
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