Speaker 1: You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a
Speaker 1: production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2: In the criminal justice system, landmark trials transcend the courtroom
Speaker 2: to reshape the law. The brave many women who investigate
Speaker 2: and prosecute these cases are part of a select group
Speaker 2: that is defined American history. These are their stories. April
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three, The home of Joe Bonano, Tucson, Arizona.
Speaker 3: You have said the US government has tried to destroy you,
Speaker 3: that's sure.
Speaker 4: Why have they.
Speaker 5: Failed to destroy you?
Speaker 6: They haven't failed you.
Speaker 3: They haven't failed well yet they may still get you.
Speaker 7: For sure.
Speaker 6: All my life I've been misunderstore it. I just the
Speaker 6: rule of my family.
Speaker 7: As a father.
Speaker 1: When Joe Banano, the head of the Banano crime family,
Speaker 1: went on sixty Minutes in nineteen eighty three, he did
Speaker 1: something nobody had expected him to do. He admitted the
Speaker 1: very existence of the mafia. In his book, he all
Speaker 1: but confirmed the cooperation between the five major crime families,
Speaker 1: including things like dividing territory and sharing profits.
Speaker 5: Why was your fight to survive?
Speaker 6: To protect your life?
Speaker 5: Make sure dot you so sick?
Speaker 1: Banano was promoting a memoir of his life in crime,
Speaker 1: a public display of hubris that would have been unheard
Speaker 1: of in Lucky Luciano's day. So while being the first
Speaker 1: former boss to publicly acknowledge the existence of the mafia,
Speaker 1: Banano had also made a grave miscalculation.
Speaker 7: Back then, every time an OC figure was arrested and
Speaker 7: go to Troo or something like that, the defense atorneys.
Speaker 7: Their argument was this stake organized crime, lacos and nostra.
Speaker 7: This is like a miss. This is a government's theory.
Speaker 7: I mean, this doesn't exist. So that was the defense
Speaker 7: back then.
Speaker 1: Charlotte Lang is a former FBI supervisor who spent years
Speaker 1: investigating organized crime.
Speaker 7: What had happened was Banano. His book was about his
Speaker 7: problems with the Commission, and he basically tells you that
Speaker 7: the commission existed, and he hid out from the four
Speaker 7: other bosses for a period of time.
Speaker 1: The commission was like the executive board of the five
Speaker 1: families running and ruining New York City and beyond, and
Speaker 1: Banano's admission of its existence gave law enforcement a new
Speaker 1: angle of attack, because proof of a commission meant a
Speaker 1: way to link the families together and prove a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: No longer would crime bosses be insulated from the ruthless
Speaker 1: and violent crimes of their underlings. They could be held
Speaker 1: responsible for every act of extortion, theft, bribery, or murder
Speaker 1: that occurred at their behest. In short, it was a
Speaker 1: game changer and an opportunity not lost on Charlotte Lang,
Speaker 1: her FBI partner Pat Marshall, and the newly appointed US
Speaker 1: Attorney for New York.
Speaker 7: I had in one morning and Pap turned to me
Speaker 7: and he said, Rudy wants that book that Bonano wrote.
Speaker 1: Through the eyes of New York's top cop. Banano's book
Speaker 1: was essentially a manual for taking down the mob.
Speaker 8: Question you here increasingly now is who is Rudolph Juliani
Speaker 8: and what does he want?
Speaker 1: What he wanted was clear, put these bosses in front
Speaker 1: of a jury and behind bars.
Speaker 4: You're not with the mob because you want to be.
Speaker 8: It's the gangster that decides whether you're his associated on.
Speaker 7: If you like your life, you will vote to acquit.
Speaker 1: I'm Anisee and Nicolazzi, my father should have been a
Speaker 1: dead man from Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts. This is
Speaker 1: Law and Order Criminal justice system. Did you know anything
Speaker 1: about organized crime before you are now assigned to an
Speaker 1: organized crime task force.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 7: I had seen the movie The Godfather, but that was it.
Speaker 1: Charlotte's story of becoming an FBI agent is a unique one.
Speaker 7: When I was in college, the first two years, I
Speaker 7: was in pre med because I was either going to
Speaker 7: be a psychiatrist or veterinarian, was what I was thinking.
Speaker 7: And after I finished my sophomore year, I thought to myself,
Speaker 7: I don't want to do this. I would read the
Speaker 7: Washington Post and I saw this article the CIA was
Speaker 7: recruiting people. A friend of mine who was really really
Speaker 7: close to I said to her, I said, I'm seriously
Speaker 7: thinking of putting in for it, and she goes, oh, no, no, no,
Speaker 7: no no. And she told me why because she had
Speaker 7: a good friend who was a CIA agent. You don't
Speaker 7: want to do this. You won't be able to keep
Speaker 7: your pets and everything like that. So I thought to myself,
Speaker 7: the FBI, Well that's kind of similar.
Speaker 1: So instead of the CIA, Charlotte applied to the FBI,
Speaker 1: thinking she'd travel the world instead. Charlotte soon ended up
Speaker 1: in New York working one of the most notoriously difficult
Speaker 1: beats in the Bureau Organized Crime. Adding to the challenge,
Speaker 1: remnants of the FBI's outdated g man culture, man being
Speaker 1: the operative word.
Speaker 7: A particular supervisor said to me, I didn't ask for you.
Speaker 7: Women can't work organized crime. You will be the only
Speaker 7: woman on this squad as long as I'm here. That
Speaker 7: was my introduction to Welcome to New York.
Speaker 1: But despite the challenges, Charlotte hit the ground running, getting
Speaker 1: her first assignment from Jim Kostler.
Speaker 7: Jim said to me, I'm going to put you on
Speaker 7: the Genevieve's squad until everybody's here and we're up and running.
Speaker 1: Charlotte joined street teams, rounding of low level gangsters and
Speaker 1: drug dealers.
Speaker 7: I mean, yes, it was dangerous in many instances, but
Speaker 7: it was exciting.
Speaker 1: Her skills were soon recognized, even by the boss who'd
Speaker 1: believed that women didn't belong working organized crime.
Speaker 7: He quickly realized that he could depend on me.
Speaker 1: Charlotte was eventually partnered with Pat Marshall to gather evans
Speaker 1: that would later be crucial to the Commission case.
Speaker 7: So the squad that I was assigned to was the
Speaker 7: Bonano family squad, and there were a couple ti capos
Speaker 7: in the family that we were going to zero in on.
Speaker 1: And part of that was looking to the past, namely
Speaker 1: the assassination of Carmine Galante. While it occurred a couple
Speaker 1: of years before Charlotte joined the Bureau, they sensed its significance.
Speaker 7: We all knew that to kill a boss in a family,
Speaker 7: you had to have the commission approval. So, in other words,
Speaker 7: if you a boss of a family and you go
Speaker 7: to a meeting where there's only four of you, it's like,
Speaker 7: you know, somebody is in trouble at that particular point.
Speaker 1: Which means if they could solve Galante's murder, they might
Speaker 1: have the evidence they needed to prove a criminal conspiracy
Speaker 1: between the five families, and like Domino's Down, they would fall.
Speaker 1: And while Charlotte and the FBI were gathering their evidence,
Speaker 1: the ambitious new US Attorney for New York, Rudy Giuliani,
Speaker 1: was tasked with a different job, assembling a rockstar team
Speaker 1: of young lawyers to take on the city's most infamous criminals.
Speaker 6: My name is Michael Cherdoff, and in nineteen eighty five
Speaker 6: was a relatively new assistant United States Attorney in the
Speaker 6: Southern District of New York U S Attorney's.
Speaker 1: Office Michael Chertoff is a former Secretary of Homeland Security
Speaker 1: and the co author of the US Patriot Act. But
Speaker 1: when he started in the US Attorney's office, he was
Speaker 1: still pretty green, a recent law school graduate eager to
Speaker 1: earn his stripes.
Speaker 6: So I started in the four of eighty three. I
Speaker 6: tried three or four small cases in what they called
Speaker 6: general crimes in order to begin to just get accustomed
Speaker 6: to trying cases in front of a jury in a courtroom.
Speaker 1: But with his command of the courtroom, Michael quickly attracted
Speaker 1: the attention of his superior, who was eager to surround
Speaker 1: himself with just the right personalities and skill sets for
Speaker 1: his fight against the mob.
Speaker 6: The assignment actually came to me in eighty four, and
Speaker 6: what happened was I had been in general crimes, and
Speaker 6: the US Attorney at the time, whose name will be
Speaker 6: very familiar to you, Rudolf W. Guliani, reached out to
Speaker 6: my unit chief and said, I've got an idea for
Speaker 6: a case I want to prosecute and try myself. I
Speaker 6: want you to assign Michael Cherdoff to help me do that.
Speaker 6: Who helped me put the case together, do the investigation,
Speaker 6: and then he can assist me at the trial. My
Speaker 6: unit chief came to me and said, the US Attorney
Speaker 6: would like you to work on this case with him.
Speaker 6: He'll try it, but you'll get an opportunity to be
Speaker 6: at the trial and participate and do the investigation. And
Speaker 6: it's a great opportunity. So I said, fine, I'm happy
Speaker 6: to do it.
Speaker 1: Michael's first step was learning to plan.
Speaker 6: The way the US attorney was thinking about it was
Speaker 6: this there had been a series of cases under the
Speaker 6: Racketeering Statute that were focused on attacking an entire organi
Speaker 6: crime family as an organization, because the Racketeering Statute really
Speaker 6: allowed you, for the first time to build a case
Speaker 6: that was organizationally focused in not just individual crimes.
Speaker 1: In other words, it was custom made for taking down
Speaker 1: the mob.
Speaker 6: And his idea was supposing, instead of just looking family
Speaker 6: by family, we do a case involving the board of
Speaker 6: Directors of the American Mafia, which is known as the Commission.
Speaker 1: And central to their strategy would be Joe Banano's ill
Speaker 1: conceived criminal memoir, and in the.
Speaker 6: Book he discussed his experiences as a mob boss, including
Speaker 6: talking about being on the Commission, and Giuliani thought, well,
Speaker 6: that's great, this is a roadmap to a case involving
Speaker 6: the Commission. And actually we're going to try to force
Speaker 6: Banana to testify so we can actually use his evidence
Speaker 6: about the background of the Commission.
Speaker 1: But it was harder to deal with than they'd hoped.
Speaker 1: By this time, he had moved to Tucson, Arizona, and
Speaker 1: was claiming to have a number of health issues.
Speaker 7: Even in nineteen fifty seven he feigned his heart attack
Speaker 7: and that he would die if he had to travel.
Speaker 1: But Giuliani was persistent. At first, Banana claimed he was
Speaker 1: too ill to go to New York and provide testimony,
Speaker 1: so the government went to him.
Speaker 7: Well, of course, Rudy being Rudy, he was like, we're
Speaker 7: going out there and we're going to do it at
Speaker 7: the hospital.
Speaker 1: Just picture the scene. It's an entire army of agents, prosecutors,
Speaker 1: defense attorneys, judges all getting on a plane.
Speaker 7: This was like this traveling show from New York. This
Speaker 7: was like big news in Arizona because his famous United
Speaker 7: States attorney in New York who's taking the mob down,
Speaker 7: is coming to Tucson. And so what happened was we
Speaker 7: had this proceeding as to whether he was physically fit
Speaker 7: enough to testify. Of course, his doctor gone on and
Speaker 7: said that he had this going on, and that going on.
Speaker 1: Banano's doctor was a member of his family and just
Speaker 1: a med student. But the government had their own expert too.
Speaker 7: We had a doctor from New York who had examined him.
Speaker 7: And this doctor, of course was stellar, and with his
Speaker 7: credentials in every sale the cent, there's no reason why
Speaker 7: he can't travel to New York.
Speaker 1: Still, Banana refused to travel or cooperate, but Giuliani wasn't done.
Speaker 1: He asked the judge to hold Banano in contempt of court.
Speaker 1: The judge complied, and from there Banano went to prison,
Speaker 1: the longest time that this aging mobster had ever been
Speaker 1: locked up, and he stayed there for over a year.
Speaker 1: With or without Joe Banano's testimony, they would need hard
Speaker 1: evidence proving that the five families had conspired to commit
Speaker 1: crimes of all shapes and sizes, including In nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: Michael Cherdoff was a young federal prosecutor in the office
Speaker 1: of then US Attorney Rudy Giuliani, who was building a
Speaker 1: case that they hoped would take down the New York
Speaker 1: mob once and for all. The scope of the investigation
Speaker 1: was huge.
Speaker 6: There had been a series of family based investigations going on,
Speaker 6: and some of those involved very extensive electronic surveillance wire
Speaker 6: tapping your bugs.
Speaker 1: In addition to secret recording devices. The FBI embarked on
Speaker 1: more target emissions too, surveilling specific suspects to witness their
Speaker 1: interactions with other mobsters firsthand. Here's former FBI agent Charlotte Lang.
Speaker 7: There were certain days where I used to say to myself,
Speaker 7: I can't believe I'm getting paid to do that.
Speaker 1: On multiple occasions, Charlotte was sent in undercover infiltrating the
Speaker 1: Genevese family to eavesdrop on conversations.
Speaker 7: When we had information from the wires, like when fat
Speaker 7: Tony Sellerno would meet with Paul Castellano, and of course
Speaker 7: they would go to really nice restaurants in New York
Speaker 7: and we would go in maybe two women, sometimes there
Speaker 7: were three of us, try to get at a table
Speaker 7: close to observe what was going on two.
Speaker 1: Of New York's most infamous mob bosses, Tony Sellerno of
Speaker 1: the Genovese family and Paul Castellano, head of the Gambino family.
Speaker 1: It was no small feat to go after Paul Castellano.
Speaker 1: At the time, the Gambino family was arguably the most
Speaker 1: powerful of all the families, and Castellano sat at the top.
Speaker 1: He was a savvy businessman known for his cutthroat approach
Speaker 1: to negotiating major deals. When it came to the financial
Speaker 1: dealings of the mob, Castellano was arbitern. For Charlotte, listening
Speaker 1: in on a mob boss was just another day at work,
Speaker 1: and as it turned out, the female FBI agents had
Speaker 1: some advantages that the old guard had underestimated.
Speaker 7: Karin Higgins, who was on the Columbo squad, she was
Speaker 7: about seven months pregnant, and so when we went into
Speaker 7: this restaurant, I spotted them. As soon as we came
Speaker 7: through the door, I said to the may Or D,
Speaker 7: I said, can we sit over there, as you could see,
Speaker 7: my friend is pregnant and she shouldn't be sitting in
Speaker 7: a draft or anything like that.
Speaker 1: The Maitre d sat the women directly next to Castellano
Speaker 1: and Salerno, access unheard of from any of their male counterparts.
Speaker 7: When we went back to the office to write up
Speaker 7: the three to two of what we saw what we heard,
Speaker 7: I said, I didn't think this was ever going to
Speaker 7: come to an end. They were very animated because they
Speaker 7: were disputing the profits that were coming from the shakedowns
Speaker 7: of the cement companies.
Speaker 1: Salerno was also a major focus in the investigation, particularly
Speaker 1: because the Genovese family was so involved with the construction industry,
Speaker 1: and as Michael Cherdoff explains, that concrete business was big
Speaker 1: business for the mob, including the Commission.
Speaker 6: It was all about this construction issue. How they controlled
Speaker 6: all the concrete being poured to build buildings in Manhattan,
Speaker 6: and two percent went to the family that controlled the
Speaker 6: particular labor union, and the other two percent went to
Speaker 6: the Commission to be divided up among the members of
Speaker 6: the Commission and their families.
Speaker 1: So basically, the money first went to the top and
Speaker 1: then trickled down within each family from there, and the
Speaker 1: FBI heard all about it. The Concrete Club, as it
Speaker 1: became known, would become key evidence, so its inner workings
Speaker 1: became extremely familiar to the prosecutors working the case, including
Speaker 1: another prosecutor who soon joined the team.
Speaker 4: My name is John Savarice, and I was an assistant
Speaker 4: US attorney in the US Attorney's Office for the Southern
Speaker 4: District of New York here in Manhattan. I think I
Speaker 4: didn't know a whole lot more than anyone who saw
Speaker 4: the Godfather movies knew all of which of course I
Speaker 4: had seen because they're terrific films, but you very quickly
Speaker 4: realized that that's Hollywood and it's not, in fact, anything
Speaker 4: like what the Mob is really like.
Speaker 1: John was assigned to assist Michael Chertoff and Rudy Giuliani.
Speaker 4: So the first things I started working on was helping
Speaker 4: to put witnesses into the grand jury, helping to assemble
Speaker 4: additional evidence that would go into the grand jury, and
Speaker 4: helping to craft what would be the ultimate superseding indictment,
Speaker 4: the one that we went to trial on.
Speaker 1: By this time, enough evidence had been gathered that prosecutors
Speaker 1: felt ready to present their case to a grand jury,
Speaker 1: which meant this case was likely heading for true and
Speaker 1: one of the central pieces to their case would be concrete.
Speaker 4: What we were doing was trying to build out what
Speaker 4: is called the Club scheme or the club aspect of
Speaker 4: the Commission case, and that was the whole narrative around
Speaker 4: the extortion of the concrete industry in New York to
Speaker 4: extract penalty from each concrete contractor in order that they
Speaker 4: be assured labor peace because the Mob had infiltrated the
Speaker 4: chief unions that did that kind of work.
Speaker 1: Labor unions cooperated because of bribes, corrupted leadership elections, and
Speaker 1: of course physical violence.
Speaker 4: And so the threat was, if you don't pay us
Speaker 4: what we want, we'll shut your job down. We'll have
Speaker 4: the union that we essentially control go out on strike,
Speaker 4: and that is devastating obviously to a construction company.
Speaker 1: The Mob pushed city construction costs up by about twenty percent.
Speaker 1: By the late eighties, it was reported that as much
Speaker 1: as seventy five percent of New York's construction industry was
Speaker 1: controlled by the MOB.
Speaker 4: We spent a lot of time with several leaders of
Speaker 4: construction companies that had been victimized by this commission driven
Speaker 4: scheme to get an understanding of what building projects were
Speaker 4: impacted by the scheme, how they felt, what drove them
Speaker 4: to do what they agreed to do, and why.
Speaker 1: But the cooperation of these legitimate business owners was given
Speaker 1: at great risk to lives and livelihoods.
Speaker 4: I do remember getting the strong sense of the fear
Speaker 4: that they felt from Ralph Scopo, who was sort of
Speaker 4: the chief enforcer of the scheme.
Speaker 1: Ralph Scopa was a member of the Columbo family. While
Speaker 1: he sat as president of their youth union. Concrete contractors
Speaker 1: were forced to pay thousands of dollars for labor peace
Speaker 1: a one percent kickback was given to Scopo on their
Speaker 1: projects such as the public library in the Bronx, a
Speaker 1: police station in Brooklyn, and in addition to the city
Speaker 1: jail on Rikers Island. He was a man who was
Speaker 1: not afraid to intimidate others.
Speaker 4: We had a tape recording of Ralph Scopo in a
Speaker 4: conversation with one of these contractors and he referenced something
Speaker 4: that had been in the newspapers about a mob hit
Speaker 4: someone who had been murdered. He said roughly something like, well,
Speaker 4: you know, you don't want that to happen to you, which,
Speaker 4: of course was terrorizing the person on the receiving end
Speaker 4: of that message.
Speaker 1: But despite the huge scale of the operation, most of
Speaker 1: these transactions were handled in person by mob members, and
Speaker 1: this worked to the FBI's advantage because it's easier to
Speaker 1: tail a couple of soldiers than the commission itself.
Speaker 4: It's happening usually in cash, person to person, and we
Speaker 4: did have tape recorded evidence at trial of various members
Speaker 4: of the mob who were the kind of footmen on
Speaker 4: the ground running the scheme.
Speaker 1: And because it was also profitable, it was something that
Speaker 1: all five of the families participated in, so cracking the
Speaker 1: Concrete Club would be the surest way to prove their
Speaker 1: criminal cooperation. So law enforcement worked from all angles, planting
Speaker 1: bugs and wire taps, conducting surveillance, hoping to gather incriminating
Speaker 1: conversations about the Concrete Scheme that could be used in court.
Speaker 1: And the results spoke for themselves.
Speaker 4: Did you still on your opinions?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Gable only to win?
Speaker 4: Hey, I done, glad book.
Speaker 1: That's little Ralphie Scopo talking to a man named alphonsald Ambrosia,
Speaker 1: a fellow member of the Colombo family, and they But
Speaker 1: Ralph Scopo and fat Tony Sealerno weren't the only mobsters
Speaker 1: that Charlotte kept tabs on. In the last episode, we
Speaker 1: talked about the nineteen eighty two bug planted in the
Speaker 1: black Jaguar of the Luksey Captain Salvator Avellino won.
Speaker 3: Provided that your guys, price is right.
Speaker 6: Could price it's the same as DNA price.
Speaker 7: When you have a boss, an underboss and Consiglieria being
Speaker 7: driven around and they're chatting away about all their illegal activities.
Speaker 7: I mean, it was a treasure trove of information.
Speaker 1: That Jaguar in the and the Jaguar bug would be
Speaker 1: a critical source of information in the government's case against
Speaker 1: the commission. Another piece of evidence they wanted the cooperating
Speaker 1: testimony of one of the conspirators themselves. Every time a
Speaker 1: mobster was picked up on charges and facing possible jail time,
Speaker 1: it was an opportunity to trade up for a higher
Speaker 1: ranking member of the family. Members of the mafia were
Speaker 1: notoriously hard to flip, but the more incriminating evidence the
Speaker 1: FBI gathered, the stronger their leverage, and eventually they hit peterr.
Speaker 7: Then we had another boss by the name of Angelo Leonardo,
Speaker 7: and he was the boss of the Cleveland family, and
Speaker 7: he went to jail for drug charges.
Speaker 1: But would this Cleveland mob boss agree to cooperate and
Speaker 1: provide evidence from the witness stand The FBI was patient
Speaker 1: and persistent.
Speaker 7: And there was an agent in Cleveland that used to
Speaker 7: go and visit him, say hey, Angelo, how you doing
Speaker 7: and everything I got So basically this agent got Angelo
Speaker 7: to flip.
Speaker 1: Lenardo was facing life for narcotics trafficking, so ultimately, in
Speaker 1: exchange for a reduced sentence, he agreed to spill everything
Speaker 1: he knew.
Speaker 7: He would basically say, how it works. You have associates,
Speaker 7: you have soldiers, you have made members. I called him
Speaker 7: Ange because we got to spend a Christmas together. Ange's
Speaker 7: story was his father was the head of the family
Speaker 7: at one particular point, but his father was murdered, and
Speaker 7: the story goes, I think Ange might have been a
Speaker 7: teenager at the time, and his mother walked him down
Speaker 7: to a particular building and she handed him a gun
Speaker 7: and said, you go in there and you kill so
Speaker 7: and so, because she had determined that's who had killed
Speaker 7: her husband. And that's what Angelo did to this club,
Speaker 7: shot him and ran out.
Speaker 1: His story speaks to why the mafia has proven to
Speaker 1: be so popular and even romanticized in pop culture. Despite
Speaker 1: their crimes often heartless and brutal, many could also be
Speaker 1: disarmingly charming. Leonardo was one of them.
Speaker 6: He was polite, he was intelligent. He was able to
Speaker 6: give background about the commission, how the commission worked, what
Speaker 6: kinds of things they decided, general background on the way
Speaker 6: the mob operates.
Speaker 1: But before the case went to trial, the man in
Speaker 1: charge of the entire investigation, who had staked his reputation
Speaker 1: on success, would make the shocking decision to step away
Speaker 1: and instead handle a political case that he believed would
Speaker 1: be even higher profile. And of course we're talking about
Speaker 1: the future mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani. Here's Michael Cherdoff.
Speaker 6: Now, the original concept was Rudy would try it, Giuliani,
Speaker 6: and I would be his second chair and assistant, so
Speaker 6: there'd be a more experienced prosecutor leading the entire prosecution.
Speaker 6: So what happened is late eighty four or early eighty five,
Speaker 6: I got called in by my unit chief and she
Speaker 6: said to me, you've read about this new indictment of
Speaker 6: Stanley Friedman, who is the Bronx Sparrow president. He's been
Speaker 6: indicted for corruption charges five a Southern district. Rudy has
Speaker 6: decided he's going to try that case, so you're obviously
Speaker 6: going to take over being the lead lawyer in the
Speaker 6: Commission case. And she said, I always thought this might happen,
Speaker 6: and I kind of warned you about this.
Speaker 1: According to Giuliani, he believed the Commission case to be
Speaker 1: air tight, and he trusted his young lawyers to bring
Speaker 1: the convictions home. His critics say that the city corruption
Speaker 1: trial promised us squaring off against a political rival, and
Speaker 1: that Giuliani hoped to ride that victory straight to the
Speaker 1: Mayor's office. But regardless of his motives, his exit from
Speaker 1: the commission case left leadership in the hands of the
Speaker 1: thirty two year old Michael Cherdoff.
Speaker 6: So it was a little bit like that famous play
Speaker 6: All About Eve, where the understudy winds up stepping into
Speaker 6: the starring role. All of a sudden, I found myself
Speaker 6: as the lead prosecutor in the commission case.
Speaker 1: Sitting in the second chair was an even younger John
Speaker 1: Savay's Gil Childers crossed over the river from the Brooklyn
Speaker 1: DIA's office to fill out the team. Together. They had
Speaker 1: less than fifteen years experience in the courtroom, and these
Speaker 1: three were about to face off with the entire New
Speaker 1: York City mob. Here's Gil.
Speaker 8: It was an incredible feeling on several levels. Whose bright
Speaker 8: idea was that to entrust this case to guys of
Speaker 8: this experience level, no matter how competent you may or
Speaker 8: may not think they are.
Speaker 1: It was the kind of case that could make or
Speaker 1: break careers, but more importantly, a win that could finally
Speaker 1: break the mafia stranglehold on the citizens of New York.
Speaker 1: And while they're at it, they might even solve a murder.
Speaker 1: The three lawyer team decided to dig deeper into the
Speaker 1: murder of Carmen Galanti. Michael Cherdoff says it may have
Speaker 1: been the most important piece of the case.
Speaker 6: An act of violence has a dramatic effect, unlike tapes
Speaker 6: or people talking about paying money, and it makes in
Speaker 6: a very real way, the jury understand that we're talking
Speaker 6: about here is not just you who gets money from
Speaker 6: a contract, but who lives and dies. And the fact
Speaker 6: that you have a criminal organization that is willing to
Speaker 6: chose someone in a restaurant, I think makes everybody sit
Speaker 6: up and take notice.
Speaker 1: As you'll remember, Carma Galanti had emerged in the late
Speaker 1: seventies as the de facto of the Banano crime family
Speaker 1: while the actual boss, Rusty Rostelli, was in prison. When
Speaker 1: Galante was gunned down at a Brooklyn restaurant, his assailants
Speaker 1: may have disappeared, but investigators knew that it could only
Speaker 1: happen with approval from the Commission, which, if proven, would
Speaker 1: tie them all to the crime. But to prove that
Speaker 1: the team knew they would have to start with the
Speaker 1: murder itself, a case that had so far gone cold.
Speaker 1: They went back with the one clear piece of evidence
Speaker 1: that they had the getaway car. A witness had identified
Speaker 1: the make and model, as well as a partial license plate.
Speaker 1: From that information, police quickly recovered the car. A print
Speaker 1: had been lifted from the back passenger door, but had
Speaker 1: not led to any identifications, at least not yet. But
Speaker 1: later investigators would have a Eureka moment.
Speaker 8: Someone had the bright idea, well, maybe this is not
Speaker 8: a fingerprint, maybe this is a palm print.
Speaker 1: I think that the person was Michael Chertoff, And that's
Speaker 1: one of the things I love about homicide investigations. There's
Speaker 1: always something new. They thought about how someone actually opens
Speaker 1: a car door, not with your fingertips, but with your
Speaker 1: open palm. So just maybe it was a pomp print
Speaker 1: that could break this case that had sat dormant now
Speaker 1: for years.
Speaker 8: A palm print at first blush looks very much like
Speaker 8: a fingerprint depending on where it comes from, but you
Speaker 8: know the same swirl patterns, et cetera. It was decided
Speaker 8: that we needed a full set of what are called
Speaker 8: major case prints, which include not only the fingers but
Speaker 8: also the palms of each of the person's hands.
Speaker 1: It would prove to be a major break in the case.
Speaker 8: There had been a fair amount of inform and information
Speaker 8: that a Banano soldier at the time in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 8: Brunlan Delcado was one of the shooters.
Speaker 1: If you'll remember Bruno and Dela Kado was someone that
Speaker 1: Joe Cantameso ran into on a wiretap job and Dela
Speaker 1: Kado was a nervous wreck after his father sonny Red,
Speaker 1: was shot dead just a few blocks away. That was
Speaker 1: part of the so called Three Kapos murder.
Speaker 8: His prints were among those who were compared to that
Speaker 8: print in the car on the door handle and with
Speaker 8: no avail, with no match, so Bruno was still a
Speaker 8: person of interest, but there was nothing to tie him to.
Speaker 1: It, that is until they tested his pom prints.
Speaker 8: He was brought in and got a full set of prints,
Speaker 8: including his palm prints, and those were immediately sent to
Speaker 8: the police NYPD. The fingerprint expert gus Lesnovitch looked at
Speaker 8: it and took no time at all and banged at
Speaker 8: Bruno's pom print on that door handle. It was really big.
Speaker 8: Vich had the crimes guys removed the door handle from
Speaker 8: the car. He had that door handle in his office,
Speaker 8: but you could see that no one could have opened
Speaker 8: that door handle after that print was left without obscuring
Speaker 8: that print. So you could effectively argue that the last
Speaker 8: person who touched that door handle was the last person
Speaker 8: in that car. So it became pretty convincing proof that
Speaker 8: in Delcata was one of the mass shooters and had
Speaker 8: jumped into the backseat of that car.
Speaker 1: The importance of the discovery cannot be overstated. It was
Speaker 1: proof of the identity of one of the shooters in
Speaker 1: Carmangalanti's murder, which had eluded law enforcement for years. It
Speaker 1: also linked to another piece of evidence that had been
Speaker 1: gathered the same day of the murder, which once again
Speaker 1: pointed to in Delacado.
Speaker 8: There was a club in Lower Manhattan called the Ravennite,
Speaker 8: and this was a Gambino family social club, and it
Speaker 8: was run by the underboss of the Gambino family at
Speaker 8: the time. And if you weren't a member of the
Speaker 8: family and more specifically the crew that sort of ran
Speaker 8: and hung out in that social club, you wouldn't go
Speaker 8: into that.
Speaker 1: Club, and authorities just happened to be surveilling the club
Speaker 1: on the day Glante was murdered.
Speaker 8: And about half an hour after the murders took place
Speaker 8: in Delocado and a couple of other Banano guys show
Speaker 8: up at the ravenite and guys come out of the ravenite.
Speaker 8: Bruno never goes in, but the consolieri of the Banana
Speaker 8: family comes out of the ravennite with another guy or
Speaker 8: two Gambino guys, and they have discussion, very animated discussion
Speaker 8: with Bruno and these other guys, and then there's this
Speaker 8: congratulatory handshake with Bruno and sort of a slap on
Speaker 8: the back. I mean, it's not like they were popping
Speaker 8: champagne corks, but it was sort of like, all right,
Speaker 8: something happened.
Speaker 1: Together with the pomp print evidence, this meeting served as
Speaker 1: proof of what law enforcement had long suspected. One that
Speaker 1: Bruno and Delakato was one of the people who murdered
Speaker 1: Carma Galanti, and two his appearance at the club also
Speaker 1: tied at least two families together in the crime. This
Speaker 1: was the bow, if you will, one of the final
Speaker 1: and most important puzzle pieces to tie the Commission case together.
Speaker 6: It makes real in a way that just talking about
Speaker 6: construction fraud and construction shakedowns doesn't that the mob is
Speaker 6: a violent organization. It crystallizes what is the essence of
Speaker 6: what lies behind the mob's power, which is the ability
Speaker 6: to carry out violent actions, including murder.
Speaker 1: But the video of the Indelacado meeting was not the
Speaker 1: only riveting show in town.
Speaker 6: There was one instance where the Commission as a whole
Speaker 6: met somewhere in Staten Island and the FBI got wind
Speaker 6: of itd was would say photographs.
Speaker 1: A tip about the meeting came in from an anonymous source,
Speaker 1: so on May fifteenth, nineteen eighty four, an FBI team
Speaker 1: staked out the area and waited. Finally, around four pm
Speaker 1: they got what they needed.
Speaker 5: The agents went out there with cameras and they photographed
Speaker 5: all the bosses of the families and their number two
Speaker 5: guys going into this house at the same time and
Speaker 5: coming back out at the same time.
Speaker 1: That was former FBI special Agent Jim Kostler, who oversaw
Speaker 1: the team that captured the landmark meeting of mafia bosses.
Speaker 1: Not since the Apple Likan meeting in nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1: Had there been more clear proof of a commission gathering that.
Speaker 5: Tony Solearro, Paul Costelano, Tony Tuscarolo, sam f Santaorro.
Speaker 1: Was that the first time that you had them photographed, actually,
Speaker 1: that you had this physical documentation of a commission meeting,
Speaker 1: because you had the heads of all five families coming
Speaker 1: and going.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, yeah, that was the first time we'd ever
Speaker 5: seen them all together in one place.
Speaker 1: The table was set. Chirt Off on his team finally
Speaker 1: had everything they needed. They had bugs revealing conversations between
Speaker 1: mob bosses and commission members. They had a number of
Speaker 1: witnesses and turncoat mobsters willing to testify. They had evidence
Speaker 1: of meetings with all the crime family leaders assembled together,
Speaker 1: and they had commission members sanctioning acts of violence, specifically murder.
Speaker 6: So you know, those were all the kind of major
Speaker 6: sources of evidence. And what I had to do, which
Speaker 6: took me about a year from nineteen eighty four into
Speaker 6: early nineteen eighty five, I had to listen to everything.
Speaker 6: I had to make sure it was accurately transcribed, and
Speaker 6: then based on that I had to build the theory
Speaker 6: of a case and that would lead to the indictment.
Speaker 1: In February of nineteen eighty five, the lengthy indictment was complete,
Speaker 1: including names of four mob bosses and five underbosses, Paul Castellano,
Speaker 1: boss of the Gambino crime family, fat Tony Salerno, boss
Speaker 1: of the Genoviz crime family, Tony Dux Caralo, boss of
Speaker 1: lou Casey crime family, and Philip Rusty Ristelli, boss of
Speaker 1: the Banano crime family, as well as multiple underbosses. Investigators
Speaker 1: got the green light to make the arrests, so Charlotte
Speaker 1: Lang and her FBI team, along with multiple other law
Speaker 1: enforcement organizations, developed a synchronized plan to grab everyone at
Speaker 1: the same time.
Speaker 7: We had made the decision from the get go because
Speaker 7: so many squads were involved in this. People from the
Speaker 7: Columbo squad were going to arrest Carmine Pertico, new Rochelle
Speaker 7: was going to handle arresting Fat Tony. That decision was
Speaker 7: made that the different squads would handle the arrest and
Speaker 7: I guess there was going to be some sort of
Speaker 7: pupp felicity that was coming out. They were afraid it
Speaker 7: was going to come out on the news.
Speaker 1: In fact, a leak to the press almost blew their
Speaker 1: element of surprise. A week before the scheduled arrest. News
Speaker 1: of the gigantic case landed on the front page of
Speaker 1: the daily news the next day. Taking no chances that
Speaker 1: any of their targets would flee, agents rounded up the
Speaker 1: major players. The mob bosses were charged and arranged a
Speaker 1: trial date was set. In the meantime, the mobsters were
Speaker 1: allowed to return home and await their day in court,
Speaker 1: where they could only speculate and stew about potential traders
Speaker 1: in their midst According to one informant, some vowed revenge,
Speaker 1: while others were thought to be plotting to assassinate the
Speaker 1: very lawyers who were poised to put them away, a
Speaker 1: course of action ultimately rejected by the Commission. One thing
Speaker 1: was clear. The government had mafia leadership feeling trapped, but
Speaker 1: when backed in a corner, they might prove to be
Speaker 1: they're most dangerous.
Speaker 7: My bureau car was in the shop, so I was
Speaker 7: catching a ride to go home with an agent on
Speaker 7: the Genoese squad and we're sitting at the hall in
Speaker 7: tunnel and we aren't listening to the radio, we aren't
Speaker 7: doing anything, and he drops me off. I get home,
Speaker 7: I start doing stuff and I turned on the TV
Speaker 7: and that's how I found out the Castelano had been killed.
Speaker 3: Shakespeare said of kings, uneasy lies the head that wears
Speaker 3: a crown. The same might be said of those who
Speaker 3: rise to the top of organized crime. They get there
Speaker 3: by violence, and often as not they leave by violence.
Speaker 2: Next time, on Law and Order Criminal Justice System, we.
Speaker 5: Were right there in the thick of things whenever the
Speaker 5: bodies were still laying on the street. It was chaos.
Speaker 4: When the trial was first getting underway, the courtroom was
Speaker 4: absolutely packed.
Speaker 6: Well, you're most nervous about are the witnesses? Are they
Speaker 6: gonna wither under cross examination? Are they gonna be able
Speaker 6: to stand up?
Speaker 7: He just sounded like a mob loost and the jury
Speaker 7: was like hanging on every word he was saying.
Speaker 8: You know, you certainly didn't want to be known as
Speaker 8: the three guys who let the mob get off.
Speaker 2: Law and Order Criminal Justice System is a production of
Speaker 2: Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts. Our host is Anna Sega Nicolazzi.
Speaker 2: This episode was written by Trevor Young and Anna Sega Nicolazzi.
Speaker 2: Executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliott Wolf, and Stephen Michael
Speaker 2: at Wolf Entertainment. On behalf of iHeartRadio executive produced by
Speaker 2: Alex Williams and Matt Frederick, with supervising producers Trevor Young
Speaker 2: and Chandler Mays and producers Jesse Funk, Nolms Griffin and Reali.
Speaker 2: This season is executive produced by Anna Sega Nicolazzi, story
Speaker 2: producer Walker lamond. Our researchers are Carolyn Talmage and Luke Stentz.
Speaker 2: Editing in sound design by Rema O Kali, original music
Speaker 2: by John O'Hara, original theme by Mike Post, additional music
Speaker 2: by Steve Moore, and additional voice over by me Steve Zernkelton.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Fox five in New York, ABC and
Speaker 2: CBS for providing archival material for the show. For more
Speaker 2: podcasts from iHeartRadio and Wolf Entertainment, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.