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- [00:01]
Chris Walker
Previously on Bloodvines.
- [00:03]
Wayne Peterson
He was fast. I mean, Fast Freddie was definitely apropos as a moniker.
- [00:09]
Norma Licciardi
That was the only night that all of us had a good sleep because they had him in jail. The next day, he got out.
- [00:15]
Wayne Peterson
Jacqueline Acciardi. She hears her dad mention to Robert, just tell me where the money is. Tell me what happened to the money.
- [00:25]
Chris Walker
Serving a subpoena grand jury to the.
- [00:27]
Wayne Peterson
Death of Jack Ricciardi. Robert steps out of the elevator just before the grand jury room is. And I directed him where he needed to appear. And he suddenly turned and went back down the elevator. It's now evening time. And driving towards his house.
- [00:52]
Chris Walker
This is investigator Wayne Peterson, who, as you'll recall, had just watched Robert Licciardi flee from his grand jury hearing at a Stockton courthouse. As soon as a judge issued a warrant for Robert's arrest, Peterson raced to Robert's house. It was now past sunset, and Peterson hoped to catch Robert at home.
- [01:11]
Wayne Peterson
And I can remember about a block or two away seeing his Corvette back out of the driveway and seeing the headlights on it and just take off.
- [01:22]
Chris Walker
Peterson rammed his accelerator to the floor.
- [01:25]
Wayne Peterson
And I'm trying to catch up with him.
- [01:27]
Chris Walker
But Robert's sports car was too fast for Peterson's government sedan.
- [01:32]
Wayne Peterson
He jumps on the freeway, and when.
- [01:34]
Chris Walker
Peterson lost sight of Robert's green Corvette, he already knew it was too late.
- [01:39]
Wayne Peterson
Shortly after that, we lost him. We couldn't find him.
- [01:43]
Chris Walker
Robert was gone. Now the question was, where was he going? It was an unnerving thought for people like Michael and Norma, who kept listening for the growl of a Corvette engine coming down their cul de sac. It never came. Four days passed, and then I get.
- [02:01]
Wayne Peterson
A phone call from Cellular One, a.
- [02:04]
Chris Walker
Cell phone provider, and they say that.
- [02:06]
Wayne Peterson
Robert Licciardi had activated his cell phone, and it was called Las Vegas cell site 20.
- [02:13]
Chris Walker
Peterson quickly faxed the Las Vegas PD photos of Robert and his car, which the department distributed to all the major casinos on the Strip. Within 48 hours, a call came in from Caesar's Palace.
- [02:26]
Wayne Peterson
A security guard had spotted Robert's green Corvette in the parking lot and was actually watching it.
- [02:33]
Chris Walker
When Robert came out, he wasn't hard to spot.
- [02:37]
Wayne Peterson
Robert's wearing a bright orange shirt with suspenders.
- [02:42]
Chris Walker
The Vegas police then apprehended Robert on a fugitive arrest warrant. And when it came time to figure out his extradition to California, Peterson and a fellow investigator decided to drive out to Vegas themselves to pick him up. They wondered what Robert might say on the long car ride back to Stockton.
- [03:00]
Wayne Peterson
When we got there, of course, he invoked his right not to speak under Miranda. But Robert couldn't help from talking and.
- [03:08]
Chris Walker
Asking questions like, well, how can you be charging me?
- [03:12]
Wayne Peterson
Because it's all circumstantial.
- [03:15]
Chris Walker
Peterson and his partner just let Robert yammer on in the backseat. They weren't about to give him any hints about their investigation. But it did give Peterson some more insight into Robert.
- [03:26]
Wayne Peterson
He's pretty nice, narcissistic personality, and you could see it's kind of like some salesman you deal with where he thinks he can talk himself out of any situation.
- [03:41]
Chris Walker
Of course, he didn't have much of a chance of talking his way out of this one because in his absence, the grand jurors in Stockton charged him with first degree murder for the death of his father. And as one of California's so called special circumstances charges, it further accused Robert of killing for financial gain. The case carried a potential death penalty if a jury convicted him. When I asked Robert about it all these years later, he remembers feeling panicked, not thinking straight. He knew he was going to plead not guilty, he said, but at the.
- [04:12]
Robert Licciardi
Same time, the powers at hand cut off all my funds, so I had nothing.
- [04:18]
Chris Walker
Remember that civil suit between Robert and Michael? The one during which Michael accused his brother of running the family business into the ground? The courts ultimately sided with Michael and ordered Robert to liquidate all of the family businesses. So now he'd lost access to the grape brokerage accounts. Robert says this meant he had little money left over to hire a criminal defense lawyer. And even though he could use a public defender, I didn't trust that the.
- [04:44]
Robert Licciardi
System would give me an attorney that would get everything that I needed on record, because I thought for sure that, you know, since there was no physical direct evidence against me, the whole entire case is circumstantial.
- [04:58]
Chris Walker
That feeling festered until gradually an idea grew. Robert had taken a few legal classes in the past, and given his current circumstances, he figured all he'd need to do was address the jury himself and present a straightforward case. The judge tried every which way to talk him out of it, but Robert was adamant he was going to defend himself in a first degree murder trial with the death penalty as a possible outcome. I'm Chris Walker, your guide in this series about the largest grape fraud in US History, the powerful family at the center of it, and how a stunning sequence of betrayals triggered the fall of a California dynasty and forever changed the way we make wine in America. And after a dramatic series of twists and turns, we finally made it to the end of our saga. From Foxapus Inc. This is the the conclusion of Blood Vines. News of Robert's trial caused a sensation in California's Central Valley. Stockton's daily newspaper, the Record, ran all kinds of bold headlines across its pages. Stocktonian accused of killing his father and acting as own lawyer. One of them proclaimed. After all, it is incredibly rare and usually a terrible idea to defend oneself in a murder case. But local reporters also started to grasp a larger story. As one writer with the Stockton Record.
- [06:32]
Jacqueline Licciardi
Put It's a story of a well known businessman who tried to instill in his children the value of frugality and the work ethic of his Italian immigrant parents. It's a story of a son who reportedly hungered for his father's riches and a daughter who has devoted her life to prosecuting her brother. It's a story of a family that.
- [06:51]
Chris Walker
Fell apart with Jacqueline now cast as a die hard protagonist, her father the helpless invalid and her brother the conniving villain. You could practically hear the movie script writing itself. But as the press noted, the Licciardi family wasn't the only one coming undone. The grand jury also charged Robert's ex wife Annette with murdering Jack for financial gain. We can't know exactly what the grand jury considered before issuing its charges since those proceedings were secret. So I asked Wayne Peterson what was the thinking behind she should be implicated in this murder?
- [07:29]
Wayne Peterson
The thinking my part was the accessory after the fact. Getting rid of the weapon was one thing because I'm making a little assumption that she was the one that placed that weapon behind the washer and dryer in Albert's the garage there.
- [07:48]
Chris Walker
To jog your memories a bit, this goes back to the neighbor, Albert Famicilli. Peterson actually tracked him down in the Sierra foothills to interview him again. And Albert's story hadn't changed. He claimed that he'd heard a woman yelling next door at the Licciardi's house to then saw a silhouetted figure with long hair deposit the gun in his garage on the night Jack was killed. Both details suggested a woman was in or around the crime scene that night. Peterson also suspected that Annette had helped stage the crime scene, like the strange position of Jack's body. But unlike Robert, Annette actually did show up to testify before the grand jury. And after a short while on the witness stand, she invoked her fifth amendment protection against self incrimination. The grand jury still charged her with homicide and so Annette's parents rushed to her defense.
- [08:38]
Annette Licciardi
My daughter had no money.
- [08:40]
Chris Walker
We hired an attorney. That's Annette's mom. Again. And the attorney she hired worked out a deal for her daughter. Prosecutors dropped all charges against Annette after she passed a lie detector test and once again pleaded the Fifth to avoid testifying in Robert's trial. Did she? Was she conflicted about that?
- [09:00]
Annette Licciardi
I don't know what she knew, but she did what the attorney told her to do.
- [09:05]
Chris Walker
Annette declined to be interviewed for this podcast, but it's clear that she managed to avoid quite the courtroom drama, one that kicked off in January 1995. From day one of Robert's jury trial. The matchup between Robert and the hard charging deputy district attorney A a fiery prosecutor named Tom Testa, could not have been more unbalanced. It wasn't just that Robert didn't know how to subpoena witnesses, though there was that right out of the gates. Robert objected to nearly everything the prosecution said, causing both the judge and jurors to grow exasperated with him. For those on the witness stand, the experience was even more surreal.
- [09:49]
Annette Licciardi
It was really weird, man.
- [09:50]
Chris Walker
And he tried to mock all of us in those hearings and make us.
- [09:54]
Annette Licciardi
All, demean us all to make us look like shit.
- [09:58]
Chris Walker
That's Jeff Kroneke, who you heard in episode four sharing details about how Albert found the gun. He was just one of the state's many witnesses who had the bizarre experience of being cross examined by Robert, of suddenly being asked on the stand about his personal life, like his drinking habits, by a man accused of murdering his own father. The judge kept intervening to keep the questions relevant, but Robert made the trial a complete spectacle with one that dragged on for two whole months. He took every opportunity to stretch out cross examinations, even though in almost too many ways to count, he became his own worst enemy. As the DA's investigator, Wayne Peterson remembers.
- [10:38]
Wayne Peterson
Robert would ask some type of question and the judge would kind of give him a little insight. Do you want to get into that area? Because you bring something up, you're opening a can of worms that's going to come back and bite you.
- [10:53]
Chris Walker
This happened once when Robert described himself as someone who avoids taking drugs. It allowed the prosecution to ask him all kinds of questions about his history of drug use. Topics that were previously off the table. Not that Robert apparently minded. The Stockton record noted that he rarely appeared nervous at all, not even when Peterson shared some additional discoveries he made after apprehending Robert in Vegas. Like remember those financial documents Peterson said.
- [11:20]
Wayne Peterson
Were missing a period of about 18 month period?
- [11:24]
Chris Walker
Well, when the Stockton police executed yet another search warrant after Robert's Vegas arrest.
- [11:29]
Wayne Peterson
We end up recovering all those missing bank Records out of a safe at.
- [11:36]
Chris Walker
The residence, at Robert's residence. And Peterson told me that wasn't all he discovered.
- [11:42]
Wayne Peterson
We found evidence that he had traveled to Panama. As I recall on the invoice from the hotel he stayed at, there were several phone calls and we were able to trace it to. I find out that number was a bank not too far from the hotel that he had stayed at.
- [12:03]
Chris Walker
To this day, do you have any idea if he had funneled money down there?
- [12:08]
Wayne Peterson
That's a suspicion. But at that time, it would be impossible to even trace any of it out.
- [12:17]
Chris Walker
At his trial, Robert argued vehemently against the idea that he sheltered any money abroad. He argued vehemently against pretty much everything the prosecution said.
- [12:27]
Robert Licciardi
They just. He got away with saying anything you wanted. He's taking money to Panama, he's doing this and that. And it got to the point where it was just ridiculous. Yeah.
- [12:38]
Chris Walker
So you were just down in Panama vacationing?
- [12:42]
Robert Licciardi
I went to Panama just to have a vacation.
- [12:46]
Chris Walker
The Deputy District attorney, Tom Testa, wasn't buying it. Over and over again, he returned to money as Robert's driving motivation. He pointed out how the grape scandal created instability in the Licciardi family. And he argued that Robert took advantage of that instability in a most evil way.
- [13:05]
Tom Testa
Here was a son, the prosecutor said, who committed patricide to gain complete control over his father's estate. And to hit that point home, Testa called upon Jacqueline Licciardi as his final witness. Jack's youngest daughter squarely placed blame at the feet of her brother. She grew emotional on the stand, providing wrenching testimony and at times, tearing up in front of the jury. At the end of the two month.
- [13:32]
Chris Walker
Trial, and after more than four years.
- [13:34]
Tom Testa
Since Jack's death, it took the jury less than 24 hours to find Robert guilty.
- [13:40]
Chris Walker
The judge condemned him to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the harshest possible punishment short of the death penalty. Michael and Jacqueline reportedly broke out in cheers as a bailiff led Robert out of the courtroom at sentencing. I hope I never hear from Robert again, Jacqueline told reporters on the courthouse steps. I just hope they lock him up and throw away the key. For her and Robert's other siblings, the case felt like justice.
- [14:07]
Anthony Scotto
I mean, because we know he did it. We're not gonna. We're not here to, you know, like, quibble about it. I mean, we know he did it.
- [14:13]
Chris Walker
And like Joanna, friends of the family, like Anthony Scotto told me, if they.
- [14:18]
Michael Licciardi
Didn'T get Robert, I would have strangled him. Okay. I would have strangled him. The guy was just a fucking piece of garbage. How could you do that to your dad?
- [14:29]
Chris Walker
Emotions ran high and the trial had opened wounds that might never re heal. But at least for Robert's siblings, the case was closed. Out of everyone who watched Robert's trial, Michael and Norma may have been the most relieved by his conviction. The couple still suspected him of trying to kill Michael on multiple occasions. The back firing gun on the ranch, the bullet that whizzed past Michael in his backyard. But of course, Michael wasn't totally out of the woods yet. Even with his younger brother headed to prison, Michael was still trying to avoid the same fate in his own situation. The situation that kicked off this whole mess to begin with, the grape scandal. Michael and his lawyer still had one more chance to overturn his conviction at the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Except by now, in the spring of 1995, Michael faced an apparent irony. While his future remained uncertain, pretty much everyone else who had pleaded guilty for grape mislabeling had already served their time.
- [15:34]
Annette Licciardi
When it was all said and done, I ended up getting 13 months in federal prison.
- [15:41]
Chris Walker
That's Frank Bavaro, the younger of the two Bavaro brothers.
- [15:45]
Annette Licciardi
And I elected to go to a federal boot camp in Pennsylvania.
- [15:50]
Tom Testa
Frank told me he spent most of his sentence working on the boot camp's farm, an appropriate assignment for a green thumb like him. But he still got emotional. When looking back on Those events of.
- [16:01]
Chris Walker
30 plus years ago, probably one of.
- [16:04]
Annette Licciardi
The best things that happened to me was it brought me down to earth, get me back down to reality. Going through this made me a better father, husband, brother and son. I don't forget what I did. I'm ashamed of it. But it's something that happened and I moved forward. I have my family to take care of.
- [16:34]
Tom Testa
For years, Frank ran a farming operation in California's Central Valley. He chalked up his involvement in the grape scandal to his failings as a young man. He died in July 2024 of cancer. As for Frank's older brother, Nick spent 21 months between a federal prison and a halfway house after pleading guilty to conspiracy and fraud. But the brother's severest penalties were financial. They faced down millions of dollars in fines while resolving the numerous civil lawsuits filed against them related to grape misrepresentation. Those included suits by the state of California as well as the Sebastiani and Robert Mondavi wineries, which the Bavaros admitted to selling mislabeled grapes to Joseph Du and Gary Alfieri, their co conspirators in a couple of the schemes likewise faced fines and three years of probation each. Only Michael stood alone against the government. Like his brother Robert, he had the confidence to fight things to the end. And just like his brother, things didn't go Michael's way. Michael ultimately lost his appeal at the 9th Circuit in September 1996. The Stockton Record ran this excerpt about it.
- [17:50]
Jacqueline Licciardi
Michael J. Licciardi, a former Stockton wine grape broker, was ordered Tuesday to a federal prison five years after being found guilty of participating in a multi million dollar wine grape fraud scheme.
- [18:03]
Chris Walker
Bitterly disappointed, Michael made a statement on the court record. Remember that I paid full price for those grapes, he wrote to the judge. I had a contract with the winery that they were supposed to inspect. I had state people watch what was going on and did nothing to stop it until they found a group of criminals that would lie to protect themselves. I've had others of my own blood lie and withhold evidence on my behalf. I had others murder one of my witnesses. I've lost to the greedy, the greed of my family, my company. But I can tell you that I haven't lost my faith in God. And today, after all that, I can tell you I am not a crook. They let the real one go. Thank you. Michael ended up serving more than four years in prison, more than any other person associated with any of the grape scandals. Certainly more than Nick Bavaro, whom Michael had always held up as the real mastermind. His wife maintains that it was a miscarriage of justice.
- [19:01]
Norma Licciardi
He fought because he was innocent. And the only one, the only one that fought it all the way. And the other ones, you know, they, Bavaro still got in trouble, I think, what, a couple years later.
- [19:15]
Chris Walker
Yeah, for almonds.
- [19:16]
Norma Licciardi
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, that's just. That should tell, tell everyone that. That should tell you right there who the who the main character of all this mess was.
- [19:28]
Chris Walker
It's true that in 1994, fresh out of prison, Nick Bavaro got another slap on the wrist for allegedly shipping almonds to Europe without inspection. Court records show that a judge hit him with a $54,000 fine. Nick declined to be interviewed for this podcast.
- [19:45]
Norma Licciardi
And you know, they're the ones who were sneaky enough to be able to get away with it with the lightest amount of time.
- [19:52]
Chris Walker
In some respects, Michael was certainly the fall guy. But I'm not sure I completely agree with Norma's assessment. Michael never faced seven figure fines like the others did since a court determined he couldn't afford it. Instead, Michael sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into lawyers fees that represented nearly everything he got from his father's estate in the liquidated family businesses. Because it turns out that neither he nor his three sisters ever received the millions their father intended for them. I never could find out the exact figures since some of the court documents are sealed, but I do know this. Robert transferred millions into and out of his Fast Freddy business, some of which was never recovered. At least another million dollars of the family fortune disappeared into various lawyers pockets. And while the siblings did succeed in cutting Robert from Jack's estate, what was recovered between that and a life insurance policy Jack had taken out was only enough for modest payouts to the sisters. The well of generational wealth dried out faster than Jack ever intended. And it's safe to say that it was far from the financial future he had envisioned for his children. But let's return to Michael, because even though he didn't face the kind of restitution payments the Bavaros did, Norma is right that Michael served far more time in prison for his crimes. And he wasn't even responsible for the largest case of grape mislabeling during that period. Because towards the end of their investigation, Lapham and his team snagged one last winery in their dragnet.
- [21:24]
Tom Testa
At the time the nation's fifth largest Bronco wine company.
- [21:29]
Chris Walker
It was run by a guy named Fred Franzia. No, not Franzia. Boxed wines. Fred Franzia oversaw his own wine empire. And back in 1993, the feds accused him and Branco of producing 1 million gallons worth of imposter oil wines, including white Zinfandel, Chardonnay and Cab Sauvre using other types of grapes. And the investigators even heard about some tongue in cheek practices designed to hide mislabeled grapes. As Lapham explains, in Italy there's a.
- [21:59]
Annette Licciardi
Tradition during the harvest to bless the loads of grapes. And Fred Frangia kind of adopted that tradition, but his was a little different. So a load of grapes would come in and they would be non Zinfandel, and he would sprinkle some Zinfandel leaves on the lodes and basically bless them and transform them thereby into Zinfandel.
- [22:29]
Chris Walker
After being indicted, Franzia pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a half million dollar fine and stepped down from his company board for five years. The company paid an additional $2.5 million.
- [22:41]
Tom Testa
Lapham says the company's lawyers made the settlement sound like this was already a huge burden. But ultimately it barely affected Franzia and Branco Wine Company, which went on to fame when Franzia later bought a label called Charles Shaw and inked a historic deal with Trader Joe's as the company behind two Buck Chuck Bronco is now the nation's fourth largest producer of wines.
- [23:05]
Annette Licciardi
I think we were sold a bill of goods. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have done it.
- [23:11]
Tom Testa
Reflecting back, Lapham would have negotiated the plea deal differently.
- [23:15]
Chris Walker
Franzia, who passed away in September of 2022, went on to become one of the most powerful men in the wine industry.
- [23:23]
Tom Testa
But the fraud investigation had run its course.
- [23:26]
Chris Walker
The LA Times even called this last.
- [23:28]
Tom Testa
Case the bottom of the barrel.
- [23:31]
Chris Walker
Franzia's indictment by a federal grand jury in Sacramento in December marked the end and arguably the high point of the five year investigation of fraud in California's wine industry. All said and told, consumers had paid an astounding $55 million for mislabeled wine coming out of numerous wineries, much of it white zinfandel. Now everyone was left trying to figure out what it all meant.
- [23:56]
Annette Licciardi
Ultimately, I think we wound up prosecuting about 17 individuals and four or five wineries.
- [24:03]
Chris Walker
So, big picture here. I mean, after all these cases, these prosecutions, what do you think the legacy of these wine prosecutions are? Did it stamp down on this type of activity? Did it save the industry's reputation?
- [24:18]
Annette Licciardi
I think it hopefully satisfied the honest growers out there that there's somebody out there who's monitoring the situation. And, you know, I hope it also had some kind of deterrent effect on those who might have been thinking about committing the same type of crime.
- [24:37]
Chris Walker
I've asked around and I think you can honestly say it has. An executive at a famous winery, Ridge Vineyards, confirmed as much. David Gates oversees Ridge's extensive plantings. And he didn't hesitate to tell me that most winemakers in California today are acutely aware of the law. If you are convicted of fraud like.
- [24:58]
Robert Licciardi
That, you can lose your license, you can lose basically your way of your way of life, which for a winery.
- [25:04]
Chris Walker
That'S the kiss of death. Gates remembers the grape mislabeling scandal well. Since then, he says, California just hasn't seen the kind of rampant and deliberate mislabeling tactics that rocked the industry in the late 1980s and early 90s. First of all, it's far more difficult today to falsify documents than it was in the 1980s. Almost all the tracking of harvest shipments and crush reports is now done electronically. But Gates told me that one of the biggest developments has been in lab science. Because we have DNA markers, inspectors can now check DNA sequences to make sure wineries are using the grapes they say they are. And while the system isn't foolproof, for example, you still can't check every grape in the back of a five ton truck. Gates says there's a common understanding among modern winemakers, big and small that in the aftermath of California's grape scandal, you also need to know your grower and get out in the field. That's the main thing. When I interviewed Joel Peterson, the famous Zinfandel maker, he told me the exact same thing.
- [26:10]
Annette Licciardi
Any winemaker worth his salt is going to go out and check the field.
- [26:14]
Wayne Peterson
Out and it should be part of.
- [26:17]
Chris Walker
The grape growing process because as Peterson.
- [26:20]
Annette Licciardi
Says, you know, it's a different world.
- [26:22]
Chris Walker
That we live in now than it.
- [26:23]
Annette Licciardi
Was in kind of the go go 80s.
- [26:29]
Chris Walker
And today's World is driven by a completely different market. Consumers are more fixated on what's inside their wine bottles than ever before. The wine writer Jancis Robinson told me she's seeing that reflected in a couple of trends.
- [26:43]
Anthony Scotto
This century has seen a huge groundswell of interest in indigenous grape varieties and everyone is mad about their little local speciality and they're recuperating them, which is great.
- [26:55]
Chris Walker
It all suggests that people are broadening their taste for what kind of grapes end up in their stemware, a sort of heightened interest by consumers that dovetails with a second trend. She's transparency around all the ingredients going into a wine.
- [27:09]
Anthony Scotto
I understand in the EU they're bringing, they are bringing in ingredient labeling. I don't know how long it will be before the same phenomenon is seen in the United States.
- [27:19]
Chris Walker
Not long. Some wineries are already labeling their ingredients voluntarily, like the one David Gates works for, Ridge Vineyards. It signals a further move towards transparency in wine, the idea that drinkers can trust what's in a bottle in the same underlying concept that California tried to codify when it first came up with the 75% rule. Which does raise the question, how did the grape scandal of the 1980s ultimately impact that campaign of trust? We may hear one side from people inside the industry, people like Gates and Peterson, who remember how the scandal improved safeguards and forced winemakers to be more honest. But the public, well, even for all those bold headlines and feverish write ups, the staggering tallies of tainted bottles and the potential calamity of the so called great grape scandal. At the end of the day, it was almost like it never happened. Ask any older drinker today whether they remember millions of bottles of mislabeled wine hitting store shelves in the 80s and early 90s. They're likely to return a blank stare. So how is it that we've forgotten this parable so easily? I think the most representative reaction is presented in this one LA Times column I found it was written at the tail end of the grape scandal, and in its first paragraph you can already see how the whole fraud would be contextualized.
- [28:41]
Jacqueline Licciardi
Nobody was killed, unlike the great Italian wine scandal of 1986, when Vinters used methanol to boost sugar levels and sent two dozen wine drinkers to early graves. Now that was serious.
- [28:53]
Chris Walker
At the end of the day, the writer said, a few wine outlaws swindled millions of dollars while wineries put out a lot of wine that no one tasted anything wrong with. And I think it's an observation that both reaffirms how lousy most of us are at discerning wines from one another as well as raises a nagging question at the heart of all wine frauds. It's like that old saying about the tree falling in the forest and no one being around to hear it. If you unknowingly drink a faked wine and enjoy it anyway, does it really matter that it's not what you think it is? I think the speed at which the public breezed right past this scandal tells us all we need to know about most people's answer to that question. It may be one thing to significantly overpay for a counterfeit bottle, the kinds of five figure trophy wines that famous wine fraudsters like Rudy Kurniawan conned off at auctions. But a $3 bottle of mislabeled? You might say that our collective shrug not only highlighted a subtle brilliance behind the scheme, how many of us simply wouldn't care about a cheap, mislabeled wine. But it also speaks volumes to how as much as we like to intellectually visualize wine and its contents, it's still inexperienced at the end of the day, independent of what any label says. Did you enjoy the wine? Did it give you the type of experience you were looking for? This is where the science of wine still falls short, and we instead brush up against those mysterious and magical qualities that have kept us coming back to wine for centuries, where the poetry of wine is more important than anything a label tells us. And apparently most Americans still felt the magic. They didn't mind a $3 made with the wrong types of grapes. Not enough to hold a grudge, anyways. And that was more or less the thrust of that LA Times piece as well, although I noticed the author may have gone a bit too far with his dismissiveness. Because in the middle of the piece, I found this.
- [30:49]
Jacqueline Licciardi
Very few people were directly damaged by the fraud.
- [30:52]
Chris Walker
And I think there's an entire family who might disagree. Here's what Norma Licciardi told me about seeing Michael go to prison in 1996.
- [31:02]
Norma Licciardi
I, for one, only visited him once. I couldn't see him, I couldn't see him there. It was too hard. So I just focused on my kids.
- [31:13]
Chris Walker
A period of nearly five years.
- [31:16]
Norma Licciardi
And when he came home, they were teenagers. Two graduated high school. Like he had to rebuild his life to be part of the family again. And he did, you know, he finally caught up and, and. But then after that he. He got. He got sick.
- [31:34]
Chris Walker
One day in 2006, Michael was at the automobile shop where he worked when his legs suddenly gave way from underneath him. It took doctors a while to realize what caused him to fall. And once they did, the next four years were full of incredible challenges. Michael passed away in 2010 from ALS. Lou Gehrig's disease.
- [31:55]
Norma Licciardi
That was the most hard and so devastating because we had lost five years of our lives. And then we had to rebuild. And then once we did, it was all taken away.
- [32:10]
Chris Walker
Since her husband's passing, Norma has thought a lot about what Michael went through. Her husband, who took many falls. She blames the wineries and Michael's business partners for pinning so much on him. She blames the government for stealing his prime years of fatherhood. She blames one of Michael's sisters for working against him in court. And she faults his other sisters for their silence. Did he speak to any of his siblings before the end?
- [32:37]
Norma Licciardi
No, none of them. None of them did.
- [32:40]
Chris Walker
Only the oldest sister, Laura, came to Michael's funeral. But out of everyone, the person she blames the most is Robert. Norma is now more convinced than ever that Robert killed his father and it was to deny Michael his most important witness. She believes it in her bones that Jack's testimony was going to help Michael in the end. Norma didn't always see eye to eye with her father in law, particularly the way he used to over rely on Michael. But Jack was also the glue that held the Licciardi family together. Without Jack there, the Licciardi family never had its shot at redemption in the wine industry or a reconciliation amongst themselves.
- [33:24]
Robert Licciardi
Hello, Chris, how are you doing?
- [33:26]
Chris Walker
I'm doing fine. How are you?
- [33:28]
Wayne Peterson
Okay.
- [33:28]
Robert Licciardi
I'm on a straight phone time right now. This is, this is. Nobody signed up for this time, so I was able to get on.
- [33:33]
Chris Walker
Yeah, you are getting better at finding those free slots. So that's that's great.
- [33:37]
Robert Licciardi
Yeah. Yeah. That way we can get some. Get some. Some time in. Okay. We left off with the.
- [33:44]
Tom Testa
Over the years of my reporting, I got to have many phone calls with Robert Licciardi. He's currently serving out his life sentence at a California state prison. Over dozens of calls, he told me he's always maintained his innocence and that his ex wife, Annette was his alibi, that she can vouch that he was asleep when Jack was murdered. He regretted that jurors never heard from Annette at trial. But even more than that, he regretted representing himself in court.
- [34:14]
Robert Licciardi
It just. It really was probably one of the stupidest things I ever did in my life.
- [34:18]
Chris Walker
Robert is now on medication to manage his mental health. He's had to adapt to life inside.
- [34:24]
Robert Licciardi
They cut a guard's face all the way from his ear all the way.
- [34:30]
Chris Walker
Down to his chin, navigating all kinds of race politics and gang wars in prisons including Pelican Bay in Folsom. But Robert says he's found religion.
- [34:40]
Robert Licciardi
I hooked up with the Catholic Church when I got there and studied monasticism.
- [34:45]
Tom Testa
And he said he spent 29 years processing the events that led towards his imprisonment. On one call, I asked Robert.
- [34:53]
Chris Walker
There's so much tragedy involved with what happened, and I'm just wondering if you've ever thought about how things might have gone differently. Do you see a parallel path where there could have been reconciliation and everyone could have come back together?
- [35:08]
Robert Licciardi
Oh, I'm still open to that. I'm still open to all of that. I'm not going to turn my sisters or my brother's gone, but I wouldn't turn them away. I mean, first we have to come to understanding that, you know, look, none of us know exactly what happened. I mean, they can point their finger at me, but were they there? Did they see me do anything wrong to anybody? No, they didn't because I didn't.
- [35:32]
Tom Testa
Robert is unlikely to get his sisters to see his point of view. He's already tried. Joanna says that Robert wrote her once and she couldn't bring herself to respond.
- [35:43]
Anthony Scotto
He was found guilty. He's exactly where he should be right now, you know, and we like it that way.
- [35:49]
Chris Walker
Besides, Joanna told me she'd prefer to keep the focus on the memory of her father.
- [35:55]
Anthony Scotto
I was never the same after that. Something in me went with my dad because we just had that type of relationship, and I just admired and respected him so much, and I just expected him to be around, you know, for a longer time. I feel very cheated by my brother, by what he Did. And I feel very angry sometimes at my other brother, Michael, for what he did to my dad, you know, before he passed away. But, you know, it's sad that it had to end the way that it did. And so I'm just finding peace within myself.
- [36:29]
Chris Walker
She's not alone. Anthony Scotto is still processing the death of his good friend and mentor.
- [36:35]
Michael Licciardi
I think back, and I still get emotional about it. The man was an exceptional human being, and I regret one key ingredient that I wasn't able to help him in the way that needed to be done.
- [36:55]
Chris Walker
Like helping expose the grape fraud early enough so that it didn't get so out of hand. Because Scotto was adamant. Had the grape scandal never spiraled out of control the way it did, Jack would not have been killed. It was only once things passed the tipping point, when lifelong friends and family members could no longer trust each other, that Jack's balancing act of family and business collapsed. By the time one son was under indictment and another had his first taste of authority, it was already too late. A power vacuum had developed, and greed seized the day. The greed of those he trusted the most. And that was Jack's tragic mistake.
- [37:36]
Michael Licciardi
Just because you're a good guy and just because your wife's a good woman doesn't mean that you're going to have good sons and daughters. It don't work that way. The issue is that Jack was maligned. And Jack, because he couldn't move out of that house, was a victim of people he trusted. And betrayal, to me, was the cardinal's sin. Betrayal. He was betrayed by his sons.
- [38:06]
Chris Walker
In the end, Jack's family, once a great American success story, unraveled even while the wine industry he helped build prospered. Seen through one lens, it's a Shakespearean tragedy, a dark commentary on family, money, and power. But at the same time, wine was always bigger than Jack. And he knew that the industry he helped pioneer was always going to outlast him. And perhaps Jack would have been proud to see the triumph of the once humble California vine. How his contributions have allowed for so many indelible moments. All of those bottles shared between loved ones, uncorked in celebration, decanted amongst friends and. And poured on nights we felt so alive. That's what the godfather of grapes helped create. And even though Jack was never one to seek the limelight for the few who still remember him, it's important to honor his true legacy.
- [39:00]
Michael Licciardi
Because what happened in the industry at the end of his life did not create an identity for his whole life. His whole life was not what happened at the the end.
- [39:14]
Chris Walker
And Scotto's right. Jack's identity is so much more than what happened in the end. So, in honor of California's once mighty grape broker, I propose a toast. Please join me in pouring yourself a glass of wine, preferably a California wine. And raise it with me in salute. Here's to Jack. Hello.
- [39:45]
Anthony Scotto
This is Global Tail Link. You have a prepaid call from Robert Lucciardi, an inmate at the California State.
- [39:52]
Chris Walker
Prison, Los Angeles County, Lancaster, California.
- [39:56]
Robert Licciardi
Hello? Hello?
- [39:57]
Tom Testa
Well, as it turns out, this story isn't quite over. While Joanna and others preferred to keep the attention on Jack, Robert decided there was something more he wanted to say. Something important enough that we're going to need another episode. If you're surprised, you're not alone. I thought I'd finished my reporting, and my producers and I were wrapping production on this series when Robert called. But what he told me adds chilling clarity and answers some of my biggest lingering questions.
- [40:31]
Chris Walker
I. I owe the nuns an apology.
- [40:33]
Robert Licciardi
You know, I owe everybody an apology.
- [40:34]
Chris Walker
I mean, I lied to everybody.
- [40:36]
Tom Testa
You won't want to miss our final surprise episode of Blood Vines. Blood Vines is a production of Thoxapus, Inc. Our executive producers are Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Story editing is done by Alicia Lincoln and Laura Krantz. Blood Vines is scored and mixed by Louis Weeks. Hi, I'm your host and creator, Chris Walker. This podcast was made possible in part by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. If you're enjoying Blood Vines, please leave us a review wherever you listen to.
- [41:12]
Chris Walker
Podcasts and please share it with your friends.
- [41:15]
Tom Testa
It really helps more people find out about our show.