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- [00:00]
Chris Walker
Previously on Bloodvines. So the word was out that we were investigating this fraud involving Corvette Co. And he basically said, come talk to me.
- [00:11]
Robert Licciardi
He was really hurting because of what.
- [00:12]
Michael Licciardi
Both, you know, because what his one son did.
- [00:15]
Chris Walker
He was cutting Michael out of the business.
- [00:17]
Michael Licciardi
The paramedics were there when we walked in. His dad was laying on the couch. He looked like he was asleep. And then that's when I went into the kitchen, pulled Michael's side and I told him that his dad had a bullet hole behind the ear.
- [00:34]
Chris Walker
Upon examining her father in law's body, Norma Licciardi, Michael's wife, had just discovered a terrible truth. Jack had been shot and she was standing in the middle of a crime scene. Suddenly, everything about the room seemed significant. And police officers who'd recently arrived at the home realized that too. They ushered the family members out of the living room to preserve evidence. But Norma's mind spun over what she'd Suicide was an impossibility. Jack could barely hold a fork due to his muscular dystrophy. And no gun had been found at the scene, only an empty.22 caliber cartridge. Plus there was a newspaper spread out on his chest and he had his.
- [01:16]
Michael Licciardi
Hands on top of each other with his cigar.
- [01:19]
Chris Walker
Who sleeps like that with a cigar in their hands? The body looked as though it had been staged. Not to mention the fact that the bullet hole had been cleverly concealed in Jack's hairline. And there was suspiciously little blood. Had someone cleaned up the crime scene to make it look like Jack had died of natural causes? Norma was understandably spooked. And she wasn't the only one. When she broke the news of the murder to Annette, Robert's second wife, I.
- [01:46]
Michael Licciardi
Don'T know what she was thinking, but all I could see was fear on her face.
- [01:52]
Chris Walker
As for Robert, I was. At the time, I was paranoid. He'd been the first to discover the body and and possibly the last to see Jack alive. But when the Stockton police questioned him, Robert said he hadn't noticed anything unusual between the time he'd helped his father get ready for bed around midnight and when he'd found him dead around 10:30am And Jack's wife Mary wasn't of much help either since her Alzheimer's was so advanced that she was unable to even talk to the officers. So the question hung in the room.
- [02:24]
Robert Licciardi
You know, who do you trust?
- [02:26]
Chris Walker
And indeed, who could anyone trust? Because there was another aspect of the murder that no one could ignore. The timing. Jack had just agreed to testify in the grape fraud case and was in the process of scheduling his deposition. You may remember from episode one that when news of his death got out, the lead investigators on the case were shocked. I was sitting in my family room watching the evening news and a spot came on about a murder. I mean, obviously we were all speculating what happened. Rumors swirled among the various criminal justice agencies. As you might recall Steve Lapham saying. I don't know where we heard this, but he was murdered with a.22 caliber bullet to the head, which is a very mafia type way of doing it. The idea seemed straight out of a Scorsese film. But the feds weren't the only ones to consider an organized crime angle. Mark Urban, the state prosecutor who was scheduling Jack's deposition, didn't want me to record my phone call with him. But he did email me this. There were some rumors floating around that Jack Licciardi and some of the people involved in the fraud had organized crime connections. Maybe this was just stereotyping all these Italian families in the wine business. But then again, Urban knew that a homicide of this nature would start as a local police matter. So he contacted Stockton PD to let them know that he would be sending over the financial information he'd collected on the family business. He also passed along some important tips. The first, that Jack's son Michael had been indicted by the federal government and was under active investigation for fraud. And the second, that Jack had planned to testify in Michael's case. And while no one knew exactly what Jack had planned to say, the question hung like a dark cloud. Perhaps someone or someones wanted to protect themselves from Jack's testimony. 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. From Foxapus, Inc. This is Blood Vines. When local newspapers and television stations first reported Jack Licciardi's murder, some noted that he'd been involved in the wine business, but only in passing. Given Jack's role as a behind the scenes dealmaker, the press didn't capture his importance to the wine industry. There was no broadsheet eulogy for California's Godfather of grapes. But that also meant that reporters missed a more important his proximity to the grape fraud. Because that was getting plenty of press. The Washington Post was even calling it the Great Grape Scandal. By the time of Jack's death in 1991, it had become clear that the practice of grape mislabeling extended far, far beyond Michael and the Bavaros. Investigators had discovered new criminal rings, wineries and growers operating separately from the players in our story. But up to the same shenanigans. This included a medium sized winery in the San Joaquin Valley run by Angelo Papagni. And prosecutors hinted at even more indictments coming down the pipeline. Indictments naming big players and threatening stiff penalties. For instance, the Bavaros. They were facing up to 130 years in prison and a $6 million fine. Investigators found evidence that they'd scammed not just Delicato Vineyards, but Charles Krug, Robert Mondavi and Sebastiani Vineyards all with fraudulent grape deliveries. And then there was Michael. He also faced decades under lockup in a seven figure fine. And that was just on the federal level. If the cases went its way, the state of California had designs to collect millions in penalties. The lawmen had thrown down the gauntlet. As the Washington Post quipped, we doubt even the French would go that far. So the question was, how far would people go to avoid that kind of punishment? You already know that Michael and the Bavaros initially tried to lie their way out of trouble, but would one of them have gone further? Like, say, killing a witness? Even though the press missed the significance of Jack's role within the wine world, in industry, insiders fretted who had the gall to take out the state's best connected grape broker. Some business associates of Jack's ran scared because back then, California's wine industry was incredibly tight knit and it was possible someone within those close circles was responsible. Even today, some remain skittish on the topic. One grape broker I exchanged emails with seemed game to talk about the past. But as soon as I mentioned Jack Licciardi, I got this response. I like my quiet life and I want to keep it that way. I couldn't get that person to write me again. In a similar aura of mistrust so antithetical to what Jack stood for, tempered his funeral. All five of his children attended the service, including his three daughters, who all lived out of town, as well as Michael and Robert. But other key people in Jack's life, like lifelong friends at Delicado Vineyards, skipped his Catholic service and burial. One friend who did attend was Anthony Scotto Jr. And he made quite an impression on the Licciardis, including Michael and his wife Norma.
- [08:10]
Michael Licciardi
And he came in just, I want to say, in a trench coat.
- [08:15]
Chris Walker
He almost seemed to be in disguise and he certainly seemed in a hurry.
- [08:19]
Michael Licciardi
Gave his condolences real quick and Just as fast as he came, he left.
- [08:25]
Chris Walker
Did he know something about what had happened to Jack or who was responsible?
- [08:30]
Michael Licciardi
I don't know who he was afraid of, but Anthony Scotto was petrified.
- [08:37]
Chris Walker
When I spoke to Scotto about Jack's memorial, he didn't mention the trench coat, but he did remember the fear hanging in the air like Jack's killer might be in their midst. He also remembered something else. I went to the wake, my wife and I, and it really infuriated me because the two sons were in there joking, joking. I couldn't even place it in my mind. How can you do this? I asked him what exactly Michael and Robert were joking about. Just joking about, you know, driving in, they had this problem or that problem, you know, the conversation of pea brains. You know, two guys that really didn't understand that this was a great man. Robert's then mother in law, who asked not to be identified by name, recalls that Robert and Michael weren't the only members of the family drawing attention at the funeral. According to her, Jack's youngest daughter Jacqueline.
- [09:38]
Jacqueline Licciardi
Was throwing herself on the floor in the cathedral. My dad screaming, that's very uncomfortable when you're watching somebody act like that.
- [09:51]
Chris Walker
It seems a lot of the mourners scrutinized the Licciardi family's behavior and it was hard not to with all the unanswered questions about Jack's murder. The whole atmosphere reeked of suspicion. Even Robert's mother in law felt ill at ease. Especially when right after Jack's funeral she started getting strange phone calls.
- [10:11]
Jacqueline Licciardi
Seven o' clock every night.
- [10:19]
Chris Walker
Just heavy breathing on the other end of the line.
- [10:21]
Jacqueline Licciardi
Yeah, so you knew somebody was there and I just hang up. But it was every night at 7 o' clock.
- [10:28]
Chris Walker
She didn't know who was calling her, but she had some suspicions.
- [10:32]
Jacqueline Licciardi
We all felt that the family being the mafia had.
- [10:39]
Chris Walker
We're covering up something big, the family being the Mafia. I asked her what she meant by that.
- [10:46]
Jacqueline Licciardi
I remember one time Robert told me, he says, well, I'm going to be okay because my dad always told me that the family in New York would take care of me. And in New York, there it was, they were Le Chardeaus with an O where here they had changed it to an I. But they were all family and they were all mafia.
- [11:11]
Chris Walker
Robert's mother in law didn't actually know if the story was true, but at least in her mind it offered a possible explanation for Jack's murder.
- [11:20]
Jacqueline Licciardi
And I knew all about Michael, meaning.
- [11:22]
Chris Walker
She knew about Michael's indictment in the federal grape fraud case and the rumored links to organized crime pieced together with the stories Robert had told her about mob ties back east. She feared that maybe she'd said something to the wrong person. The funeral. Because the calls kept coming until finally one night she had the idea to dial star 69 and so I called.
- [11:44]
Jacqueline Licciardi
Them back and I said, you better stop. I lied. I did. I said, you better stop calling here. I know who you are and where you are and I will report you to the police.
- [11:55]
Chris Walker
The person hung up and she never got another creepy call after that. But she didn't report any of it to the police. She figured that detectives already had their hands full with Jack's murder investigation. And she wasn't wrong.
- [12:12]
Narrator
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- [14:03]
Chris Walker
Stockton Police kept quiet when they first started looking into Jack's murder. They didn't want to give away any hints about where Their investigation was headed lest a suspect flee or destroy important evidence. But I know exactly what happened in Jack's murder investigation because I got copies of something journalists usually don't have. Access. An entire trove of discovery material, which was provided during a later trial and includes all of the internal police reports. The paper trail shows that things moved quickly at first. During an autopsy, a Stockton county medical examiner extracted fragments of a.22 caliber bullet from inside Jack's skull, which explains why there was no exit wound. He also used Jack's body temperature at the time he was discovered to extrapolate a time of death of around 12am on the morning of January 19, plus or minus three hours. So that set the window of death between 9pm and 3am and remember that Robert said that everything was normal when he left around midnight. This left open the possibility that Jack was shot in those three hours after Robert said he'd left the house. The detectives on the case, police Sergeants John Williams and Andy Capron, quickly got to work. They collected statements from neighbors from the Licciardi's housekeeper and from all of the Licciardi siblings. Well, all of them, except for some reason that's not spelled out in the reports I have, Michael. But from the interviews they did conduct, Williams and Capron kept circling back to a few important clues. Clue number it appeared the assailant had gotten past Jack's fiercely protective dogs. This suggested a perpetrator that the dogs were familiar with because, as one former neighbor told me, no one could get near that house because the dog would have just gone ballistic. Now, no one could say for sure whether the dogs were in the room when Jack was murdered. But still, that was curious. Clue number two. All three of Jack's daughters, Jacqueline, Laura and Joanna, reported business problems between their dad and their brothers, particularly Michael, in light of the GRAPE investigation. But you already know all that. And it seems the police were most interested in clue number three, the fact that Jack usually kept a.22 caliber pistol under the seat cushions of his couch. And that gun now appeared to be missing. According to Jacqueline and Joanna, all of the family members knew about it. Their dad kept the pistol in a black pouch, sometimes alongside as much as $12,000 in cash. And to the detectives, the missing gun seemed like more than a coincidence. But where was it? They didn't have to wonder for too long. Two weeks into their investigation, the detectives caught a break through a most unexpected source. A pastor at a local Baptist church. He told the police that a member of his congregation had come to him with some disturbing information about a dream drinking buddy named Al who had recently found a gun that may have been used in Jack's murder. The pastor refused to reveal the identity of the tipster, but it wasn't difficult to identify the Al in this story. The detectives remembered interviewing one of the licciardi's neighbors, a 32 year old named Albert Falmasilli on the day Jack was found dead. At that time, Albert had said that he had no knowledge that a homicide had occurred next door. So now Sergeant Capron raced back to Albert's house to interview him again. But Albert wasn't home. Capron went back again the following day. Albert still wasn't home. So Stockton police set up a 24 hour surveillance to catch him. When he finally returned, little did they know that he was hiding and freaking out. Because what I'm about to tell you is an incredibly weird series of events. And to help me tell this story, I consulted two of Albert's friends at the time. Jeff Kroenke and Brad Rosario. They were all in their early 30s in 1991. And on the evening of Jack's murder, Kroenke was hanging out with Albert at a friend's house after they'd spent the day helping her move.
- [18:03]
Robert Licciardi
We were drinking beers, you know, this certain day Albert was known to be a bit of a partier. We all did, you know, we were, we were pretty, pretty raging partiers.
- [18:12]
Chris Walker
And after they'd partied enough, Kroenke drove Albert home around 10:30pm and I remember.
- [18:19]
Robert Licciardi
It was dropping Albert off. The dude couldn't even hardly walk straight.
- [18:24]
Chris Walker
Kroenke watched him stumble down the driveway to the garage which served as a hybrid bedroom and music area where Albert and his friends would jam. Robert Licciardi even joined on occasion. Anyway, the next morning Kroenke was woken up by a frantic call from Albert.
- [18:41]
Robert Licciardi
And he's like, he said to me, he goes, Jeff, he goes, last night after you dropped me off.
- [18:48]
Chris Walker
And Albert proceeded to tell Kroenke a strange tale. He said that he'd been half asleep on his bed when suddenly he saw.
- [18:57]
Robert Licciardi
This person open the door. And he woke up and he said he saw somebody lean in and set something down.
- [19:04]
Chris Walker
The mystery visitor then closed the door and vanished. But in Albert's drunken state and he.
- [19:10]
Robert Licciardi
Just was like, oh, whatever. It could have been Raymond, it could have been Marty, it could have been anybody coming in to pick up a guitar or whatever, you know.
- [19:19]
Chris Walker
After all there were always people coming and going from the garage. Even at Odd hours of the night. But the next morning he woke up.
- [19:27]
Robert Licciardi
And he said he saw this thing on the ground. He goes, he picked it up and he goes, wow, it was a gun.
- [19:31]
Chris Walker
And the street outside was swarming with cops who'd been called next door to the Licciardi house.
- [19:37]
Robert Licciardi
So I go, what did you do with it? Then he goes, well, because I was so freaked out, I didn't know what to do with it and I took off.
- [19:47]
Chris Walker
In fact, Albert had tucked the weapon into the waistband of his pants, hopped on his bicycle and headed over to his friend Danny Rosario's house. Danny passed away about a decade ago. But I spoke to his brother Brad Rosario, who remembers this situation in colorful terms.
- [20:05]
Robert Licciardi
What Albert did is he decided, well, I'm going to take this gun, I'm going to go over my, you know, my brother's house. Albert goes, hey man, check this out. My brother goes, get that gun out of here. I don't want to see it, I want to hear about it. Get that right. You get the, out of here. And his wife too, she's just like, what the. So Albert leaves from. For what I was told from my brother as he went down to the Delta, which is very. We grew up right there on the, the port of Stockton. And Albert supposedly threw the gun into the fucking river.
- [20:43]
Chris Walker
Except Albert lied about that. He didn't actually throw the gun into the river. And the truth was about to get squeezed out of him because remember how the Stockton police had set up 24 hour surveillance around Albert's home? Well, when they finally spotted Albert walking down Willow street on February 8, they immediately brought him into the station for questioning. Over an intense series of interviews spanning 12 hours, Albert confessed to having stashed the gun at Danny Rosario's house and gave the detectives his account on what happened on the night of Jack's murder. According to Capron's written report, Albert said at approximately 0200 hours he began to hear a woman's voice arguing next door at the licciardi House. About 10 minutes later, he heard what he thought was a loud bang. About 20 minutes later, someone opened the garage door and peeped in. Albert said the person had long hair. Moments later, the person had opened the door and shut the door. Sergeants Williams and Capron were understandably suspicious of this narrative. But when Albert took them to Danny Rosario's house, he did produce the gun, which he'd hidden behind a sofa in the living room without Rosario's knowledge. The weapon was a Colt.22 caliber semi automatic. Handgun held inside a black zippered gun case which matched the description that Jack's daughters had given the police. And while the thousands in cash that Jack normally kept in the case was missing, forensic tests would later confirm the gun as the murder weapon. But Albert wasn't off the hook. The detectives returned him to the police station where they got him to consent to a polygraph examination. Here's part of the transcript as read by a voice actor. Did you shoot Jack Licciardi? Albert answered no. And the examiner noted he appeared to show no deception. Were you present when Jack Licciardi was shot? Again, Albert answered no and appeared to show no deception. But when asked, do you know who shot Jack Licciardi and did you have any prior knowledge or were involved in any planning of the the homicide of Jack Licciardi? On these answers, Albert did tip off the lie detector machine. Williams and Capron gave each other a knowing look. They had their suspect. And while the DA denied their request to hold him in custody on murder charges, citing reasonable doubt, Albert became the detective's main focus. Police reports show that they spent weeks asking as many of Albert's friends as they could find, including Kroenke Rock, what Albert had told them about finding the gun. And in the end, they found that Albert told a more or less consistent story and he had no clear motive to kill Jack. But perhaps he knew who did. After all, he'd failed a lie detector test on the question, do you know who killed Jack Licciardi? And given the way he'd stashed the gun and gone into hiding, Albert seemed genuinely afraid for his life. But afraid of him. Who? The police asked him this question in multiple interviews. The Mafia, Albert kept saying. When pressed on this, Albert told the police that Robert Licciardi had always claimed or joked, Albert wasn't sure that the Licciardis had ties to organized crime. And so here we are with the Mafia rumors again. But whether or not the rumors were true, Albert's fear was palpable. He told friends that someone was trying to frame him. And as soon as the police let him go, he disappeared from Stockton, not to be seen for years. And that meant Capron and Williams were back to square one. They were also left wondering who would try to frame Albert, what to make of his recollections of a woman screaming and a long haired person coming into the garage, and was there any basis to his Mafia mentions whatsoever? The detectives hadn't uncovered any shred of fact there. It seemed way more plausible that one of Jack's sons, like the one who told Albert the Mafia tales or the one who was on trial for grape fraud, was behind the murder. So what of the sons? Throughout the investigation, Robert had been cooperative but somewhat unreliable. He'd answered their questions about events surrounding the murder, but when asked to help identify the gun, Robert said he was busy and wouldn't come to the station. And Michael had been oddly quiet. In the nearly month and a half since Jack's murder, he'd barely said a word to detectives, which made them wonder. Was he simply distracted by his upcoming trial? Was he tired of dealing with law enforcement? Or was he hiding something? So in early March, almost two months after Jack's murder, Sergeant Capron decided it was time to revisit Michael as a suspect. The detective arranged to meet him at his home in La Mirada. And when he pulled up, Capron was surprised to see that Michael's home was built like a fortress. According to Michael's wife, Norma, we installed cameras.
- [25:33]
Michael Licciardi
As soon as you rang the doorbell, the cameras would go on so we could see. We also had a stucco wall, a courtyard put up, and we, Michael, attacked, trained our Doberman.
- [25:50]
Chris Walker
When Michael emerged from behind the security wall surrounding his home, he apologized that he'd waited so long to talk to the detective. Things had been scary, Michael said, for him, his wife, and his four daughters. Capron noted that Michael seemed uneasy. In a police report he wrote, Michael did not appear to be comfortable with my presence. But as they talked, Capron sensed it wasn't because Michael didn't want to help. He'd been quiet for another reason, a reason that he wouldn't quite articulate to the detective. But Michael broached by way of asking for police protection. As it turned out, he'd recently had a close call, an incident that he didn't mention to the police, but that I heard about from his wife, Norma. She swears it happened like this.
- [26:36]
Michael Licciardi
He was in our backyard playing with a dog, and he just bent down to use, picking up the ball or whatever, and he felt a bullet go by. It hit the house.
- [26:50]
Chris Walker
It took Michael a second to realize what was happening. Someone was shooting at him. The bullet barely missed.
- [26:56]
Michael Licciardi
It hit the awning, and so it.
- [26:59]
Chris Walker
Had ricocheted, and it seemed like it had been fired from the street where there was a view into the backyard. Michael ran for cover before another shot could fire, find its mark, and before he could get a look at the shooter.
- [27:10]
Michael Licciardi
And so the next day, he told.
- [27:12]
Chris Walker
Me about it, and Norma went to investigate herself. Sure enough, she saw the marks where the bullet had ricocheted. And following its possible trajectory.
- [27:22]
Michael Licciardi
I dove in the pool. He couldn't swim. And to her horror, I found it in the drain.
- [27:28]
Chris Walker
Was this an actual attempt on Michael's life? A threat? A warning? Michael and Norma weren't sure, but they were scared. They debated telling the police but decided against it. Both felt that if they did, the person they suspected was the shooter would find out. And that person might not miss. The next time on the next episode of Blood Vines. As the hunt for Jack's killer continues. The government tried to say he was a mafioso.
- [27:58]
Jacqueline Licciardi
Have you ever seen a house after the police get through? Search, searching. It's horrible.
- [28:02]
Chris Walker
Defendants in the grape fraud trials turn on one another. They were trying to get other players evidence against them.
- [28:12]
Michael Licciardi
I believe he was wired just by the questions he was asking Michael. And so I told Michael, he's, you know, he's. He's trying to trap you. You and that van out there.
- [28:22]
Chris Walker
And just as the courtroom drama begins to unfold, it's actually something we had to come consider in how to pitch.
- [28:28]
Robert Licciardi
This to a jury.
- [28:30]
Chris Walker
More clues surface in Jack's death, and.
- [28:33]
Michael Licciardi
That was, I think, got him killed.
- [28:35]
Chris Walker
Clues that put additional licciardi lives at risk.
- [28:39]
Jacqueline Licciardi
He could have blown up the house.
- [28:41]
Chris Walker
That's coming up on episode five of Blood Vines. Blood Vines is a production of Fox to Puss, 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. 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 podcasts and please share it with your friends. It really helps more people find out about our show.