Podcast
Gangland Wire
Hosted by Gary Jenkins: Mafia Detective · EN
Gangland Wire Crime Stories is a unique true crime podcast. The host, Gary Jenkins, is a former Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit Detective. Gary uses his experience to give insigtful twists on famous organized characters across the United States. He tells crime stories from his own career and invites former FBI agents, police officers and criminals to educate and entertain listeners.
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A Mafia Counterfeit Ring
Jul 16, 202500:13:34Tap to summarizeHey Wiretappers, listen to my short bonus episode. I’m looking for mob fans to read the first half of a memoir about my life, which is partly about being a cop and mostly about the Civella Spero War. Email me at ganglandwire@gmail.com and I’ll send you a pdf to read. It’s about 22,000 words. Once it’s done, I’ll send you a copy This week, we journey back to the early 1900s—a time when the first wave of Sicilian immigrants brought more than just dreams of opportunity to America. They also brought with them an age-old criminal code that would lay the foundation for the American Mafia as we know it. Our story begins with the Mustache Petes—those old-world mafiosi who preyed on their own immigrant communities through intimidation, extortion, and a cunning knack for organized crime. One of their earliest rackets? Counterfeiting. 💵 A Nationwide Web of Fake Money In 1901, the Secret Service—then the only federal law enforcement agency with a national reach—uncovered a brand-new counterfeit $5 bill in circulation. This was no small operation. The National Iron Bank of Morristown, New Jersey, had unknowingly unleashed a run worth $250,000—millions in today’s money. Agents quickly linked the phony bills to a sophisticated, coast-to-coast counterfeit ring run by Sicilian gang leaders like Ignacio “Lupo the Wolf” Lupo and Giuseppe Morello. These men were more than petty crooks—they were the original godfathers of organized crime in New York City. 🔪 Violence and Betrayal in the Shadows As the Secret Service tracked counterfeiters from Yonkers to Pittsburgh to San Francisco, they met ruthless opposition. Notorious mobsters like Vito Catone didn’t hesitate to attack federal agents. One desperate fugitive even tried to escape by lunging at agents with a knife, fleeing through a rail yard, and getting knocked down by bricks thrown from a moving train. Law enforcement, often under-armed and outnumbered, were up against killers willing to silence anyone in their way. 🩸 The Barrel Murder This bloody saga culminated in one of the earliest and most chilling mob murders on record: the infamous Barrel Murder of 1903. When a New York City woman stumbled upon a barrel with a nearly decapitated body inside, investigators connected the corpse to the Morello gang’s counterfeiting operation. The victim, Benedetto Madonia, had apparently been lured to New York to help secure legal fees for his jailed brother-in-law, Giuseppe DiPrimo—only to be betrayed and butchered by the very men he’d come to help. 🕵️ Secret Service Stings and Underworld Justice The Secret Service made arrests and even staged elaborate stings, using marked bills and informants to infiltrate the gang. But corruption, fear, and an underdeveloped justice system left many ringleaders untouched. One killer, Tomasso “Petto the Ox,” was freed despite damning evidence, only to be gunned down years later in a revenge hit that many believe was ordered by DiPrimo himself after his release from prison. 🔗 A Blueprint for the Mafia to Come These early black handers and Mustache Petes were rough drafts of the organized syndicates that would soon flourish under Prohibition. Counterfeiting required a clear chain of command, trusted lieutenants, and loyal foot soldiers—known back then as “queer pushers” who spread the fake bills far and wide. In many ways, it was a proving ground for the hierarchy that would one day run America’s underworld. Subscribe to get gangster stories weekly. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here. To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos. [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there. Good to be back here in the studio. This is a special bonus episode about the barrel murders and what’s his name? Tommaso the Ox Peto and a lot of those guys, Joe Petrocino. It’s kind of a shorty. And also, I’m putting this out because I’m asking for your help. I have a book that I’ve been working on about half, a little over halfway through. It’s going to be a memoir about my career and mainly about my interactions with the mob during the Savella Spiro War and what we did during that time. So I’m doing it. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a little bit different sort of a style. [0:39] It’s a real short and punchy and to the point style. I’m not I’m really trying to take all the words I can out of it. I need some feedback. I want to see, you know, I got 20,000 words and I don’t know how many hours into this thing. And hell, I don’t know if it’s any good or not. And, you know, it may not be, it may be stupid for all I know, you know, I think it’ll, I think you’ll find it somewhat entertaining. And, and so I, I, what I’m looking for is some real critical feedback, you know, something that you like, something that you didn’t like. You’re not going to hurt my feelings. Promise me that. I mean, you see something you don’t like, or you think I’m redundant, or you see some errors where I repeat myself in it or something. Let me know. It’s about, I said, it’s about halfway through. I got up to the point where, uh, Carl Sparrow has been shot. He’s coming out of the hospital, and he has to go to dialysis and has to get his car fitted with hand controls. And so from there on, the war between the Savellas and Spiro is really on. Give me a feedback. [1:37] What you have to do, I think, is email me at ganglandwire at gmail.com. [1:42] Let me know, and I’ll send you a PDF, and then you can get back with me. Thanks a lot, guys. Guys, now listen to my story about the Mustache Pete’s and the early counterfeiting game. Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, back here in the studio all alone today, I’ve got a quick little story of early, early New York Mafia. [2:03] Really the mustache peach. When these guys got here, they’re looking for money. They’re looking for opportunity. They’re denied a lot of opportunity, but they brought the mafia with them. They brought this criminal mentality with them. They started sending out black hand notes and preying on fellow immigrants from Sicily and Italy and kind of branched out from that. It preied on a lot of people. Now, one thing that got into early on was counterfeiting. And the law enforcement agency that had the responsibility to investigate counterfeiting back then was the Secret Service, and it still is today. The Secret Service was really the only nationwide law enforcement agency on a federal level back in those days. 1901, there’s a brand new counterfeit $5 bill detected. Different banks across the country printed the banknotes back then. This was the National Iron Bank of Morristown, New Jersey. I read it was part of a production run of $250,000. Now, $250,000 in 1901 was a lot of money. Of course, they had to sell it for, you know, maybe 25 cents on the dollar, probably even less. So Secret Service agents quickly arrested Giuseppe Di Primo and a couple other guys for passing some of these counterfeit notes in Yonkers, New York in 1902. [3:30] Weeks later, they arrested Vito Laduca and a couple other associates down in Pittsburgh, and they attract them from New York to San Francisco and other cities across the United States. So they’re like onto this counterfeit ring, and they were a nationwide counterfeit ring. One of these guys, Vito Catone, was a bad character. He tried to escape arrest by lunging at the agents with a knife and then ran away in the nearby rail yard, chased him down by commandeering a train, and then knocked him down by hurling bricks at him. Now, can you imagine that? They got a guy with a knife. You’re chasing him through the rail yard. You jump on a moving train, jump off, throw bricks at him, and knock him down. Actually, he might not even have had guns. Law enforcement, again, didn’t carry guns like they do today. [4:20] You know, he was such a bad character when he got to a hospital, he tried to kill a nurse and escape with some kind of a kitchen knife he&...
Transcribe →The Murder of Teddy Deegan and the FBI
Jul 14, 2025Tap to summarizeIn this gripping episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins unravels one of the most damning scandals in FBI history—a chilling story of corruption, betrayal, and a sanctioned murder that would stain the Bureau’s legacy for decades. Gary examines the sinister role played by FBI agent H. Paul Rico in the 1965 murder of Teddy Deegan. You’ll hear how, back in October 1964, Rico learned Deegan had been marked for a mob hit—yet the Bureau did nothing. Why? Because the killers were protected informants. Gary breaks down how the FBI built its case on the false testimony of mob informant Joe Barboza. Instead of stopping the murder plot, the Bureau sat on exculpatory evidence and let Barboza’s lies send Louis Greco, Henry Tamaleo, Peter Limone, and Joe Salvati to prison—two of them to death row. The FBI’s Informant Obsession: The Bureau’s relentless protection of violent informants like Barboza and Vincent “Jimmy the Bear” Flemmi reveals how an obsession with “winning” overshadowed basic justice. The Justice Department’s own admission in 2000 that they knew the real killers exposes just how far the corruption ran. From Cover-Up to Vindication: Follow the twisted timeline of the Deegan murder, the courtroom betrayals, and the decades-long fight to clear the names of the wrongfully convicted. Gary explores the human cost of a system that chose loyalty to informants over the truth. Why This Story Matters: This episode forces listeners to confront a haunting truth: when law enforcement trades integrity for convenience, innocent lives pay the price. Gary challenges you to rethink the myth of the Bureau’s infallibility—and to remember the names of the men who spent their lives behind bars for a crime they didn’t commit. Subscribe to get gangster stories weekly. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here. To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos. Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, good to be back here in the studio. This is Gary Jenkins, former Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. I’ve seen a lot of things in my life, and I just heard something in that interview I just did with Detective Mike Huff from Tulsa that I had never heard before. [0:18] I mean, I’ve heard a lot of corruption things, but this one, it just went beyond the pale, especially there at the end where he said that this H. Paul Rico asked him about his kids and how old his kids were. That was like, you know, and I, you know, I talked with that guy long enough to know that he wasn’t lying. You know, he wasn’t making that up. That was, it was just beyond the pale, if you ask me. But today’s episode is going to be a little bit more about H. Paul Rico and a dark chapter in the FBI history. Now, this is before John Connolly and the Whitey Bulger cover-up and all that. H. Paul Rico was the agent that really broke in Connolly, I think, and taught him the ropes. He was a slick FBI agent that had all the informants, that always had the inside track on everything, knew where the deals were. And so let’s talk a little more about this one incident that we glossed over in that interview with Mike Huff about the murder of the Roger Wheeler down in Tulsa at the golf course, the Southern Hills Golf Tournament. [1:30] And it was all over control of Jai alai, all the money that came out of Jai alai. This thing, it just, it was a web of deceit that reached into the highest levels of federal law enforcement, as you could tell from what Mr. Huff was saying. [1:44] And so I’m going to tell you the story of the Edward Teddy Deegan murder. This is the FBI’s legacy of shame. I read one article about this, and that’s what they call this, the legacy of shame. [1:56] So let’s go back to October 1964, the year I graduated from high school, actually. Boston FBI agent H. Paul Rico wrote a memo. He’s got an informant whispering that Teddy Deegan, a known hoodlum in Chelsea, Massachusetts, is marked for death. There’s a contract out on him. It’s not just street talk, not just bullshit that he heard somewhere. This came from real solid mob insider informants. A few months later, another memo makes it all the way to J. Edgar Hoover himself. March 10th, 1965, it says that Vincent Jimmy the Bear Flemmy, who is Steve Flemmy, Stevie the Rifleman Flemmy’s brother, I believe, and a guy named Joe Barbosa, have asked New England mob boss Raymond Patriarca for a green light to kill Teddy Deegan. And the word is they’ve already had one dry run on it. So what did the FBI do with this information? You know, they did nothing with it. They did absolutely nothing. They didn’t warn Teddy Deegan, which I know FBI agents, and I know they’ve gotten information like this, and that’s the rule is you go warn the person. And usually it’ll be another guy involved in a lot of shenanigans that then they’ll try to bring him in with that warning. I know we had one in Kansas City. They went to him, and he could have come in. He could have talked. He wouldn’t talk, and like about two weeks later, he was dead. But you at least have to warn him, and it’s an option or it’s an opportunity for you to make a pitch to him. [3:24] Later on, they talked about in another memo that identified, this Jimmy the Bear Flemmi as a murderer of seven men, including Teddy Deegan. But it also said that from all indications, Jimmy the Bear is going to continue to commit murder. But this informant’s potential outweighs the risk. It’s crazy. And, you know, they said that in this Teddy Deegan, they claimed that Flemmy and Barboza and a couple other guys were behind it. And one of them set the trap, lured Deegan into a fake break-in, then shot him in the back of the head. And then a couple others finished up the job, but Flemme and especially Joe Barbosa, Joe the animal Barbosa, were highly placed FBI informants at the time. Really valuable assets. Two years later, 1968, four men, Louis Greco, Henry Tamaleo, Peter Limone, and Joe Salvati are convicted based on the testimony [4:25] of Joe Barbosa, who set up this murder, they’re convicted for this murder. And the FBI knew that Louis Greco was in Miami at the time of the murder. They even had the witnesses. They had proof that he wasn’t even in town at that time. [4:39] But, you know, and of course, they didn’t reveal that, you know, that’s exculpatory information that you can get your conviction turned around and at least get another trial on it. Now that you’ve got that information that the U.S. Attorney withheld from you, the FBI, whoever the law enforcement was that withheld from you. H. Paul Rico was overheard bragging at a mob party how easy it was to convict the four pigeons. They called them the four pigeons. They said it was funny. And one of them, Greco, who wasn’t even in town at the time, got the death penalty. Now think about that one. There’s a federal agent laughing about sending an innocent man to the death chamber. It’s crazy. So over the next four years, you know, these guys are frantically trying to get the death sentences overturned, and they get them commuted to life after the Supreme Court hurt the case. Actually, it’s after Supreme Court’s ruling in Furman v. Georgia. [5:35] Tamaleo will die in prison in 1985 at 84. He was the oldest inmate in Massachusetts. Greco died in 95, had colon cancer, and a broken Hart. His son, Lewis Jr., drank Drano and took his own life a couple years later. Meanwhile, the FBI was doing everything they could to keep the truth buried. They even funneled false information to Governor Dukakis at the time, blocking any. [6:03] Opportunity for a commutation because they’d asked the governor for a commutation. They had, you know, these different pieces of evidence that proved they didn’t do it. And the FBI fought it like crazy. Yeah, like they fought Mike Huff from looking into this whole Roger Wheeler [6:19] case any further t...
Transcribe →Paul Rico: Crooked Agent Gets His Due
Jul 7, 202501:04:25Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Tulsa homicide detective Mike Huff joins host Gary Jenkins to break down one of the most shocking mob hits in U.S. history. Det. Huff tells about the 1981 murder of businessman Roger Wheeler at Southern Hills Country Club and the investigation that ended in the arrest of Boston F.B.I. agent Paul Rico. You can learn more about this story by reading Mike’s book, Killing My Father: The Inside Story of the Biggest FBI Corruption Scandal in History. What started as a local homicide case quickly unraveled into a national organized crime conspiracy involving Florida Jai Alai gambling, the Winter Hill Gang, and notorious Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger. Huff shares how he uncovered links to FBI corruption, the Dixie Mafia, and hitman John Martorano, who eventually confessed to the killing. Huff also opens up about working with Roger Wheeler’s son, David, the emotional toll of the investigation, and how their joint efforts finally exposed the truth. His book Killing My Father reveals even more about this decades-long fight for justice. Subscribe to get gangster stories weekly. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here. To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos. Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I have another former cop, a retired copper from not too far away from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and he has a heck of a story. He’s written a book about it, but it’s a heck of a story. Down in Tulsa, Oklahoma, they’ve got a mob murderer. Well, now, mob murders don’t just go down every day in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and it’s a really interesting story that ties clear back to to the highlight business down in florida to the winter hill gang in uh boston massachusetts uh to whitey bulger really and and a hit man named john moderano and to a one of the infamous corrupt fbi agents out of boston you know they seem to have had a problem in the boston fbi for a period of years there and a couple three of their guys end up going to jail uh over probably being a little bit overly uh that they forgot where the line was it looks to me like but anyhow it was uh it’s a retired detective mike huff welcome mike, Well, hey, welcome to U2. Thank you for doing this. All right, Mike. Now, tell us a little bit about your career. You know, how did you come up through the ranks in Tulsa PD? Well, I started in January of 1975. [1:20] I got promoted to a detective in 1980. I didn’t much like it. It wasn’t enough action. I had a good career on the street. But I like my supervisor a lot. So I stuck with this being a detective. [1:39] In May of 81, May 27th, you know, I just got to work. I was checking on a guy that I had shot three weeks earlier who was in intensive care. We’re just sitting there and we’re talking about we’re going to eat supper. And I was on the phone with the hospital. Checking on this guy’s condition, and police radio came on and said, we need all the homicide detectives to head out to Southern Hills Country Club on a shooting. I guess 5-0s that night, you know, we hit it out there, and, you know, Southern Hills, even at that time, before a lot of all the major golf tournaments they’ve since had, was a very, well, it was the kind of place that I wasn’t familiar with. [2:34] Everybody with money was part of that country club, and I wasn’t one of that crowd. There’s a middle-aged man swamped over in a seated car. He’d been shot between the eyes. It was a little bit foreign to me. You know, I’d been a homicide detective for a year and had been to a good bunch of homicides, but most of them were, you know, street murders or domestics, things like that. And so I knew this one was going to be a bit different, but I didn’t know how different this was going to be. I think I was 25 at the time. My supervisor told me this was going to be my being in charge of the scene. So we started making assignments. Very little evidence of the scene. There were four live rounds laying right outside the opened doorway of Mr. Wheeler’s Cadillac. You know, that was pretty puzzling. This one’s right near one of the… [3:40] Really nice swimming pools out there, and we found a few witnesses. People had seen this car. It looked out of place. I don’t know why anybody hadn’t had somebody check it out. A couple guys sitting in the car. Mike, tell us a little bit about how did you figure out who this guy was? He was pretty well-known in Tulsa, and that’s a pretty well-known country club guy. Just for your information, the Southern Hills Country Club is a primo, premier golf course here in the Midwest. And it’s nothing but high-end, rich oil people in Tulsa, I believe, mainly went to that. And so tell us about how you figured out who this victim was. He had a nice car. Well, the people were abuzz and said, you know, [4:31] you don’t know who this guy is. He owns a telex corporation. Well, that didn’t mean a whole lot to me, other than they said, you know, he employs thousands of people. You know, this was a time that was before Google or the Internet or cell phones or anything. I think I had a police radio, and I don’t even think pagers were invented yet. [5:02] Communication was tough. You know, the word started trickling in of who he was. I guess we were probably out at the scene for six or seven hours and documenting it and getting our pictures and all that kind of scene work. We went back to the station, detective area, we called it the bullpen. The bullpen was filled with brass, people they’d called in and whatever. The word was there was going to be a 13-man task force formed on this deal, and they started breaking that out. Boy, for some reason, I sure thought I wanted to be on it. And I got the word to the sergeant that there is a scene in the book that we wrote. This sergeant, Roy Hunt, was a legend. He had solved murders for decades. I really liked him. He liked me. He pulled me to the side and he said, hey, if you get involved in this, it’s probably going to change your life. And he said, you’ve got a pretty good career down here. So, you know, this is probably going to screw it up, you know, if it doesn’t kill you. I mean, I was so young, green, that I said, oh, man, I don’t want to do this. He said, all right, let’s drink to it. So he pulled out a bottle of whiskey and a couple of shot glasses from his desk. The good old days. [6:29] And so we need a, We had a drink about it. You know, I wasn’t the only guy involved. I mean, involved in that task force. After about a couple weeks, the lead started dwindling. It boiled down to me and a really good fellow named Dick Bishop. We got assigned a case. You know, it was a good learning experience for me. I had Dick Bishop. I had my sergeant. You know, we were, for some reason, 1981, that was a big homicide year for Tulsa. We had close to 80 homicides. I was working around the clock. You know, I mean, I’d pick up a grounder here or there on top of this. [7:11] And so we stayed busy, but we got a call from the state police in Massachusetts. And they said, hey, I need to be up here. Actually, Dick and Sergeant Walter Hunt went to Boston. I didn’t make that trip. But I just worked another homicide. Let me ask you a question here. At this point in time, I know a red ball like that, a hot case like that, where the phones light up at first with all kinds of bad leads and crazy leads, and everybody’s running down all these leads. But you mentioned that there was a car in the lot that somebody mentioned was suspicious. Was that, had you figured out that was the car that had been occupied by whoever killed Roger Wheeler? Yes, sir. It was the late 70s, probably a 79 or 80, four-door, LTD, four-door. Two guys with beards were in the car and they we...
Transcribe →Gotti and Jimmy McBratney
Jun 30, 202500:21:52Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Gangland Wire, I pull back the veil on one of the most pivotal moments in John Gotti’s rise through the ranks of the Gambino crime family—the 1973 murder of Jimmy McBratney. As a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, I bring a lawman’s eye to the tangled web of revenge, power plays, and myth-making that surrounds this infamous hit. We start with the murky legend: that Gotti made his bones by taking out McBratney, earning Carlo Gambino’s favor. But like many mob stories, the truth is far more layered. I examine the wave of underworld kidnappings gripping New York in the early ’70s, led by Eddie Maloney and his gang, who impersonated cops to abduct mobsters for ransom. Caught in that chaos was Jimmy McBratney—an Irish tough guy with a soft side, a devoted father who hoped to leave the life behind. Through Maloney’s own words, I draw a portrait of McBratney as more than a casualty of mob politics. We explore his role in the kidnapping racket, the deadly fallout from a botched grab, and the inevitable spiral toward vengeance that would seal his fate. This episode also delves into the mysterious death of Manny Gambino, nephew of the boss, and how his murder—whether linked to McBratney or not—helped fuel a narrative that demanded retribution. Was Gotti the hand of that justice? Or was the story reshaped later to burnish his legend? We follow the footsteps of NYPD Detective Raymond Taylor and the team that tracked Gotti down. Their investigation, pieced together from reluctant witnesses and underworld whispers, ultimately cracked open the case—and helped launch the myth of the “Teflon Don.” In the end, this story is more than just a mob hit. It’s a study in blurred lines—between law and lore, loyalty and survival. Through wiretaps, memoirs, and police reports, I unravel a tale that speaks to the human cost of life in the shadows—and the power of a story to outlive the truth. Subscribe to get gangster stories weekly. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here. To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos. Transcript [0:00] Well, hey guys, welcome back to the show. This is Gary Jenkins, [0:02] retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. Well, I have a story about John Gotti and how he made his bones with the murder of Jimmy McBratney and that whole backstory behind that. It seems like with most mob stuff, there’s two or three different stories about it. You know, we just have to go with people’s memories, but yet mob guys will throw out different stories and, you know, in order to maybe throw the cops off or the agents off. And so you never really know exactly, but you just have to go to the sources of each of these stories and work it back from there. So I’m going to tell you these different stories, and you let me know what you think happened here. You know, the story is he made his bones by killing this Jimmy McBratney and got the respect of Carlo Gambino, which, you know, is mob lore now. Now, in the early 1970s, there was a series of kidnappings of New York City wise guys. and there’s a book out there called tough guy the true story of crazy Eddie Maloney and this book Maloney. [1:05] Discusses in detail some of these kidnappings that he and his gang were involved with and Jimmy McBratney was part of this gang. The two men had met when they were incarcerated at Greenhaven State Prison in New York and they became close friends. [1:20] Maloney in the book describes McBratney as a devoted family man who stood six foot three, weighed 250 pounds, who was a weightlifter and he claimed that McBratney could bench press 400 pounds. Maloney said that Jimmy McBratney was locked up for armed robbery, said he was quiet, a listener and a learner. Pretty soon they were talking about doing things together whenever they got out. He also said that the guy knew a lot about guns, wanted to collect guns. Really, his heart was in his home life, his family life. He wasn’t a guy that went out and played around. He loved his wife and two children. They had a house on Staten Island, and he wanted to save up enough to own a nightclub. And he said that actually McBratney was kind of prudish that whenever the talk in the yard at the prison was about women in a sexual manner, it upset him. He said his wife visited him regularly and wrote a letter every day. So he was a real family man. Now, after they were both released in October 1972, Maloney and Bratney became part of a kidnapping ring that they said. Now, Maloney claims was a brainchild of two other brothers. There were wise guys from the Gambino crime family, Filippo and Ronnie Miano. They only wanted 10% of the ransoms. [2:36] And Filippo told Maloney that his real motive for these kidnappings was revenge. He said, the guys I’m setting you up, fuck me around and my people around on many business deals in the past. And I want to see those greedy fucks suffer. That sounds like something somebody like that would say. I mean, He’s got the lingo down, right, doesn’t he? They were convinced that these kidnapping mobsters could be pulled off without the victim’s family or anybody notifying the cops. [3:03] They believed they could get as much as $100,000 for each wise guy they snatched. Now, it’s pretty dangerous snatching wise guys in New York City, but they’re not going to the cops, but they’re going to send out their own little detectives. They knew if they did get caught, the punishment would be, may probably torture, maybe more than just a bullet in the head, probably torture, and then the bullet in the head. Now, their little kidnapping gang was Maloney and McBratney, a guy named Tommy Genovese, who was a distant relative of Vito Genovese, a guy named Warren Chief Sherman and Richie Chasen. They’d get home addresses from these Miano brothers, and they had a two-team approach. Now, this is how Maloney reported this in his book. The first team would pretend to be police officers and use stolen badges and kidnap the wise guy from his home and then hold him in another location. The second team would then make the arrangements and pick up the ransom money. Now, the first kidnapping was of a Gambino capo named Frankie the Wop. Now, that escapade went off without a hitch, and the gang got away with $150,000. [4:08] Now, over the next couple of months, they did three more successful kidnappings. They were going along pretty good. The next one after that, their luck changed. Now, McBratney actually planned this one, and they were going to grab a Gambino loan shark. They’d gotten a name and address from the Miano brothers, and they only knew him as Junior. They didn’t know any other name on him, at least Maloney didn’t know any other name on him. So they went by Junior’s house. They found him, stuck a gun in his stomach, put him in a car. When he got in the car, the victim put up a fight and Maloney hit him over the head a couple of times and then shoved him in the back seat. There’s a couple of kids that saw that scuffle around the car and followed them for a little bit and got the license number and turned it over to one of the kid’s uncles who happened to have some mob connections. So now this is in Gambino territory and they have lost a guy and now they’ve got the license number of the car that was used. [5:08] They traced the car to a friend of maloney’s that’s where they were holding junior in this junior now the gambino guys you know acted just like cops they went to the once they found out who’d done it they went to the guy’s mother started asking questions about what was going on and where he might be when they found out about this mcbratney went into a panic and he realized that they probably had his name as well as maloney’s and the sherman’s they got 21 000 for Junior, and they were going to return the victim. Well, Sherman was supposed to tape Junior’s eyes over before covering those sunglasses. Well, he didn’t get it done right. Maloney claims that afte...
Transcribe →Boston Crime Stories
Jun 23, 202500:41:03Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with author Daniel Zimmerman, whose investigative works dive deep into the dark corners of Boston’s organized crime world. Zimmerman has written two gripping true crime books that reveal the raw and often tragic realities of life on the fringe of the Mafia. He recounts his research for his book, Shots in the Dark, which led him to an informal meeting with former New England boss Peter Limone. His first book, Shots in the Dark, tells the harrowing tale of Rocco Anthony Balliro, a Boston mob associate whose desperate and poorly planned rescue mission turned into a deadly shootout. Believing he was storming into danger to help a friend, Rocco unknowingly walked into an ambush set by Boston police. When the smoke cleared, the cost was unimaginable—his girlfriend and her young son lay dead. Zimmerman takes us behind the headlines, exposing the chaos, confusion, and heartbreak of that fateful night. Zimmerman’s second book, Chasson’s Run: The Prison Break That Captivated America and the Love Story That Fueled It, shifts focus to one of Boston’s most violent and manipulative criminals. This is the story of a man so dangerous, yet so persuasive, that he convinced a woman to help him escape from the infamous Walpole State Prison. It’s a tale of charm, obsession, and reckless loyalty—set against the backdrop of one of the most dramatic prison breaks in U.S. history. Join us as Daniel Zimmerman unpacks these explosive stories and reflects on the twisted loyalties, romantic delusions, and violent consequences that define Boston’s mob lore. Click here to see Dan’s books on Amazon. Subscribe to get gangster stories weekly. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here. To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos. transcript [0:00] Hey, welcome all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I have today Daniel Zimmerman, a little bit different sort of a story. Now, he has another book a lot of you guys might be a little more interested in. We’re going to talk about that just a little bit. But the main book we’re going to look at is Chasson’s Run. I think I pronounced that right, Daniel. It’s actually Chasson. Chasson’s Run. Chasing somebody, which kind of fits the picture here. I think it’s a story that, well, Daniel Zimmerman, welcome. I really appreciate you coming on. Well, thank you. I appreciate you having me for this talk. Yeah. Now, Daniel, tell the guys a little bit about yourself. So tell the guys a little bit about your story. Well, oddly enough, I am a newspaper writer, but not the type you would think. I’ve been writing for over 25 years now, actually, a column or columns for local newspapers. And I cover, of all things, high school sports. I go out to area high schools. I watch the games. I take notes, take interviews, grab comments from players [1:00] and coaches, go home and write it. And a couple of days later, it’s in the newspaper. Is that in the Boston area? Yes. Great Boston area. 25 years I’ve been doing it. You know, it’s funny you say that because I did a library presentation for my first book. And one of the questions in the audience from a woman was, how do I translate writing high school sports into writing mob books? Yeah. And I told her, you know, there’s two aspects of both. You have to, number one, be able to research, find out information. [1:29] Keep track of information, and be able to do an interview with your subjects. And in this case, it would be athletes and coaches. On the book writing side, you’re reaching out to suspects and police officers and so forth. So there’s a technique and there’s a skill you learn in both. And I think they translate well into each other. You’re really both just trying, in both situations, you’re trying to get people to tell you a story and give you some interesting little sound bites in both stories. Trust me. Trust me. I get that a lot. As far outside of the newspaper writing, my full-time work over the last five decades has been the first part of my life I worked as an EMT, emergency medical technician, for a private ambulance service, but it happened to be a private ambulance service located within a 15, 20-minute range of two of the most notorious prisons in Massachusetts, MCI Walpole and MCI Norfolk. And the company that I worked for as an EMT, was tasked with transporting inmates to the hospital for a wide assortment, whether it be illness or injuries, stab wounds, you name it. We were the ambulance service that handled that. The second half of my life, I transitioned from being an EMT to working for a major utility, a gas company. And I was a supervisor who would oversee crews that would repair gas leaks in the street. So pretty dangerous work. [2:49] And it’s kind of funny. I mentioned library talks. Another audience member had said to me, she said, so let me get this straight. You were an EMT going in and out of prisons on a regular basis. And then you switched to dealing with potentially explosive gas leaks and interview mob guys to write a book. [3:09] You know, how do you sleep at night? Sleep better. Sleep better that way. Get your adrenaline out during the day. So there’s another book, Shots in the Dark, The Saga of Rocco Ballero. Okay, good. Tell the guys a little bit about that, then we’ll get into this book. Well, Rocco was a small time, I describe him as a petty criminal. He was part of a mafia family out of the north end of Boston. His family, the Balleros, worked directly under the main family, the major family in the Boston area, and that was the Anjulos. The Anjulos, in turn, answered Patriaca, who was out of Providence, Rhode Island. So that was the tear. Rocco’s family was two down from the top. And Rocco was at the time that this story took place, only in his early 20s, early to mid-20s. And again, just coming up in the business, so to speak. The same business that his five brothers and father were all involved with all through their lives. Unfortunately, he got swept up into a double murder that he was framed for. Two people perished, a 21-year-old woman and a two-year-old toddler killed in a crossfire. [4:16] And they were my aunt and my cousin. [4:18] That’s how I knew the story. It was 1962. I was a toddler myself. I was only two years old, so I don’t have direct memory of the incident. But obviously, I grew up, family members would tell me. And then when I got to a point where I was writing on a regular basis, I decided that I was going to tell the story. And I spent a year researching it, making sure that I had the material to do what I wanted to do. And then I reached out to Rocco. He was incarcerated at MCI Norfolk at the time. [4:46] And more or less, I wrote a letter and asked him if I could come see him. And he couldn’t get me there fast enough. He wanted the story told. Yep. And so I went to visit him at the prison. And a few years later, you have the book written and done. And Rocco’s story is told. Unfortunately, he didn’t live long enough to see it happen. He died from c...
Transcribe →A Rhode Island Mob Story
Jun 16, 2025Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins welcomes Anthony Pesare, a retired Rhode Island State Police Intelligence officer turned crime novelist. Gary and Anthony dive into the notorious Providence neighborhood of Federal Hill, a hotbed of mob activity. Anthony offers first-hand stories of surveillance, navigating tight-knit communities, and the challenge of identifying criminals who blend seamlessly into everyday life. He based his recent true-crime novel, They Always Win, on the exploits of Frank “Bobo” Marrapese Jr., a member of the New England Mafia Family led by Raymond Patriarca in the Federal Hill neighborhood. Anthony also wrote Back in the Game in his series on Gino Peterson, a Rhode Island State trooper investigating organized crime. He recounts one of his most notable cases involving a coin shop owner named Stephen Saccoccia, who orchestrated a sophisticated multimillion-dollar money laundering scheme using “Smurfs” to move drug money back to Colombia. When a low-level Providence area mobster tried to move in and extract a tribute, Saccoccia made one phone call, and the guy backed off. It’s a fascinating look into how organized crime adapts and evades detection. After retiring from law enforcement, Anthony served as a professor and dean at Roger Williams University before returning to police work as the Chief of Police in Middletown, Rhode Island. These experiences further enriched his understanding of police culture—something he brings vividly to life in his fiction. His debut novel, They Always Win, features Detective Gino Peterson, a character shaped by Anthony’s real-world insights. Through Gino, Anthony explores themes like addiction, loyalty, and psychological strain—pressures many officers face behind the badge. The novel includes storylines inspired by the murder of mob figure Richard “Dickey” Calley, with confidential informants and witness protection playing key roles in the investigation. Gary and Anthony’s conversation blends crime history, insider law enforcement tales, and the craft of crime fiction. They reflect on the bonds between officers, the emotional toll of the job, and the blurred lines between fact and fiction when writing from experience. Don’t miss this episode if you’re fascinated by mob history, police intelligence work, or how real investigations can fuel gripping crime novels. Subscribe to get gangster stories weekly. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here. To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos. Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, it’s good to be back here in studio on Gangland Wire. I have a man today who has a career somewhat similar to mine. He was with the Rhode Island State Police Intelligence Unit, Anthony Passare. Anthony, welcome. Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for the invitation. Love to talk about this stuff with you. Yeah, this has got to be fun, guys. It’s going to be fun. I always like having these ex-intelligence unit mob cops on here because we have so much in common. It’s like, you know, it’s like we work together almost, but yet in different parts of the country. Now, Anthony is writing some books right now. He’s turned a lot of his old experiences into fictional books with a fictional detective, but it’s all based on real events. We’ll talk about those books a little bit more later on. Anthony, you served, you were a college dean or a college professor, and you became a chief of police, and now you’re writing novels. So tell the guys a little bit about your basic history. [0:59] Sure. I joined the state police when I was 22 years old, very young, obviously, like we all were. And I joined the state police and I was lucky enough to be stationed in the intelligence unit, work with some excellent individuals. As you know, no one does anything alone in law enforcement. It’s always, you need the support of your fellow officers, prosecutors, and that sort of thing. So I was with the state police for 24 years because at the time they had a 25-year mandatory retirement. So you had to leave. So at 24, I was lucky enough to get a job as the assistant dean of the School of Justice Studies at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. I was there for six years. At the end of my sixth year, I was dean of the School of Justice Studies, which gave out undergraduate degrees in criminal justice, master’s degree. And we also had a justice system training research institute where we brought a lot of offices in for in-service training. [2:02] But I was anxious to get back into law school. I loved the parents. I loved the students. The administration was good to me. But dealing with college professors is a whole different animal. And nothing against them. But that wasn’t my culture. My culture was our culture. And as you know, it’s different. And a lot of it has to do with respect. And I didn’t feel that where I was working. So I was lucky enough. I applied and became chief of police in Middletown, Rhode Island. Which is just north of Newport, Rhode Island, which is a tourist attraction. There’s a Navy base here. And I served for chief for 14 years. And I retired at the end of my 14th year. And I spent four years practicing law and actually prosecuting cases, misdemeaned cases for the town. [2:54] At the end of that sixth year, the town came back to me and asked me if I would come back as chief, which is really unusual to happen, at least in Rhode Island. But the chief that was hired after me decided to move on, so I went back. And I did that for two years, and I just retired in December. And I mention all of that because it provided me with the materials for the books I wrote, but it also gave me the best experiences I could ever have. I mean, I grew up in a tenement house in Providence. since we were probably poor, but we didn’t know it. But I say to officers all the time. [3:36] You’re in a unique position. You will be talking to captains of industry, rich people, poor people. You’re going to be exposed to something. I’ve met presidents, I’ve met senators, and what chance would I have other than being a member of the law enforcement? So I grew up in an Italian neighborhood, so I took that, my upbringing, along with the fact that while I was under state police, we had three witnesses in protective custody. We were with them 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we made a lot of cases. And eventually, one of the cases we convicted a maiden member of organized crime for first-degree murder, which is highly unusual, as you know, to get. But the witnesses help us put a case together. [4:25] So when that case finished, I said, there’s a story here. You know, there’s a story here. And I wasn’t interested in doing true fiction and reading transcripts and doing all that hard research. I wasn’t interested in it. [4:39] I fictionalized my upbringing and these three people, but the framework is a real case. And so I did that and I published that, self-published it, and it did really well. That was your first book then. What was the title of that? It’s called They Always Win. They always win, and it’s part of the Gino Peterson series. The book that you have is the second book. I’m working on the third book. It’s going to be a three-book series, and we’ll close out Gino’s chapter then. So I wrote that book, but then I got the Middletown job, and it was just so difficult to write. And so I put it off until before I retired. I put the second one together, [5:26] and that was published in November of last year. As you know, your best writing, I think, comes from real experiences, things that you’ve gone through in my career. [5:39] I was able to be on a task f...
Transcribe →Big Apple Mafia: Stories From the Five Families
Feb 6, 2025Tap to summarizeIn this bonus episode, Gary Jenkins tells about how the FBI recruited the man known as “The Grim Reaper” or the “Killing machine.” It might surprise some that they recruited Greg Scarpa Sr. before Joe Valachi gave his public testimony. From the time of Scarpa’s earliest arrests by the FBI, he sang like a bird. Additionally, Gary tells about Scarpa Jr. and Senior joining in murdering a mobster girlfriend or “Goomar” named Mari Bari. Colombo boss Alphonse “Allie Boy” Persico feared she would reveal his whereabouts when he was on the lam from the FBI. Scarpa’s people will call this “the murder he is going to hell for.” Additionally, Gary Jenkins asks for your help with his new and captivating book inspired by his podcast episodes. Big Apple Mafia: Stories From the Five Families delves into New York City’s organized crime scene, beginning with legendary Mafia detective Joe Petrosino and key moments from his remarkable career. As with his first book, Windy City Mafia: Stories From the Chicago Outfit, Gary handpicks some of his favorite stories, crafting a compelling ten-chapter collection. Readers will explore tales of Lt. Petrosino and the Black Hand, Frank Costello—The Gentleman Gangster, the notorious Crazy Joey Gallo, the ruthless Tommy “Karate” Pitera, and Gary’s personal favorite, John Gotti’s Mole, and five more. Written in his signature direct and engaging style, this book is a must-read for true crime enthusiasts. Subscribe to get new gangster stories every week. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here. To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos. To subscribe on iTunes click here. Please give me a review and help others find the podcast. Donate to the podcast. Click here! Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, Gary Jenkins, Kansas City Police Intelligence [0:04] Unit Detective in the past. I have been at it again. I have written my second book based on my podcast episodes. My second book is called Big Apple Mafia, Stories from the Five Families. Now, I’m going to tell many mob stories from a podcast. [0:20] Big Apple Mafia is going to be a little bit longer than Windy City Mafia, the Chicago outfit. It’s got 160 pages. So my best stories, I really love a lot of these stories. like the one about Gotti’s mole, the New York City policeman who was feeding him information all the time in that investigation, how they uncovered that guy. And really everything from the overview in the early days, Abe Rellis, the canary that could sing but couldn’t fly, and all those old stories. So this new book is only $2.99 as a Kindle. And remember, the reason I’m doing this is for Amazon to put that book out on other people. When you go to Amazon, then if you’re a mob book reader, then we want this book to be put in front of all those mob book readers, whether they’re podcast listeners or not, of course. And if you want to help me with that, I kind of game the algorithms. It seems to work a little bit. They monitor the purchases or the pages read and the reviews, so give me a review also. So, and this helped out immensely with my Chicago book. So once again, I’m asking you for basically a small $2.99 donation and you’ll get the book in return, the Kindle book, or it’s a little more for the, I can’t remember how much it is for the, for the, uh. [1:40] Paperback and, and so anyhow, don’t forget to give me a review and as reward for listening to this little sales pitch, here’s a great story about Greg Scarpa senior, AKA the grim reaper, or as I’ve learned, the name he really preferred was a killing machine or just km this guy was a real piece of work man i mean he was a real piece of piece of work he was he played chess while everybody else was playing checkers it seems to me like so listen to my story and don’t forget go to amazon and click on you know search gary jenkins, mafia books and you’ll find my books and buy that 299 kindle book and give me a review on it it’s called uh not windy city mafia one of my it’s called big apple mafia stories from the five families so listen up guys you know he’s got the usual thing as a young thug he ended up doing truck hijackings and the mob guys saw that and that’s where you fence your property if you do a truck hijacking large amounts of property. [2:42] In 1960, FBI agents arrested him for hijacking. And another one hijacking, when they arrested him, they served a search warrant on his house and they found several cases of liquor taken from a more recent hijacking. Well, it was during that time in August of 1960 that the FBI opened their first informant file on him. And, you know, think about this, this is three years before Valachi does his testimony. He got that three years before Bellacci talks. I mean, Bellacci has come in by now, but this is three years before he actually gives his public testimony and people know about him. Greg Scarpa Sr., who’s going to get into the Profaci, then Colombo family, is talking to the FBI. And they dismiss the charges on the first hijacker. And then they drop him shortly after that because his brother was involved with this and and he won’t talk about his brother which is pretty common you know that’s that’s a bit much to ask of a guy but you know i noticed in the book i was reading about this is a really good book about this uh the greg scarper and his whole life that the charges were never refiled. [3:52] The book says agents kept dropping by a social club where he frequented and and all the time and they tried to talk to him all the time. And so much that guys started to talk. And he finally, they said he begged the agents, you know, you got to stop this. Guys are starting to talk. Oh, that book, by the way, is Deal with the Devil. There it is. It’s thick too. It’s a big, thick book. Peter Lance. I think it’s really good now. Now there’s another book about him that mentions him a lot by this FBI agent, Len DiVecchio. [4:23] And DiVecchio was one of his. [4:26] Two guys that we know that ran him as an informant and i tell you what he i in my opinion from what i’ve read they were playing he was playing those guys all along well he did work for him i mean he did do work but he he was using it to uh to get himself promoted in the mob and and earn more money and and all that and and in 1962 they actually early on they gave him top echelon informant status, which is a pretty big deal. And what they said, there was a Profaci-Gallo war going on at that time, and they said he could furnish information on that. They really wanted to know about that. That other liquor hijacking case was dismissed during that time. In early 1962, there was an FBI report in which an unidentified agent describes Scarpa as a reliable and emotionally stable person, and that he has never furnished any false information. And the subsequent memos that they started writing early on his information was much better and more detailed and more about crimes than anything joe velacci ever talked about joe velacci got in there and talked to old history and and he explained a lot that that they didn’t know you know like the the capos and the bosses and and the families and how they were separate and and how they they They worked together and all those kinds of things. The induction ceremony, Scarpa was reported on current events. [5:55] Bureau at that time calls him a capital regime. Now, he’s a little bit young for that. I think they wanted to boost him up a little bit and make him look like he’s more important. But they did say, and this turns out to be true, he was really close to the profetiae. [6:08] Family concierge, Charles LoCicero. They also claimed t...
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