Speaker 1: Before there was East Coast West Coast rap battles, there
Speaker 1: was East Coast West Coast mob wars. You think about
Speaker 1: the MAFI, you think about New York, you think about Chicago,
Speaker 1: you think about al Capone. But Los Angeles had its
Speaker 1: own batch of mobsters. It's where we kick off True
Speaker 1: Crime Tuesday. The story is.
Speaker 2: True, sounds true?
Speaker 1: No, it sounds made up.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Garry and Shannon present true.
Speaker 1: You raised a son, I did. When your son was five?
Speaker 1: Did he know how to make gin?
Speaker 2: No? He barely knew how to make peepee. Mickey Cohen
Speaker 2: is a kid who, at the age of five, was
Speaker 2: taught how to make gin by his older brother, Harry.
Speaker 2: Mickey Cohen is the name of an LA gangster that
Speaker 2: kind of pails. I don't want to discount his impact,
Speaker 2: but he's not as well known, perhaps as some of
Speaker 2: the bigger ones, the Lucky Luciano's, the Bugsy Seagulls and
Speaker 2: things like that. And part of it is because he
Speaker 2: was an LA guy at least when he rose to
Speaker 2: when he rose to prominence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mickey Cohen was born in Brooklyn, but his dad
Speaker 1: died in when he was weeks old. Mom took off
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles a couple of years later, and they
Speaker 1: made their life in Boyle Heights. And as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: he took to the life very quickly. He had an
Speaker 1: older brother who was a teenager at the time when
Speaker 1: when little Mickey was learning how to make gin at five,
Speaker 1: he grew up around pool halls, racking balls, slipping players,
Speaker 1: bootlegged booze. It was a life of crime, or shall
Speaker 1: we say, a life on the take from go and
Speaker 1: Mickey Cohen is known. I think the picture that comes
Speaker 1: to mind for me of Mickey Cohen is when he's
Speaker 1: standing among what is left of his house in February
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty and he's wearing a bathrobe and he's just
Speaker 1: kind of casually looking at his house that had just
Speaker 1: been essentially blown up by a rival mobster. And it's
Speaker 1: such a cool picture because Mickey Cohen's in a bathrobe. Now,
Speaker 1: what does that exude to you? To me, that exudes
Speaker 1: I don't give an f you just tried to blow
Speaker 1: my house up. I am not bothered enough to get
Speaker 1: out of my bathrobe. I am not bothered enough to
Speaker 1: change out of my slippers. I'm going to stand here
Speaker 1: in my bathrobe and look at the damage, because I
Speaker 1: don't fear you. I am Mickey f and Cohen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the craziest of This rival tries to
Speaker 2: sneak a bomb underneath the crawl space of Cohen's house
Speaker 2: and the crawl space or the bomb itself is made
Speaker 2: of thirty sticks of dynamite, and they said it was
Speaker 2: a weird quirk of the house that resulted in the
Speaker 2: bomb not killing anybody. It was placed underneath the house,
Speaker 2: but a cement covered vault that this guy installed ended
Speaker 2: up diverting the blast.
Speaker 1: The guy's name was Tom Dragna, the rival who tried
Speaker 1: to blow up Mickey Cohen and his house, and the
Speaker 1: two were involved in the Sunset Wars, which was basically
Speaker 1: a turf war in Los Angeles trying to get mob
Speaker 1: dominance in the late forties. And this was supposed to
Speaker 1: be a sign, but like you said, it was a
Speaker 1: gross miscalculation because there was that cement covered vault that
Speaker 1: basically took the impact of the bomb.
Speaker 2: And that was one of eleven known assassination attempts against
Speaker 2: this guy. He was known as LA's al Capone, and
Speaker 2: you mentioned that he was born in Brooklyn. As he
Speaker 2: grew up. He just all ways was hustling, started selling
Speaker 2: La examiners downtown. The paper he would he struck up
Speaker 2: a deal with the editor the paper because he was
Speaker 2: giving the editor bathtub gin at a time during prohibition,
Speaker 2: and the editor would end up giving him papers that
Speaker 2: he could then sell and keep the proceeds from.
Speaker 1: It's funny that he started selling newspapers because he ended
Speaker 1: up buying the newspaper people, buying the politicians, buying the cops,
Speaker 1: buying attorney general. In fact, got an attorney How is that?
Speaker 1: How great is that that you're a mobster running dirty
Speaker 1: money left and right and you're able to put an
Speaker 1: age of your picking in that spot.
Speaker 2: Pretty nice? He as a kid, learns to box, actually
Speaker 2: tries to make a go of it, ends up in
Speaker 2: the Midwest in Cleveland, but catches on with some of
Speaker 2: the less than savory people who are around the boxing
Speaker 2: clubs that he was in, and gets picked up as
Speaker 2: an enforcer for the mob. Gets pushed over towards Chicago
Speaker 2: because they need some they need a tough guy in Chicago. Now,
Speaker 2: this Mickey Cohen told stories all the time, and I
Speaker 2: mean tall tales that kind of story all the time.
Speaker 2: He talks about when he was in Chicago that was
Speaker 2: the first time he met al Capone. Well, the math
Speaker 2: doesn't work out because al Capone was already in Alcatraz
Speaker 2: for tax evation at the time, so there's no way
Speaker 2: he could have met him. But after things get out
Speaker 2: of hand in Chicago and he's a little bit too
Speaker 2: big for his breeches, they send him back to Chicago
Speaker 2: in the thirties and they say, hey, listen, we need
Speaker 2: you to team up with Bugsy Seagull. So he's in
Speaker 2: cahoots with Bugsy Seagull and basically everything from prostitution to
Speaker 2: gambling on the strip, the gambling ships off the coast,
Speaker 2: all of that made Mickey Cohen into one of the
Speaker 2: biggest gangsters in la.
Speaker 1: If you're interested in this storyline, I will direct you
Speaker 1: to the nineteen ninety one major motion picture movie Bugsy.
Speaker 1: It's a great movie from what I remember when I
Speaker 1: was eleven and I went to go see it in
Speaker 1: the theater. It's about Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen. Warren
Speaker 1: Batty is Bugsy. Harvey Kaitel plays Mickey Cohen. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's fantastic. It's all about Los Angeles and Vegas and
Speaker 1: like the West Coast Mafia.
Speaker 2: Mickey Cohen, a former boxer turned local mobster here in
Speaker 2: la is detailed in a new book out. It's called
Speaker 2: Mickey Cohen, The Life and Crimes of LA's Notorious Mobster
Speaker 2: and Terry Tariba. The author basically argues that Mickey Cohen
Speaker 2: kind of didn't get as fair shake in terms of
Speaker 2: being as high profile as some of the other mobsters
Speaker 2: that we know about. For example, Mickey Cohen, he didn't
Speaker 2: really he didn't really drink, wasn't a big smoker. I
Speaker 2: guess ice cream was his was his vice, and in
Speaker 2: fact he was. He was oddly respectful and nice in
Speaker 2: many cases to the police that were tracking him and
Speaker 2: trailing him all day. He also supposedly brokeered some sort
Speaker 2: of a truce. One of his tough guys named Johnny
Speaker 2: Stampanado was caught with Ava Gardner, who was also having
Speaker 2: an affair with Frank Sinatra at the time, and Mickey
Speaker 2: Cohen mediated the whole thing, not by insisting that Johnny
Speaker 2: Stampanado give up the relationship, but by insisting that Frank
Speaker 2: Sinatra make amends with his wife Nancy.
Speaker 1: At the time, Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner. What a
Speaker 1: love story. Yeah, what a great story that is. I
Speaker 1: think there's a Kitty Kelly book about that. It's pretty good.
Speaker 2: He controlled and I mentioned that, you know, all of
Speaker 2: the things, the gambling, ships, the back room gambling on
Speaker 2: the Sunset Strip, prostitution, all of that stuff that was
Speaker 2: running through LA at the time, but none of that
Speaker 2: is what really got him in trouble. It's what falls, sorry,
Speaker 2: it's what fells. All of the big ones. Tax evasion.
Speaker 2: In nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 1: Sam tax evasion.
Speaker 2: He's indicted for failing to pay adequate taxes on his
Speaker 2: income one owing what would be about two point seven
Speaker 2: million when adjusted for inflation. There were some other legal
Speaker 2: issues that were hanging over him. Of course. To shore
Speaker 2: up his legal defense, he took out a storefront on
Speaker 2: the Sunset Strip in which he wrote the words Mickey
Speaker 2: Cohen quits, and then auctioned off a bunch of his furniture,
Speaker 2: a bunch of his electronics, his vintage weapons at the time.
Speaker 2: So he does just under four years in prison for
Speaker 2: tax evasion, and he gets out and he's a new man.
Speaker 2: But i'll put that in quotes new man. He dresses differently.
Speaker 2: He talks to young people. A stay out of crime
Speaker 2: begins hanging out with Billy Graham.
Speaker 1: How old was he when he got out?
Speaker 2: Uh? And died in fifty one, got out in fifty
Speaker 2: five and born in thirteen, So he's in his forties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well back then the forties were your sixties essentially.
Speaker 2: I guess. And then he goes back to prison in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty two. Guess what for tax evasionax evasion? And
Speaker 2: he's released a short time later. I mentioned that there
Speaker 2: is another movie about this guy. You mentioned Buggsy Siegel.
Speaker 2: Obviously that concentrates on Bugsy Bugsy, but there was a
Speaker 2: There was another movie called Gangster Squad in twenty thirteen
Speaker 2: where Sean Penn plays.
Speaker 1: Making That's a good movie. That's a good movie.
Speaker 2: I'm a Stone. Josh Brol and Ryan Gosling in that
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: When Cohen was interviewed by Mike Wallace in New York
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty seven, he said, I never killed a
Speaker 1: guy who, in my way of life didn't deserve it.
Speaker 1: I mean, in my way of life, is quite the umbrella. Right.
Speaker 2: By the time he gets out, he says, the world
Speaker 2: has changed. Touring for his autobiography that he wrote he
Speaker 2: was diagnosed with terminal cancer. A little less energetic, they said.
Speaker 2: He did still did the did the rounds. He did
Speaker 2: what he could