Speaker 1: It's nice with Dan ray On Delileos.
Speaker 2: D all right. A subject that we talk about a
Speaker 2: little bit, but most of us talk about it from
Speaker 2: not from an inside perspective, an inside point of view.
Speaker 2: A few weeks ago I had as a guest during
Speaker 2: the eight o'clock hour, my guests who were about to
Speaker 2: reintroduce to reintroduce you to Lewis Ferrante. He's a former
Speaker 2: member of the Gambino crime family. Spent several years in
Speaker 2: stir as we say, because he decided that he would
Speaker 2: not incriminate fellow Gambino family members. Probably a good decision,
Speaker 2: you know, a life decision. I would say, uh, Lewis
Speaker 2: to Ferranti is with us, lou Ferrente. By the way, Lewis, Uh,
Speaker 2: you're a stand up guy. How are you tonight?
Speaker 3: I'm good? Thank you, Dan. I appreciate introduction I did.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: You were a stand up guy. You know you're you're
Speaker 2: in the slammer. What years were you in? What years
Speaker 2: were you in?
Speaker 3: I got I got locked up. I was young. I
Speaker 3: was I did nothing but fine. From when I was
Speaker 3: thirteen by the time I was twenty five, I was
Speaker 3: facing the rest of my life in prison. I had
Speaker 3: three cases. I had an FBI case, a secret service case,
Speaker 3: and a state organized crime cask boss case and accumulation.
Speaker 3: It's you know, facing probably one hundred and sixty years
Speaker 3: with everything. So yeah, I said, I'm not squealing, I'm
Speaker 3: not ratting, it's not happening. And the pressure just continued,
Speaker 3: and I was, O.
Speaker 2: Were you How old were you when you by the way,
Speaker 2: you know, in terms of baseball, you'd call that someone
Speaker 2: like yourself a five tool player, So you were five
Speaker 2: tool games gigs? Are you? You had a lot of
Speaker 2: skill sets here?
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I did my ex Yeah. True. My
Speaker 3: expertise was at the time heis and hijackings. That's what
Speaker 3: I did. And I had a really really good crew
Speaker 3: and that's what we were known for, and you know
Speaker 3: we did it. We we operated within the Gambino family umbrella.
Speaker 3: But I worked with any family. I worked with everybody, Lukesey,
Speaker 3: Banano Colombo. If if somebody had a tip, I just
Speaker 3: had to put it on record with my own family.
Speaker 3: But anybody came to me.
Speaker 2: So what were what sort of trucks were you looking
Speaker 2: to hit? I mean you when you say you had it, kip,
Speaker 2: you were you were going at some fruit truck, I assume,
Speaker 2: But what were you looking for? Now?
Speaker 3: You're looking for money, any anything that's big money it
Speaker 3: could be. I mean I had everything from uh Brazil's
Speaker 3: yeah you know, I mean not even like Victoria's secrets,
Speaker 3: which we thought the truck was carrying. We ended up
Speaker 3: with these big cheap cone cup brazils when we hit
Speaker 3: the truck, you know, So there was things. Sometimes, you know,
Speaker 3: you got a truck coming out of the airport, you
Speaker 3: get the wrong one. But you look for something, you know,
Speaker 3: big as far as merchandise is concerned. Something you know,
Speaker 3: you figure you get ten twenty, maybe at best thirty
Speaker 3: cents on the dollar. Usually you don't get me you know,
Speaker 3: usually it's more towards ten or twenty. So you know,
Speaker 3: you need a load, you know, hopefully worth a million dollars.
Speaker 3: So you could at least have one hundred thousand if
Speaker 3: you got ten cents on it, Okay, and.
Speaker 2: So and so. Therefore you you would fence the property.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we had fences, but also too we did uh.
Speaker 3: We were eventually charged with I don't want to say
Speaker 3: I was acquitted in the end of these charges, but
Speaker 3: we were also originally convicted of and charged with armored
Speaker 3: car robberies as well. And that's just straight money. So
Speaker 3: there's yeah, I would see to the load.
Speaker 2: If you get you know, a big you hit it
Speaker 2: truck down. Yeah, you know pictures of of uh you know,
Speaker 2: dead presidents.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's one instance I could talk about
Speaker 3: because I was charged with it. We went to uh.
Speaker 3: We got to tip a guy originally came from New
Speaker 3: York and he joined the Navy. He got out of
Speaker 3: the Navy and he was down on his lock, got
Speaker 3: a job, a couple of bad jobs, and then eventually
Speaker 3: get landed a job with an army clock company and
Speaker 3: he told us, look, come down here, you could hit
Speaker 3: one of my trucks. You know the company I'm working
Speaker 3: for it was a big, big armored car company, well
Speaker 3: known throughout the country. So we did at Back then
Speaker 3: it was pre nine to eleven, so after nine to eleven,
Speaker 3: you know, you need proof. You have to prove where
Speaker 3: you are before you bought a plane. It's tsa, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Back then, though, we used to book fights with phony names.
Speaker 3: We would put guns, walkie talkies, span is in a
Speaker 3: in a box and just ship at ups, you know,
Speaker 3: to California, to an address and it would be there
Speaker 3: waiting for us when we got there. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you could do any of that stuff today, I
Speaker 3: can't imagine it. I can't even imagine booking a flight
Speaker 3: without having you know, identification and stuff. But back then
Speaker 3: you could. So we booked phony, you know, we booked
Speaker 3: flights under phony names. We sent all our weapons and
Speaker 3: the other accouterments for for you know, for for a
Speaker 3: heist down there, all the tools, and we got down there,
Speaker 3: and what happened was he said, at the last minute,
Speaker 3: you know, we went to dinner when we were going
Speaker 3: over to plan stuff, and at the last minute he
Speaker 3: got cold feet. He said, look, I'll give you another
Speaker 3: truck to hit. I really don't want it to be mine.
Speaker 3: I feel like they'll get me right after. They'll catch me,
Speaker 3: they'll know. And so at that point I needed to
Speaker 3: get another guy down there, because if we don't have
Speaker 3: the driver, you know, it's it's it's it presents. You know,
Speaker 3: you got difficulties if you're hitting guys that nobody's on
Speaker 3: the inside. It's easier if you're hitting somebody from outside.
Speaker 2: So what did you I mean, first, First of all,
Speaker 2: you've got to be a little bit upset with this
Speaker 2: guy who who invited you to do this deal and
Speaker 2: now he's backing out on you at the last minute.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at the time, you know, I'm obviously I'm a
Speaker 3: little formed man. Now, you know, the whole situation is horrible.
Speaker 3: But back then, yeah, I was. I was twisted. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I was heated. So we got we got a guy
Speaker 3: called New York. I said, look, I'll get another guy
Speaker 3: down yeah, cold New York. I asked another guy from
Speaker 3: micro get on a plane, hurry up, get down here.
Speaker 3: We got you know, we're down here already. We're going
Speaker 3: to go through with something. So he came down, he
Speaker 3: flew down. What happened was we didn't know this. He
Speaker 3: got down there, he was down there a couple of days,
Speaker 3: and we were going back to a hotel UH in
Speaker 3: San Francisco, and we got swarmed by FBI agents working, yeah,
Speaker 3: working in concert with the police. Helicopters, bulletproof vest, machine guns.
Speaker 3: You know, they just they took us in, righted you out. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what happened. So the guy who I called he
Speaker 3: was he was a roommate with somebody who was an
Speaker 3: FBI informant, and that guy he said, look, you know,
Speaker 3: Louis called and he's got something big for me out west. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know, drive me to the airport. And that guy
Speaker 3: did not know exactly what we were doing, but he
Speaker 3: took the FBI and looked. And now I could look
Speaker 3: back on it, Dan and say, by the grace of God,
Speaker 3: you know, it was stopped. Who knows what could have happened.
Speaker 3: So it's a good thing. But back then I was
Speaker 3: again I was you know, you know, we would you
Speaker 3: know anyway we went.
Speaker 2: How old were at that time, So I was.
Speaker 3: In my early twenties when I was knocking on I was.
Speaker 3: I was accused of knocking off one of the biggest
Speaker 3: heights in US history in my early twenties. And my
Speaker 3: crew were all in their thirties and forties, and you know,
Speaker 3: defences we used were all in their sixties, so everybody
Speaker 3: was older than me. But I was on the street
Speaker 3: since I'm thirteen, and I delivered. And I always if
Speaker 3: I said I was going to do something, I did it.
Speaker 3: You know, there's talkers and there's doers, and like anything
Speaker 3: like anything in the real world, in the old world
Speaker 3: or the other.
Speaker 2: World, so you were. You were, in effect, at a
Speaker 2: very young age, a quarterback.
Speaker 3: I was. I was. I would put the heist together.
Speaker 3: I had the crew. They all listened to me, and
Speaker 3: we were like a well oiled machine. We did what
Speaker 3: we did really well. We didn't we never got caught
Speaker 3: in the commission of a crime. I didn't understand the law.
Speaker 3: I learned that later in life. I eventually studied after
Speaker 3: I went through seven attorneys, including the famous civil rights
Speaker 3: attorney William Kuntzler. I had originally retained Barry Slotnik. I
Speaker 3: had some of the best attorneys money could buy in
Speaker 3: the beginning, and eventually I learned the law. But I
Speaker 3: didn't know the law when I was on the street.
Speaker 3: And I thought, once we got away with the crime,
Speaker 3: scott free, it was done. Just don't talk about it.
Speaker 3: You know, if you didn't go, you should know. So
Speaker 3: we didn't talk about it. And then what happened was
Speaker 3: at some point or another years later, a few years
Speaker 3: down the road. You know, a lot of crimes were
Speaker 3: from when I was twenty twenty one, twenty two. Now yeah,
Speaker 3: now twenty four to twenty five, and I'm facing life,
Speaker 3: and what happened was the FBI. There was a guy
Speaker 3: who one of the fences I used. He was a
Speaker 3: big fence and give you an it's almost like it's
Speaker 3: an incredible story. Again. The guy was on forty seventh
Speaker 3: Street in the Julie District in Manhattan. That's where he operated,
Speaker 3: and there was only like five or six fences, as
Speaker 3: I understood it, for like decades. They had that handle anything.
Speaker 3: You know. You could bring them the Stanhope diamond and
Speaker 3: they could move it, you know, whereas other fence, another
Speaker 3: fence might say, what the hell you want me to
Speaker 3: do with that? I don't know where to go? Dad.
Speaker 3: You could bring them a picasso, you know, a Dollari
Speaker 3: van go anything. He could fence, and so we always
Speaker 3: used him. It was my friend's uncle, and I looked
Speaker 3: up to him. I called him uncle. I called him uncle,
Speaker 3: your uncle Billy at the time. And I looked up
Speaker 3: to him. And at some point or another a lot
Speaker 3: of the heists I did, I brought all the merchandise
Speaker 3: I brought to him, and he was aware of other
Speaker 3: big heightts we did. And when he got arrested by
Speaker 3: the FBI, he flipped. But he became what they call
Speaker 3: and you would know for your listeners. He became what
Speaker 3: they called a dry snitch. He wanted to be a
Speaker 3: confidential informant. He did not want to testify against anybody,
Speaker 3: but he gave up everything that I did, and the
Speaker 3: FBI of all the crimes that they were looking at
Speaker 3: they had thought of. It was like a lot of
Speaker 3: these big heists they thought were done by like a
Speaker 3: season's crew, like a Jimmy Burke, you know, the guy
Speaker 3: who did les Stanza. They figured, you know, they were
Speaker 3: looking at all these big guys in their forties and
Speaker 3: fifties who've been around hardened criminals and never knew it
Speaker 3: was a kid in his early twenties.
Speaker 2: Rob Okay, please clip that then, kind to watch the language.
Speaker 2: So obviously what happens is when you're doing this stuff,
Speaker 2: you had no concept about conspiracy laws, You had no
Speaker 2: concept about rico statutes, You had no concept about statues
Speaker 2: of limitations. You figured, hey, now, six six months, it's
Speaker 2: it's all in the rear view, Mira. So you you chose,
Speaker 2: you chose not to snitch, and you did eight years.
Speaker 2: With all that, you've were facing life in prison. Obviously
Speaker 2: your lawyers must have worked some sort of well, I'll.
Speaker 3: Tell you what happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, let me take a break, loose, just real
Speaker 2: quickly because commercials. We'll use this as a break. We'll
Speaker 2: come back. We'll talk about it, and if folks wanted
Speaker 2: the conversation, ask questions. I also want to talk about
Speaker 2: the book that you have just written, Bogada Clash of
Speaker 2: the Titans, and it does cover the period of nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty to nineteen eighty five, which starts with obviously the
Speaker 2: Kennedy administration in the person of Robert F. Kennedy, Junior President,
Speaker 2: Kennedy's attorney general, his brother going after organized crime, and
Speaker 2: while Jay go Hoover had been the head of the
Speaker 2: FBI for about three decades and he was asleep at
Speaker 2: the switch. And there's a lot of stuff going on
Speaker 2: in the nineteen fifties that Hoover either turned a blind
Speaker 2: eye to or he was too arrogant to what acknowledge
Speaker 2: he was missing. We'll get to all of that. I
Speaker 2: promise we're going to spend at least until eleven o'clock,
Speaker 2: and I'd love to have those of you join the conversation,
Speaker 2: ask questions. Organized crime is always something that has fascinated everyone.
Speaker 2: We're getting a real inside look from Lou Ferrante. We'll
Speaker 2: be back on night Side right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
Speaker 1: night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2: My guest is Lou Ferenting. He was a member of
Speaker 2: the Gambino crime family, was associated with them, served eight
Speaker 2: years in prison because he would not incriminate fellow Gambino
Speaker 2: family members. He's written a book called Bolgata, Riise of
Speaker 2: and Empire. It's just out. Has received a critical acclaim
Speaker 2: from The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Washington Free Beacon,
Speaker 2: amongst others. And I find him to be a really
Speaker 2: interesting gentleman, and he has turned his life around. How
Speaker 2: old are you now?
Speaker 3: If I could ask, Lou, Oh, I'm fifty five. Now
Speaker 3: this is many years ago. I'm back going back to
Speaker 3: the nineties when I was.
Speaker 2: Wild, okay, And as they say, when you folks ended
Speaker 2: up swarmed by FBI agents in San Francisco, how many
Speaker 2: of how many were in your crew that day? How
Speaker 2: many people were there?
Speaker 3: So yeah, that day there was there was uh one, two, three,
Speaker 3: four of us there and there were other guys you
Speaker 3: know back home, obviously I had I had more of
Speaker 3: a crew you know, it depends who I would use
Speaker 3: for a job. But there were four of us in
Speaker 3: San Francisco. There were three, and then the fourth guy
Speaker 3: who joined us, and he had just joined us, and
Speaker 3: that's when we got we got dragged in. There's actually
Speaker 3: surveillance photos of that incident floating around on the computer somewhere.
Speaker 2: Really, so I got to ask a question on that one.
Speaker 2: Were you guys staying at a high class hotel in
Speaker 2: San Francisco?
Speaker 3: No, No, we weren't. No, very very low key. It was.
Speaker 3: It was what you would call a hotel motel, somewhere
Speaker 3: you go like to hike, you know, from uh if
Speaker 3: you're doing something wrong yester the day. Yeah, No it was. No,
Speaker 3: it was no fancy place.
Speaker 2: So now I want to drill down on some of this,
Speaker 2: and I want to get to the book as well,
Speaker 2: but I want to take the few minutes we have
Speaker 2: left before the newscast at the bottom of the hour.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming you were born into this. I mean you
Speaker 2: were you were born into.
Speaker 3: This, most most of my friends were. I wasn't Dan. Actually,
Speaker 3: I came from my mother's family was crooked. My my
Speaker 3: grandfather was a World War two hero eight bronze stars
Speaker 3: in the Asiatic Pacific. But he came home and his
Speaker 3: friends got him in the union. He drove heavy machinery
Speaker 3: in the Operating Engineers Union, and he took numbers at
Speaker 3: night in the bar. My uncle was a hijacka his son,
Speaker 3: my mother's brother. We used to visit him in sing
Speaker 3: sing Uh and different prisons throughout my childhood.
Speaker 2: I made a nice family trip one.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, we'd argued the whole way up there and
Speaker 3: and and back, but it was like a typical Italian family.
Speaker 3: Arguing is just part of conversation. Yeah, it was, you know,
Speaker 3: we were allowed. But yeah, so that's how I grew up.
Speaker 3: But my father's family were law abiding when I I
Speaker 3: got involved in the life, though, I did meet on
Speaker 3: come in contact and became close friends with a lot
Speaker 3: of people who were born into the life where their
Speaker 3: fathers were the wise guys, their grandfathers, their uncles. One
Speaker 3: of my dear friends, he's a captain in the Banano family.
Speaker 3: He's away right now. He's a perfect example. His grandfather
Speaker 3: was a captain, his uncle was a captain, and uh
Speaker 3: and uh and in one of his cousins. All of
Speaker 3: them rose to the rank of Capo at different times
Speaker 3: in their lives, and they were all part of the
Speaker 3: Banano family from the very beginning. They all came from
Speaker 3: Castela Maurici del Golfo in Sicily, So there was people
Speaker 3: I lived in uh. I practically lived for the better
Speaker 3: part of seven or eight years in Peter Gotti's house.
Speaker 3: Sean Gotty's oldest brother, Peter was a captain in again
Speaker 3: final family, and I was in and out of that
Speaker 3: house just about every day. They were born into the life,
Speaker 3: Peter Son, Peter Son, Peter was born into the life.
Speaker 3: They knew nothing else. Although John wasn't and Peter wasn't.
Speaker 3: They were first generation. Actually nobody realized that John Gotti
Speaker 3: was the first generation Mafio, so he wasn't born into
Speaker 3: the life. Yeah, he came up. Him and his financial
Speaker 3: Rgerio eventually met Neil Dough or became close when Neil
Speaker 3: de la Crosch and then got involved with the game.
Speaker 3: You know, family. But most of my friends were involved
Speaker 3: in that life to some extent. They were born into it,
Speaker 3: whereas I wasn't. And there was just as many guys
Speaker 3: who weren't like me too.
Speaker 2: So when once you got into it, Okay, I'm assuming,
Speaker 2: and if I'm wrong, here tell me. Okay, I'm I'm
Speaker 2: I'm asking this. This is not a rehearsed interview. I'm
Speaker 2: assuming that when you had some successes, whether it was
Speaker 2: you know, hitting an armored truck, you know, hitting a
Speaker 2: truck that you know that that really turned out to
Speaker 2: be a money a money winner for you. I'm assuming
Speaker 2: there was a little bit of an adrenaline rush when
Speaker 2: when things went right.
Speaker 3: I loved it. Dan. If I look back now again,
Speaker 3: I regret it now today, from the moment I from
Speaker 3: the and I started to rethink my life in prison,
Speaker 3: I regretted it. But when I was involved and in
Speaker 3: when I was doing it in real time, I loved it.
Speaker 3: I thought it was the big It was incredible adrenaline.
Speaker 3: I have skydived, and skydiving doesn't come close to it.
Speaker 3: The adrenaline rush was incredible. And you're lawless as well, right,
Speaker 3: you know, I abide by all the laws of society.
Speaker 3: Now Ever, since I came home from prison, I abuie
Speaker 3: by all the laws of society, and I'll never feel
Speaker 3: that sense of lawlessness, which is also a sense of
Speaker 3: freedom philosophically speaking, you know, it's a sense of there's
Speaker 3: nothing holding you down. You know, we all have to
Speaker 3: live by the guidelines of society. Now, then we have
Speaker 3: additional guidelines with our domestic lives. We have you know,
Speaker 3: you have a wife, you have children, you have responsibilities,
Speaker 3: you have all kinds of things you have to abide
Speaker 3: by every single day. And then you have a boss.
Speaker 3: You got to go to work. Then you have laws
Speaker 3: of the way to work that you have to follow
Speaker 3: on the road, et cetera. I didn't have any of
Speaker 3: that law.
Speaker 2: Become we want to become addicted to that lifestyle, just
Speaker 2: like someone who tries drugs and they like it, they
Speaker 2: become addicted.
Speaker 3: I just I did. I loved it. I loved it.
Speaker 3: I absolutely loved it. Dan and I loved it. And
Speaker 3: you know, the big shock of going to jail, when
Speaker 3: you're locked up in a cell, the first shock is
Speaker 3: is you have removed from the street and you don't
Speaker 3: have any of that action that you that that feeds you,
Speaker 3: that that you live off of. It's all done, it's
Speaker 3: all gone. And then you have obviously there's additional things
Speaker 3: are suffering. You know, there's loneliness. You missed your family
Speaker 3: and your friends, and your loved ones and all that
Speaker 3: other stuff. But you also, I missed the action too,
Speaker 3: and you have wise guys in there. I have to
Speaker 3: tell you. It's funny you said that because you have
Speaker 3: wise guys in there that also missed the action but
Speaker 3: don't realize it's done, and they try to relive it
Speaker 3: day after day. For example, if guys used to steal
Speaker 3: stuff from the kitchen for us, Let's say guys were
Speaker 3: smuggling spaghetti from the kitchen up to the tea block
Speaker 3: for us so we can make spaghetti at night the
Speaker 3: way we like it. You you would have the wise
Speaker 3: guy going, hey, what'd you do with that pound of spaghetti.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have a sit down with this guy over
Speaker 3: the pound of spaghetti. We should have got that pound
Speaker 3: the other guy got it. Next thing you know, they're
Speaker 3: walking on the tier block and there's like sixteen wise guys,
Speaker 3: you know, from every different family over a pound of spaghetti.
Speaker 3: And I'm my own. You know, you got to be
Speaker 3: kidding me. These guys are out of their minds, but
Speaker 3: they're trying to relive the life that they don't have anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's incredible, it's incredible, you know, And once I saw
Speaker 3: the comedy. You know, I'm by myself laughing, going this
Speaker 3: is this is, this is ridiculous. You know, you got
Speaker 3: to realize, you know, we're not living this life anymore,
Speaker 3: you know. And then they'll say, just chairs for so
Speaker 3: and so, come over here. You've got to sit here
Speaker 3: because he was sowing so on the street. And it's
Speaker 3: and they're playing the game still, they're not ready to
Speaker 3: let go of it.
Speaker 2: But you also, I assume having you know, been a
Speaker 2: maid member, and I assume you were a maid member.
Speaker 3: Correct, No I wasn't. No, they correct the record, So
Speaker 3: just to be no, no, I was not. So I was.
Speaker 3: I was plated to be. All my friends that I
Speaker 3: hung out with right after I went to prison. I
Speaker 3: went to prison, you know, I got locked up twenty four,
Speaker 3: twenty five. I'm facing the rest of my life in prison.
Speaker 3: So I was young. I was coming up on my own.
Speaker 3: I would have one percent been straightened out had I
Speaker 3: not gone to jail and had three cases. So now
Speaker 3: I'm locked up and all of the friends I hung
Speaker 3: out with every day, the things that everybody I did
Speaker 3: things with, they're coming up on visits and saying I
Speaker 3: got my I got my thing, I got my I
Speaker 3: got straightened out, but I got my button, I got,
Speaker 3: you know. So I'm proud of them. I'm hugging and
Speaker 3: kissing them, but this is I touched of Mvy and
Speaker 3: me going, I can't.
Speaker 2: They're going to what they perceived. What they're going. They're
Speaker 2: going to the major leagues. What they perceive is the
Speaker 2: major leagues in their their vocation.
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly. And I felt like, you know, you got
Speaker 3: You're buried.
Speaker 2: You're buried in in in in in a minor league
Speaker 2: baseball and you never can get that break.
Speaker 3: And I'm sick about it. Dan at the time. By
Speaker 3: the grace of God, once again, I say, now I
Speaker 3: look back, it was a lucky thing. I'm glad that
Speaker 3: I never had it because it was easier when I
Speaker 3: came home. When I came home, too, they immediately wanted
Speaker 3: to put me up. One of my friends, I told
Speaker 3: you to mention the guy from the Banano family, he says,
Speaker 3: Louis goes, I'll put you up tomorrow, he goes, especially
Speaker 3: after you did eight and a half years, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, you kept your mouth shut. And so I'm
Speaker 3: assueing and here, and he had pulled me over by
Speaker 3: the way from the Gabino family. There was a beef war.
Speaker 3: I was in jail. Peter got he was locked up
Speaker 3: thro him forty years and uh and my friends from
Speaker 3: the Banano family. Because I wasn't made already. I was.
Speaker 3: I was just claimed by the Gambinos. He pulled me
Speaker 3: over to the Bananos and so he goes, I'll put
Speaker 3: you up. I says, put me up. I'm done. I'm finished.
Speaker 3: I go and I and I wish I could talk
Speaker 3: you out of it, and I tried to, but uh,
Speaker 3: you know, by then I had I had witnessed what
Speaker 3: it's all about from the inside. I'm in there, and
Speaker 3: I realized that there were so many informants.
Speaker 2: What do you do about those guys? Yeah, what are
Speaker 2: you doing these?
Speaker 3: I just write I love riding home for the Submary channel. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I I.
Speaker 2: Got to take a break here for at the news.
Speaker 2: At the bottom. Man we get back. I want to
Speaker 2: talk about the book, and I want to give people
Speaker 2: an opportunity to ask you questions. I mean, you, we're
Speaker 2: never a made man, but you have emerged stronger and
Speaker 2: better from a situation that that was about the only
Speaker 2: thing that you really knew growing up and fall. It's
Speaker 2: a great story. It's a great story, my guess. Lou
Speaker 2: Ferrante his book is we got to Clash of the Titans.
Speaker 2: We'll get to that, I promise. And if you'd like
Speaker 2: to feel free, you can ask any question you want.
Speaker 2: As you can see lose an open book. He's there's
Speaker 2: nothing you're going to ask him. He's not going to
Speaker 2: give you an answer to six one, seven, two, five,
Speaker 2: four ten thirty six one, seven, nine, ten thirty. And
Speaker 2: I also think he should have any that some of
Speaker 2: us should acknowledge some congratulations to him, because a lot
Speaker 2: of guys go to jail and they don't have this metamorphois.
Speaker 2: They they think that well, i'll get my i'll get out,
Speaker 2: and i'll uh, I'll do something else. If I'm a
Speaker 2: bank robber, I'll get another bank and i'll and I'll
Speaker 2: get away, and they just continue on. And it's they
Speaker 2: They never they never can see the darkness that they're
Speaker 2: heading down. And Lewis lose the exception in many respects.
Speaker 2: So I admire and I enjoy talking to him, and
Speaker 2: I hope you will as well, coming back on nightside.
Speaker 1: If you're on night side, with Dan Ray on WAZ
Speaker 1: Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2: So my guess is Lou for Ante, he's an accomplished author.
Speaker 2: So some of your works have gotten some fabulous reviews
Speaker 2: mob Rules. You have a first volume praise for Bogata,
Speaker 2: Rise of a Rise of Empire. What is the word
Speaker 2: bogd to.
Speaker 3: Mean Bogatas we had slangs for like a family, a
Speaker 3: crime family, we would say either the Bogado or the Bourgad.
Speaker 3: We didn't we wouldn't say a crime family or uh,
Speaker 3: you know, we wouldn't say the Gambino family like that.
Speaker 3: We would say John's crew if it was John Gotti's
Speaker 3: cruel or if it was chinging Anti, who was the
Speaker 3: boss of the Genevie's family. We would refer to it
Speaker 3: as the West Side. But the actual crew would be
Speaker 3: the Bogado or the Bruvad pronounced that way. And it's
Speaker 3: basically it comes from like it's almost like an Italian
Speaker 3: ghetto the name. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the book that we're going to talk about right
Speaker 2: now is a book that is coming out on December third,
Speaker 2: So I just it's it's it's unpublished by Pegas Pegasus,
Speaker 2: which is a big publisher.
Speaker 3: Simon and Schuster. That's correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, big big publishers. So you're doing really you found
Speaker 2: a real calling in life. So let's just this book
Speaker 2: is not available, but is it available for pre order?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'll tell you thanks for asking. Borgata it's
Speaker 3: a trilogy, the Bogada Trilogy, and the first volume which
Speaker 3: is Rise of Empire Borgata Rise of Empire, which has
Speaker 3: a red cover in the United States, that has been
Speaker 3: available since January, so that's available now. It's doing very well.
Speaker 3: And that's the first volume that brings you from the
Speaker 3: origins of the Mafia in Sicily, crosses over the ocean,
Speaker 3: picks up in the United States, goes through prohibition, goes
Speaker 3: through the rise of Las Vegas and Cuba, and the
Speaker 3: mob how they spread themselves out across the country and
Speaker 3: in different areas. So that's sort of like the first
Speaker 3: landing of the Mafia in the United States. And the
Speaker 3: second volume is Clash of Titans, part of the Borgata
Speaker 3: trilogy that's due out in December. It may have just
Speaker 3: been bumped to the first week of January. It's available
Speaker 3: for pre order, so I would urge your listeners to
Speaker 3: hopefully read the first one, Rise of Empire. If they
Speaker 3: enjoy it, the second one will be out shortly. And
Speaker 3: the second one deals with Part two, which picks up
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty and as you had mentioned earlier, it
Speaker 3: picks up with the first concentrated attack on the Mafia,
Speaker 3: which is through the Kennedy administration. When John F. Kennedy
Speaker 3: won the presidency, he appointed his brother, Robert F. Kennedy,
Speaker 3: is the Attorney General, and Robert F. Kennedy had a
Speaker 3: grudge with the mob from the McClellan Hearings also known
Speaker 3: as the Rackets Committee, where he brought mobsters in front
Speaker 3: of him and he tangled with them, and he had,
Speaker 3: you know, big, big loud tips with them, including Jimmy Hoffer,
Speaker 3: the labor leader teams to leader Jimmy Hoffer, who plays
Speaker 3: a prominent role in the second volume as well. And
Speaker 3: when Bobby Kennedy becomes Attorney General, there was sort of
Speaker 3: a quid pro quote with the Kennedy's made through the father,
Speaker 3: Joe Kennedy Senior, where if the mob helps Kennedy get
Speaker 3: into office because they controlled big places like Chicago where
Speaker 3: they had a tremendous political cloud and they needed them
Speaker 3: to get Kennedy in these particular swing states. He needed help.
Speaker 3: The mob said, well, if we help, we expect him
Speaker 3: to just back off and layoff. And John F. Kennedy
Speaker 3: was pretty easy going. He seemed to be okay with that.
Speaker 3: Joe Kennedy Senior unfortunately had a stroke and became incapacitated,
Speaker 3: and it was left to Bobby, who was a bit
Speaker 3: of a grudge holder. And Bobby went crazy going after
Speaker 3: the Mob. And as you said, also too, I go
Speaker 3: deep into Hoover and why he seemed to ignore the
Speaker 3: Mob for the better part of decades, and at some
Speaker 3: point he was forced to awaken.
Speaker 2: I think that Hoover actually said that there was no
Speaker 2: such thing as organized crime, and that whatever organized crime
Speaker 2: was around, the FBI had put them in their place.
Speaker 2: And this was a period of time when the mob
Speaker 2: leaders were meeting in the Catskills, so you didn't have
Speaker 2: the media coverage that you had today. And obviously Bobby
Speaker 2: Kennedy became, you know, to the mobster, a deep dark
Speaker 2: enemy that no r if you will, and that's why
Speaker 2: there's so much question and concern about who truly was
Speaker 2: responsible for the assassination. I don't know if you get
Speaker 2: into that in the book I did.
Speaker 3: I got deeply into it, Dan, I think I think
Speaker 3: you readers, your listeners rather will enjoy that as well.
Speaker 3: I went deep into the ties between organized crime and
Speaker 3: the government, UH and the Cuban exiles. And it has
Speaker 3: a lot to do with those three groups. Those three
Speaker 3: those are the three I think chief conspirators. And you know,
Speaker 3: some people add Lyndon Johnson to it, some people add
Speaker 3: Jed Behova to it, some people add Alan Dulles to it.
Speaker 3: But I make a clear argument that those three groups, uh,
Speaker 3: the government, the mafia, and the Cuban exiles rogue elements
Speaker 3: of the government. I should say, it wasn't obviously, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, a top down thing in the government. It
Speaker 3: was rogue elements of the government. Uh. And it was
Speaker 3: also certain individuals within the Cuban exile community who felt
Speaker 3: portrayed by the Kennedy administration, first at the Bay of
Speaker 3: Pigs and then at the Cuban Missile crisis, where you know,
Speaker 3: the first of the Bay of Pigs, they felt abandoned
Speaker 3: by the Kennedy administration, uh, and then at the Cuban
Speaker 3: Missile crisis they felt the you know, everyone pretty much
Speaker 3: in the administration, even the choice Joint Use of Staff
Speaker 3: felt like, this is an easy reason to go in
Speaker 3: to go invade Cube and get what we didn't get
Speaker 3: done the first time, and the Cuban ex were biting
Speaker 3: their nails. Goes, we finally got this going. And the
Speaker 3: next thing Kennedy did was he not only uh uh
Speaker 3: you know, he made a deal with Khrushchev and under
Speaker 3: the table to pull missiles out of two he would
Speaker 3: put we would pull missiles out of Turkey if Krushchev
Speaker 3: got the missiles out of Cuba. But he also told
Speaker 3: the UH to Khrushchev and Castro that there would be
Speaker 3: no subsequent invasions, I promise you. And then he turned
Speaker 3: on the Cuban exiles and said locking them up because
Speaker 3: it's illegal the activities that they're conducting on US soil.
Speaker 3: And you know, these.
Speaker 2: Guys went for that group, and I studied that a
Speaker 2: little bit bit. That was a group called Alpha sixty six.
Speaker 2: I think that was the exile group.
Speaker 3: That was very that was very Yeah, that's correct, yeah, yes,
Speaker 3: two yeah. For Grade twenty five, Oh no, that's right.
Speaker 3: For Gade twenty five oh six was the was the
Speaker 3: main characters. And then Alpha sixty six was part of it.
Speaker 3: And those are the guys who were sort of like, uh,
Speaker 3: I think that that sort of morphed into the Watergate too,
Speaker 3: so that that crow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and and for me, I always suspected organized
Speaker 2: crime because of the Jack Ruby connection. Obviously, when Ruby
Speaker 2: was in the bowels of the Dallas Police Department and
Speaker 2: killed Oswald while he was in custody of a Dallas
Speaker 2: police officer shot him to death, and you know, live
Speaker 2: television back in Sunday morning of November nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 2: You know, now you know, Ruby claimed that he did
Speaker 2: it because he wanted to stop the poor suffering of
Speaker 2: Jackie Kennedy. I think that was the excuse he used,
Speaker 2: but I felt there was a motive there. Did you
Speaker 2: get into that at all?
Speaker 3: I did? I did, and you nailed it. I got deep,
Speaker 3: deeply into it, and I uncovered some really nice bits
Speaker 3: and pieces and put them together nicely. Where Ruby had
Speaker 3: conversations with his attorneys, and one particular attorney he said
Speaker 3: to him, look, you know, my last attorney told me
Speaker 3: to come up with that story. It's sohny. He goes,
Speaker 3: I don't care if Jackie Kennedy suffered or not. And
Speaker 3: you know, I said, I was, you know, heartbroken over
Speaker 3: the Kennedy assassination. If I was so heartbook, and can
Speaker 3: someone explain to me why I didn't even bother to
Speaker 3: vote from, you know, and he goes, I don't care.
Speaker 3: And he said that the Warren Commission, when they did
Speaker 3: the Warren Commission report which exonerated him, he was telling everybody,
Speaker 3: don't believe it. He goes, I wasn't innocent. Don't believe it.
Speaker 3: And you know who Hoover himself when he watched it,
Speaker 3: he said, he said right away, it's a mobhead. You
Speaker 3: know it was it was clear. You know, you got
Speaker 3: a guy and you got a guy in a black
Speaker 3: suit and a fedora with a thirty eight snubnose runs
Speaker 3: up to you know, Oswalden shoots them and you know, basically.
Speaker 2: All dead men tell no stories.
Speaker 3: Right exactly exactly, and they all knew it. They all
Speaker 3: knew that he was silencing a witness. And there's there's
Speaker 3: strong connections to uh. Marcelo adorns the cover. Carlos Marcelo,
Speaker 3: the Louisiana Don Louisiana mob boss adorns the cover of
Speaker 3: volume two, Clash of Titans, and he's the main central
Speaker 3: character uh, he was. He really really torns with Bobby Kennedy.
Speaker 3: And he was repeatedly overheard by witnesses who sent this
Speaker 3: information to Hoove up before the assassination and after saying
Speaker 3: they repeatedly overheard him saying, look, you know, if you
Speaker 3: cut off the head the dog, I'm sorry, if you
Speaker 3: cut off the tail, the dog still could bite you.
Speaker 3: You have to cut off the head, meaning Bobby Kennedy
Speaker 3: was the tail. John Kennedy was the head. You got
Speaker 3: to take out the head and that's the only way
Speaker 3: to diffuse Bobby Kennedy. And the minute Kennedy was assassinated,
Speaker 3: Bobby was completely incapacitated, and eventually he was you know,
Speaker 3: he was out of the Justice Department and the war
Speaker 3: against the Mob.
Speaker 2: Well, he and Linda Johnson were not on speaking terms
Speaker 2: even at that point.
Speaker 3: All that's correct.
Speaker 2: This is Lou Farranty. We're going to finish it up here,
Speaker 2: and I'll tell you as we get towards the holiday
Speaker 2: and the gift giving season. If you're at all a historian,
Speaker 2: if you have a family member who was a historian,
Speaker 2: these were a couple of books. You want to get
Speaker 2: to the one that comes out the Clash of the
Speaker 2: Titans covers nineteen sixty obviously an important year politically, to
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five, and then there'll be another third book
Speaker 2: in this trilogy. I'm delighted to get this conversation with
Speaker 2: Lou Farronte. He and I have had very different experiences
Speaker 2: and very different career paths, but I think we've come
Speaker 2: to some very similar conclusions.
Speaker 3: That's correct. And you're a legend, by the way, Dan
Speaker 3: in our world, what you've done in your life. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, there aren't a lot of innocent people, but
Speaker 3: it's a shame when there are a few, and I've
Speaker 3: met some in jail, and the work you've done is incredible.
Speaker 3: I want to Kit Mahatia, well, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: And the men here in Boston who were associated with
Speaker 2: organized crime, they were innocent of the crime for which
Speaker 2: they were convicted, and they were convicted of that crime
Speaker 2: with the knowledge of Jaka Hoover. And I believe that
Speaker 2: Hoover actually at that point said, because of the Kennedy assassination,
Speaker 2: we'd have to become much more aggressive. And they used
Speaker 2: a guy up here named Joe Barbosa to who had
Speaker 2: killed thirty five forty forty five people. No one could
Speaker 2: have really calculate his body count, but he was a
Speaker 2: real effective witness and he became the prototype for the
Speaker 2: heart for the for the feder witness Protection program. He
Speaker 2: was the first armer of the Feeder witness Protection program.
Speaker 2: And when he murdered a guy out in California, it's
Speaker 2: a great story lit the FBI agents here who had
Speaker 2: worked with him and developed him, they went to California
Speaker 2: to become defense witnesses, character witnesses for Barbosa because they
Speaker 2: were afraid he was gonna flip.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: He killed a guy out in California named Clay Wilson,
Speaker 2: and he eventually he was facing the death penalty out there.
Speaker 2: This was before Furman versus Georgia, and he was allowed
Speaker 2: to plead guilty and he got what was called a
Speaker 2: California sentence five years to life. He spent three and
Speaker 2: a half years in a federal farm in Montana, and
Speaker 2: he was paroled and the FBI told the well, the
Speaker 2: FBI agents, the corrupt FBI agents told the mafia people
Speaker 2: here in Boston where Bobosa was. And the the mafia
Speaker 2: people in Boston went out and kept Bobosa in February.
Speaker 2: As they say, he died in an industrial they got him.
Speaker 2: He was shot, yeah, they got yeah.
Speaker 3: Wow. So the fed him to the mob? Is that
Speaker 3: what they and the story.
Speaker 2: GOESBI corrupt FBI agents here in Boston. We had a
Speaker 2: very corruptive office for for decades here in Boston. There
Speaker 2: were plenty of good FBI agents. Okay, guys who are doing.
Speaker 3: Trying to reflects on them, I know.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I have had plenty of friends and law enforce.
Speaker 2: We'll take a quick break back of Blue Ferrante right
Speaker 2: after this. I can't tell you, lou bunch of them
Speaker 2: enjoying the conversation, and thank you for your kind words.
Speaker 2: They're up. They're way overboard what I did. It was
Speaker 2: it was a thing, but that it wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 2: the sort of metaphorhis that you have gone through. That's
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 3: I think nobody has this tenacity to stick with things
Speaker 3: for other people. It's an incredible thing you did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks man, I appreciate it. We'll be back on
Speaker 2: Night's Side right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
Speaker 1: night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2: I guess Lou farranting, Lou, real, quick question, you become
Speaker 2: a professional writer. How did you learn that skill or
Speaker 2: did it just come naturally?
Speaker 3: There may be an element of natural to it, because
Speaker 3: I took to it, but it was self taught. I
Speaker 3: was in prison and I went to the whole long story.
Speaker 3: Don't have the time for now to tell you how
Speaker 3: I went there, But I went there to someone else.
Speaker 3: So I'm in the hole. I finally get released and
Speaker 3: I called my friend who was the caretaker of John
Speaker 3: Gotty's club, and he had tattoos all over his body.
Speaker 3: He had Biblical verses. Dad, So I said, hey, you
Speaker 3: read right, Yeah, you read the Bible. I say, assume
Speaker 3: the old the verses on your body. He says, yeah,
Speaker 3: I read the Bible. I read books too, so I
Speaker 3: asked me sent me in books, and I started to read.
Speaker 3: I fell in love with books. The first time I
Speaker 3: ever read a book in my life was in prison.
Speaker 3: I was literate. I went to you know, little school
Speaker 3: when I was young, grammar school. I graduated high school.
Speaker 3: I just never went to college. But I cheated my
Speaker 3: way through school too, so and I ran a chop
Speaker 3: shop through high school. You know, I mean they have
Speaker 3: it right, Yeah, incredible. So so anyway I read, I
Speaker 3: fell in love with books, and at some point I said,
Speaker 3: I'd like to write, but you don't have a university
Speaker 3: or a professor, and you know university professor in the
Speaker 3: writing teacher. How I taught myself was basically everything. I
Speaker 3: figured that everything Leo Tolstoy knows about writing is in
Speaker 3: the pages of Anna Karenina. Everything Hemingway knows about writing
Speaker 3: is in the pages of To Whom the Bell Tolls?
Speaker 3: Everything the Bronte sisters know about writing is in Jane A,
Speaker 3: et cetera. And so I would just read these books,
Speaker 3: and I would read them with an analytical eye, take
Speaker 3: notes in the margin, how they begin to how they
Speaker 3: begin to a chapter, how they begin to plot, how
Speaker 3: they develop a plot, how they introduce a character, how
Speaker 3: they exit a character. And that's why I taught myself
Speaker 3: out to right. I came home and I wanted to
Speaker 3: be a writer of anything but true crime. I never
Speaker 3: wanted to look back at the mob. I didn't want
Speaker 3: to talk about it. I didn't want to know about it.
Speaker 3: I tried everything to get published with anything else. And
Speaker 3: you know, the people the publishing industry basically just keeps
Speaker 3: telling you, tell us about you, tell us about you,
Speaker 3: allow us you know.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly, and that's that that is the key to success. Lou,
Speaker 2: I'm flat out of time. It's been a fascinating hour.
Speaker 2: We will replay this hour on Sunday night, our Best
Speaker 2: at Nightside, which runs at eleven o'clock here in Boston
Speaker 2: on Sunday this coming Sunday night. I pledge you on.
Speaker 2: I pledged you on that if you ever get up
Speaker 2: to Boston, love to take you to dinner and uh
Speaker 2: and just meet you, be honest. The book that's coming
Speaker 2: up is Forgota bl r g A d A Clash
Speaker 2: of the Titans. It's come now, just before Christmas. The
Speaker 2: prior book is already available, and I suggest you may
Speaker 2: want to Rise Borgata Bio r g A t A
Speaker 2: Rise of Empire again. Lewis Ferrante f E r r
Speaker 2: A n t E. You can find it Amazon, you
Speaker 2: can find it anywhere. Well, let's keep in touch, and
Speaker 2: great success to you, my friend, and congratulations on your metamorphois.
Speaker 2: It's it's a inspirational story. My pleasure, my pleasure. When
Speaker 2: we get back, I think I want to talk about
Speaker 2: Donald Trump's decision not to have a second debate. I
Speaker 2: will a third debate. I should say I'll explain it
Speaker 2: all right after the eleven o'clock News