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Speaker 2: You are now listening to True Murder The most Shocking
Speaker 2: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 2: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 2: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 2: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 2: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 7: Good evening, This is your host Dan Szepanski for the
Speaker 7: program True Murder, The most shocking Killers in true crime
Speaker 7: History and the authors that are and about them. When
Speaker 7: the infamous gangster Whitey Bulger went on the lamb in
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety five, the streets of Boston became a war
Speaker 7: zone between the mafia and the renegades, with the winter
Speaker 7: Hill Gang looking on. Rogue Mobster. The Untold Story of
Speaker 7: Mark Silverman and the New England Mafia chronicles the inside
Speaker 7: story of the Boston mob Wars of the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 7: when over two dozen gangsters were killed in a vicious
Speaker 7: war for control of the Boston underworld. Rogue Mobster is
Speaker 7: told in the Worlds of Mark Silverman, an outsider from
Speaker 7: Medford who got inside the mob and became an integral
Speaker 7: part of the ensuing war. His account is the first
Speaker 7: ever inside glimpse into what went on at the street level,
Speaker 7: why people were killed, and what the stakes really were.
Speaker 7: Silverman grew up in the shadow of Whitey Bulger, Howie Winter,
Speaker 7: Raymond Patriarcha, and Jerry Angelio, bosses of Boston's most infamous
Speaker 7: crime families with a Jewish last name. His opportunities should
Speaker 7: have been limited in Boston's Italian underworld, but he moved
Speaker 7: up quickly, gaining acceptance across the board. Silverman was made
Speaker 7: in the patriarch of the Patriarcha family as a reward
Speaker 7: for infiltrating a renegade mob faction backed by a New
Speaker 7: York family. The book begins with the unique history of
Speaker 7: the Boston ganglin scene and takes the reader right up
Speaker 7: to the late nineteen eighties. Silverman recounts the shifting alliances
Speaker 7: and friendships that were torn apart as the various mob
Speaker 7: factions battle for control of the Boston underworld through the
Speaker 7: early two thousands. Rogue Mobster is a first hand account
Speaker 7: of the violent mob wars of the nineteen nineties, when
Speaker 7: bodies were piling up across New England and Mark Silverman
Speaker 7: was walking a tightrope between winter Hill and the Mafia.
Speaker 3: The book this.
Speaker 7: Evening we're featuring is Rogue a Mobster with my special guests,
Speaker 7: Mark Silverman and Scott Dicci. Welcome to the program, gentlemen,
Speaker 7: and thank you to agreeing to this interview. Mark Silverman
Speaker 7: and Scott Decci.
Speaker 6: Well, thanks for us on appreciate it.
Speaker 7: Thank you very much, You're welcome. I'm pretty excited for
Speaker 7: our audience to hear another We normally don't do too
Speaker 7: many stories mob stories, but this is a very exciting one,
Speaker 7: and with this inside access that we have here, this
Speaker 7: is a kind of unique, even in this sort of genre.
Speaker 7: So let's get right to it. Please, whoever wants to
Speaker 7: go first here, maybe Mark, I would think maybe you
Speaker 7: can tell us set the setting for our audience where
Speaker 7: exactly this is in Boston, what kind of neighborhood this is,
Speaker 7: what's the makeup of the neighborhood. Let's maybe even set
Speaker 7: the year, what year this story begins basically, and what
Speaker 7: was the mood there at that time. Take us back
Speaker 7: this area in Boston where this story is set, and
Speaker 7: take us back please.
Speaker 4: Well, there's a couple of neighborhoods that are involved mostly
Speaker 4: in this story, and one of them is called Winter Hill,
Speaker 4: and that's in Somerville, Massachusetts, and that's a predominantly Irish
Speaker 4: neighborhood and it's notorious for the strength of its organized crime.
Speaker 4: But there's also the North End of Boston, which is
Speaker 4: mostly Italian, and those two groups are integral to the story,
Speaker 4: and that's kind of where it began. It began right
Speaker 4: around nineteen eighty nine. Around that time when the patriarchal
Speaker 4: crime family actually had an internal war because the family
Speaker 4: split into two factions, and one of the factions was
Speaker 4: a renegade faction from within the family. In other words,
Speaker 4: these guys got together and they wanted to make a
Speaker 4: play for power. They wanted to take down the existing
Speaker 4: hierarchy of the patriarcha family which I termed Cozonoustra and
Speaker 4: that lasted for about five years up until about maybe
Speaker 4: ninety four ninety five, and that's when the federal government
Speaker 4: came in and they took down most of the renegade faction.
Speaker 4: But in the mafia, it multiplies, So when those guys
Speaker 4: went to jail, another faction that represented them came up
Speaker 4: and in ninety five when all this stuff was clearing,
Speaker 4: as they were clearing out the remnants of that original
Speaker 4: renegade faction, Whitey Bulger and Frank Cadillac Selemmi they were
Speaker 4: the two leaders, Whitey Bulger of course, being the leader
Speaker 4: of the Irish Mob and Frank Cadillac Soulemi being the
Speaker 4: leader of Coast and Oustra. When the indictments came down
Speaker 4: for those guys in ninety five, they both decided to
Speaker 4: go on the Lamb, and Frank Clemmi lasted about seven
Speaker 4: months on the Lamb, and Whitey Bulger, as I'm sure
Speaker 4: maybe your audience knows, and maybe you know, he lasted
Speaker 4: almost seventeen years on the Lamb. So my point being
Speaker 4: is that during that time when the two main leaders
Speaker 4: were on the Lamb and on Accountant War, it just
Speaker 4: began an all out fight for power. People tried to
Speaker 4: fill the void. And that's uh, that's pretty much where
Speaker 4: I came into the scene.
Speaker 7: Okay, we're gonna we're gonna go switch to Scott Dicci
Speaker 7: and ask him a question that I'm really curious about.
Speaker 7: How he how you became involved with this project, Scott
Speaker 7: and and why it was of interest to you as
Speaker 7: a as a writer. And you can give us your
Speaker 7: background if you'd like. Uh, we'd like to hear that,
Speaker 7: and and tell us why this story compelled you to
Speaker 7: write this book, and tell us where that when and
Speaker 7: where you made that decision and why tell us please?
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, you know I started getting interest in organized
Speaker 6: crime and writing, started writing some articles online on the
Speaker 6: web back late nineties, early two thousands, and then wrote
Speaker 6: my first book, Cigar City Mafia, about the Tampa underworld
Speaker 6: in two that came out in two thousand and four.
Speaker 6: About a year after that, I got an email from Mark.
Speaker 6: You know, I'd been approached by a lot of people.
Speaker 6: I've written a few books since then on the mafia,
Speaker 6: and I get approached by people fairly regularly about writing stories.
Speaker 6: And you know, hey, I was involved in this, this,
Speaker 6: and this. When Mark contacted me, I thought he had
Speaker 6: a really interesting take on it. Number one, Mark's only
Speaker 6: a couple of years older than me, you know, so
Speaker 6: he's pretty young. So that was one thing. You know,
Speaker 6: here's someone I can relate to. This is not some
Speaker 6: guy in his eighties that's calling stuff that happened the
Speaker 6: way back when. But you know, for all the exciting
Speaker 6: stuff that had been going on in Boston, there really
Speaker 6: hadn't been a lot of a lot of the books
Speaker 6: dealing with Boston organized crime dealt with Whitey Balger exclusively,
Speaker 6: and there was so much else going on that just
Speaker 6: wasn't told. And here's a guy who had a really
Speaker 6: good kind of you know, we were all outside looking in,
Speaker 6: but he was inside looking in, and he had a
Speaker 6: really good perspective on it, and it was just a
Speaker 6: really good And the one other thing I liked about
Speaker 6: is Mark doesn't pull any punches in dealing with what
Speaker 6: he did. It's not like, you know, woe is me
Speaker 6: I was in this life. You know, he's pretty frank
Speaker 6: about his involvement and what he did. And you know,
Speaker 6: that's kind of a refreshing change of pace from a
Speaker 6: lot of these mob tell alls that you read.
Speaker 7: Okay, now, Mark, you kind of skipped ahead a little
Speaker 7: bit in the book for anybody sort of listening in
Speaker 7: our audience. So I'm going to just ask you to
Speaker 7: take us back to how the heck you became involved
Speaker 7: in organized crime, Why organized crime seem attractive to you? Obviously,
Speaker 7: most people in our audience are going to be saying, well,
Speaker 7: you know, how did you do this? How were you
Speaker 7: influenced to become a gangster, Why would you want to
Speaker 7: become a gangster? And you know what kind of environment
Speaker 7: did you grow up that this was an option for you?
Speaker 7: So tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: Take us back, well back in those days. You know,
Speaker 4: I was uh, I was an impressionable kid, and UH
Speaker 4: I had grown up in the Great Boston area, in
Speaker 4: Medford and Somerville, and uh, even as a teenager, I
Speaker 4: had always seen these guys and uh, you know, I
Speaker 4: was no different than most kids. I mean I was Uh.
Speaker 4: I was running around with the street tofts, and I
Speaker 4: was uh I was looking at these guys as maybe,
Speaker 4: uh you know, guys who got respect, guys who got
Speaker 4: things done, Guys that uh were somebody's in our neighborhood.
Speaker 4: And uh when I was in high school, I was
Speaker 4: pulling off some petty crimes and I was making some
Speaker 4: decent money. And uh I went to college for a
Speaker 4: year after that. But uh, I was living in the
Speaker 4: uh winter Hill neighborhood of uh of Massachusetts, and uh
Speaker 4: that's actually in some of the Massachusetts and uh when
Speaker 4: I was living there, I began meeting some very very
Speaker 4: high ranking Winter Hill gangsters, and uh, I actually began
Speaker 4: to get noticed by some of the senior members of
Speaker 4: the gang, some of the guys that have been around
Speaker 4: a long time, and uh, some guys that I really
Speaker 4: looked up to. So I was kind of torn between
Speaker 4: do I stay in school or do I do I
Speaker 4: make this transition into uh this life because at that age,
Speaker 4: you're not really thinking about your future. You're saying, wow,
Speaker 4: you know this, this looks like it might be uh
Speaker 4: you know, it's it's it's it's instantly gratifying, you know,
Speaker 4: at least that's how I thought. But uh, I began
Speaker 4: as a driver for the Uh the guy that I'm
Speaker 4: speaking of, one of the old time members of the gang,
Speaker 4: and he took me under his wing, and he just
Speaker 4: took a liking to me, and uh, excuse me. We
Speaker 4: had like a grandfather grandson type of relationship. He just
Speaker 4: a lot of these older guys, a lot of the
Speaker 4: guys that have been around a long time, what they
Speaker 4: like to do is they like to excuse me again. Uh,
Speaker 4: they like to mentor the younger guys that they see.
Speaker 4: I mean, they're not gonna pict just any random guy
Speaker 4: off the street. But they saw something in me that
Speaker 4: they they thought maybe that they could groom, They could
Speaker 4: like a piece of clay that they could mold. And
Speaker 4: I don't know if they manipulated me or I was
Speaker 4: a willing participant, but I eventually began driving and collecting
Speaker 4: some shylock money from some of their operations. Could they
Speaker 4: started introducing me around town to some real heavy hitters.
Speaker 4: And I was a young kid and I was awe struck.
Speaker 4: I was like, you know, this is this list. Looks
Speaker 4: like it could be really something good. So at that point,
Speaker 4: there was no more going back to the school. My
Speaker 4: school was going to be on the streets. And at
Speaker 4: that point it started to grow. I mean I became
Speaker 4: their protege. I became the guy that they began grooming,
Speaker 4: that they began relying on. I mean, I was nineteen
Speaker 4: twenty years old and I'm going out collecting envelopes for
Speaker 4: guys that are notorious in the Boston on the world,
Speaker 4: I mean legends. And you know, I played the game.
Speaker 4: I enjoyed it, and I began to grow.
Speaker 7: Now you're talking about and you mentioned it is prior,
Speaker 7: you know, predominantly in the book about the distinction between
Speaker 7: went on here. The renegade faction you talked about and
Speaker 7: alluded to. We'll talk about that in a little bit,
Speaker 7: but this is Lacusinostra. These are Italians, and for anybody
Speaker 7: that doesn't know about this, it's at least legend, has
Speaker 7: it anyway that the Italians want to pick Italians so
Speaker 7: that they can trace them all the way back to
Speaker 7: the old country to make sure that the guy's good.
Speaker 7: What was your family like, what was your parents and
Speaker 7: your family like that you were in this kind of
Speaker 7: neighborhood and did that have any influence on you getting
Speaker 7: involved in organized crime? Your family itself, in your background,
Speaker 7: your environment that you grew up in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I have a Jewish last name,
Speaker 4: but I'm actually half Sicilian and that's that comes from
Speaker 4: my mother's side and my mother's father, My grandfather was
Speaker 4: he was actually an Italian gangster, but his brother, my uncle,
Speaker 4: was an Irish gangster, so it was kind of a mix.
Speaker 4: But on my father's side it was Irish, so it's
Speaker 4: kind of like a sportensborg of uh. You know, in
Speaker 4: my immediate family, I had all these ties to the
Speaker 4: to the organized crime and uh it was kind of crazy.
Speaker 4: But yeah, you're right about the Italian thing, absolutely, but uh,
Speaker 4: in Boston. I don't know if you, uh your listeners
Speaker 4: are familiar with this, but uh, in Boston it was
Speaker 4: actually more like an Irish thing because of you know,
Speaker 4: guys like Whitey Belser and guys like Cowie went there
Speaker 4: and Joe McDonald and those guys. But yeah, they they
Speaker 4: they were part of cost and Austra to a point,
Speaker 4: you know, but uh, they they held their own and
Speaker 4: it's it's a very it's a very unique situation in uh,
Speaker 4: in the Boston area. So that's uh, those are kind
Speaker 4: of like my family roots.
Speaker 7: And you talked about patriarcha to being part of the
Speaker 7: Coles and Austra. Well, let's fully explain that he had
Speaker 7: enough respect that when he went to New York he
Speaker 7: could he had some influence he had he sat down
Speaker 7: with the these people, So he sat down with the
Speaker 7: biggest mafia leaders in America or in the world.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, he actually, you know, there was a sixties
Speaker 4: Irish gang war that originally this was way before my
Speaker 4: time obviously, but Raymond patriarch at to end that war.
Speaker 4: He threw his support behind the Irish winter Hill Gang
Speaker 4: and that began. That was the beginning of a love
Speaker 4: hate relationship between the Italians and the Irish. But it
Speaker 4: was because of Raymond Patriarch and the power that he wielded,
Speaker 4: as you said, as you alluded to it, he held
Speaker 4: a seat on the National Commission. He he was the
Speaker 4: CEO of the New England Mafia, and yeah he was.
Speaker 4: He he was the leader of cos and Austra. But
Speaker 4: because he was backing up the Irish during their internal
Speaker 4: power struggle that they had in the sixties, they actually
Speaker 4: merged and he took a real liking to these Irish guys.
Speaker 4: And you combine the two together and you get a
Speaker 4: very strong, uh, a very strong army.
Speaker 7: Bell Scott, what was the what was your the research
Speaker 7: that that was entailed in writing this book? How did
Speaker 7: you go about getting this information from Mark? Mark? Did
Speaker 7: did you use a recorder? Did you write stuff down?
Speaker 7: Do you guys have conversations you had said you'd already
Speaker 7: done a fair amount of research. So it's so tell
Speaker 7: us exactly how this came about, this account.
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Speaker 6: Couple steps there. One of the things was that Mark
Speaker 6: had already written down a lot of just notes and
Speaker 6: ideas and memoirs, if you will, kind of unstructured, and
Speaker 6: he sent that to me, and I would help him
Speaker 6: formulate the story, getting his side of it, and then
Speaker 6: I'd go back and check it and you know, fill
Speaker 6: in some gaps with the official record, if you will,
Speaker 6: law enforcement reports, congressional hearings, newspaper articles, magazine articles, talk
Speaker 6: to some people, mob historians and other authors and other sources.
Speaker 6: And then I had actually gone up to Boston and
Speaker 6: visited with Mark, and you know, he drove me around
Speaker 6: some of the neighborhoods so I can get a feel
Speaker 6: for that area as well, and then recorded some conversations
Speaker 6: with him, and so it was kind of like a
Speaker 6: little mix and match of a few different styles. But
Speaker 6: Mark had a lot of really good stuff written down
Speaker 6: that that he had produced over the years and keeping
Speaker 6: track of this great story because it's it is a
Speaker 6: little complex. So you know, what what we want to
Speaker 6: do is really just make sure we got the narrative straight,
Speaker 6: but you don't want to fudge the facts. So just
Speaker 6: and I think it comes off the way we did it,
Speaker 6: and really in a chronological fashion. You really get to
Speaker 6: see all the manipulations and the switching sides and all
Speaker 6: the craziness that was going on. And you know, Mark
Speaker 6: really did a good idea, a good job I should say,
Speaker 6: of relaying that.
Speaker 7: Yeah. You know what I really think is really great too,
Speaker 7: is that you know, everybody that that reads a mob book,
Speaker 7: now organized crime book has been affected by Goodfellas and
Speaker 7: sopranos and of course the Godfather, right, everybody. I mean,
Speaker 7: there's just no one on earth that hasn't. So you know,
Speaker 7: you still you get sort of those visuals because it's
Speaker 7: still otherworldly to most people. It really isn't normal or
Speaker 7: regular or even comprehensible, you know. So, But what's really
Speaker 7: interesting is that because Mark has this inside access, I've
Speaker 7: never read a book like this that has the intimate details.
Speaker 7: And we'll talk about that as well. Now, Mark, what's
Speaker 7: interesting in this book. I've heard, you know, you talk
Speaker 7: about to the betrayal that there's no loyalty. The way
Speaker 7: these guys get to each other bumping them off is
Speaker 7: basically their best friend, you know, the guy that they
Speaker 7: can hang out with him. And you said, listen, you
Speaker 7: learned early on that just because the guy hangs out
Speaker 7: with you doesn't mean he's your friend. But what I
Speaker 7: was talking about to the audience was the intimate details
Speaker 7: of the betrayal in terms of relationships, and that's what
Speaker 7: runs a theme through this book as well, which just says,
Speaker 7: adds more humanity to this thing. Now, tell us just
Speaker 7: a little bit, and again we might be jumping up
Speaker 7: a little bit, but tell us about you know, this
Speaker 7: very very important figure in your life, Maria, and tell
Speaker 7: us who Maria is, how you meet her, who she
Speaker 7: is is, And just introduced who Maria is pleased, and
Speaker 7: when and how you came about to meet her.
Speaker 4: Well, one of the very first people that I started
Speaker 4: out with in my own crew was a guy named
Speaker 4: Bobby Renew And Bobby was a few years older than me,
Speaker 4: and he was, like I said, he was. You know,
Speaker 4: you made a point about friends in the mob. I
Speaker 4: mean we palaled around every day and we would, you know,
Speaker 4: considered best friends or whatever. But in the mob you
Speaker 4: really have associates. But Maria was actually be on again,
Speaker 4: off again girlfriend of him. And when he went to prison. Uh,
Speaker 4: he went to prison when the war really kicked off,
Speaker 4: and I was kind of left on the street to
Speaker 4: fend for myself. And uh, as he went away, Maria
Speaker 4: and I started to get into contact because I felt
Speaker 4: as though that maybe Bobby was trying to use her
Speaker 4: to see if to see if I might make an
Speaker 4: advance on her, to see because I thought that maybe
Speaker 4: she might be a spy for him. I thought that
Speaker 4: you know, when you're in prison and you know your
Speaker 4: friend or your guy, the guy that you earn with
Speaker 4: he's on the street, I mean you're thinking all kinds
Speaker 4: of crazy things. I mean, you want to get as
Speaker 4: many people as close to him as you can. And
Speaker 4: I had the reputation for I don't know, sleeping around
Speaker 4: with some of the enemy wise guy's girlfriends, and the
Speaker 4: later it got him too a sentence. He was serving
Speaker 4: a five to seven year prison term. And he asked me,
Speaker 4: he said, of all the people to ask, he says,
Speaker 4: you know, can you keep an eye on Maria? And
Speaker 4: I right, there was a red flag because I said,
Speaker 4: of all the people, you're gonna ask me to keep
Speaker 4: an eye on your girlfriend? I mean, you know, my reputation,
Speaker 4: So I kind of thought it was he wanted to
Speaker 4: get her to see to see if I would betray him,
Speaker 4: because in my mind I felt as though he had
Speaker 4: already started to betray me. This is what you were
Speaker 4: speaking of too, with the with the friendship, your best
Speaker 4: friends and shifting alliances and all that stuff. Is that
Speaker 4: at that point in our relationship when I met Maria,
Speaker 4: him and I we just weren't trusting each other because
Speaker 4: I felt as though he was on one side of
Speaker 4: the war and he felt as though maybe I was
Speaker 4: on the other. So he figured maybe with the girl
Speaker 4: he could find out exactly where I was. And that's
Speaker 4: how that became.
Speaker 7: Now, tell us a little bit about more about this.
Speaker 7: I mean it might be typical to you, but tell
Speaker 7: us why this there was this split in this family. Obviously,
Speaker 7: people pick people to be in families and they test
Speaker 7: out their their alliances and their loyalties. So then why
Speaker 7: is there what is the specific reason why this group
Speaker 7: had this renegade faction.
Speaker 4: Well, that's kind of a complex question. But the short
Speaker 4: answer on that is the fact that when leadership, when
Speaker 4: the top leaders go down via prison or or the
Speaker 4: other way, other guys are trying to step up and
Speaker 4: take their positions. And that happens, you know, in the eighties,
Speaker 4: and it happened again in ninety five, as I've already
Speaker 4: alluded to. And uh, what actually started it though, was
Speaker 4: in New York when John Gaudi and Sammy Gravano they
Speaker 4: made a power play in the Gambino family. They they
Speaker 4: clipped uh, Tommy Billatti and Big Paul Castellano, and uh,
Speaker 4: that was that was a very very touchy situation because
Speaker 4: that's the one thing you don't do, is uh, in
Speaker 4: the mafia and cosin ostra, even going back to Sicily especially,
Speaker 4: is that the boss is the boss is the boss.
Speaker 4: You know, whether you like him or you don't. It's
Speaker 4: not about liking him, but you take orders from him.
Speaker 4: You accept the fact that he is your boss, and
Speaker 4: you honor him. And when they made that move, they
Speaker 4: had actually been recruiting people in uh the five families
Speaker 4: to actually make them move with them. So when that happens,
Speaker 4: now you've got other families that are splitting into two
Speaker 4: because you know, Guardian Gravano are basically saying that, you know,
Speaker 4: if you don't come with us, you'll be considered against us,
Speaker 4: and naturally they'll try to take you out. So New
Speaker 4: England kind of followed suit because they I'm not going
Speaker 4: to say that they see New York kind of controls
Speaker 4: the New England mafia to a point two. And when
Speaker 4: people saw that Guardian Goravano had done that, that the
Speaker 4: Gambinos had made that power play, they thought it was
Speaker 4: okay to follow suit because they wanted to get they
Speaker 4: wanted to go with maybe that that rogue faction of
Speaker 4: the mafia that that they were creating by taking out
Speaker 4: the end the boss and the boss of the Gambino family.
Speaker 4: So that's kind of how it all started, and it
Speaker 4: took a long time to really pick up steam and
Speaker 4: to really make everything go.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 7: Now that you talk about indictments, the major indictments, and
Speaker 7: there's a few of them in this book that create
Speaker 7: obviously that that sort of accelerates a lot of breakdowns
Speaker 7: of gangs and alliances and loyalties, doesn't it when you
Speaker 7: get indictments, And like you said, Whitey Bulger and Fellini
Speaker 7: or Flemy, they took off. So tell us more about
Speaker 7: the indictments what exactly, Like we just alluded to that
Speaker 7: this is about drug dealing, but we're going to talk
Speaker 7: about other things than you know that you were involved
Speaker 7: with as well. Tell us about what kind of crime
Speaker 7: these guys were indicted for and what happened with those
Speaker 7: the first major indictment and in what year was those
Speaker 7: first major indictments and what was the result of that.
Speaker 4: Well, I'll take it into two stages. In nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 4: Raymond Patriarchsenia died, and in nineteen eighty six, Jerry and
Speaker 4: Julo and his brothers were indicted and sent off to prison.
Speaker 4: So in a matter of two years, you have a
Speaker 4: family that has been under absolute leadership, Raymond patriarcha being
Speaker 4: the boss of the family, and Jerry Angulo being the underboss,
Speaker 4: they are no longer in the equation. So this is
Speaker 4: around eighty six. So naturally by this time there's problems
Speaker 4: because there's a power vacuum. As I was saying, you know,
Speaker 4: I don't want to jump up again. But by the
Speaker 4: time nineteen eighty nine came about. The thing that really
Speaker 4: ignited the war within the family was a guy named
Speaker 4: Frank Cadillac. Solumi was He was sanctioned as a new
Speaker 4: boss around nineteen eighty nine, and they tried to kill him.
Speaker 4: He was shot. They lured him to a peace meeting,
Speaker 4: at least that's what he thought it was going to be,
Speaker 4: and they tried to take him out. Were simultaneously down
Speaker 4: in Rhode Island. The murder actually up in to Connecticut,
Speaker 4: but his underboss was clipped in the same month. So
Speaker 4: now as those two guys tried to take over, the
Speaker 4: renegades took him out. The only problem is Selemi lived.
Speaker 4: He took a couple of bullets, and naturally there's gonna
Speaker 4: be you know, fighting back, and that that's when the
Speaker 4: family really really divided. Is now obviously Selemi and his
Speaker 4: loyalists are very upset. You know, you just killed us
Speaker 4: on the bush. You took a shot at him, you
Speaker 4: tried to convince him that it was a peace meeting.
Speaker 4: So that's what kicked off the first wave of it.
Speaker 4: As I was telling you, But if you turn up
Speaker 4: the clock to ninety five, you know, now you've got
Speaker 4: Slemi and Balger getting indicted along with other guys that
Speaker 4: are high ranking figures. So it's almost like deja vu
Speaker 4: to a point because now there's another leadership vacuum. You
Speaker 4: got Balger and Slemi that are gone in ninety five.
Speaker 4: So again, what happens the other renegade faction from the
Speaker 4: Italian mafia? They try to fill the void. And that's uh,
Speaker 4: that's where we're at.
Speaker 7: Right now, Scott. With your research, obviously you didn't rely. Again,
Speaker 7: you spoke about doing research side by side with the
Speaker 7: kind of information that Mark gave you that you might
Speaker 7: not have access to with you know, official records. What
Speaker 7: about the New England Mafia after writing this book was
Speaker 7: different than some of the other crime families that you've covered. Well,
Speaker 7: what was different about the New England family? What was
Speaker 7: that little bit of flavor that was a little bit different,
Speaker 7: that was seemed to be interesting and part of this story.
Speaker 7: What was unique about New England mafia.
Speaker 6: The a couple things. First of all, the ethnic makeup.
Speaker 6: As Mark said before, you had the real strong Irish presence,
Speaker 6: which in a lot of other cities had died out
Speaker 6: by the nineteen thirties, but here it is in the
Speaker 6: nineteen eighties, nineties, Current and Boston where that's still going on.
Speaker 6: And there's just something about the flavor, like when you
Speaker 6: go there and you about these guys and you see it,
Speaker 6: there's it's kind of an intangible thing that you have
Speaker 6: this flavor about the New England mafia. That's that's different
Speaker 6: than saying New York. It's not quite as sophisticated. It's
Speaker 6: not quite as you know, two thousand dollars suits and
Speaker 6: pinky rings. It's a little more blue collar. And then
Speaker 6: doing the research and talking to Mark, it's really very
Speaker 6: neighborhood based. It's really very street based, which is different
Speaker 6: than a lot of the other smaller families around the country.
Speaker 6: Everyone has their own little quirks and charms, but those
Speaker 6: are the real things that kind of set in New
Speaker 6: England apart. And the last thing, too is the way
Speaker 6: that it's spread out geographically. You have a couple centers
Speaker 6: of power that flip flop back and forth. Like Raymond
Speaker 6: Patriarcha ran the family out of Rhode Island, but you
Speaker 6: know Solemi was based out of Boston. And then you
Speaker 6: know recent bosses have flip flop between the power being
Speaker 6: either in Providence or in Boston. And so that's also
Speaker 6: kind of a unique situation that a lot of other
Speaker 6: families don't have.
Speaker 4: Dan. If I could interrupt the one second two, I'm
Speaker 4: just gonna come right out and say this, you have
Speaker 4: to remember something too, Whitey Bulger. In any other family,
Speaker 4: let's say in New York, Chicago, even Florida, a guy
Speaker 4: that is an Irish mobster could never become the most
Speaker 4: powerful mob boss in any city. But in Boston, he
Speaker 4: had been working with the FBI since nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 4: and in order to keep him safe, the FBI decided
Speaker 4: the best way to go about that was to make
Speaker 4: the Italians fight each other and whack each other out.
Speaker 4: And that's basically they kind of started the war. I mean,
Speaker 4: I've made references to the street angle of what the
Speaker 4: war was about and how the fact split. But the
Speaker 4: FBI was creating this situation to keep Bulga insulated and
Speaker 4: in South Boston as an Irish leader, but the above
Speaker 4: all boss of all bosses was him because they were
Speaker 4: protecting him. And as I said, he was insulated in
Speaker 4: South Boston and to keep him safe, the major people
Speaker 4: around him got to go down, but especially the Italians.
Speaker 4: The Italians were just collateral damage to keep him safe,
Speaker 4: and it just caused so many problems. But that's basically
Speaker 4: what it is, and it's very sad, but that's what happened.
Speaker 7: Well, you do say in your book, and I've never
Speaker 7: read this before, that basically the FBI were might much
Speaker 7: because you meat a lot about, you know, some of
Speaker 7: the missteps of mobsters, and some people will say, well,
Speaker 7: they weren't so smart, you know, John Gotti, Blavin and
Speaker 7: lots of guys Blavin and people would make light of that.
Speaker 7: But when I'm talking about is that these guys, basically,
Speaker 7: like you say, insulated themselves. But the FBI basically knew
Speaker 7: what was going on one step ahead of everyone, so
Speaker 7: they sort of played knew the psychology of mobsters and
Speaker 7: then played those eagles and those paranoid kind of characters against.
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Speaker 7: For details at each other. And like you say, when
Speaker 7: they can protect a mobster let him succeed and then
Speaker 7: and arrest people around them, people start wondering who is
Speaker 7: working for who? And so you you really do talk
Speaker 7: about how the FBI really played the mobsters one against
Speaker 7: each other.
Speaker 4: Sure, sure, and that's and that's what has to happen, unfortunately,
Speaker 4: because you know, if you're going to protect somebody, you
Speaker 4: gotta you gotta clear the way, you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: you got to also create you know, they got to
Speaker 4: keep making high profile arrests too. And uh, you know
Speaker 4: the thing in New England, as we alluded to earlier,
Speaker 4: is the fact that the Irish were a smaller group.
Speaker 4: So the FBI targeted the Italian coast and Ostra, and
Speaker 4: they figured the best way to infiltrate them, The best
Speaker 4: way to take them down is to get a guy
Speaker 4: like Bulger and an irishman to give him information and
Speaker 4: help them destroy the larger group, which of course would
Speaker 4: go into New York and go into other ethnic areas.
Speaker 4: But that was their original plan, and they seemed to
Speaker 4: carry it out pretty well, because, like I said, they
Speaker 4: were pretty much responsible and directly directly however you want
Speaker 4: to say it, however you want to paint it to anybody,
Speaker 4: but that that that's really what caused it.
Speaker 7: Right now, tell us a little bit more about how
Speaker 7: you rose in this organized crime. I mean obviously you
Speaker 7: were not obviously, but you talk about working with different
Speaker 7: crews and different gangs and different families and then surviving
Speaker 7: this entire uh, this entire war. Take us further, take
Speaker 7: our audience further into the story where uh, what you're doing,
Speaker 7: and specifically you're drug dealing, you're you're you're doing other rackets.
Speaker 7: So tell us everything that you're involved with, who you
Speaker 7: were working with.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 7: Once some of these people are in this power vacuum
Speaker 7: and discontinue with the story of what you're doing and
Speaker 7: who you were working with and what you're achieving in
Speaker 7: terms of your rise in organized crime.
Speaker 4: Well, like I was saying earlier, is when I was
Speaker 4: coming up in the underworld, I was strictly an Irish gangster,
Speaker 4: and being so close to these high level of Irish people,
Speaker 4: we kind of started to understand what was going on
Speaker 4: as far as you know, they were protecting Whitey Bulger,
Speaker 4: and the Whitey Bulser was taking down his own people.
Speaker 4: He wasn't just taken down the Italians, he was taken
Speaker 4: down the Irish as well. And when I was working
Speaker 4: with the high level Irish people, as I told you,
Speaker 4: the high level went to Hill gang members. They had
Speaker 4: separated themselves from Bulger at that point because we kind
Speaker 4: of knew, you know, I mean, it really wasn't hard
Speaker 4: to figure out because as I said, we're taking this
Speaker 4: up to my years from like maybe eighty nine to
Speaker 4: like I said, maybe ninety four, and I was strictly
Speaker 4: an Irish gangster. I mean, we saw what was going on.
Speaker 4: You know, we shared rackets with Bulger's people, we shared
Speaker 4: rackets with the Italians, and I was into book making
Speaker 4: drug deal and loan shock and some union stuff. But
Speaker 4: we were always met with resistance by Bulger's people, and
Speaker 4: it seemed like the best thing to do was to
Speaker 4: stay away from him. And that's what those guys really
Speaker 4: drilled into my head was that, look it, even though
Speaker 4: we all represent the winter Hill gang, Bulger is not
Speaker 4: with us, stay away from him. And they all but
Speaker 4: said the words, but they never did say them that
Speaker 4: you know, Bulger was with the FBI, so it kind
Speaker 4: of interfered with a lot of our rackets. And it
Speaker 4: kind of gave me the heads up on it because
Speaker 4: I was close to these guys and they were you know,
Speaker 4: prior to eighty nine ninety when they got away from Bulger,
Speaker 4: and they figured that the best course of action was
Speaker 4: if you don't want to have a problem with him,
Speaker 4: if you don't want to get fed to the FBI,
Speaker 4: then stay the hell away from him. But of course,
Speaker 4: you know, it clashed. But you know a lot of
Speaker 4: our rackets were shipped with those guys, as I was saying,
Speaker 4: And I didn't start getting with the Italians until until
Speaker 4: the second wave of the war, as I said, like
Speaker 4: around ninety five, because by that point, as I said,
Speaker 4: Balger and Frank Cadillac. So let me were on the
Speaker 4: limb and excuse me, the leaders that were still around
Speaker 4: in the Winter Hill gang. They began introducing me to
Speaker 4: the Italians and I really, I really didn't understand why
Speaker 4: they were doing it, but they were actually putting me
Speaker 4: in the yep, the center of the war. Because that's
Speaker 4: kind of how Balger did it, is that, like I said,
Speaker 4: he played the Italians against each other, you know, and
Speaker 4: these other went the Hill guys kind of saw that strategy.
Speaker 4: Is the fact that, well, what made him successful was
Speaker 4: the fact that, you know, they left him alone because,
Speaker 4: as I said, the Irish were a smaller group, and
Speaker 4: we kind of all knew that that was the game
Speaker 4: plan of the FBI, so if we could continue. In
Speaker 4: other words, I wanted to just stay with the Irish
Speaker 4: because I felt more protected because I figured that they
Speaker 4: were going to go after the Italians. But you know,
Speaker 4: some of our rackets overlapped each other and it was inevitable.
Speaker 4: I began working with both sides of the Italians, the
Speaker 4: renegade fashion in the coast and Oasta fashion.
Speaker 7: Now, as you rise in organized crime, like you say,
Speaker 7: you're seeing things as people are telling you to to
Speaker 7: be very cautious regarding some people. What about your relationship?
Speaker 7: What is what is is there any strain on the relationship?
Speaker 7: What as you go through these and you you have
Speaker 7: you talk about and I likely to get you to
Speaker 7: give a couple examples of later on in the book
Speaker 7: where you go to a place and you have again
Speaker 7: this vibe because you say, you go to a restaurant
Speaker 7: that'll you know, a couple guys are in jail, and
Speaker 7: the guy goes into the restaurant and and he knows
Speaker 7: that these people are going to uh, there's people gonna
Speaker 7: say to these guys that are in jail, Hey, these
Speaker 7: guys are in your restaurant. There's a lot of this
Speaker 7: uh one upmanship that you talk about in your book.
Speaker 7: And I'll get you a little bit later to give
Speaker 7: us an example of when you go in and you're intimidated,
Speaker 7: you're with your girlfriend, you you uh you see, Bobby,
Speaker 7: These are these are fascinating stories that take us far
Speaker 7: beyond the sort of you know, this guy bumped off
Speaker 7: that guy and took over his racket. It seems what
Speaker 7: we've got we get lots of that, but this, this
Speaker 7: personal story is really I think something that the audience
Speaker 7: is not as accustomed to in reading, so well, there's.
Speaker 4: There's there's a lot of jealousy in the mall. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, especially when you know when you're right hand man,
Speaker 4: your best friend, the guy that maybe you looked up to,
Speaker 4: you know, when he goes to jail, you know he's
Speaker 4: not well, and when inmates are coming in and out
Speaker 4: of there from the street, I mean, there yeap in
Speaker 4: my name, they're saying, you know, hey, you're sitting here
Speaker 4: doing you know, five to seven, and he's out there.
Speaker 4: He's with girls, he's making money, he's with this one,
Speaker 4: he's with Dallen. It becomes a jealousy issue too, and
Speaker 4: it becomes where, you know, it's it's it's human nature.
Speaker 4: It's it's it's jealousy, it's envy, it's it's you know,
Speaker 4: what the hell am I doing in here and he's
Speaker 4: doing out there, and it's it's that that's what it
Speaker 4: is in the mob because everybody's trying to one up
Speaker 4: the other guy. You know, you might be friends with
Speaker 4: a guy for five six years, but the whole time
Speaker 4: your friends with him, all he's trying to do is
Speaker 4: play you. Because he needs to make sure that he
Speaker 4: makes that decision to turn on you after he knows
Speaker 4: your rackets, after he knows what you're doing, because you know,
Speaker 4: I'm better off alive to somebody until they know my rackets,
Speaker 4: until the time is right, until you know, the reason
Speaker 4: to get rid of me would be to take my
Speaker 4: you know, to take over my errand to take over
Speaker 4: my hosp And uh, that's what I began to notice.
Speaker 4: And there was a lot of personal situations, especially between
Speaker 4: me and Bobby. And that's when, you know, we talked
Speaker 4: about it earlier, when Maria got involved. You know, I
Speaker 4: saw the signs. I saw what was going on. And
Speaker 4: when you're on high demand, when when when you're a
Speaker 4: muscle guy, when when everybody wants you, like everybody wanted
Speaker 4: the guy Bobby. You know, he's very very easily influenced.
Speaker 4: You know, all someone has to do is in prison
Speaker 4: is approach him and say, you know, hey, you know
Speaker 4: I heard this guy, you know, your buddy Mark. You know,
Speaker 4: I heard he's working with the Italians. I heard he's
Speaker 4: working with this one. You know, he's taking it all
Speaker 4: in and he doesn't like it, you know, And it
Speaker 4: was just a really hot situation, because that that's what
Speaker 4: it's all about, is like, you know, you don't have
Speaker 4: friends in the mob, you have associates, you know.
Speaker 7: Well, can you tell us about the time that Bobby
Speaker 7: gets out of prison and you're out on a date
Speaker 7: with you're out with Maria. Tell us about this, because
Speaker 7: that's a fast and story. Tell us about the whole thing,
Speaker 7: the car waiting outside, what you told your buddy to do,
Speaker 7: the cop later tell us that whole story. That's an
Speaker 7: amazing account.
Speaker 4: Are you talking about the the beginning of the book?
Speaker 7: The uh, the no, Well, not not the beginning though,
Speaker 7: when you're talking about when when Bobby gets out and
Speaker 7: then you're with Maria and he comes in and you
Speaker 7: have this altercation at the restaurant. He says something to her,
Speaker 7: don't leave Maria, and.
Speaker 4: Well, this is I think what you're talking about is
Speaker 4: when I ran into him. Yeah, I'm kind of kind
Speaker 4: of stuck between. I don't know as far as that
Speaker 4: story goes, I'm kind of a little confused as to
Speaker 4: what it's talking about. I kind of don't Can you
Speaker 4: be a little more specific.
Speaker 7: Well, you said that he had he had come into
Speaker 7: the to the restaurant you were with a friend. You're
Speaker 7: on a double date. Maria's there. You hadn't seen Bobby
Speaker 7: in while he comes in, and then you don't know
Speaker 7: if there's going to be an altercation or not. But
Speaker 7: obviously you guys have this standoff between you and then
Speaker 7: everything's fine, but you do tell your your guy, hey, listen,
Speaker 7: get the girls out outside, get him into the car,
Speaker 7: and meet me out front in case anything happens here.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, that was There was actually an attempt prior
Speaker 4: to that on Bobby's life. He was somebody attempted to
Speaker 4: execute him and he took about four bullets and with eyes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: he was. He was a survivor, and you know, I'm
Speaker 4: sure he was looking for somebody to blame and if
Speaker 4: anybody had a good reason, I mean I was probably
Speaker 4: at the top of that list. I mean I was
Speaker 4: with this girl. They had made an attempt on my
Speaker 4: life earlier prior to that. But we were on a
Speaker 4: double date with me and another top guy in my crew,
Speaker 4: and uh, we decided to stop into uh a strip club,
Speaker 4: and uh, the four of us walked in and uh,
Speaker 4: I heard somebody call my name, and uh it was
Speaker 4: a voice that was very clear to me it was Uh,
Speaker 4: it was Bobby and now he sees it I walk
Speaker 4: in with with the girl that uh he accused me
Speaker 4: of being with, and uh that I accepted responsibility for
Speaker 4: being with and uh he was with another guy. Uh
Speaker 4: he had some comments to say about her. He was
Speaker 4: really trying to get me going, and uh he was
Speaker 4: trying to belittle her. And at this point, you know,
Speaker 4: me and Maria are uh really into our relationship. I
Speaker 4: mean we're we're not just one a fling, I mean
Speaker 4: we're we're very serious. And uh, I'm sure he wasn't
Speaker 4: happy about almost being executed, and uh, you know he
Speaker 4: uh he had some derogatory things to So I went
Speaker 4: up to the bar to get a beer. I got
Speaker 4: along neck corona and I held it in my hand
Speaker 4: and I walked over to the table and I had
Speaker 4: my friend Joey Leggs take the girls away from the scene.
Speaker 4: But naturally, Maria is very nervous because she sees me
Speaker 4: talking one on one at this table with Bobby and
Speaker 4: another serious wise guy, and she sends his trouble and
Speaker 4: he tries to get me going, almost like I got
Speaker 4: him going. He was trying to get into my head.
Speaker 4: He was trying to make me. He was trying to
Speaker 4: get unto my skin, and he was trying to make
Speaker 4: me make a mistake. He was trying to make me
Speaker 4: lose my cool, and he had some bad things to say.
Speaker 4: But long story short, as Maria kept peeking over and
Speaker 4: kept walking by, he called her a dirty name, and
Speaker 4: I didn't like it, and I walked. I I just
Speaker 4: got right in his face. I told my friend Joey
Speaker 4: Leggs the keys, I said, get the girls out of here.
Speaker 4: I said, stop the car up, wait out front. Is
Speaker 4: because when I come out, I'll probably be running because
Speaker 4: you know, I had the long neck beer bottle in
Speaker 4: my hand for a reason. You know, if if something's
Speaker 4: going to happen, I mean, I'm gonna do what I
Speaker 4: gotta do. But I never really got that far and
Speaker 4: I walked out of that place, and uh, that was
Speaker 4: the end of that.
Speaker 7: Well you miss a little bit of it, though, because
Speaker 7: what I thought you would you would share with the
Speaker 7: audience is exactly what you did. Tell him. He had
Speaker 7: thought that somebody with blue eyes had had killed him,
Speaker 7: and you do have blue eyes. And like you say,
Speaker 7: if there was a person that may have had a
Speaker 7: motive well, you fit that bill and you have blue eyes.
Speaker 7: So after he bad mouthed your girlfriend, you told them, hey, listen,
Speaker 7: we're gonna have a problem here because you almost died
Speaker 7: last time. So you basically intimated to him that you
Speaker 7: were the guy. You put that idea in his head,
Speaker 7: and then you let him live.
Speaker 1: But what I said to.
Speaker 4: Him exactly those words is h I said, I don't
Speaker 4: know for sure, I said, but maybe the shooter that
Speaker 4: they let you live, but I'm not sure. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: uh yeah, I mean that was the prime suspect. There's
Speaker 4: no doubt about it. I mean, I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: you know all about crime stories and everything like that,
Speaker 4: it's always, uh, you know, it's always the guy's girls,
Speaker 4: the guys the girl's boyfriend that has the motive, you know.
Speaker 4: And uh, yeah, I do have blue eyes.
Speaker 7: But you're not saying it was you though.
Speaker 4: No, I don't know who did that. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 4: know what happened with that could have been anybody. I mean,
Speaker 4: he botched the hit on me that was on contract
Speaker 4: by uh that was ordered from a boss. So and
Speaker 4: there was other people that had that were maybe trying
Speaker 4: to capitalize on that. See a lot of times in
Speaker 4: the mob too. The perfect scenario would be, let's say
Speaker 4: you're gonna clip somebody. You're gonna murder them, you're gonna
Speaker 4: hit them, whatever you're gonna do, you're gonna shoot them.
Speaker 4: The ideal situation would be to make it look like
Speaker 4: somebody else did it, because that way the cops will
Speaker 4: wrap up that case, they'll send them off to prison,
Speaker 4: and the person who really did it doesn't have to
Speaker 4: worry about those chages coming against him because he's already
Speaker 4: framed up somebody else. So there was other people who motive,
Speaker 4: But no, I don't know. I don't know who did that.
Speaker 7: Right now, Scott, I wanted to ask you, and then
Speaker 7: I'll if you can't answer it, I'll get Mark to
Speaker 7: answer it. But when I first started looking at this book,
Speaker 7: I said, okay, well, this is an incredible inside information
Speaker 7: sort of the access that Mark obviously has by virtue
Speaker 7: of who he is. He has this incredible access to
Speaker 7: this information. Now, you as a writer and writing having
Speaker 7: written these books before, you don't want to step on
Speaker 7: the wrong people's toes, and of course you want to
Speaker 7: get the story straight. That would really piss somebody off
Speaker 7: if you got something wrong. Was there any challenge in
Speaker 7: this book to have Mark sort of or at least
Speaker 7: some of the information that Mark gave you that you've said,
Speaker 7: maybe this is a bit sensitive, or that could be confidential,
Speaker 7: or we may not want to say that because that's
Speaker 7: still pending in court. Tell us about that sort of challenge.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you always have to be careful of that kind
Speaker 6: of stuff. For this book. A few of the things,
Speaker 6: there's some people's names were changed. I mean, that's really
Speaker 6: one simple way of taking care of part of that. O.
Speaker 6: There was stuff Mark told me that we didn't put
Speaker 6: in the book. You know, Mark's attorney obviously read through.
Speaker 6: You want to make sure that you know when Mark's
Speaker 6: talking about you know, John Smith, this guy, or he
Speaker 6: talks about Anthony Barry, you know, committed these crimes. You know,
Speaker 6: while he was arrested for those crimes, and that's backed up.
Speaker 6: You know, you obviously don't want to get into a
Speaker 6: libel situation. But you know, on the flip side of that,
Speaker 6: you know Mark having the inside story sometimes, Yeah, you
Speaker 6: can't always verify, so you have to maintain integrity Mark's
Speaker 6: accounts of it. But you don't want to just be
Speaker 6: making reckless accusations around someone, so there, Yeah, there were
Speaker 6: certainly some stories where stuff we just either tweaked or
Speaker 6: took out or changed someone's name, So you always want
Speaker 6: to be cognizant of that, and it's it's certainly something
Speaker 6: I think even if you're writing historically, you want to
Speaker 6: try to be as accurate as possible and keep that
Speaker 6: it's I just want to say, and also make sure
Speaker 6: you know, what Mark gives out is stuff that that
Speaker 6: he's comfortable giving out, because you know, we talked a lot,
Speaker 6: and I wanted to and I always wanted to make
Speaker 6: sure if I wrote something that wrote it to Mark,
Speaker 6: Hey do you mind if we include this? This is
Speaker 6: a great story and you know if he had heartacheover
Speaker 6: we just want to do it.
Speaker 7: So yeah, right right, Yeah, it's interesting and and Mark
Speaker 7: uh in terms of it just seems to me. I
Speaker 7: mean again, I'm maybe I'm not looking at it as
Speaker 7: carefully as I should or something, But is everybody that
Speaker 7: you're writing about okay with this? Are you sure this
Speaker 7: is okay? You're not gonna get comanied here? You know
Speaker 7: you're not gonna get or Simon rushdied. I mean, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean you're not gonna have somebody going, oh,
Speaker 7: somebody's coming after me, are you absolutely positive?
Speaker 4: I can never be positive about that. I don't expect
Speaker 4: people to be patting me on the back and saying, hey,
Speaker 4: great job, you know, and write nice reviews about it.
Speaker 4: You know, there's a lot of hurd feelings out there,
Speaker 4: and a lot of those guys are still around, you know,
Speaker 4: And I still live in the same neighborhood. I never
Speaker 4: moved or anything. I go about my business every day.
Speaker 4: I still run into some of these guys. Sure, you know,
Speaker 4: there's always that possibility. Then, I mean, that's that's just
Speaker 4: the way it is. And I'm not really a shy guy,
Speaker 4: and I try to be I try to be truthful,
Speaker 4: but I also got to be smart.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: I don't have an immunity deal with the government like
Speaker 4: most people do that write these kinds of books where
Speaker 4: they talk about what, hey, you know, I whacked this
Speaker 4: one or I whacked that one, and they can give
Speaker 4: you the details of it. And I'm not saying I
Speaker 4: never did anything like that. But you know, if I
Speaker 4: did have an immunity deal, I could go into detail
Speaker 4: about that because obviously I would be protected from prosecution.
Speaker 4: But I'm not, you know, so you know, as Scott
Speaker 4: was saying, you know, some of these stories, you know,
Speaker 4: I would have really loved to tell a great story,
Speaker 4: and I think I did pretty good, but I would
Speaker 4: have really liked to get into some details. But you know,
Speaker 4: you got to worry about these over zealous lawyers, these
Speaker 4: over zealous prosecutors, the US Attorney. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: I've been a target for a long time with these
Speaker 4: people and on crimes that never go away with no
Speaker 4: statute of limitations. But uh, you know, I don't you
Speaker 4: know something, whatever happens happens. I mean, when we're all
Speaker 4: gonna you know, the one the inevitability in life is
Speaker 4: we're all gonna die someday. So maybe my day's gonna
Speaker 4: be sooner than the most. I don't know, but I'm
Speaker 4: willing to take my chances.
Speaker 7: Mark, what Sorry, I was gonna say.
Speaker 6: One thing added to Mark thing though, to keep in
Speaker 6: mind too that generally in even how many you know,
Speaker 6: mob books have been written by guys exposing other guys,
Speaker 6: and they really haven't been the repercussions and a lot
Speaker 6: of the stuff that Mark talks about, you know, by
Speaker 6: now here we are in twenty twelve, we're talking about
Speaker 6: ten years ago, you know, even some of the most
Speaker 6: current stuff already going on five six years ago. So
Speaker 6: in talking with other guys that I've know that we're involved,
Speaker 6: their kind of answers. You know, if I write about
Speaker 6: this guy, why is he gonna come bother me now?
Speaker 6: After all this time they make trouble for himself. So yeah,
Speaker 6: they might not like it, and Mark might team on
Speaker 6: the street and it might give him the fingers they
Speaker 6: screw you, but they're not gonna go over and do
Speaker 6: something to Mark than they're putting themselves in a in
Speaker 6: a position of you know, being arrested.
Speaker 4: Or they'd rather deal with today's problems. You know, there's
Speaker 4: a there's a new problem every day in a monster's life,
Speaker 4: you know. So it's it's almost in order of importance too,
Speaker 4: you know. Yeah, there's some hurt feelings. I'm not going
Speaker 4: to deny that, you know. And I got some hurt
Speaker 4: feelings too, you know. So it's kind of a two
Speaker 4: way street where you know, I think Scott kind of
Speaker 4: covered it there too, where you know a lot of
Speaker 4: these stories are old, you know, I I don't know
Speaker 4: whatever happens happens, I guess. But I think Scott clarified
Speaker 4: that well.
Speaker 7: I think you obviously took you know, you took great
Speaker 7: lengths not to be like I say, there's you're not
Speaker 7: giving any information up on anyone, and it's you know,
Speaker 7: it's very much different. You talk about an immunity deal,
Speaker 7: but you're not. You know, you didn't testify against people.
Speaker 7: So it's a completely different book, right, So, you know,
Speaker 7: so the information out there is, like you say, you
Speaker 7: might ruffle some feathers. People might not like your depiction
Speaker 7: of things. I was going to ask you, though, why
Speaker 7: was this book important for you to write?
Speaker 4: I felt like it needed to be told. You know,
Speaker 4: I was the guy that lived in the shadows for
Speaker 4: all of these years. I was the guy that put
Speaker 4: my ass on the line for the better of what
Speaker 4: I thought was this honor bound society. I felt betrayed.
Speaker 4: I felt I don't know. I felt like people had
Speaker 4: to know that this is the way it works, that
Speaker 4: this is the mob. This is the mob that people
Speaker 4: glamorize and that there's movies about. And you know, here
Speaker 4: here's the real, the real inside stuff about the way
Speaker 4: it really really works. You know, and uh, I wanted
Speaker 4: to tell it, and I wanted to do it carefully.
Speaker 4: You know, it's not about talking about what guys did
Speaker 4: or what they didn't do, or trying to trash someone.
Speaker 4: It's also you know, I don't want to get them
Speaker 4: in trouble either. You know, that wasn't that wasn't the
Speaker 4: reason for doing this. You know, whatever they've done or
Speaker 4: they haven't done, I really don't bring it up past
Speaker 4: two thousand and two, two thousand and three, you know
Speaker 4: where they might be. You know, the statute of limitations
Speaker 4: wouldn't be helping them, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: I didn't put anybody in the fire, you know, and
Speaker 4: I was cognizant of that fact as I wrote the book.
Speaker 4: I don't want to do that, and I wouldn't expect
Speaker 4: people to try to do that to me, right, Scott, can.
Speaker 7: You tell us about this is a very important part
Speaker 7: of the book where and again do you do a
Speaker 7: masterful job capturing this, probably without you know, Mark saying
Speaker 7: it and without the narrative really explaining it. It's the
Speaker 7: turning point in Mark Silverman's life, basically the attempts on
Speaker 7: his own on his own life, and so maybe you
Speaker 7: could talk about that not the end of the book,
Speaker 7: but it's near the end of the book where we
Speaker 7: talk about sort of this, this sort of Marcus talking
Speaker 7: about spoken about this throughout the interview about you know,
Speaker 7: he was disillusioned and now he realized and he could
Speaker 7: see there was no loyalty. But talk about that one
Speaker 7: sort of a near attempt and then it just seems
Speaker 7: like there's a turnaround there where the light bulb goes
Speaker 7: off and Mark says, look it, I've got to make
Speaker 7: a change here.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, we Mark and I joke as like
Speaker 6: the Hollywood scene because it's you know, it's fleshed out
Speaker 6: like and so one of those just near miss scenes
Speaker 6: that you'd see in a movie. But it really happens.
Speaker 6: And I think in when Mark talks about that story
Speaker 6: and the way we wanted to write it was exactly
Speaker 6: what you said. It's here he is kind of coasting
Speaker 6: through this glamorous criminal life and this is where exactly
Speaker 6: what he says kind of comes to fruition, where he
Speaker 6: really sees the depth of that treachery and how close
Speaker 6: he really was dying and at that moment, and that
Speaker 6: really hits home. And I think that opens his eyes
Speaker 6: and then he starts adding up everything else that's going
Speaker 6: on around him, and then there's you know, there's another
Speaker 6: smaller scene later where the FBI comes and you know, hey,
Speaker 6: Mark's working a regular job and they say, you know,
Speaker 6: there's still guys looking to kill you, and you know,
Speaker 6: I think at that point it really is is clear
Speaker 6: to Mark that this was obviously not what you know,
Speaker 6: he signed up for as an impressionable young young guy.
Speaker 6: It's not that life at all. And that that scene
Speaker 6: I think really works well in that context because again
Speaker 6: you don't have to say. He doesn't come out and say, hey,
Speaker 6: I almost got killed. I got disillusioned. You can tell
Speaker 6: by the way he starts reacting to things around him
Speaker 6: that that's what's going on.
Speaker 7: Yeah, tell us about that. Describe that scene for us.
Speaker 7: Not to give away too much for for audience, but
Speaker 7: I mean, just tell us about that that attempt, just
Speaker 7: your just your feelings, your your gut instinct, tell us
Speaker 7: about that whole event. It's very powerful. With the FBI
Speaker 7: visited me just before that in the FBI.
Speaker 4: Yes, well, Scott was kind of saying, is that I
Speaker 4: really started to see it for what it was, and
Speaker 4: I realized the dangerous spot that I had really put
Speaker 4: myself into. You know, I mean, when you're inside of
Speaker 4: a mafia war, people know that you know a lot
Speaker 4: and people that may have felt, as I be, that
Speaker 4: I betrayed them, and maybe in some ways I did.
Speaker 4: But you know that when there's two sides fighting, one
Speaker 4: of them is gonna lose, one of them is gonna win.
Speaker 4: So one of them is gonna go home happy and
Speaker 4: the other ones are never gonna let it go. And
Speaker 4: they're not gonna blame the FEDS or anybody else. They're
Speaker 4: gonna blame me because they're gonna say, you know, we
Speaker 4: fought this war well for six seven, eight years, and
Speaker 4: the reason we could never win it is because this
Speaker 4: guy wasn't really with us. And when they found that out,
Speaker 4: I mean, my life was it was just constantly in danger.
Speaker 4: I mean I had I had visits and uh, like
Speaker 4: like Scott said, I mean, I got a visit from
Speaker 4: the FBI, and uh, I was working a square job.
Speaker 4: But uh the location of that square job was, uh,
Speaker 4: it was in a bad spot. It was Uh it
Speaker 4: was in the uh, the territory of one of the
Speaker 4: guys that felt as though I betrayed him in the war,
Speaker 4: he was on the renegade side. So the FBI came and, uh,
Speaker 4: they said, uh, you know, Mark, we have a moral
Speaker 4: obligation to inform you that, uh we believe that there's,
Speaker 4: uh there's a contract on you. And uh, you know, naturally,
Speaker 4: I said, you should have told me this a year ago,
Speaker 4: because that's when the last attempt on my life was made.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you know about this one, you probably
Speaker 4: know about that one.
Speaker 7: And excuse me, what did they say to that when
Speaker 7: you asked them that.
Speaker 4: Oh, they didn't like it because they thought it was
Speaker 4: you know, they thought I was trying to be cute,
Speaker 4: you know, but I was kind of being serious, like,
Speaker 4: you know, you don't know about that one, but you
Speaker 4: know about this one. You know what's going on? You know,
Speaker 4: why are you telling me? Why do you care? You know?
Speaker 4: And I really didn't take it serious, but in some
Speaker 4: ways I did because they said that they had picked
Speaker 4: it up on a wire tap during one of their investigations.
Speaker 4: And see, the one thing you have to understand too,
Speaker 4: is they can tell you that there's a death threat
Speaker 4: on your life, but they can't tell you where it's
Speaker 4: coming from. So as they were telling me this, I
Speaker 4: immediately knew right away who it was, and maybe the
Speaker 4: investigation that they were into. I mean, just them telling
Speaker 4: me that gave me enough where I kind of you know,
Speaker 4: I mean, I knew what I was into when I
Speaker 4: knew who my main enemies were. But that was also
Speaker 4: a ploy to get me to jump into their arms
Speaker 4: and to uh to uh become a member of uh
Speaker 4: we like to say, Team America. You know, when there's
Speaker 4: a when there's a contract on your life or they're
Speaker 4: telling you there's a contract on your life, the normal
Speaker 4: mobster is going to jump into their arms and ask
Speaker 4: for protection because they're the only ones that can't protect you,
Speaker 4: at least they claim to. I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 4: I have never gone that route, but uh, I don't
Speaker 4: know if I would trust them.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, well that's fascinating. Yeah. Well guys, uh, gentlemen,
Speaker 7: I want to thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 7: We could probably go on for another hour. This is
Speaker 7: an incredible story, but I want to thank you very
Speaker 7: much Scott Decci and Mark Silverman for this Rogue Mobster,
Speaker 7: very very very very interesting book, fascinating inside access and
Speaker 7: like I say, it's almost like you're inside a Sopranos,
Speaker 7: Goodfellas Godfather's episode. You're cooking marinera sauce and Christen there.
Speaker 7: It's like, I'm going, man, this I because I already
Speaker 7: know that that's where they get stuff from. They get
Speaker 7: true accounts, and of course they get somebody writ in
Speaker 7: a little bit of drama and dialogue. But even the
Speaker 7: dialogue is in here. You know, this is crazy. So
Speaker 7: it's been really really fun. This is a much different
Speaker 7: book again with all this information. And then you and
Speaker 7: Scott uh did a really really admirable job. And I
Speaker 7: want to thank you very much for number one for
Speaker 7: a great book and two for a great interview. So
Speaker 7: thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Gentlemen.
Speaker 6: Well you're welcome. Thank you for having us on. Appreciate it.
Speaker 7: Well, thank you very much, thank you very much. And
Speaker 7: for audience you've been listening to Rogue Mobster with Mark
Speaker 7: Silverman and Scott uh dicy gentlemen, thank you very much,
Speaker 7: and have a good evening, good night too, all right night,
Speaker 7: thank you, thank you,