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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder The most Shocking
Speaker 6: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 6: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 7: Good Evening. This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 7: program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True Crime
Speaker 7: History and the authors that have written about them. In
Speaker 7: October two thousand and six, G. T. Harrel received a
Speaker 7: phone call from a man who identified himself as the
Speaker 7: great nephew of a high ranking member of the mafia
Speaker 7: from the forties until his death in the mid nineties.
Speaker 7: He told him that three generations of his family members
Speaker 7: had a wealth of stories about the mob that needed
Speaker 7: to be told. He said he would like to commission
Speaker 7: him to write a book detailing the life and times
Speaker 7: of his great uncles. He was invited to travel in
Speaker 7: New York City to meet Ah meet him his great
Speaker 7: uncle Sonny Della Universida, the last living sibling of Pauli
Speaker 7: Lefty Delhi Della Universida, as well as a former criminal
Speaker 7: attorney and his brother. The following week, he was introduced
Speaker 7: to every one in Little Italy, New York City. In
Speaker 7: videotape seventeen hours of interviews with Sonny, he told compelling
Speaker 7: stories about many of his life experiences with well known
Speaker 7: gangsters and associates of his brother Pauli, many of whom
Speaker 7: were the who's who of the mafia. After return home
Speaker 7: from his fascinating of very productive tape sessions, he looked
Speaker 7: up Sunny's brother's name on the Internet, as well as
Speaker 7: sought confirmation on his identity in history books and documents
Speaker 7: about the mafia. He found nothing, but still believed in
Speaker 7: his story and those related to him by other relatives.
Speaker 7: He decided to go to the definitive source about the mafia,
Speaker 7: the FBI. After a few days of working his way
Speaker 7: up to chain at command, he was finally directed by
Speaker 7: a department head to talk to a man who was
Speaker 7: described as the expert on the history of the mafia.
Speaker 7: He promised to be a person who would definitely be
Speaker 7: able to confirm Pauli's existence and ranking if he did
Speaker 7: in fact exist. He did confirm that Pauli Lefty was
Speaker 7: not only known by law enforcement authorities, but that he
Speaker 7: was known to be the configliere for all five families.
Speaker 7: He was stunned and knew that he had been offered
Speaker 7: a unique opportunity to learn secrets that had never been
Speaker 7: disclosed before. As the sagon folded, he granted an insight
Speaker 7: into he was granted. He gained an insight into the
Speaker 7: origins of the American Mafia, its principal key players, as
Speaker 7: well those unknown bosses who ran the whole syndicate in
Speaker 7: a shroud of secrecy. The book we're featuring this evening
Speaker 7: is for members only, and it is not just an
Speaker 7: expose a It is an in depth look into the
Speaker 7: life and times of known figures and secret bosses who
Speaker 7: reign supreme during the formative years in the growth of
Speaker 7: the Mafia worldwide. The book we're featuring this evening for
Speaker 7: members only, The Story of the Mobs Secret Judge, with
Speaker 7: my special guest, Jerry Verro. Welcome to the program, and
Speaker 7: thank you for agreeing to this interview. Jerry Verro, thanks Dan,
Speaker 7: thanks for having me well, thank you very much. This
Speaker 7: is going to be a very very interesting interview because
Speaker 7: of the information in this book. It's a real eye
Speaker 7: opener and it dispels a lot of the myths that
Speaker 7: have been built up over the years from all kinds
Speaker 7: of sources, not only fictional but also nonfiction sources. As
Speaker 7: we find out from this book that you've described as
Speaker 7: an expose there, certainly it can qualify as that. Now
Speaker 7: tell us, Jerry, tell us how you were related to
Speaker 7: these people and why this was an important story that
Speaker 7: you decided or people around you decided that it was
Speaker 7: important to be told. Now this story. Tell us how
Speaker 7: you related and why this is an important story that
Speaker 7: needed to be told.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm the great nephew of Paul Lefty Delhi Universita,
Speaker 3: and in an organized crime family, when you have a
Speaker 3: powerful figure like that, sometimes you're too close to him
Speaker 3: in relation, like a son or a daughter. Sometimes you're
Speaker 3: too far away. I was perfect. I was right in
Speaker 3: the middle because his older sister, Sadie, the matriarch of
Speaker 3: the family, was my grandmother. Well, growing up, not only
Speaker 3: personal experiences I had with him and others, but stories
Speaker 3: that I owe her. Some I just overheard as a
Speaker 3: kid that they didn't think I was listening. Others I
Speaker 3: asked outright. As I got older, and I found out
Speaker 3: that he was a powerhouse of some sort, but I
Speaker 3: didn't know why. I didn't know thee specifics. I didn't
Speaker 3: know whether he was a leader of some sort. He
Speaker 3: dealt with all five families, and I didn't know why,
Speaker 3: because everything that I knew about organized crime, it didn't
Speaker 3: make sense. Well, I started interviewing his brothers, realizing I
Speaker 3: had better get this information because you know, his brothers
Speaker 3: and sisters started passing away, and they all wanted this
Speaker 3: story told about their brother for various reasons. And I
Speaker 3: thought the story needed to be told as well, because
Speaker 3: there's so much fiction out there. And I watched these
Speaker 3: documentaries and I just laughed sometimes, like, you guys don't
Speaker 3: know what you're talking about. That's not really what happened.
Speaker 3: So I thought to get it out there. But at
Speaker 3: the same time, I didn't want to exclose anybody that's
Speaker 3: still alive. So a lot of the people in the
Speaker 3: book that were close to my uncle have already long gone.
Speaker 3: And I did the best I can research and found
Speaker 3: out that none of their descendants are involved either.
Speaker 7: Now you made the phone call to G. T. Harrold,
Speaker 7: I'm guessing, I mean, I would believe why did you
Speaker 7: pick G. T. Harrold. What was it about G. T.
Speaker 7: Harold that you thought you couldn't get from another author.
Speaker 7: What was it especially about him that was of interest
Speaker 7: to you and your family?
Speaker 3: Well, because he was former he was retired army intelligence.
Speaker 3: And I knew from you know, again watching documentaries and
Speaker 3: reading books and movies, that there was a reason why
Speaker 3: my great uncle was never mentioned, and I knew of
Speaker 3: other names that would mentioned. I said, my uncle was
Speaker 3: very close to him, so there was a reason, some
Speaker 3: kind of conspiracy. I thought maybe that he wasn't mention.
Speaker 3: So I knew that G. T. Harroll having that position
Speaker 3: and he would be able to go up the ladder
Speaker 3: in the FBI where they were ignored, ing may I
Speaker 3: never heard of him, never heard of him, and all
Speaker 3: that type of stuff, And so they would talk to
Speaker 3: him knowing that he would he would he would get
Speaker 3: the information, but yet he would keep it in confidence,
Speaker 3: which he did. So we can't name who told him
Speaker 3: certain things, but he was able to climb up the ladder,
Speaker 3: I mean called the FBI to going to look and say, yeah,
Speaker 3: this guy is all the intelligence retire So that was
Speaker 3: the main reason. And then you know he did some
Speaker 3: other projects before he sold some scripts to hollywoods. I
Speaker 3: knew he was a good writer, and he was recommended
Speaker 3: by the two lawyers we hired, one and entertainment lawyer
Speaker 3: Ken Lake and another criminal lawyer, John Lake, and who
Speaker 3: was very helpful in our research, by the way, and
Speaker 3: actually now he's a circuit court judge in Sarasota, Florida.
Speaker 7: Right, Yeah, so that would be a great, great choice
Speaker 7: because without the FBI confirmation and somebody being trusted and
Speaker 7: being able to get that information, we still might not
Speaker 7: have this story, would we.
Speaker 3: No, Well, I mean GT was was didn't He didn't
Speaker 3: want to write the story initially because you know, when
Speaker 3: he started, he initially he read transcripts of interviews with
Speaker 3: the last with Sonny, the last living brother. We went
Speaker 3: to New York City, we hired a stenographer, We did
Speaker 3: interviews in front of the lawyers because we also had
Speaker 3: to make sure too that he didn't you know, you
Speaker 3: can't talk about any murders. There's no statutal limitations, so
Speaker 3: the lawyers would have for protection as well as verification. Well,
Speaker 3: GT originally got these transcripts to look through and he
Speaker 3: did research all over the internet. He couldn't find he
Speaker 3: found some stuff on Sonny, some drug charges you know
Speaker 3: that he had, but nothing on Paulie. So he didn't
Speaker 3: want to write it because he didn't want to write
Speaker 3: about what he thought it was a fake character. So
Speaker 3: he that's where he started working his way up the FBI.
Speaker 3: And then of course when he came to New York
Speaker 3: City when he did his actual interviews. GT wasn't there
Speaker 3: during the original interviews with the stenography. He came later
Speaker 3: and we said, we better get my uncle on cap
Speaker 3: right because he's not getting any younger. Then talking to
Speaker 3: some old timers a little lialy, some would go on
Speaker 3: camera briefly and realize that take me off and whatnot,
Speaker 3: and that's when he was really convinced. But he wasn't
Speaker 3: going to do it until he had some sort of
Speaker 3: what would have convinced him proof. I mean, it's tough
Speaker 3: to say proof because he for some reason, the FBI
Speaker 3: won't release his records. I'm a criminal lawyer has tried
Speaker 3: and they said it's classified. Why is his records classified?
Speaker 3: But anyway, GT got enough information to make him feel
Speaker 3: comfortable and going forward with the book, and he believes
Speaker 3: it emphatically, and he's even till this day. He gets
Speaker 3: more information on his own. He's just that curious about it.
Speaker 7: Interesting and so in terms of the he had the
Speaker 7: interview with your with you and your family, he was
Speaker 7: pretty convinced after that, and of course then he got
Speaker 7: confirmation from the FBI. But he as a journalists, as
Speaker 7: a guy that knows a good story, he knew that
Speaker 7: he was onto something and very con vincing people as well.
Speaker 7: I'm sure these people are all you know yourself as well.
Speaker 7: Now tell us how this all started. Tell us about
Speaker 7: your your great uncles or your uncle's pardon me, and
Speaker 7: the great uncles, and tell us about their background in Sicily.
Speaker 7: How tell us about as much as you know about that,
Speaker 7: and was told in the book as well well.
Speaker 3: Obviously they were both born and what they used to
Speaker 3: call at the time the lower East side of Manhattan
Speaker 3: on Match Street. Now you know, later on it became
Speaker 3: known as Little Italy because of all the immigrants that
Speaker 3: came from Italy came to that general area and different
Speaker 3: blocks with different different areas of Italy Sicily and Calabria
Speaker 3: and Naples and whatnot. Well, the stories I heard when
Speaker 3: they first came over is that their father was trying
Speaker 3: to get away from the gangsters and the fascists and Sicily,
Speaker 3: and when they arrived in the Lower East Side, they
Speaker 3: weren't prepared for or what they saw and what they experienced. Well,
Speaker 3: Italians were discriminated against in a major way. There were
Speaker 3: signs in the storefronts that would say Italians need not
Speaker 3: apply and things of that nature. And my great grandfather,
Speaker 3: Antonio del universe a Napoulion, Sonny's father, wound up having
Speaker 3: to work for some of the very people he was
Speaker 3: trying to get away from in Sicily. Well, they were
Speaker 3: very poor. They had to take in a boarder at
Speaker 3: one point to live in the house with them. On
Speaker 3: top of that, the mother died very young. When the
Speaker 3: lasts child, Sonny, was born, the mother passed away while
Speaker 3: my grandmother Sadie had a drop out of school to
Speaker 3: take care of the family. She was fourteen years old
Speaker 3: her self at the time. She could only do that
Speaker 3: for so long. And then what wound up happening is
Speaker 3: five editor seven children were sent up to an orphanage
Speaker 3: to be raised. I mean, just think about that. They
Speaker 3: take away five ed of your seven children, while my
Speaker 3: grandmother Sadi stood behind. She was already old, and I
Speaker 3: to take care of herself. And Paulie stood behind because
Speaker 3: from what I was told, eleven twelve years old, he
Speaker 3: already had his own rackets going on in the Naghboros.
Speaker 3: He stood behind. So it's a story to also show people,
Speaker 3: you know what some of these Italian immigrants, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't want to say they were pushed into it.
Speaker 3: They had choices, but there weren't many choices. You either
Speaker 3: change your name to an americanized name, like a lot
Speaker 3: of them, did you try to function and you take
Speaker 3: the job sweep in the streets, which which they would do.
Speaker 3: They had pride and others just said, you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm taking this route of organized crime. And I also
Speaker 3: believe from hearing stories from my great uncles, organized crime
Speaker 3: is not created equal completely. It depends. I mean someone
Speaker 3: that runs a prostitution ring versus someone that runs a
Speaker 3: club with gambling and booze and things like that. It
Speaker 3: not created the same, you know. I mean, it eventually
Speaker 3: becomes legal anyway, the prostitution rings, the drugs and the murder,
Speaker 3: for Hia, that's a different animal. So it's not all
Speaker 3: created equal. So I learned a lot from them, and
Speaker 3: they had some very rough lives. But that being said,
Speaker 3: it needs added a seven children. Five out of the
Speaker 3: seven became legitimate and got legitimate jobs. It was just
Speaker 3: Paulie and Sonny that got involved in organized crime.
Speaker 7: Now you talk about being around to a certain degree
Speaker 7: and in hearing the stories, what families are we talking about.
Speaker 7: For those that are not so familiar, some of the
Speaker 7: names that are very familiar tell us about who your
Speaker 7: uncles were supposed to be connected with were connected with.
Speaker 3: Well, one name that is not going to pop out
Speaker 3: in people's head is a guy named Jimmy Alto. His
Speaker 3: real name is Vincente Alta Mare. He was from Sicily
Speaker 3: and he actually owned four different clubs in the Lower
Speaker 3: East Side. He owned one on one sixteen Matt Street
Speaker 3: that my uncle eventually took over, one on one sixty
Speaker 3: nine Hester. He owned another club which was called Alto
Speaker 3: Knights Social Club, which is recorded in history where all
Speaker 3: the you know, the who's who with the mafia hung
Speaker 3: out in there. And then he owned another grill down
Speaker 3: in that area. Another name that most people never heard
Speaker 3: of yet I heard from his grandson. The guy. His
Speaker 3: name is Lenny Azarello. He sent me pictures of Jimmy
Speaker 3: Alto he sent me for some reason. Jimmy aunt was
Speaker 3: also a high ranking Freemason, which I never knew Italians
Speaker 3: were involved in. I have all that documentation, but it
Speaker 3: was after the book was published that this guy, Lenny,
Speaker 3: by the way, is very highly educated. Okay, he's got
Speaker 3: a master's from NYU, he's got a Bachelor of Arts
Speaker 3: and all benin. He's an Emmy Award winning music composer.
Speaker 3: So he isn't just some you know, loser. He's a
Speaker 3: credible guy. Well, that was one of my uncle's main people.
Speaker 3: So in a nush and not to get off topic,
Speaker 3: my uncle PAULI wasn't the only person that maybe you know,
Speaker 3: these academics out there and historians never heard of. There
Speaker 3: were quite a few of them. Well, two of the
Speaker 3: main people that my uncle's mentors, if you will, was
Speaker 3: Jimmy Alto, Lucky Luciano and Maya Lansky that I know of,
Speaker 3: and they taught him different things. Alto and Luciana were
Speaker 3: full blooded Sicilians, just like my uncle Pauli. They kind
Speaker 3: of took him under his wing, and Mayor Lance he
Speaker 3: schooled him on how to control your temper. And had it.
Speaker 3: This is a business. This isn't about just breaking heads
Speaker 3: all the time. And I think that's why my uncle
Speaker 3: became a Consolieri advisor later on as he got older.
Speaker 3: But those were some of the names that were here
Speaker 3: involved in. But he never became a made man. He
Speaker 3: didn't have to. He was he was independent. He dealt
Speaker 3: with all five families, and his take was to be
Speaker 3: a made guy.
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Speaker 3: It means that you're owned by somebody. You're owned by
Speaker 3: one of the families, and you got a kick up
Speaker 3: to then. While he had enough power from Luciano and
Speaker 3: Alto and then the job that he later had as
Speaker 3: the liaison between Sicily and the United States where he
Speaker 3: didn't have to but those are some of the names
Speaker 3: that but he dealt with all five families. So the
Speaker 3: Carlo Gambino, he was very close with Carlo because again
Speaker 3: another fellow full blooded Socilian. He was close with Joe.
Speaker 3: He was close to Tommy Lukesey, very close to Vito Genovic,
Speaker 3: even though Vito was from Naples. So he was close
Speaker 3: with all the who's who, all the big names that
Speaker 3: people here. But his mentors were Jimmy Alto, Lucky Luciano
Speaker 3: and Maya Lanski.
Speaker 7: Right, yeah, well all the other big names as well.
Speaker 7: Now you say they ran some they ranked clubs. Was
Speaker 7: are they the kind of guys that at least you
Speaker 7: knew early on or at least the I guess the
Speaker 7: public facade that these people were businessmen running clubs. Is
Speaker 7: that kind of the racket that they had.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean they provided a service that everybody wanted.
Speaker 3: People wanted to gamble, people wanted to drink, and that's
Speaker 3: what they provided. But my uncle took over the club
Speaker 3: on one sixteen Mott Street, and I know of police,
Speaker 3: politicians and even famous people in the movie industry back then,
Speaker 3: and they would go in his club and Barry Opuso
Speaker 3: was one of them, and they just wanted a table,
Speaker 3: and they wanted to gamble, and they wanted to you know,
Speaker 3: hang out, smoke cigars, and you know, it was a
Speaker 3: business to these guys. The only difference was they didn't
Speaker 3: have a license to do it. So, yeah, it was illegal,
Speaker 3: but you know there wasn't It wasn't as bad as
Speaker 3: maybe as it's poor trade. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Now, tell us about what was the the public
Speaker 7: or at least in terms of the police and most
Speaker 7: people when you went through the records, was what were
Speaker 7: your uncles known for? What were the rackets that they
Speaker 7: were known for in terms of from the police point
Speaker 7: of view.
Speaker 3: Well, Sonny, the youngest brother, he was well known as
Speaker 3: a major drug dealer. That's what he did. He got
Speaker 3: caught with other who's who for organized crime, h trafficking heroin.
Speaker 3: That's what he was. He was trafficking and dealing heroin
Speaker 3: and he was dealing with you know some of the uh,
Speaker 3: the guys up in North They went and made American
Speaker 3: Gangster the movie out of that I forgot. Nicky Barnes
Speaker 3: is one of them, but he dealt with them. He
Speaker 3: was he was dealing, but he was also kind of
Speaker 3: a gopher for my uncle Paulie. My uncle also had
Speaker 3: clubs all over the city where he would he was
Speaker 3: the shylock. He would lend the money for the for
Speaker 3: the guys that wanted to gamble. So my uncle Sonny
Speaker 3: would go back and forth, he would deliver the money,
Speaker 3: he would pick it if he would pick it up.
Speaker 3: Because my uncle's you know, kind of laid low. What
Speaker 3: they knew about my uncle but wouldn't reveal. The records
Speaker 3: is that he traveled back and forth to Sicily and
Speaker 3: he would use different names going back and forth. Now,
Speaker 3: how he got that position was in the forties, Lucky
Speaker 3: Luciano had three consolieres, which was common back then. It
Speaker 3: was Fido Jennovese, Tony Bender and of course my uncle
Speaker 3: paul Lefty well when he was gonna when he was
Speaker 3: getting deported. Uh, there was my uncle Paulie was actually
Speaker 3: in line to take over that family. He didn't want
Speaker 3: to be bothered with it because of what happened to
Speaker 3: the prior bosses Marenzano, Maseria, then Luciano getting deported, so
Speaker 3: Luciano took him under his wing. They gave the family
Speaker 3: to Vito Genovese, which my uncle thought was a smart
Speaker 3: move because Vita was kind of a wild man figure
Speaker 3: that you take the family, god, you take the limelight me.
Speaker 3: While Vito was uh, you know, kind of in debt
Speaker 3: to him for letting him do that. Because Pauli was
Speaker 3: a full blooded Sicilian, he was in line to take
Speaker 3: over after Luciano or Vito was from Naples. Well, Pauli
Speaker 3: became what they later referred to as ill Messagero. He
Speaker 3: would go back and forth to Sicily. Initially he would
Speaker 3: go to Sicily and he would take messages from Luciano
Speaker 3: as well as money, okay, because he was because Luciano
Speaker 3: still had an interest in all five families. Then he
Speaker 3: started to get to know to Sicilian bosses after Luciano
Speaker 3: passed away. So basically he would go over there. He
Speaker 3: would get money, typically money that they used. It was.
Speaker 3: It was laundering, the narcotics money because Sicilians were big
Speaker 3: and drug trafficking. He would bring over the money. He
Speaker 3: would lend it to the five families for one point
Speaker 3: a week and they would open casis. They used it
Speaker 3: for the casinos in Cuba, Vegas and everything. So he
Speaker 3: was basically financing a lot of what all fire. It
Speaker 3: wasn't all the money didn't come from him, but a
Speaker 3: substantial amount of money came from him. Now in turn,
Speaker 3: he operated his club. He did what he wanted to do.
Speaker 3: But he was he was the money man for all
Speaker 3: five families, so he was protected by all five bosses
Speaker 3: he was protecting. He had the backing of the bosses
Speaker 3: in Sicily. So how he was described to me by
Speaker 3: all the time as he was a boss without a family,
Speaker 3: and it was known only by the highest ranking guys
Speaker 3: what his true position was. His club was his cover
Speaker 3: to the lower ranking guys. So that some of the police,
Speaker 3: you know, the FEDS that would talk to Georgia over
Speaker 3: the phone with tell him what they knew. I know
Speaker 3: that our criminal lawyer John Lake and also had some
Speaker 3: conversations with people actually right from the Department of Justice.
Speaker 3: But a lot of NYPD's never heard of him, never
Speaker 3: heard of him at all. I kind of laughed, I said,
Speaker 3: what do you mean you never heard of me? He
Speaker 3: grew up on Martin Hester in the middle of Little Italy.
Speaker 3: His entire life is not as he lived in a
Speaker 3: small town in upstate New York. How can you not
Speaker 3: I can understand if you didn't know what his true
Speaker 3: position is, but how can you not know who he is?
Speaker 3: He lived, he was born there, and he died there.
Speaker 3: He never left, So you know, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know any answer why they never heard of
Speaker 3: him before? I mean I can again, I can understand
Speaker 3: him saying eeah, we knew him, he was just this
Speaker 3: or that, but never heard of him. I can never
Speaker 3: hear of everybody in little little he heard of Paul
Speaker 3: left he now.
Speaker 7: Some of the famous crimes that are covered in this
Speaker 7: book include October thirty first, nineteen forty five. Tell us
Speaker 7: about what Paul? He left the Mastermind on October thirty first,
Speaker 7: nineteen forty five.
Speaker 3: Well, well, that's like, that's another interesting story. In October
Speaker 3: thirty first, nineteen forty five, he masterminded the largest narcotics
Speaker 3: tist and American history at the time. I've heard different
Speaker 3: variations of it where some people said that the government
Speaker 3: set him up. He never actually did it there, But
Speaker 3: what the article reports that there's a four or five
Speaker 3: page rite up in True Detective Magazine, which is a
Speaker 3: big magazine at the time, and of course the New
Speaker 3: York Times picked it up. But there were huge containers
Speaker 3: of morphine that was being sent over to the soldiers
Speaker 3: during World War Two, and Key I didn't know how
Speaker 3: he did it at first were when we were writing
Speaker 3: the book, but he obviously was. You know, the five
Speaker 3: page article and True Detective gets into details. But in
Speaker 3: a nutshell, they hijacked these morphine tablets and these containers
Speaker 3: on the docks ready to be shipped overseas. They put
Speaker 3: them on trucks, they took them and they put them
Speaker 3: in a in a garage, and they stored it in
Speaker 3: our warehouse and they built it. Okay. I've had some
Speaker 3: old timers that refuted that, saying he never would have
Speaker 3: done that, he had more money than he needed. But
Speaker 3: then I have others say, well, he was. It was
Speaker 3: suspected that he was involved heavily with World War two.
Speaker 3: He was. He helped Luciano in World War two, because
Speaker 3: Luciano didn't speak that well in English, but my uncle
Speaker 3: spoke no good English when an accent a little bit
Speaker 3: more than mine maybe, and flew in Sicilian. So he
Speaker 3: would have known about those containers being shipped over and
Speaker 3: what he did was, after they were shipped over, he
Speaker 3: alerted they wore departments that they could replace him immediately
Speaker 3: because he kind of felt bad about it. But it
Speaker 3: was a five hundred thousand dollars score in nineteen forty five,
Speaker 3: which I don't know what that amounts to today. And
Speaker 3: it was funny about that. Two things, number well several things. One,
Speaker 3: how come that's never been reported in any newspaper, any book,
Speaker 3: never so I could just disappeared. It wasn't like it
Speaker 3: was the back of a pharmacy. It was the largest
Speaker 3: narcotics heist in history at the time. So if I'm
Speaker 3: a good so what I say to some of these
Speaker 3: academics out there status is all beloney. If you're a
Speaker 3: good historian and reporter and you see this, you're not
Speaker 3: going to say to yourself, hmm, who was this Paul
Speaker 3: w universe of the guy that pulls off something like this,
Speaker 3: How did he get away with it? He was either
Speaker 3: already a heavy hitter himself or he worked for somebody
Speaker 3: who is But the fact that it just disappeared, so
Speaker 3: to speak, such a large heist till this day, I
Speaker 3: still don't know. But that's that's what he did to
Speaker 3: it was the largest narcotics in history at that time
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty five, five hundred thousand dollars. And that's
Speaker 3: what they found. That's what they that's what they suspected.
Speaker 3: I think it was more than that.
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, and for our audience as well that might
Speaker 7: not know this term that most of them probably do
Speaker 7: from the deal, sopran and everything else. But what does
Speaker 7: explain to our audience is briefly, what a consig is.
Speaker 3: Okay, A concoliarity is basically the Italian word for a
Speaker 3: counselor Okay, he's like an attorney for the family. Now,
Speaker 3: what people typically understand is that each family has its
Speaker 3: own concoliarity, advisor, counsel, whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 3: and he advises the boss on certain issues. Now, he
Speaker 3: gets voted in by a lot of family members, where
Speaker 3: an underboss is just you know, certain certain members get
Speaker 3: voted in. Certain just get it because they move up
Speaker 3: in the next spot. They move up automatically. Okay, if
Speaker 3: someone dies off or if they're really good earners, they
Speaker 3: move up. But typically they understand it's the consoliarity for
Speaker 3: each family. Like Robert Duval was the consolierity and the Godfather.
Speaker 3: He would always advise Marlon Brando. That's what he did.
Speaker 3: Right now, Each family as one designated and they're typically
Speaker 3: the most trusted member. My uncle was an advisor consolieri
Speaker 3: not only for all five, but other families throughout the country.
Speaker 3: Dealt with Chicago, he dealt with the Vegas bosss. And
Speaker 3: the reason being is because he was neutral. He wasn't
Speaker 3: a member of any one family, so they would use
Speaker 3: him and sit downs because he would be neutral because
Speaker 3: he had no allegiance to any particular family and they
Speaker 3: knew he was just a money guy, and that's what
Speaker 3: he did. So a constanieti is a counselor an advisor.
Speaker 3: It's like a lawyer for the family.
Speaker 7: Right now. Another again for people to get a lot
Speaker 7: of their information from the Sopranos and movies like Goodfellas,
Speaker 7: it's interesting too that how much accurate stuff is in
Speaker 7: those movies as well. People love those movies, Sopranos, the series,
Speaker 7: but there's a lot of stuff that's lifted right from
Speaker 7: true life. One of these stories is the the airport
Speaker 7: in the Good Fellows, the movie Goodfellas, and now in
Speaker 7: the book you talk about that thirty three years later,
Speaker 7: that your relative was involved in this heist five million
Speaker 7: dollars in cash and eight hundred and seventy five thousand
Speaker 7: dollars in jewels were stolen, and also that Paul Verrio
Speaker 7: was a business associate of PAULI Lefty. We'll talk about
Speaker 7: We'll talk a little bit about Jimmy Hoffe as well,
Speaker 7: but tell us to take us back to this heist
Speaker 7: that was portrayed in the movie Goodfellas.
Speaker 3: Paul Latanza heist, the you know he Basically, what I
Speaker 3: was told by family members is that when this was
Speaker 3: being put together that Paul Verio consulted with Paulie Lefty,
Speaker 3: my great uncle, on this heist, because who would know
Speaker 3: better a guy that got away with the largest one
Speaker 3: in history and they didn't get away with it, but
Speaker 3: he you hesly kept it from you know, a small
Speaker 3: little New York Times article as all they got out
Speaker 3: of it. And he planned it, and he would have
Speaker 3: got away with it. He was the last one to
Speaker 3: get caught, so they figured they'd consulted, and they consulted
Speaker 3: with him on a lot of things. He was he
Speaker 3: was supposedly a genius, is what I was told so
Speaker 3: Paul's ario from when I was still consulted with him
Speaker 3: on exactly how to do it and had to plan it.
Speaker 3: And my uncle had connections in Italy, so he knew
Speaker 3: all about when the you know, he had connections in
Speaker 3: Italy where the where the planes were coming from, so
Speaker 3: he consulted with him on it. Now, the interesting thing
Speaker 3: is I got to talk to Henry Hill before he
Speaker 3: passed away, and he didn't know anything about it. But
Speaker 3: he also admitted, which makes sense, that he wouldn't have
Speaker 3: known of somebody like that and that high in that
Speaker 3: higherarchy of of of organized crime, but someone like his,
Speaker 3: his boss, Paulisio, would have would have dealt with my uncle.
Speaker 3: So yeah, he knew. He consult again, all five families
Speaker 3: consulted him, and yeah, he was involved in it, and
Speaker 3: he I know he got some money out of it,
Speaker 3: because I don't want to name who, but some of
Speaker 3: the family members, my family members got items from that heist,
Speaker 3: and one was a Girod Parago watch, which is kind
Speaker 3: of like in the class of a Rolex. And we
Speaker 3: were just told that there's some stuff that fell off
Speaker 3: the truck at the airport. Who was some stuff. There's
Speaker 3: some small items, no big deal. But yeah, he consulted
Speaker 3: with him, and so he wasn't. But yet at this
Speaker 3: point he was operating completely under the RAIDAR. So only
Speaker 3: Paul Verio and some other heavy hitters would have known
Speaker 3: that he was even consulted. The rest of them are
Speaker 3: not going to know. He remained under the RAIDAR and
Speaker 3: he preferred it that way.
Speaker 7: Now one more, I apologize for this, but this is
Speaker 7: some of the stuff that really fascinates people, this connection
Speaker 7: to some of the legends and myths that surround the mafia,
Speaker 7: and one of those is the disappearance at Jimmy Hoffa. Again,
Speaker 7: Paul Verio and you're uncle PAULI Lefty are involved here.
Speaker 7: So also another name that came up too. It's interesting
Speaker 7: I interviewed Philip Carlow in one of my earlier, very
Speaker 7: early programs, and he had written a book about Richard Koklinsky,
Speaker 7: a hit man for the mob. So tell us about
Speaker 7: Richard Koklinsky and Paul Verio and Jimmy Hoffa.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll tell you how this little happened at g T.
Speaker 3: Harrold was disappoint interviewing my uncle Sonny on a regular basis,
Speaker 3: you would call him and he would interview him on
Speaker 3: a regular basis, and he recorded all of it. By
Speaker 3: the way. Well, one day he has my uncle Sonny
Speaker 3: down at his house visiting him in Jacksonville, and Sonny
Speaker 3: is talking to G. T. Harrold's son, Okay, Chris, and
Speaker 3: he starts telling him about different things, and she just
Speaker 3: knows you when you get with these old timers, they
Speaker 3: have so much information that they go in different directions
Speaker 3: and it's tough to keep him on one subject. While
Speaker 3: he starts talking about, Yeah, I know Paul Vario at
Speaker 3: this chop shop on Flatlands Avenue in Brooklyn, and I
Speaker 3: used to go visit him there. He had one on
Speaker 3: Fountain Avenue. I used to go visit him and we
Speaker 3: used to eat and all that. No, you know how
Speaker 3: any bodies they crushed in. They used to charge you
Speaker 3: about oney fifteen hundred per body. And he starts naming
Speaker 3: all these names, and in the middle of it he says,
Speaker 3: halfa So George's Gt. Harrold's in the other room. He
Speaker 3: comes slide down and says, what what is that name?
Speaker 3: He said, half Jimmy, Yeah, Jeremy Haff. He goes, so,
Speaker 3: what what's the big deal what's the big deal? I mean,
Speaker 3: I understand. I mean these guys are the ones that
Speaker 3: accused of taking out you know, our pre.
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Speaker 3: And John F. Kennedy to him, Haffa wasn't a big deal. Well,
Speaker 3: he asked him the story in detail. What happened, he says,
Speaker 3: Paul Verio called him, said, come on down, I got
Speaker 3: something to show you. He used to go down and
Speaker 3: visit Paul Verario on a regular basis because he said
Speaker 3: he was used to cook good and used to like
Speaker 3: the way he cooked, and he'd hang out with him. Well,
Speaker 3: he showed him it was a black car. He doesn't
Speaker 3: remember who was a Cadillac, a Lincoln or what. Opened
Speaker 3: up the back door and in the in the back
Speaker 3: of the black car was rolled up. Someone rolled up
Speaker 3: in an oriental type brook opens it up. There's halfa
Speaker 3: sitting there, white face, he remembers him with a with
Speaker 3: a bullet hole in his head. Rolled it back up.
Speaker 3: He says, he took it over to the he called it,
Speaker 3: you know, the crushing machine, picked it up, put it
Speaker 3: in a crusher and as it's crushing it was a
Speaker 3: little spicket in the ground. Paul Verrio had a hose
Speaker 3: there and he had his thumb on it. There was
Speaker 3: no kN I was only spraying the car down as
Speaker 3: it's crushing it, because fluids are coming out all over it. Well,
Speaker 3: he tells that story. He doesn't He's asked several times,
Speaker 3: so what George did g T. Harrold's I keep calling George.
Speaker 3: His name is George. He interviewed him several different times,
Speaker 3: five or six different occasions, and asked him the story.
Speaker 3: Sonny told the story of Verbatim every single time to
Speaker 3: a t. And remember, seventy eight years old at the time.
Speaker 3: He he doesn't know who killed him, doesn't know when
Speaker 3: he wound up in New York. He just knows he's
Speaker 3: the last place he saw him. Was there. Well, George
Speaker 3: does a little research and he finds out that some
Speaker 3: very credible people, starting with Bill Banano, the son of
Speaker 3: Joe Banano, was told by his father that Jimmy Hoffer
Speaker 3: in fact was crushed in a car and was in
Speaker 3: a bumper of some GM vehicle. And then I'm watching
Speaker 3: an interview on TV and I see Richard Koklinsky. They
Speaker 3: were interviewing him and they asked him what happened to half?
Speaker 3: And he left because I heard he was he was
Speaker 3: crushed in a car. Well, that makes sense on several levels,
Speaker 3: because you know, the Bananos worked that area of Brooklyn, Okay,
Speaker 3: Columbu more down by Avenue U. They worked at are
Speaker 3: Richard Koklinsky worked. He used to do hits for the
Speaker 3: Demeyo crew, and the DeMeo crew is in that same neighborhood.
Speaker 3: So it all makes sense. And then what made sense
Speaker 3: to me is about twenty years earlier, when I was
Speaker 3: living in Queens, New York, I was at a whole
Speaker 3: new level of mischief. We were stealing cars and we
Speaker 3: were smashing them up. We were playing smash up Derby.
Speaker 3: So my uncle Sonny grabs me one time. I'm probably
Speaker 3: twenty years old. He said, what the heck you're doing here? Kid?
Speaker 3: Vandalism is the absolute worst crime. You get nothing out
Speaker 3: of it. He goes, come with me. I got to
Speaker 3: take you some much if he takes me and my cousin.
Speaker 3: This is the late eighties, somewhere in Brooklyn. And he
Speaker 3: takes this to Brooklyn and there's these rows of these junkyards.
Speaker 3: It was right off for the Bell parket in Pennsylvania Avenue.
Speaker 3: So long story short, we go in, We pull up,
Speaker 3: it's about eleven o'clock at night, goes to the gate
Speaker 3: and some guys said, hey, Sonny, hell are yeah, how
Speaker 3: are you doing? Letting me in to the front of
Speaker 3: the front of the junk yard was all the beat
Speaker 3: up cars. As you went back, you saw the crushing machine.
Speaker 3: You saw these single white mobile home trailers are used
Speaker 3: at offices. And he took me all the way in
Speaker 3: the back. But they had this garage and you could
Speaker 3: see through the windows. You could see something going on
Speaker 3: in their lights and sparks. Anyway, it was a chop shop.
Speaker 3: They were cutting up cars back there. They actually gave
Speaker 3: you a list on a piece of paper, Granddam three
Speaker 3: hundred dollars, Corvette desk, blah blah blah. So long story show,
Speaker 3: we're leaving, we'll pull it away, and I says, uncle, Sonny,
Speaker 3: let's go, what's the deal there? That's Pauliverio's shop. I
Speaker 3: didn't know who Paul Verio was yet. I never heard
Speaker 3: of him because Goodfellas wasn't out yet. Din't even know
Speaker 3: who the heck it was. So he laughed, He goes
Speaker 3: and how many bodies of crushing? And that's where Hafer went.
Speaker 3: That's what they do with Haffer. They got rid of
Speaker 3: him in there. Me and my cousin looked at him.
Speaker 3: Your hair right, and he just laughed it off and
Speaker 3: never said another word. We never followed up with it.
Speaker 3: But the point being is twenty years earlier approximately, he
Speaker 3: told me the same that's as brief as he mentioned.
Speaker 3: But I was at that chop shop. And then he
Speaker 3: tells G. T. Harrold the same story. You know about
Speaker 3: twenty years later. That's what I told George, I says.
Speaker 3: I says, he's telling the truth, And like George says, well,
Speaker 3: if you just look through the book, some of the
Speaker 3: claims your uncle Sonny makes from the heist, him defending
Speaker 3: himself in court against it against the famous judge Irving
Speaker 3: Younger from his theater with de Niro, all these things
Speaker 3: that he claims, and he could later prove how cany
Speaker 3: en not believe a word? The guy says, he can
Speaker 3: prove everything just about what he's saying with documentation that
Speaker 3: we put in the book. So that's how that story went.
Speaker 3: So GT believed that immediately, and you know that's where
Speaker 3: we put it in the bookcase. There's other famous people
Speaker 3: that that back it up. On top of Sonny. Look,
Speaker 3: Sonny is when he did the interview in Manhattan, he
Speaker 3: had to picture at his interview. Now he says that
Speaker 3: his brother asked the mind of the largest narcotics heist
Speaker 3: in history at the time. But but but it was
Speaker 3: never been reported. He defended himself in court ocame want
Speaker 3: a habeas corpus against a famous prosecuting attorney who became
Speaker 3: a judge and later a professor. The same judge befriended
Speaker 3: him and married him later in his private chambers. Oh,
Speaker 3: by the way, when I became I became the big
Speaker 3: shut and off off Broadway and Janeiro did his first
Speaker 3: acting job there. Okay, he walks out the attorney doing
Speaker 3: the interviews, looks at me. He says, either we have
Speaker 3: the greatest story he never told. Well, your uncle's a
Speaker 3: little bit off his rocker. Well, of course, another day
Speaker 3: he comes in with all this documentation everything what he
Speaker 3: just said. He's got his marriage certificate in there, he's
Speaker 3: got all kinds of you've read the book, you've seen it.
Speaker 3: He could document all of it. So at this point
Speaker 3: the tens, you're going to believe everything this guy's saying.
Speaker 3: And that's where he got his credibility. That's why George,
Speaker 3: you know, G. T. Harrow believed hop when he said it,
Speaker 3: because you could back everything else up.
Speaker 7: They're in some years. You know, they're in some really
Speaker 7: legitimate entertainment too. When you're talking about off off Broadway
Speaker 7: and having the opportunity where de Niro uh did his
Speaker 7: first role where he played five different characters. So you
Speaker 7: know that the uh that lends a real power to
Speaker 7: people too, in in organized crime where people are owning
Speaker 7: major casinos and major entertainment clubs, and like you say,
Speaker 7: it's a different environment when prohibition was, when this whole
Speaker 7: thing started or in at least in the forties where
Speaker 7: with prohibition it really you weren't on the other side
Speaker 7: of the law. Everybody indulged in all of these things
Speaker 7: until it became legal.
Speaker 3: Right agreed and and and that was interesting different direction
Speaker 3: that he took in it. At a prison, he changed
Speaker 3: his name from Sunny Dela Universe to n Tony Bastiana
Speaker 3: in order to kind of disassociate himself from his brother
Speaker 3: and his drug dealing life. He opens up the theater
Speaker 3: and he opens up right in the heart of the
Speaker 3: all FOURF Broadway district at the time, run by Ellen
Speaker 3: Stewart Lomama, and within a short period of time he
Speaker 3: gets referred to as Lapapa, and he had all kinds
Speaker 3: of famous people in there again, including Robert de Niro,
Speaker 3: whe he did his his first ever acting job, and
Speaker 3: that's documented in de Niro's autobiography as well as on
Speaker 3: the internet in The Village Voice and some of those
Speaker 3: other things. So that was an amazing story in itself,
Speaker 3: and there was some other famous people there as well.
Speaker 3: But like he said, he never would have gotten that
Speaker 3: spot in the off Broadway district and he wouldn't have
Speaker 3: the money to open up the theater do any And
Speaker 3: if it wasn't for his brother Paulie, little did he
Speaker 3: know that De Niro, according to him, knew his brother
Speaker 3: Pauli from you know a nudity literally was a big shop.
Speaker 3: See the next body is no I've been told by
Speaker 3: by people that even Mont Scorsese he probably knows that
Speaker 3: paul Lefty was the big He was very influential an
Speaker 3: organized crime. But they don't know the specifics, like why
Speaker 3: why are the bosses coming up to him? Why is
Speaker 3: he getting treated this way? He looks like just a
Speaker 3: club owner. They didn't know the reason why he was
Speaker 3: so powerful. We didn't know the details either until you
Speaker 3: know the little small sizzle reel you saw from Tony Napoli.
Speaker 3: And that's not for me. If three or four hours
Speaker 3: of DVD with all kinds of details that he told us,
Speaker 3: he's the one who kind of connected the dots for
Speaker 3: us when some of the areas in the book were
Speaker 3: gray where we knew my uncle was a leader. But
Speaker 3: why why are the five families listening to him?
Speaker 7: Why?
Speaker 3: It just doesn't make sense. There's no such thing as
Speaker 3: a constantly added all five families? What's going on? And
Speaker 3: of course Tony Napple many old timers connected that I've
Speaker 3: sat down with quite a Tony was the only one
Speaker 3: when I enough guts to go on camera. So it
Speaker 3: gets really interesting. And I think both brothers are fascinating.
Speaker 3: And GT seems to think that the all four Broadway
Speaker 3: and he's got all kinds of information. That's a that's
Speaker 3: a separate book. That should be a separate book, because
Speaker 3: there's a lot more to it right now.
Speaker 7: What you talk about in the in the book too,
Speaker 7: is that to dispel the myths of that that have
Speaker 7: grown over the years about the mafia and fictional accounts
Speaker 7: and non fictional accounts. Is something about families and crews.
Speaker 7: Tell us to explain that and dispel the myth.
Speaker 3: Well, what my uncle Sonny told us is that they
Speaker 3: were never referred to as families. Back in the days
Speaker 3: there were always cruise there were there were sets of crews.
Speaker 3: He says. You know, actually the term family they got
Speaker 3: from it was a reporter and the newspaper that defined
Speaker 3: certain crewis families. Okay, because Italian related in families and
Speaker 3: that's how the families got their names. It wasn't from
Speaker 3: the Commission when they started five families that was that
Speaker 3: was created by a journalist who called these different crews.
Speaker 3: You know, one crew ran Brooklyn, one crew in Manhattan,
Speaker 3: Queen's Construction, different these series of crews. They they were
Speaker 3: maybe all under Carlo Gambino, for example, he handled all
Speaker 3: these crews. He had he had one Coppo running one crew,
Speaker 3: one Coppo another crew, one another crew. But back then
Speaker 3: he said, they were known as like that's the sixth
Speaker 3: Avenue crew, that's one hundred and nh Street crew, that's this,
Speaker 3: that's that, or like some of the famous names, the
Speaker 3: Purple Street Gang, the Mulberry Street Crew. See, if you
Speaker 3: think about it, you could look, you can document this.
Speaker 3: There was a group called the Mulberry Street Crew. Well
Speaker 3: a crew, they were just a crew of guys. And
Speaker 3: because of the journalists coming up with this, they became
Speaker 3: known as a family. And then of course the the
Speaker 3: organized crime adopted it as well. And you know always
Speaker 3: that crew, well he's with his family. But you so
Speaker 3: it's proof if you look back that they were these
Speaker 3: different crews, they were called cruise had they become family. Well,
Speaker 3: the Mulberry Street Crew was a part of what they
Speaker 3: referred to as the Genevese family. So that's what Sonny
Speaker 3: remembers as and that's his take. I don't know if
Speaker 3: that's necessarily true or not. It makes sense if you
Speaker 3: look at it, but he basically says, they never called
Speaker 3: them families. There were always crews. And that was his
Speaker 3: take on one. And I don't know exactly the time
Speaker 3: frame and when it changed from cruise to families, but
Speaker 3: if you look at some of them, they are you know,
Speaker 3: the you know Avenue you crew, That's what they were called.
Speaker 3: But then later they were associated with one big family.
Speaker 7: Now, apart from this that myth, we just covered, what
Speaker 7: are what was the biggest myth that you had had
Speaker 7: believed in it that was dispelled by virtue of this
Speaker 7: entire project being completed this book.
Speaker 3: Well, the biggest one was probably that the old timers
Speaker 3: were against drugs, and they and the old and you
Speaker 3: know you were they didn't did, they weren't involved in
Speaker 3: drugs and they were against drugs. And if you got caught,
Speaker 3: do you know, dealing drugs or doing you know, you'd
Speaker 3: be killed that kind of maloney boloney. The drugs way
Speaker 3: back when and there was major, major heroin coming in
Speaker 3: through the docks and my uncle negotiated with the help
Speaker 3: of not Albert Anastasia, but tough Tony Anastasia, to allow
Speaker 3: the Sicilian steamships to come in and give them a
Speaker 3: period of time to settle in before they were searched,
Speaker 3: and he had to go. He had to use Tony
Speaker 3: Anastasia to negotiate with the unions. And the heroin came
Speaker 3: in from fruit cans, olive oil cans. You heard of
Speaker 3: coppuccino machines. So whenever I would watch a special, now
Speaker 3: heard him say that the old timers were against drugs.
Speaker 3: You know, they organized Crankiet baloney. They were major in
Speaker 3: drug traffick, and they did heroin out of Sicily through
Speaker 3: the French connection, of course, the connection and all that,
Speaker 3: and then they had the cocaine coming from South America,
Speaker 3: so they weren't all at it. There was. To me,
Speaker 3: it's the biggest myth. And I can't believe some documentaries
Speaker 3: are out there that's still say that it's the biggest baloney.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I've seen that quite a few, quite a bit,
Speaker 7: and probably about the last ten or fifteen years it's
Speaker 7: been and it's almost repeated like it's uh, it's factual.
Speaker 7: So I was interested in that ray in that conclusion
Speaker 7: as well, especially because you're Paulie was doing the was
Speaker 7: it Pollie or Sonny? Pardon me that was did the morphine?
Speaker 3: Well, Paulie was. Sonny was dealing heroin. And Paulie was
Speaker 3: the one who was responsible for masterminding the big half
Speaker 3: a million dollars no, five hundred thousand dollars morphine heist
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty five. He was because he Sonny didn't
Speaker 3: have enough juice to do that. Sonny was only able
Speaker 3: to do his drug dealing whatever he was doing because
Speaker 3: of his brother. Paulie only poorly had the power to
Speaker 3: set something up on the docks like that and not
Speaker 3: have to check with anybody. He was already he was already, honest,
Speaker 3: she was already a high ranking guy that had the
Speaker 3: backing of all the heavyweights. So the Sonny wouldn't Sonny
Speaker 3: was just dealing drugs. He would get drugs. I don't
Speaker 3: even think he got it from his brother, and he
Speaker 3: would he would get it and he would cut it
Speaker 3: and he would deal it up in Midtown Manhattan and
Speaker 3: you know, Harlem and some of the other gangsters territories,
Speaker 3: and so.
Speaker 7: At that time into the forties as well, supplying morphine
Speaker 7: heroin basically the same basically, basically the same drug. They
Speaker 7: were also far removed from the street by dealing with
Speaker 7: heroin and morphine. Basically people of more means would be
Speaker 7: able to afford some of this, or at least they were,
Speaker 7: you know, separated from the street kind of level. Dealing
Speaker 7: in the small drug dealing.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, like Sonny for example, he was dealing directly
Speaker 3: with people and handing it off with the money. Paul,
Speaker 3: he never got involved with that. He was above that.
Speaker 3: He would just he was behind the trafficking. He was
Speaker 3: letting them bring it in and he was just getting
Speaker 3: the money for but he had nothing. He never put
Speaker 3: his hands on any of it to do anything like that.
Speaker 3: He was just setting up the trafficking end of it
Speaker 3: and other people would distribute it for him. He never
Speaker 3: touched anything like that. He was above that.
Speaker 7: No, tell us about irving younger, because this is quite
Speaker 7: the achievement based on his stature as a prosecutor and
Speaker 7: as evidence that he was elected judge a little bit later.
Speaker 7: Tell us about the self defense or parton me defending
Speaker 7: himself and irving a younger.
Speaker 3: Well, my uncle Sonny was arrested for counterfeiting money, or
Speaker 3: what they claimed to be counterfeiting money. And he had
Speaker 3: this apartment and he had I think five thousand dollars
Speaker 3: it was of all twenties. Well he was, I'm sure was.
Speaker 3: He absolutely was counterfeiting the money. And when he got arrested,
Speaker 3: the cops are running up the stairs and he tossed
Speaker 3: all of the money out onto the street, and of
Speaker 3: course people are running and they were grabbing it. Well,
Speaker 3: when he was tried, he defended himself in court against
Speaker 3: a prosecuting attorney at the time named Irving Younger. He
Speaker 3: didn't know who he was when he was doing the
Speaker 3: interviews for the stenographer and the attorney was interviewing him
Speaker 3: and he mentioned Irving Younger. He stopped the stenographer for me.
Speaker 3: He says, you knew Irving Younger. So so he says, yeah,
Speaker 3: I know me, you know, And the attorney knew who
Speaker 3: he was because apparently Irving Younger has a book called
Speaker 3: the Book of Evidence. And when you take the bar
Speaker 3: and you study to being attorned law school, it's a book.
Speaker 3: It's a mandatory book to read, called the Book of Evidence.
Speaker 3: But Sonny had no idea when he was doing the interviews.
Speaker 3: But anyway, he defends himself in court and he wins
Speaker 3: what he calls a habeas corpus because what he said
Speaker 3: to the judge, he said, hey, wait a minute, you're
Speaker 3: telling me exactly five thousand dollars was found that I
Speaker 3: was counterfeiting. He goes, that money wound up on the street. Okay,
Speaker 3: how can you're telling me that they found every single
Speaker 3: twenty dollar bill there and it amounted the five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: I claim No, So he won this habeas corpus. Well,
Speaker 3: the nerving younger approached him and commended him, said, wow,
Speaker 3: you did a great job there and whatnot. And he
Speaker 3: started meeting with him for lunch after that and started
Speaker 3: talking to him about gangsters, and Sonny kept telling him, no, no, no, this,
Speaker 3: I didn't do that. This is what happened. And he
Speaker 3: started to enlighten irving younger that you know what our
Speaker 3: government and are as crooked as we are. They're setting
Speaker 3: people up and it's not even true. He says, he
Speaker 3: knows this cases. What they drugs from one case, put
Speaker 3: it in one room, the next defendant comes in. It
Speaker 3: happened to be a gangster, and they'd bring that same
Speaker 3: stash in him, and he started telling him that. And
Speaker 3: at least he claims that he believes that he inspired
Speaker 3: Irving Younger to write the Book of Evidence in the
Speaker 3: first place, you know, to determine corrupt evidence from legitimate evidence.
Speaker 3: And he would meet with him several times after that. Well,
Speaker 3: then when he got out and he got into the theater,
Speaker 3: he invited Irving Younger to his wedding. He couldn't make
Speaker 3: it for him. By this time, Irving Younger went from
Speaker 3: a prosecuting attorney to a defense attorney to a judge. Okay,
Speaker 3: And he married him in his private chambers as a
Speaker 3: favorite to Sonny, to show his loyalty to him for
Speaker 3: everything that all the information at Sonny gave him to
Speaker 3: help him to get to that point. And obviously, as
Speaker 3: you know, we have a copy of the Mariage certificate
Speaker 3: scanned in the book with his signats and even and
Speaker 3: see and the more and the attorneys that read the book. Okay.
Speaker 3: In fact, there was total through a source that Flee
Speaker 3: Bailey saw it was blown away. Wanted to meet my uncle, Sonny.
Speaker 3: I want to meet this guy if he was that
Speaker 3: intimate with Irving Younger during the beginning years. And it's
Speaker 3: amazing how Sonny, I mean, he just see also in
Speaker 3: the book when he was in prison in Rikers Island,
Speaker 3: you know, Irving Younger responded to him, gave him his
Speaker 3: home and his work number. But this time he was
Speaker 3: already a professor at the University of Minnesota, and of
Speaker 3: course we had a blackout the numbers. But it's amazing
Speaker 3: when you think about it. How many gangsters, well known
Speaker 3: convicted drug dealers and gangsters do you think Irving Younger
Speaker 3: was friends with, probably just him? And why was he
Speaker 3: meeting with him? Why was he meeting with him and
Speaker 3: asking him? Because you know what, I think Irving Younger
Speaker 3: knew more about Sonny's brother than Sonny did. I think
Speaker 3: Irving Younger already knew that Fauldy was a high ranking
Speaker 3: member and that by meeting with Sonny he would get
Speaker 3: to ask him questions about the who's who with the mob,
Speaker 3: the Genovesis of the world, because Sonny was around them
Speaker 3: because of his brother, and he was getting information about
Speaker 3: guys just like that. In fact, Vito Genovese, Sunny claimed
Speaker 3: was set up. He was never into drugs, he was
Speaker 3: doing other things and he was one of the people
Speaker 3: that was set up and sent to prison, and he
Speaker 3: let Irving Younger know about that. So, yeah, it's kind
Speaker 3: of afmazing how he befriends somebody an icon like Irving Younger.
Speaker 7: Do you think Irving Younger was just curious as to
Speaker 7: what actually was going on rather than the position he
Speaker 7: believed he was in, and you know, I mean, he's
Speaker 7: a man of power and position and information but at
Speaker 7: the same time getting the real deal from somebody. Do
Speaker 7: you think that's really what it was.
Speaker 3: Well, that's what my uncle Sonny claims. He was a
Speaker 3: very compassionate guy, and he thought everyone deserved a fair trial,
Speaker 3: and he didn't like the idea that the government was
Speaker 3: abusing that power and putting these gangsters in jail. And
Speaker 3: I grant that they weren't choir boy, but they were
Speaker 3: using whatever they could to put them in jail, just because,
Speaker 3: for example, Vito Jenna Vice used to run a thing
Speaker 3: called the Gifa horse racing. Well, they couldn't catch him
Speaker 3: on that, okay, so but they wanted him in jail,
Speaker 3: so they used drugs that he was into, drugs to
Speaker 3: put him in jail in seatory he wasn't into. So
Speaker 3: who he was against is Hey, look, if you can't
Speaker 3: prosecute the guy for what he's really doing, don't come
Speaker 3: up with a bogus chargers to get him in jail.
Speaker 3: So he was talking to Sonny about that because he
Speaker 3: knew Sonny knew what these guys were really doing to
Speaker 3: earn their income. And I think, so, Sonny is you know,
Speaker 3: basically that's the reason why Irving Younger would meet with
Speaker 3: him and ask him these questions. And then of course
Speaker 3: he became a defense attorney, stopped working for the state,
Speaker 3: a judge, and wrote the Book of Evidence. I mean
Speaker 3: that that makes it all kind of makes sense to
Speaker 3: what Sonny was saying right now.
Speaker 7: How long did this book take from the beginning the
Speaker 7: tape sessions? How long the genesis of this book?
Speaker 3: It took about two and a half years to write,
Speaker 3: and obviously was told through the eyes of the family.
Speaker 3: So there's there's spec you know, there's there's some speculation
Speaker 3: why these things were happening. So it took over two years.
Speaker 3: And I have to tell you from this Tony Napoli interviews,
Speaker 3: which which is summing and we actually have a one
Speaker 3: hour documentary that's just about finished at an independent producer
Speaker 3: in Florida's Completing, which includes Tony Napoli, a retired deep
Speaker 3: undercover narcotics agent judge, and some other people that are
Speaker 3: being interviewed. And now, so that book took two and
Speaker 3: a half years, but we're starting to connect the dots.
Speaker 3: So there's other books that really need to follow this
Speaker 3: book as well, and I'm not sure in what a
Speaker 3: sequence to write them, because as big as my uncle was,
Speaker 3: and with all these different people that are coming out,
Speaker 3: he's very you know, there's so much more information. I
Speaker 3: don't know where to start. So that book is just
Speaker 3: the beginning. But it's good because it tells his childhood,
Speaker 3: it tells his family life. It now it tells about
Speaker 3: his brothers and sisters and maybe why he became who
Speaker 3: he became, and some of the benefits afforded to other
Speaker 3: family members because of this power. Yet we didn't know
Speaker 3: why we would go over there to buy your car,
Speaker 3: go here to get your jewels. We didn't know why.
Speaker 3: We just know Uncle Paul knows the people. So that
Speaker 3: book covers all of that, and that's the beginning that's
Speaker 3: really important. But it took two and a half years.
Speaker 3: We had to revise it recently in twenty twelve because
Speaker 3: of new information we had, we wanted to make sure
Speaker 3: it was more accurate, so we just revised it for
Speaker 3: twenty twelve. But it took two and a half years,
Speaker 3: and there's more books that are going to follow that
Speaker 3: which you're going to get more into detail on what
Speaker 3: he actually did and who we actually dealt with.
Speaker 7: Are there any disgruntled people that either didn't, you know,
Speaker 7: disagreed with some of the stuff in the in the book,
Speaker 7: or was there any he had any critics at all?
Speaker 3: Well, of course you have your critics. That's sadus is
Speaker 3: all boloney was. He could have been that powerful or
Speaker 3: I would have known about it and things like that.
Speaker 3: So you have those critics, typically historians, academics or a
Speaker 3: lot of bloggers out there where they just talk about
Speaker 3: organized crime. They read files and they believe everything they read,
Speaker 3: and I guess they don't wonder why half of these
Speaker 3: files are typically redacted. I mean, what's what aren't they
Speaker 3: allowing you to read? Okay, well it's all black and
Speaker 3: he sort it in Good Morning's Vietnam. They redacted all
Speaker 3: of it. So so you have those people that are
Speaker 3: challenging and they just don't grasp. But I have more
Speaker 3: than enough people that have come out and have their
Speaker 3: own stories about them. See, they're just they're to scruntled.
Speaker 3: And of course there's certain family members as well that
Speaker 3: don't believe it, and they just can't grasp the fact
Speaker 3: that you weren't supposed to know. I mean Roy Demeo's son.
Speaker 3: I believe it was Albert DeMeo. He didn't know his
Speaker 3: father was a serial killer who killed over one hundred people.
Speaker 3: He was a mafia hit man. He didn't know till
Speaker 3: he got I think he was in his forties. John
Speaker 3: Gotti Jr. Did an interview on sixteen Minutes where he
Speaker 3: said he was in military school and he finds out
Speaker 3: on TV in front of he's eighteen years old, in
Speaker 3: front of all these other people, John Gotti, the boss
Speaker 3: of a Gambino family, and all the guys just kind
Speaker 3: of tearing around and look at him. So they don't
Speaker 3: It's tough to tell someone very close to their father
Speaker 3: or whoever that might be, that yes he was, they
Speaker 3: just I would have known. So, Yeah, there are disgruntled
Speaker 3: that just not going to believe no matter what you're
Speaker 3: telling him, no matter who comes out and says what
Speaker 3: But that's just all part of it. I mean, that's
Speaker 3: just the way it is.
Speaker 7: You've had more validation than I'm not trying to point
Speaker 7: out say that you have a lot of criticism, but
Speaker 7: you've had more validation than would offset any kind of
Speaker 7: criticism whatsoever, haven't you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I'll say it this way. I've had more
Speaker 3: credible validation. I've had criticism, but from people that wouldn't
Speaker 3: have known anyway, people that just you know, read mafia
Speaker 3: books and have written on blogs, and you know, you
Speaker 3: have access to public records. If you have access to
Speaker 3: public records, all the information you can get to what
Speaker 3: you get out of public records less whatever is redacted.
Speaker 3: I've had the opportunity to sit down with dozens of
Speaker 3: old timers, one that I actually got on camera as
Speaker 3: you can see, Tony Napoli, and got the information right
Speaker 3: from them. And very few people, if any, at my
Speaker 3: age at forty four, have had that opportunity to sit
Speaker 3: and they talk to me. Because I know, I'm not
Speaker 3: going to name them unless they wanted me. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to say, hey, Joey Bats told me, as Frank Eaton,
Speaker 3: who knows told me that I don't have to. I
Speaker 3: put it in my head. I've got all this information
Speaker 3: shure from these different people. I don't have to name
Speaker 3: who's telling me what. So I could sit down with
Speaker 3: these old timers, They'll tell me what they know about
Speaker 3: my uncle. And I'm not going to reveal who told
Speaker 3: me because I already have enough credibility by some of
Speaker 3: the people I've sat down with that I was able
Speaker 3: to show on camera that I sat down with many
Speaker 3: of them. So my information comes from the guys that
Speaker 3: lived that, not the records that were you know, redacted
Speaker 3: and adjusted by people that don't want the truth to
Speaker 3: be known. And some critics don't get that, but you know, again,
Speaker 3: I got more credible validators and I do credible critics.
Speaker 7: Now for people that have been interested with the program
Speaker 7: tonight listening to the US talk about for members only
Speaker 7: the story of the Mob's Secret Judge, you have a
Speaker 7: fantastic website and this will keep people abreast of what's
Speaker 7: going on in the future when this documentary will come
Speaker 7: out and all the information about the book and everything else.
Speaker 7: Tell us about your website and any other information and
Speaker 7: that's coming out or not information, but any new things
Speaker 7: that are coming down the pipe very soon.
Speaker 3: Well you could, you could. You could find all the
Speaker 3: information on our website. It's Mafia Secret Judge dot com.
Speaker 3: We have several Facebook pages on the four members only
Speaker 3: and Paul Lefty you can put in. You could find
Speaker 3: that we have several groups and pages and a lot
Speaker 3: of supporters and all all of us. You could find
Speaker 3: that information there. And currently I'm living in the Los
Speaker 3: Angeles area where I'm from Southwest Florida, where I was
Speaker 3: living in New York, Florida, now Los Angeles because Magic
Speaker 3: is really starting to take off. We haven't signed any
Speaker 3: deals yet, but we're dealing internationally with Russia and China
Speaker 3: about publishing the book and documentary over there, and we're
Speaker 3: really starting to gain some momentum here. And I'm taking
Speaker 3: my time because I want to make the right deal.
Speaker 3: But you're going to see this is a feature film.
Speaker 3: You're going to see several books to follow, including probably
Speaker 3: my memoirs, my life growing up in that family, and
Speaker 3: how this you know, six year journey when we started
Speaker 3: the book in two thousand and six developed into this
Speaker 3: book in this project, my personal journey. So there's a
Speaker 3: lot to come. I mean, basically in a nutshell, Dan.
Speaker 3: I mean, we're exposing, if you want to use that word,
Speaker 3: one of the most powerful guys in organized crime history
Speaker 3: that's never been revealed before. I mean, he's been referred
Speaker 3: to as the CEO of the Mafia for forty years now.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of conspiracy theorists out there who believe
Speaker 3: that there's really a shadow government running the show and
Speaker 3: all that, which they could be right. But there are
Speaker 3: in that same group critics that believe this can't be possible. Well,
Speaker 3: of course there were guys behind the scenes running the show.
Speaker 3: I mean, how do you think they were so successful?
Speaker 3: So we're basically revealing al Capone for the first time.
Speaker 3: And I said that in front of an old timer,
Speaker 3: and he laughed, and he says, no, your uncle was
Speaker 3: much more powerful than al Capone. Alcohol was from Naples,
Speaker 3: he wasn't Sicilian. He was born in Brooklyn, and he
Speaker 3: wound up in Chicago because Luciano and the boy, oh
Speaker 3: look you're not going to be a boss here, hit
Speaker 3: the road, chased him to Chicago. Your uncle ran New
Speaker 3: York through to help at a Sicilian So how can you
Speaker 3: compare him? You're revealing a bigger guy than that and
Speaker 3: that's hard for me to grasp. But the validation all honestly,
Speaker 3: Tony Napoli is the one who started this when he
Speaker 3: came out and validated who my uncle was. That created
Speaker 3: other people to come out of the woodwork and back
Speaker 3: him up because he's such a credible guy. He really
Speaker 3: started this whole ball rolling. Before that, I was getting
Speaker 3: critics because I had family members, I had other people.
Speaker 3: So you have him and you have a judge. Then
Speaker 3: you have several other people on Facebook that are well
Speaker 3: known at Italian I'll tell you this story so clause
Speaker 3: of him being validated. Now that this story is being
Speaker 3: proven that it actually is true that this guy was
Speaker 3: able to do that, it's snowballing, like you couldn't believe this.
Speaker 3: This thing's happening daily that that's just so you follow
Speaker 3: us on Facebook and go check out the website and
Speaker 3: you'll see all the new updates that are happening on
Speaker 3: a regular basis.
Speaker 7: And I also want to do personally thank your brother
Speaker 7: James as well for connecting myself to you and enabling
Speaker 7: and helping with the arrangements for this interview. So I
Speaker 7: want to thank you very much for that too. Your brother.
Speaker 3: Sure, I'll let him know. Well.
Speaker 7: I want to thank you Jerry for coming on the program.
Speaker 7: I will have to have you back on. I'm sure
Speaker 7: that we will have to have you back on. That's
Speaker 7: all there is to it, and we've been and for
Speaker 7: those who been listening, it's for members only. The Mobs
Speaker 7: The Story of the Mob's Secret Judge with Jerry Verro.
Speaker 7: Thank you very much for coming on to the program
Speaker 7: and speaking about this very very fascinating subject in book.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Jared, Thank you Dan, thank you very much
Speaker 3: for having me.
Speaker 7: Okay, good night, good night.