Camp Gagnon - NYPD Cop Uncovers Satanic Cult & More Stories | Mike Codella

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

whats good people we have former NYPD cop Mike Codella in the tent to tell us about uncovering a secret satanic cult operating with NYC elites, about his scariest moments as an undercover cop, and the most challenging day he had on the force. Mikes stories are unbelievable and he's a good soul. WELCOME TO CAMP!Thanks to Morgan and Morgan ZippexBlue chew for supporting the greatest show everTIMECODES COMING

Who is the person that you stared face to face with that truly scared you the most? I've sat across a couple of bad guys that were really, really evil. But one in particular, he was involved with this satanic cult. They sacrificed the girl in Boris Hills Park. They impaled what he saw it. The oataps, he had a crushed chest cavity. It wasn't sharp, but it was so heavy. He said that we know we'd kill it with it.

Looking at him was like looking at the devil. This is Mike Kodella. He's a former NYPD detective who has some of the most unbelievable stories I've ever heard in my life. but they are absolutely true. Today he's going to tell us about the time he uncovered a satanic cult operating in New York City. It was a satanic cult.

They were influential people. One of the guys was related to one of the DAs. There were doctors involved and they were people with substantial memes. How he saved lives during September 11th. The first tower that went down, I was in that building. I went to the hospital, they cleaned me up, and then I went back to the building an hour or two later.

After the building collapse, you went back? We had to start digging people out. What it was like surviving gang violence as an undercover cop? There was a hit on you. $50,000 for me and 50 for my partner. I wasn't an easy target. And the time his friends beat up a mafia boss. Your boys that you grew up with all beat the f*** have a mafia associate.

And a mafia weak shot. Oh, so this is a serious issue. Everybody got retribution. One guy got a plane in his head. My other friend got shot in the legs with a sort of shotgun. Mike is genuinely an awesome dude. If you've ever talked to a retired cop, they have some of the best stories ever, and the NYPD guys have seen everything.

So, without further ado, enjoy Mike Codella. Welcome to camp. Mike Codella. I'm very excited for you to be here, man. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate you for schlepping all the way from Staten Island, from your trash pile, below Manhattan to be here, man. No problem.

This is going to be fun. You have a fascinating story. You've lived an absolutely remarkable life. Some highlights, some little details here and there so people know. 22 years, NYPD law enforcement, many of those years as a detective, many of those years as a plane-clothes officer, and then you went undercover for a long time, and then you became a sergeant of the detectives. Right.

You've lived quite a life. You've seen arguably the best and worst of humanity, specifically in New York City and a time where New York City was not particularly safe. And yeah, you've just had, you've had a very wild ago. Your grandfather's also connected to the mafia. Yep. Which you didn't realize until much later. So there's a lot of stuff to uncover.

But the thing that I'm most curious about to begin, who is the criminal or the person that you stared face to face with, looked him in the eye, that truly scared you the most, that shook you to your core that made you think, like, there's nothing in this person except pure evil. So I've sat across a couple of bad guys that were really, really evil and treacherous guys, but one in particular, I think, was probably not only intimidating, but also like the personification of evil. And because of what he was involved with,

it just exemplified what a bad guy he was. And so his name was John Lentini. His nickname was Tiny. He was a motorcycle gang guy, vice president of a motorcycle gang in Brooklyn. And he was involved with this satanic cult. And even when I went up to Attica to go speak to him, the correction officers warned me

that he was, you know, big guy, obviously, not obviously, but he turned out to be about 350 pounds, but the correction officers warned me that he was a dangerous guy in the facility. And they actually didn't even want me to go see him without them being with, you know, being with me in the room,

which is unusual because when you're interviewing a guy, you know, he's not going to be so forthcoming in front of CEOs. But they thought he was going to be, you know, there was an opportunity for him to get violent. And aside from his violent nature, he was just an evil, evil guy. Like, looking at him was like looking at the devil. Really?

Yeah. And what was your first contact with him? How did his story sort of unfold in your life? Yeah. So he was in Attica. Which is a prison. Yeah, Attica State Prison. And he was doing time for sodomizing his infant daughter.

him and his wife at the time. Like the most evil thing you could imagine. Unbelievable. Yeah, and the wife had taken pictures. And before I went up to see him, I got to look at his case folder and look at the pictures. So this is the kind of guy I'm dealing with. A guy who had sex with his infant daughter,

the wife also was involved, and he made her take pictures. And, you know, when you go up there or when you go to elicit information from an inmate or from anyone, you can't be confrontational. So basically I had to let him believe or insinuate that I thought it was okay, what he was doing. So otherwise, he's not going to open up to me about the other stuff.

And what was the subtext of why you were going to go speak with him? Yeah, so what happened was he was, so he called up, he called up my office, And he said he had information on this infamous missing person case from New York City. And the missing person case was a kid named Eton Pates, who was seven years old at the time walking to a bus, walking to school. And the mother, it was the first time, supposedly, the kid had ever walked to the bus stop by himself. And the mother was watching him.

This was down in the Soho area of Manhattan. The mother was watching from her second floor window as the kid was walking. to school and she had another, she had other children in the house. And at some point, one of the other kids diverted her attention and she turned from the window. Only for a couple of seconds, according to all accounts. When she turned back, the son, Eton, was gone. She assumed that he got on the bus and went to school. But it turned out that he never made it to school.

the teachers just thought he had to stay at home but obviously he didn't when he failed to come home from school that day she realized that he was missing so for that 15 seconds that she turned her head from the window her kid was abducted that is brutal yeah and that was a famous case that case was probably one of the most famous

not only missing person cases but one of the most investigated cases ever in New York City Yeah, I mean, in the middle of the day in New York City, to have a child go missing at any time in history is pretty, you know, shocking. It's going to rile the neighborhood up and people are going to be wanting answers. Yeah, they actually, that kid, Eton Pates, he actually became the first kid on the milk, you know, missing kids on milk containers. Oh, wow. Yeah.

And did they ever recover his body? Did they ever find him? No, they never recovered his body, but what happened was, so I'll backtrack to this guy. tiny. So he calls up and he said he had information on Eton Pates. And how long has that case been called for by the time he calls you? Well, he called probably like 96, 97. And Eton was missing from 1979.

May 25th, 1979. It's almost 20 years, or more than 20 years. Right. Wow. And it was cold for me, you know, obviously all those years. So you get a call. It's this sicko saying, hey, I've heard about this guy Eton Pade. I know some information

maybe you could help you know, I could help you out once you come down here. Right, because he was looking to get paroled. And if he gives us some information about this case that he could get

a little favorable sentence kind of thing? Yeah, he was hoping to get it out if he gave us information and so when I got his case folder, we looked it up, looked it over, and again,

we saw those pictures and we saw what he had done and who he was involved with criminally and he had a bunch of arrest other than that. like many criminals, he had a long rap sheet. So when we go to interview him and I'm sitting in front of him,

I've only seen pictures of him, but when he walks in, he was really, like I said, intimidating. He was like 350 pounds. He was really strange-looking. In other words, he was, like he was a mixture of different nationalities, and you couldn't even figure, like if you look at him,

you wouldn't know what nationalities. was and his eyes had this strange his eyes were a strange color like almost like a greenish greenish gray and just like a weird guy like a guy you wouldn't forget his facial wouldn't forget and of course he was a big guy he was

probably like 6-5-350 pounds and what does the room look like that you're sitting in a small room maybe I don't know 10 by 10 with a plastic table and plastic chair just bright white lights yeah no lights just a you know regular ceiling iridescent light

And you're sitting there in the chair waiting for him to come inside. Yeah. And when you're sitting there, what are you thinking? What's going through your head? How do you feel? You know, I'm trying to figure out if what he said on the phone, we verified some stuff already. So I know he's got some information. He may look to embellish, but the fact that he, you know, what I always say was one of the things that made me think that he was going to give me information that he was on the level was.

when he gave me Eton's name he screwed up the name he said it he incorrectly said Eton's name both first and last name and I thought to myself if this guy was lying to me just to get me up there he'd make sure he'd have the name correct

right right I mean otherwise I would say this guy I don't know what he told about he can't even say the kid's name right so the fact that he screwed up the name butchered the name gave me some indication that maybe this guy's on the level and like I said he said he knew

what happened to the kid and he later on told me how he thinks the kid was actually abducted but on the phone he says I can't tell you about the exact abduction he said but I could tell you what I saw happened to the kid later on so that again

kind of perked my interest because he didn't say that I saw I know he he got taken here and this. You know, he, he can't, so everybody said on the phone kind of made me believe he had some information for him. So now you're sitting in this room,

white lights, there's cops around you, like other other COs that are in the room. No, they didn't come in. I have one detective with me. So it's, well, you and one other detective. Yeah. And you're standing there. Yeah.

And you're sitting down in the chair and then all of a sudden you hear the door open. Yeah. And you see Tiny walk in. Right. And what does he look like? What does he dress like? He's like, he's in the,

the inmate clothes, khakis, I guess, like a greenish outfit. He was sloppy, sloppy dress, you know, sloppy face appearance. And just big, and nasty, like a big, like a big, tough, ugly biker. What do you look like? And so he sits down across from you. Right. And then what do you guys discuss? So basically, I told him I knew what he did, which was the solid.

me on this kid. I said, and, you know, everybody makes mistakes. And, you know, like, I tried to make believe it was not a big deal. You know, have to kind of win this guy over. Is that difficult for you to do? Yeah, man, that's difficult. You see, you have children yourself. Did you have kids at the time? No. So, oh, my, excuse me, I did. I have one kid at the time. A baby, presumably. Yeah, a baby. He was a baby, yeah. So you yourself have an infant. Yeah. And then you see the pictures of what this guy did to his own child. Right. Are you angry when you look at this guy? Yeah, you put that on the side, though.

Because, again, if he gets an indication that I'm just jerking around with him and I'm just trying to elicit information, he's going to close up. So, you know, I try to win him over and tell him, hey, we all make mistakes, whatever, you know, things like that happen. Wow.

Sometimes you can't control yourself. And he fell right into, you know, he believed it. He's like, yeah, you know, happens. And okay. And then we went on to go into his story. Did he talk about it? any of his crimes that he had committed that he was in there for,

like when you were talking about it? And, you know, obviously he said, yeah, you know what happens, whatever. But did he go into... Detail? Any other detail or, like, talk about it at all? He did. He wasn't... He wasn't too shy about it.

Was that, is that bizarre to you? That he would talk about such a vile crime, like, with a virtually a stranger? Is it bizarre? I guess it's bizarre to me, but if you'll put yourself... When you take yourself out of your own... mental say and you put yourself in his mental state it's not the most crazy thing in the world

you know like I think he felt like he was talking to a guy like himself similar to himself you know like a guy who's on the edge and not a legit guy not a good guy was he remorseful in any way? No no you kidding no not at all crazy not at all so you get

this sense from him and I mean without being too graphic I guess you know maybe we can edit it out if it's too wild but did he say anything to you about his crimes that he committed that, like you remember any of the words that he said? No, I don't remember the words. I mean, basically, he admitted what he did, you know.

It's all on record, so he knows. I mean, I told him, I saw what you did. I've gone through your case, you know, and he was fine with it, you know. You knew I would, obviously, and he was fine with it. And he had done other stuff. He'd done drug crimes. He had done robberies, strong-arm robberies.

I mean, those things seem pale in comparison. Compared to that, it was nonsense, right? Yeah. But, I mean, he was a gun guy. He was just a... Psycho. A lot of God. Yeah.

So then you now pivot and you say, okay, so what's going on with Adon? Is that his name? Adon. Eton. Sorry. Right. So now you go to him and say, hey, what's to deal with Eton? Yeah.

And then what does he say? So basically, the story he tells me is that he was a... He was a vice president of a motorcycle gang. And it was a 1% motorcycle gang. And I forgot who they were attached to the Mongols, the Hells Angels, but they were like attached to one of these major gangs. And somehow they got the contract, for lack of a better term, to secure these houses up in Yankees and Westchester, these mansions.

And in the mansions were, what was going on in the, mansions was the satanic uh parties satanic sex parties drugs were involved and tiny in his motorcycle gang were there to secure the perimeter in case any cops

were called and attempted to get into the party and break it up or lock people up or any other people were just going to try to crash the party so they're doing private security for a satanic cult in a mansion in New York City. Yeah, Yonk is a Westchester, both of them. I mean, that's, it sounds pretty unbelievable.

Like, when he told you this, were you like, yeah, like, what was your feeling when he's saying this to? Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I didn't find it that unusual. It's just not something that was out of the realm of what I think would be going on. Because he had given me a lot of information regarding, like he was very specific and although I had never really dealt with any kind of satanic stuff

but being doing narcotics for a lot of years and drugs and dealing with different nationalities you run into these nationalities that do this blessings on the drug carrier so they think they become invisible and they worship these entities to protect them. Like we'd bust in a house and you see like this altar and it'd be all of these spiritual things on it

and that's something I don't know who these spirits are that they're praying to but kind of cultish and kind of on the level of satanic stuff. So you've seen ritual rooms before when it comes to other things in your job, you know, drugs and stuff. So when he tells you, yeah, we were doing security at this mansion for a satanic cult and then how does this tie in with the great apartment story?

Right. So at some point he becomes friendly with the people that are paying him to secure the premise. Him and the president of the club. And he gets to run not only the run of the outside of the place where they're securing, but he gets to go in and out of the building,

out of the houses. Because they know him now. In fact, he becomes so friendly with them that he takes up with that cult and he becomes religious or whatever term you want to use. He becomes enamored with what's going on there. And like I said, what's going on there

is not only the satanic rituals or prayers or music is sex and drugs. And that's what was the allure for him, the drugs and the sex, right? And because of his persona of being a big, strong, tough guy and a protector, I guess people involved with the code were attracted to him too. But again, he runs the security and he runs in and out. So the way the kid ties up, excuse me, the way the kid ties up into this is that he at some point is in one of the houses. And he's watching this satanic ritual.

on this stage that they have built in the house. And they call out the kids by name, the little Eton kid. Now, they call him out, and at the time he didn't realize who the kid was, although he recognized the name, but he didn't know who it was. They call this little boy out. They do some kind of measuring with some kind of rope that they use for the ritual, and they're going to sacrifice him. They put him on an altar.

he doesn't see the actual sacrifice supposedly. He knows what's going to happen, but he didn't want to see it according to him, and he leaves, which again is right up the alley of, to me, rank some truth because a lot of bad guys, when they give a confession,

they'll put themselves right up to the scene of the crime, but take themselves away from the actual crime. So had he said, like, yeah, I was there, I saw the whole thing, he might not be thinking like, oh, I could be implicated in this, and that might ring as it might be a false confession, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I think he saw the whole thing, but I think in his head he's figuring, let me just say I saw up to that point. But that makes it almost more true to you.

That made it almost more true to you. That he says, you know, oh, I left. I didn't see that part. It's like, oh, you really saw some shit. Why else would you be protecting yourself? Right. Wow. And so he says that he leaves this satanic, you know, ritual.

There's no way he left it. He definitely, I mean, if this guy's going to. I mean, if he's doing that to his little kid, he's. He doesn't care about all the kids. Yeah, there's no way. No. So he basically sees this missing child to get ritually sacrificed in a mansion

for a satanic cult. Right. And then he tells you this and says, so I'm like, that's what happened. Right. What do you do with that information? All right. He was very hard to,

what happened is I wanted to verify, obviously, what happened. So he gives me names, all the people that he gives me are dead. Convenient. Yeah. convenient and he said

you know a lot of things he said then you know he was a really he was a bright guy because he said stuff back then that I had never heard of you know up until

recently he talked about the Bohemian Club or the Bohemian Grove Bohemian Grove he talked about the Bilderberg group and this is in the mid-1990s stuff I'd never heard about and there was no internet

and even if there was, he wouldn't have access to it in Attica, especially in the early days. So he was a well-read guy, but he, this was information. He said he had learned later on from being above with the cult. And similar to like what Epstein was doing, or supposedly doing was compromising people, have people compromise. So what was difficult for him,

was to give us names of people because everybody used a different name. Everybody used a fake name or a nickname. The names that he did give us when we tried to find them or looked them up, some of them had records for pedophile stuff, but they were dead. Others had no records but were gone,

couldn't find them or dead. So it was difficult. It wasn't easy. And he was hard to verify a lot of things he said. But at some point, what we did was, I said, you have to give me something. I can't get you out of jail. You have to give me something that we could verify.

So he gave me two cases that were really interesting. So one case was, so at this point, he's, you know, at the point of after the kid, he becomes pretty heavy involved with this cult. And he gives me a case that was, he says, okay, I'll give you something. we sacrificed a girl meaning him and his president of the bank, the president of the gang, the biker gang, him, the president

and a couple of the other bikers. They sacrificed a girl in Forest Hills Park, he says. And he gives me an approximate year and an approximate month. He said, you know, he didn't remember the exact year,

which I kind of get, and he didn't remember the month. Other than there was a lot of snow on the ground. So by the time he gave us this, the precincts have all changed their locations and things that changed. One precinct doesn't cover the same thing as it used to years ago. Everything's changed. And everything, of course, was on paper. There was no computer stuff.

So that was going to be a hard case to find. But a guy I knew in one police plaza, he was an old-time guy who was a civilian. He finds the... So let me backtrack. So what Tiny says is, so we sacrificed this girl, he said, he didn't know her name. He said, but she had a name of her son tattooed on her back. That he remembered. And girls with tattoos was kind of unusual back.

This was, so this happened in like the early 80s when this girl was supposedly sacrificed. He said, she had a tattoo of her son's name on her back. He said, and we used a sword from like the same. the middle ages. A sword? Yeah, they impelled it with a sword. And he said, what he said, it wasn't sharp. It had like a flattish

edge. He said, but it was so heavy. He said that we knew we'd kill her with it. She thought she was going to be like initiated or blessed when they did it, when they did this door. She willingly laid on this table in the park, you know, like those

cement tables that the people play checkies on and chess on. She willingly, lay there and she thought it was going to be like a bloodletting where they just were going to take some blood from her and do some kind of crazy thing and she thought they were going to bless her with that heavy sword but what they actually do is they they stab her with it but it's not like a stab because it's not really sharp but they crush her just impale her basically right so when this guy finds the case sure as hell he finds the case of a uh what he did was against he gets He went through all the winter months, and then he was able to find this case,

and sure as hell, there was snow on the ground on this particular date, and the girl has a tattoo on her back, just like he said, and the autopsy had a crushed chest cavity, just like he had said. And only one person was interviewed at the time, and the person interviewed was the president of the biker gang. and the interview basically said so-and-so says that he saw

this female victim in the park wandering around sorry about that so-and-so said he saw this female victim in the park the gunshot ringtop that's my ringtone I mean that's all right

it brings up some memories for you like oh nice it keeps me on my toes the good old days yeah yeah yeah yeah

yeah so basically. So they find her body. They find her body. It has a crushed chest cavity. The autopsy said that she had a crushed chest cavity, just like he had said it would. In a wound? Like some type of penetration.

Yeah, he's from a blunt object. Crush the chest. Just like he said a wood. So that panned out exactly to what he said. And they talked to the president of a biker guy. Yeah, the witness, the only witness, not witness to the homicide, but a witness to seeing her around the area was the president. biker gang. And what did he say? In the report, he just said that he had seen her

in the neighborhood. Not that he killed her, obviously. So there was never an arrest man on it. That's wild. And so this guy that you talked to, Tiny, said that was me. That was them. Him and the president and his other biker guys. Right. So you

verified that he did that? So we verified that that case existed. Did you ever ask him why did you sacrifice it was on? Yeah, I'm sure I did it. But, I mean, it was all you know, everything went back to the satanic. Like he was bought, you know, like heart and soul in that satanic crap. And did he ever say, like, what he got from this?

Like, what they did for him? Like, obviously, he's giving them, like, drugs. He's obviously a pedophile, so I'm sure he's getting access to. Well, that was a big deal. That was, you know, like, according to him, everybody, not about everybody, but a good percentage of the people involved but not just sex, but illegal sex. And bad stuff.

Wow. Like the children, non-consensual stuff. Right. Wow. Right. And he's doing this, I guess, so I guess he gets involved in this thing. He's a, he's a psycho, is wanting to use the group to get access to this illegal sexual activity. That's all, that was a majority of them.

Right. And so he's basically willing to do anything that the group asked him to do. Well, at some point he becomes enamored with the devil, aside from the other crap. So he's truly bought into... Yeah, that's what I meant by it. He's bought and sold into this devil's song. To the actual dogma, I guess, or like the literature of Satanism. Right.

And he knew his, you know, he was, like I said, he was very school. So he, so do you think that he believed that if he sacrificed this woman in the park, that he would be doing something for the devil or that he was doing a service for them? Exactly. Wow. I mean, that's insane. And where did they find the victim?

In Forest Hills Park. Where was she? Was she, did they dispose of her? Or was she just... They just slept there in the park in the snow. Whoa. I mean, that is crazy. And so he said there were two cases

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What we needed to do is we needed somebody else. We were looking to see if somebody else could verify his story. And at this point, most of his most of his biker guys

that were involved were dead. In fact, one of the guys who was a biker, he was a black guy. His name was, They called him Lucifer.

That was his nickname. And he actually drove a hearse. And he was a, he worked for a funeral home. And one of the, I knew a sergeant in the police apartment that was a, worked in a funeral home. He was a mortician. And his side job was working in a funeral home. And just, you know, out of curiosity, I said, every guy in Lucifer, he drives a hearse?

He knew him. He knew who he was. He hadn't seen him, but he knew who the guy was. And he knew that when he died, they had a big biker procession for him, for the guy Lucifer. But obviously, we couldn't talk to him at this point. He was gone already. But I'll tell you what a small world it is. So I used to work out in a gym in Ridgewood, which is where his biker gang had one of their major clubhouses was in Ridgewood.

Ridgewood is borderline Brooklyn, Queens. Right. And this is Lucifer's? No, Tiny. Got it. Tiny's gang was in Ridgewood. Yeah. Which was Lucifer's also.

Got it. Right. They were all in the same biker gang. And in the course of one of our conversations, I asked him something about guns. And he said he had bought a gun, the last gun or one of the guns he bought, he bought from a guy. Excuse me, I'll never forget. He said, I bought it from a guy named Harry, who was a big Puerto Rican guy. named Harry, big muscular guy.

The boarded's last gun from him. So I used to work out in the gym on St. Nicholas Avenue, which is in Ridgewood. And downstairs was a boxing gym, and upstairs was a weightlifting gym. And there was this Puerto Rican guy named Harry that I used to be friendly with.

And I said, it's such a small world, but it's, I doubt, it's almost impossible, right? I go, and I hadn't been in that gym for years because I had already moved out of the area, moved and but I spent a couple of days going back and forth

to the gym looking for Harry and I see him and I didn't see him in many years and he was like I said we knew each other and he gave me a big hello and I hugged me

and I said you don't get named Tiny and he says yeah I think so I said you ever sell him a gun and he knew I was a cop Harry did and he knew I was

I wasn't looking to get him in trouble and he said yeah I sold him a gun and he remembered the gun and he remembered so that just verified that tiny another thing he was telling me the truth

about who he got the gun from when he got the gun what kind of gun all of that was on the level but the other thing we verified with him was we were looking for somebody to who was involved with the security of the building and who might have seen some of the stuff that he was talking about

so he gives me information on one of his biker associates um this guy was He was a black guy and he was doing time already for, I think he was doing time for a shooting or possession of weapons. And he was a bad guy too, really bad dude.

So he was in jail already. So that guy had nothing to, he had no reason to give us any information. And I told him to that. I said, well, this guy's going to tell us to go, F off if we go to ask, talk to him, right? And he says, no, no, no, I'll tell you what you can use is leverage. So basically, before that guy,

went to jail. He was playing basketball in a park in Brooklyn. Just like a pickup game. And he got into dispute with one of the guys he was playing the game with. Now, this is a park full of people. He went to his car, pulled out his gun, came back and shot the guy in front of everybody.

Put the gun back in his car and drove away. The whole park knew it was him. But everyone was afraid of him. So nobody testified, so he got away with killing this basketball player. So Tiny said, this is what happened. Maybe you could use that.

So again, we found the case of the shooting and the DOA basketball player. And this is a cold case that never got closed. Right. Right. Wow. Nobody reported it. So Tiny's telling you this saying, hey, you want to talk to someone else that works security at this cult? Talk to this guy.

And in order to get him to talk, you got some dirt on him because he did a murder that he never got caught for. Right, exactly. And basically, you can go talk to him and be like, hey, tell us what you know. And if he tells you to F off, be like, hey, we got some shit on you? Exactly. So either you can tell us or we can put this extra charge on your thing and that's going to mess up your life in prison, add on years or maybe make his sentence worse or put him in a different prison altogether.

Exactly. So you go. Right. And get charged with the crime that he'd never been charged with. And so now you take that and you go to talk to the guy. I think he was in Sing Sing Sing. I take a folder and I put a telephone book in the folder. I put the case on it and I tell him this is your homicide from, I don't know,

years ago and he has all your witnesses against you. If you don't tell us about this stuff, this is going to come back. And what was he like? Talk to me about him. What did he look like? He was a tall, muscular, thin muscular guy. Mm-hmm. You know, black guy, tough guy, been in and out of jail his whole life. Intimidating? Yeah, being a mean guy, you know, he's a tiny friend. Wow. So you sit across from him and you say, hey, we got this case.

Got this case, bro. You're going to talk or not? You're going to tell us about, I don't care about this case. I care about this stuff, the satanic stuff. And what did he say? Well, eventually what he said was I'll write you a statement, which is what I wanted. And what does that mean exactly? Well, I gave a pad and pencil.

I said, write a statement about not only the homicide, right, the book that we have all this stuff on, and I'll get rid of that, and tell me what you know about the satanic stuff. And so if he writes a statement about the shooting in the park, you're able to just get rid of it. No, no. What we tried to do was arrest him for it. But I had a problem with the police, which I've spoken about in the past. The case, a lot of it was shik-hand, for lack of a better term,

which is a whole other story. So he writes down to the statement. He writes down a statement about that shooting. And then does he write a statement about the satanic stuff as well? I don't remember if we had him write that or he just told us what he knew. And what did he tell you? Basically what Tiny told us. Not about the kid.

He wasn't involved with that. He didn't see that. But he told us it was a satanic cult operating Marceza. How involved with the satanic stuff. He wasn't as involved as Tiny was. He just knew it existed. And he was doing security and he'd go in and have sex and drugs in there. And that was his participation.

Did him or Tiny ever say what the satanic cult, like, did day to day? Do they say what they wore? Did they ever say... They were legitimate people during the day. If that's what you mean. Yeah, and they just had regular jobs? Yeah, they had high... They were influential people.

What do you mean? Well, some of the people, one of the guys was related to one of the DAs, supposedly. Manhattan DA at the time. One of the younger guys that was involved. He was related to the district attorney of Manhattan? The past district attorney. Right.

Right. There were doctors involved. I mean, these were, and again, Tiny didn't know them by name, although the names he did give us when we rechecked them, they were people with substantial means. They were legitimate people.

So these are like wealthy, elite people in New York City. This is not like a little Joe Schmo, pedophile living under this bridge. This is, these are elite, powerful people in New York. Like they would have no connection to Tiny other than... And being a bouncer, basically. Right.

Wow. So now you get this information for a tiny You're able to go get this other bouncer that he knows This other security guy to talk You're able to verify a tiny story And basically you're able to say Okay both these stories are The story's factual

There was a satanic cult that's operating in Westchester Do you go back to tiny and ask if it's still operating? Like what do you do now with that information? Well now we want to We want well we tried to do was We tried to interview the see the cult the cult was a spin-off

of a cult called the process church of the final judgment the process church of the final judgment and that was the cult that Berkowitz supposedly David Berkowitz from Son of Sam

who did the Son of Sam shootings that was the church or the cult supposedly that he was involved with so the satanic cult is an offshoot of the son of Sam serial killer and he was also involved

in a different cult well the process church basically the same cult Right. Right. Wow. And that's, I mean, that's insane. Yeah. So just before we get the Son of Sand, because that's, I mean, that's pretty wild. You're now talking to a guy that was basically in the cult that he was also in. Right. Do you try to investigate this? Do you try to close the case of Eton? Like, what is the next steps? The next step was we had to bring it to the DA and see, you know, how far we come home with it, basically.

And no one was very, you know, it was still, Etan bodies wasn't, wasn't found at this point. It never was, actually. But at this point, absolutely wasn't found. And, you know, it was hard. We don't have a lot of substantial stuff to go. So at this point, who do we go after? For argument of sake, the people that killed the kid, we don't know who they were. Right?

Tiny's giving us names They're all dead For the most part all of them are dead His friend The guy in jail that we interviewed The black guy He's already in jail And the DA was they weren't

They weren't to be honest They weren't very interested Was Tiny able to tell you the location Of the mansion? He gave us locations Not exact locations And we did the best we could He gave us a location of

Where where some of the other bodies were buried regarding the cult and it was upstate New York and the guy whose name he gave us was an unusual last name a long Italian name and it was unusual but I had remembered it because I went to school

with somebody with the same last name so we found the guy we found the house upstate New York and the associate of Chinese had since been dead but the father was there living there an old guy and we told me we wanted to dig around

or look around in the yard and he let us and we didn't find anything just by ourselves but then we did the ground penetrating radar and we saw where there were possible dig sites but we couldn't get a warrant

they wouldn't let us get a warrant to dig really yeah are you confident that those ground detecting radar would have brought about something based off your experience? It's hard to say, you know. I mean, the old man could have been building, but he cut us all.

He wouldn't let us dig on our own without a warrant, and then we couldn't get a warrant. Wow. So he let you dig around? Look around, like, he let us look around. He wouldn't let us dig in the yard. I don't think he was involved, to be honest, the old man.

I just think one of two things. Maybe he didn't want his ground disturbed, or he could have maybe just been protecting his son's name. and they didn't want it, you know. Do you know anything about how the son died? No, I might have known. I don't remember, though, to be honest.

Wow. So now you find out from Tiny, he says, look, I know where this kid went missing. You're able to verify the story. You're able to find a place where apparently the bodies have been disposed of. How were you able to find the names of the people that were in the cult, like the doctors,

the people related to the DA? Like, how did you put those pieces together? Well, some of the names he gave us. Tani knew some names. Wow. Yeah. And did you ever go investigate those people? Yeah, like most of them were gone.

Dead or just off the grid. Most of them. Yeah. Were there any that were alive? There was a guy who was involved on the auto dealership. I always think it's in California. I always want to say it's in Florida, but I think it was actually in Long Island. It was a dealership in Long Island and my detectives and went out to speak to him and he lawy it up right away.

want to speak about it. And subsequently they went back maybe several months later or a year later to talk to him again. And they had sold the dealership. And according to the people that bought the dealership, they said they sold it shortly after my guys went to see him. And that had been in the family for many years. Did they say he sold it like in a rush? In a rush, yeah.

For a low price or something? Yeah, I don't know what the price was, but they got out of business. Wow, and then just kind of disappeared? Yeah. Really? So you were never able to find the guy again? No, like I said, they spoke to him the one time, but he lawy it up. And then just...

And then just disappeared. Wow. Which didn't matter anyway, because if he lawyered up the first time, he wasn't going to talk to us. Wow. Yeah. I mean, that is crazy. Yeah, it was crazy. So now what do you do with this information?

Like, you believe that there's a cult, you have this, you know, peripheral information. Do you pursue it more? Does this offer any leniency to Tiny? this psycho pedophile? Like what happens with the case? I mean, basically, it just became a cold case. We were Stonewall. We got, you know, we tried to interview Berkowitz,

see what his relationship was and what he knew, and the department wouldn't let us go speak to him. Wow. And why don't you think they let you speak to him? My personal opinion is because they believe, well, I believe they were more shooters than Berkowitz. I don't know how many, but I believe there are more shooters

and I think the department was satisfied with the one arrest and the shootings were stopped and the case is closed and I don't think it would be good publicity if 20 years later we find out there's four more shooters on the loose Wow but you weren't going to talk to him

about the shooting necessarily you were going to talk to him about the you know the satanic cult Yeah but really we wanted to you know It tied into his shootings And he had talked about the satanic cults in the pastime. Okay. So you believe that some of the people that were involved with the satanic cult, I guess one, do you believe that there was in fact a satanic cult? Do you believe Tiny's story?

Yeah. And so in that case, you believe that there's people that were involved in the satanic cult that ritually killed children that are still walking around New York City completely free. Yeah, I don't know how often the killing of the children is, to be honest. I mean, although I wouldn't, I don't put it past them. You kill one child. I mean, it's... Yeah, and again, maybe, you know, the whole, listen, Eton Pate's case has been closed subsequently with an arrest. There was a guy, for many years, they thought a guy named Hovesay Ramos killed him.

He was a convicted pedophile. He had, they had caught him in Pennsylvania, lowering kids into the Lappidavit, the school bus that he lived in. So he was a, and he was, his girlfriend was Eton Pates's, babysitter. So this guy, Jose Ramos. So for many years, he was the prime suspect. It's a pretty good lead?

Yeah, yeah, really good lead. And everyone thought he did it. Even Eton's father used to mail him a picture of Eton every Eton birthday and say to Ramos, where's my son? I wouldn't mail him a picture. That seems like that's probably what this guy wanted. Yeah, that's true. I wouldn't include a picture.

Yeah. Yeah. But whatever he did. But of course, Ramos never got back to. Ramos was in jail already. For a other case. Okay. Another kid case.

So he never got, you know, he never, and he had spoken to people in jail saying he had sex with a little boy the same day that Eton disappeared, a little blonde boy. So he implicated himself in a lot of respects. Jose Ramos did. Was he ever convicted for the disappearance of Eton? No. And he was, no, and he was never charged with it.

And he never confessed to it directly. No. Well, he spoke to other inmates, never about killing or Eton. But he had said that he brought a little boy up to his apartment that looked like Eton. He had sex with him. And then, strangely enough, he said something to the effect that he then he put him on a bus or train either to Westchester or Yonkers. I forget which one he said, Westchester, which ties into this other, you know, that's what the other stuff is, Westchester and Yonkers. Whoa.

Now, that could be a coincidence, right? I mean, he could have just said that. But in 2012, a guy whose first name escapes me, but his last name was Hernandez, he confessed to grab an Eton on the day that Eton disappeared and killing him. And putting him in a garbage can and supposedly, maybe not a garbage can, putting him in a box, I think, a cardboard box.

And he was subsequently arrested based on his confession and his first trial was a hung jury they couldn't convict him because he had mental he had he's a mental got all kinds of mental problems

he's been on medication and he's a confirmed mental deficient right so the first trial was a hung jury and then they tried him two years later or three years later

in like 2015 and they convicted him so Hernandez is doing time for the Eton Pates Wow. Now, my personal opinion is, I'm not saying the detectives didn't do a good job on it. Obviously, I didn't even know, I never got to look at the case. But my personal opinion is Tiny's story is not far-reaching.

It's very possible. Nandis might not be guilty and Tiny might be guilty. Wow. Tiny's people, Ella. That is wild. So what ended up happening with Tiny? It's such a strange world, man. It's such a, like I said before, it's a small world, right?

So he eventually finishes his time and he gets out. I didn't keep contact with him. After I realized they weren't going to do anything with him, I couldn't help. Not that I wasn't going to help him, but I couldn't get him out of jail. Nobody, you know, I couldn't run any further with the case, and it's just basically, so he eventually gets out. He gets out?

Yeah, he did his time for his, he did the, whatever years for the kid. This is insane. Well, he, he, so he was out probably by like 2000, probably by the year 2000 he was out. He got arrested probably in like 1984-85 for the daughter. I think his wife flipped on him,

and she said that she was forced to take pictures and to have sex with the kid. Wow. I believe the wife flipped on him. So years later, I'm in the, I'm in the, Secret Service Task Force

not doing protection we're just doing cases investigation cases and I get a call that one of the groups is doing a buy and they wanted

they needed another couple of guys to go up or either going undercover with this main guy and I said I was doing none I took a ride I was going to go up

You were doing a buy you mean Yeah they were I think they were buying counterfeit money Undercover Yeah yeah Right

and they had it on the cover they were going to send in so I get to the scene and I jump in the back of one of the agents' cars and I look at the guy next to me and it's tiny what? Yeah, he was going to go make an introduction

or help buy illegal money counterfeit money so what do you say when you get in the car next to the scariest criminal you've ever been with? I was And now he's a free man working as an informant.

Yeah. I was dumbfounded, to be honest. It took me a, you know, it took me a second to like, holy. So I look at him, he looks at me and he doesn't, like, acknowledge me. And I see, oh, you don't remember me? And then he looked at me, like, up and down.

And then he did. It dawned on him, who I was. And the case, that case fell apart. He never made an introduction and nothing. But he became a mother. Muslim in jail, according to him, because he had the Muslim cap on. I'm not sure what you call it.

But he became a Muslim, and he gave me his card. He said, I opened up this business, and the name of the business was, just another brother, B-R-U-T-H-A. He said, yeah, this is my new business, just another brother. So I took his card, and I kept it, and then 9-11 happened. And my office was actually in the World Trade Center. So not that that mattered for this, but after 9-11 and they realized that it was a terrorist attack, I called him up. And I said, hey, what's your involvement with the Muslim community? And he, you know, he's a bad guy.

So whenever the bad guys find bad guys, that's the bottom line, you know. It's like a drug addict. You take a drug addict and you put them in a place where there's no drugs, they're going to find another drug addict, right? And he said, well, I know, you know, I know some stuff that's going on. So I introduced him to FBI agent. What? And that was the end of my dealings with him.

He said I knew some stuff that was going on, like... I don't know, not specifically about this, but in general. But, like, terrorism? You know, whatever. He knew bad guys. Put it that way. What the heck. Because that's what he is.

He's a bad guy, and it'll always be. And you never found out anything. I didn't follow up. No, I, you know what? If he needed me or if he wasn't happy with the FBI guy, he would have got back to me. I mean, that is crazy. Yeah. And then what happens later on is he becomes an American, he somehow annoys himself an American Indian chief.

Tiny? Tiny does. And he. When was this? After you had set him up with you? Yeah, years later. Somebody sent me something. something about him because I had lost contact.

I had no dealings with him, but somebody sent me an article about him. So he marries a female and the state of Pennsylvania was trying to take the female's kid away. It was his kid. So he has a baby with a female, another female. The first wife is gone. The other wife that he had married with the yellow baby. And because of his record, the state of Pennsylvania is trying to take the baby away from the mother. Because he's living with this woman.

but also away from him. Yeah, away from the both of them. And she had previously had kids taken away because her first husband was a pedophile. What? So this girl is probably also a pedophile, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's just crazy world, right?

So then she meets this other pedophile named Tiny. Yeah. And then... They have a baby. And then the state comes in and goes, yeah, you can't have a baby. You guys are both pedophiles. Right.

So do they take it? They took the baby. And he was fighting to get the baby back. And now I know that he's dead. I don't know how he died, but I know he's dead. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, thank goodness, bro.

I thought this guy was going to be listening to this podcast. That is crazy. Crazy, right? And when did he die? Do you know? I'm not sure, but, like, not that long ago, maybe five, six, seven years ago. That is wild. Yeah.

Dude, well, that's an insane. So that's the scariest dude you ever met. That's probably one of the, yeah. I would say he's up there. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because it's 2024, and it's time to talk about something important. when you are seriously hurt, your injury could be worth millions. Yes, that's right.

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Now let's get back to the show after the short disclaimer. You had mentioned Berkowitz. Right. The son of Sam. Now, you didn't work on that case directly, but you went through the files and you knew some people that had worked on that case? Well, so when we got it was the reason I started to fool around with it was because of this. Because the satanic cult. Because of the connection.

So, and would you mind just explaining a little bit who Berkowitz is for people that don't know? Yeah, so David Berkowitz was, he was a serial killer here in New York City. And he started the killings in like 1976. and he did some before he so what he did was he would kill or shoot at mostly people in lover's lanes

guys and girls making out and lovers lanes and like I said it started in like 76 in the summer that's what I think Spike Lee's movie Summer of Sam I think it was cool

yeah yeah because it was in the summer of 76 and really he had the whole city up in arms and nervous because he was randomly shooting innocent people and girls most of the girls had long dark hair so now all these girls were cutting their hair they were dying their hair blonde

because he shot about I think he shot like 14 people and I think seven of them died or six of them died so and like I said he would not only shoot Love his lanes, he shot random girls on occasion.

And they all kind of had the same look. And he would leave notes, or he would leave notes at the scene, and he would also became, he would write letters to Jimmy Vreslin, who was a New York Daily News columnist, a well-known New York guy. And he would write these taunting letters, basically, trying to catch me kind of thing. And he would have, like, satanic words. in it or reference Satan and

the letters are kind of creepy and scary to be honest right so when he he eventually gets caught a year later I think July or August of 77 77 um the cops get a tit he one of his last killing he parked at a hydrogen when he did a shooting and he got a summons and the woman saw a car in front of the air in the area and she told the cops,

I don't know if there's anything to do with it, but there was a yellow, I think it was like a Volkswagen or something, and they had a summons in the window. It was parked at a hydrant. And they tracked that down to his car. And when they found the car, they looked in, they saw a gun in the car, and they waited and they pinched them when they came out.

Wow. So when he gets arrested in the summer of 77, he initially says that he was told to do these killings by his neighbor's dog. His neighbor's name was Sam Carr, and the dog was telling him to do the shootings. That's why he got the name of Sam, Sam Carr, the son.

That's what he initially told the cops. And so he was basically going under the guys of being mentally unstable. Yeah, oh, a dog told me to kill these. people. Right. Which sounds obviously delusional. Right. Delusion. But sometime after, he came forward and said, that's not really what happened. I was to take the blame. I did some of the shootings. I didn't do them all. I had accomplices. In fact, the last shooting, it was supposed to be, it was supposed to be a snuff film. There was supposed to be a Van Dash videotape in this. And he didn't give names at the time, but he at some point he was probably going to give names up.

And then, and he, after giving this information, he subsequently gets his jugular cut in jail. And he doesn't go out of the picture. He doesn't die, but he almost died, but it shook him,

shook him up enough not to talk anymore. Wow. So he never, so he doesn't talk about it. And he's since become like a born-again Christian. And, um, I've had some,

some, writing correspondence with him. Oh, really? Yeah, but he doesn't. He just basically, he basically admits to what he did

or not all of them, but he's very sorry for what he did is basically what he always says, which I don't doubt that he is. I mean, I believe after all these years he might be a born-again Christian, you know, he might have found Jesus, but in any respect, he's not,

he doesn't want to give up anybody for his own safety. according to him. And so he never was on the record to give a statement that there were other shooters. He had just mentioned it to people. I think he put it, I think in an interview, a television interview. Oh, really?

Yeah. He said, yeah, there were other people that were working with me. Yeah. And it was a part of the satanic cult. Right. Wow. And were there other, like, was it ever confirmed that he was in a satanic cult? Was he open about that?

Well, Tiny had said that before he got, you know, years earlier, he had run into Burkowitz, but he never talked to him, but he had seen him at, like, some of these functions. So tiny claims that he was there. Yeah. Was there any other verification that he was a part of the satanic cults? Verification from all the members? Yeah, like himself or, like, did Berkowitz ever write it in a letter? Like, he was kind of satanic language.

Yeah. Did he ever say, like, I really did these because Satan wanted me to? No, I think he said stuff, yeah. Oh, really? Like that kind of stuff he would say, yeah. But never, oh, I was a part of this cult on this street. Wow. And Berkowitz is still alive? Yeah.

And when did you talk to him? When did I write letters back and forth? The last one was probably like five years ago. It's relatively recent. Yeah. He's still in prison? Yes. Will he ever be released?

I don't think so. I don't even think he goes up for his parole hearings. Wow. I wonder if he would ever admit to it now. I don't know. I'd love to go see him. It's been so long. Would you ever try to like... Yeah, I would. follow up with him and be like, hey, it's been, you know, 50 years?

Yeah, absolutely, man. You're ready to give closure to this thing? Yeah. Wow. Where is he being held? I don't know the name. I knew the name. It's up in Suffolk County.

It's a jail up in Suffolk County, you know. Wow. Yeah. I mean, that is wild. So you don't think he acted alone. You're pretty... I don't think he acted alone. I don't know.

You know, I'm not a conspiracy guy, really. I don't know if it was a cult, if the cult actually existed to the thing. extent that tiny believes it did or says it did. And I don't know if Berkowitz was actually involved with a cult, but I do believe that he acted in concert with others. Wow. Now, do you think that there's cults that exist within New York City today? Satanicals?

Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't doubt it. Yeah. I mean, if one existed, you know, 20, 30-something years ago, why would it stop? Yeah, I mean, I don't doubt it, to be honest. Wow. Have you looked into it more? or like do you have any interest in trying to like uncover that that you know part of crime within the department

as far as berkowitz or just in general time just in general satanic cults no i mean i don't know what i mean it's it's not illegal to be part of a cult it's not illegal to be a cult so right you know if they're committing crimes and things like that i wonder if there's uh yeah i wonder if there's something you could do like i wonder if there's something that police could do or detectives could do to try to like uncover that or try to like infiltrate it. I mean, has there ever been any work to try to do that? I guess it's probably, it's probably not that serious of a thing in their eyes. I feel like it's probably kind of covert compared to, you know, drugs and gangs and things.

I mean, to be honest, it's a, the lack of the better term, it's a freedom of religion, right? Right. So unless they're actually committing a crime. Right. And you would have to get some tip off that they're committing crime. Right. Wow. That's interesting.

Is there any other information about the satanic cult that you think would be interesting? Well, you're familiar with Andre Rand at all? Andre Rand? You ever see the movie? There's a documentary called Cropsey. Have you ever heard of it? I've seen it. So he actually lived in the San Island, this guy, Andre Rand.

And he worked at Willowbrook. You're familiar with Willowbrook at all? Okay, so Willowbrook was the biggest, it was a mental institution, a state hospital mental institute. And it was the biggest one in the country at the time. And this is going back to the, I think it opened in the 50s up until the 80s. And so this is a time when people litten treat the mentally ill good, not like mentally challenged and even physically handicapped.

So I think it was only supposed to have like 4,000 people in it, but it had over 6,000. It was so overcrowded. It's in Staten Island, by the way. Now it's part of Staten Island College. took over the facility and changed it obviously. Is it still there? The facility's not there.

But the buildings, like the grounds. It was like a 350-acre ground. Wow. Yeah, it was huge. So this guy Andre Rand, he was a, he initially was a maintenance guy for the building. And somehow he's able to climb the ladder and become a physical therapist.

But that's what was going on there. Nobody qualified for anything. Hualdo Rivera did an expose on it. He was able to sneak in the counter. camera. I always get, I'm always surprised people aren't more familiar with Wilburne because I was a kid, but I remember clear as a, clear as day, like watching the TV was a big thing for a long time. So somebody, one of the workers got Geraldo Rivera to sneak in with a camera. And it was probably a huge camera because this was like in the, in the early 80s. I think like

80, maybe 7980, but in any event, he filmed the people, the, the, the patients on the floor in their own urine in their defecation, naked, banging their heads against the wall. They weren't, they were treated horribly like animals. And he made this bigger,

expose this, he exposed this, what was going on there. It was a big deal for many years and then they finally closed it in 1987, but it remained open. They changed it and supposedly they went under different guidelines, but who knows. But in any event, Garand worked there.

And he worked there for a few years, and he actually lived underground. There's like underground tunnels, and he was a homeless guy, basically. And he was a suspect for a bunch of kid kidnappings or abductions. Two women, two nurses were missing and abducted, and they attributed to him. He took a bus full of kids going from the YMCA. in St. Island, he put them on a yellow school bus, and he took them to Newark Airport. And he got there, and I think he didn't know what to do with them, and eventually somebody called the cops on him, and they locked them up, and he did some time for that.

But he was like a legitimate suspect for a lot of kids missing. In fact, that's where the name Cropsey came from. It was like the boogeyman of St. Allen, and people knew him, and everybody was afraid of him, and they knew his reputation. and he was mentally deranged. But I knew this woman from outside the job that she had a tough life and she was just, she had a tough life. And one day I run into her, and she knew I was a cop.

I'd run into it for a long time when I was a cop and ran into the Lower East Side quite often. And I was telling you, I'm working in a couple of missing person cases. And she asked me, She said, you be here at Holly Ann Hughes? And I'm like, no, I never heard of her. She said, oh, I was good friends with her mother. She was a little girl, and she went missing on St. Island.

I said, can you look into it? I was really good friends with her mother. And that was like in 1983 or 84 when Holly Ann disappeared. So I grabbed the case folder, and I look at it, and I see this guy ran. I make a long short, I find the last guy to see Holly Ann Yuz. and he saw Andre Rand that night also but he never put nobody ever put Rand and Holly Ann together they all seen them both that

Holly Ann Hughes went to the grocery store to get soap for her mother that particular night and she never came home the mother gave for a couple of dollars and buy a bar of soap and she went to the bodega and she never came home people seen Andre Rand in the neighborhood right there in front of the store but so when I get the guy And I...

Was Rand convicted at that time? Of other crimes. Related with children. Yeah. So this guy's a known pedophile, psychopath. Yes. And this girl goes missing and they see them both on the same night.

Yeah, but they could. And no one put it together. Well, not legally. Not. Nobody would say that he was with her. Got it. They just seen him in the area. Anyway, I interviewed this one guy

and he doesn't want to talk because he didn't want to be known as a rat. And I'm like, bro, you understand what you're rat? This isn't a rat. This isn't a drug deal. This isn't a stick-up. Two people in a gang. and you're selling out your partner.

This guy kidnapped this girl, abducted this little girl. He also, the guy you were talking to, had nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it. He's not like he was an accomplice. No, no, no, he was just a guy there. He was just a knock around guy that, you know,

a little bit down on his luck. But he says, all right, I did. I seen all he had used in his car. In any event, we get the ball rolling. We eventually get Andre Ran arrested. He had been, I think he had already been arrested for another little kid at this point. He was already in, but we get him charged with the Hollande News case after all these years.

Wow. But the reason I bring it up, because in the course of this case, we realized that he was involved with a satanic cult, too. What? Yeah. A completely different one? Well, we don't even know, but he had all the satanic, where he was staying, had all the satanic writings on the walls and all these. Like what? You saw it?

Yeah, he had like the pentagrams and just satanic stuff. He was another guy that, so a lot of people put, excuse me, a lot of people put the two together. like he was involved with the same cult Can you describe like what his house looked like or what any of the stuff looked like? I don't think I went to his house because I think he was homeless well he was already in jail too long to have a house. Got it. But we spoke to

one of a supposed girlfriend who kind of admitted that he was into stuff like that and we went to where he lived off on the grounds of the Willowbrook and they had like the inscription, the devil's stuff on the wall and So he made we

A lot of people assume that it was the same cult And he was doing it doing that Not only for his own Benefit before a cult benefit What the hell I mean this is crazy crazy right I went from being like yeah there's zero Cults in New York right

They just seems so crazy like crazy And this whole like satanic panic of the 90s Right My mom is all over this stuff Like she believes like there's satanic Colts everywhere. And I'm always like, I don't know, Mom, maybe. And now you're telling me that there's at least one, maybe two or three confirmed

satanic pedophile cults of elite people in New York. Well, the head of that... The guy who kind of created that cult, the process church, he actually lived in St. Island for a while up until recently. The guy that created it? The guy that created the cult. He was originally upon his width... Well, originally he was a disciple of Elvron Hubbard.

What? the guy that invented Scientology? Yeah, yeah. So this guy's name is Robert de Grimson. That's not his real name. That's his name that he chose. Robert de Grimson. Robert de Grimson.

And he was a disciple of O'Ron Hubbard. And he eventually hooks up with O'Ran Hubbard's girlfriend or wife. I'm not sure. I don't think anybody knows if that was his wife. In the UK, in England. And he steals the wife from, Elvon Hubbard and they branch off

with a lot of philosophies of Scientology but then they go on a different path and introduce to be honest I used to know a lot

of what they what their belief was the process church like they believe like there's four major entities Lucifer Satan

Jesus and I don't remember the last and there's good and bad and everyone but basically it's the satanic cult but

He, Robert de Grimson, him and the wife split up. In fact, she, I think she died too, but I think she died. He may not, he wasn't, as a very recent, he wasn't dead, Robert de Grimson. But she created that animal sanctuary in Texas. It's a really big animal sanctuary. In fact, the Obama's got their dog from her. De Grimson's wife? Yeah.

What? And it's strange that she's, they do a lot of animal sacrifices. to process church. And as strange as she... The wife of the leader owns an animal sanctuary. Yeah, really big one. Which the name always escapes me.

What the hell? The hell? The one in Texas. And that's where Obama supposedly got his... When he was in the White House, got his dog from. It's a weird place he had a dog from? It's a weird coincidence, I guess. Yeah, it's a weird coincidence.

Yeah. Bizar. And he lives in Staten Island. I went to see him years ago. What? Why? Why? Well, we're doing the case. When we were following up on the Berkowitz and the Aiton and all of this stuff, I went to visit him. Now, is the process church at this time? Is it open? Is it public? Like, do people know about it? Or is it still very covert and like still very secretive? Well, I mean, I'm sure it's all over the internet. Okay. Robert de Grimson's all over the internet. He's got like pages dedicated to him.

So at this time, when you go to speak with him, it's already like a public thing. This organization exists. And their claimant that they don't do any illegal activity. Yeah, I mean, I don't know who would say that they were part of it, but I mean, like I said, you Google it, I'm sure a thousand things come up on him and the church. He had a legit job because I went, I went through his garbage and I got his W-2s, and he worked for either like an electric company, like, you know, a company that either supplies electric to houses or gas to houses or I forgot which but he had a legit job a good job like a supervisor job but when I went to speak to him he wouldn't speak to me he just may believe like he

didn't understand what I was talking about and he basically slammed the door in my face oh really so you knocked on the door yeah and he opened it yeah and what did you say I said you Robert de Grimson I like to speak to you yes and he didn't even answer he just stood almost like fake a dementia. He just kind of looked off in the distance and then closed the door. Eventually close the door, yeah. Wow.

And what was the reason you wanted to talk to him? Was it regarding the cult? Yeah, I wanted to see if he, maybe, you know, maybe he's ready to talk. Wow. Did you talk to him as like, you know, necessary police work or were you, is this a personal thing that you were like,

let me just go see what this guy's doing and see if we can turn it into a case or something? Did I identify myself? Is that what you're asking? Yeah, and like, was the purpose of you going, like you were still on the force. Yeah, yeah, it was still a cop, yeah. Wow.

Yeah, I wanted to talk to him about this as a, you know, as a official case. And could you ever, like, get, like, a warrant or, like, a summons, like, legally, could you ever get a way to get him to talk? No. Bizarre. Yeah. This is all very strange. That guy's wife is an animal sanctuary. He's ex-wife.

Ex-wife, and then he was a descendant of Elron Hubbard and made this thing that Berkowitz was a part of that then spun off into this cult that killed Eton. I mean, this is... Possibly. Possibly. A wild web. And then Andre Rand isn't part of this, I guess, as well. Maybe. He ended up getting convicted of the disappearance of...

Wow. And then you were instrumental in putting that case together. Yeah, but by the time he was actually cuffed, I was transferred out of that squad. That must feel good to be like... Yeah. I want it out. They want... The lieutenant and the captain actually asked me to stay in and finish it, but I wanted it out.

And everything was basically being wrapped up. It was... Mm-hmm. You know, so I wasn't needed anymore. Wow. I mean, that is wild. There's Colts in New York City that are operating. And we have hopefully good police officers that are getting into it and figuring it out.

Yeah. And you had mentioned that your office was in the World Trade Center at the time of September 11th, 2001. Seven World Trade, it was. I was in Building Seven. Yeah. I was in the building when it went down, when the first building went down, actually. You were in Building Seven? No, I was in the first building that got the first town.

hour that went down, I was in that building when it went down. Can you talk to me about that day as a New York police officer? Yeah. What happened? You wake up that morning. What was it, Monday? It was a Tuesday, I think. Okay. You wake up that morning. I woke up that morning and every once in a while I take my kids to school. And I took my kids to school that day. And I used to make my own hours, basically.

I was a sergeant. I had a bunch of detectives under me. and I worked with the Secret Service doing cases, investigation. And so our office was in seven-wheel trade. So I was, I dropped up my kids. I was actually in the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. No, I was dropped over my kids, and I hear that one plane already hit the World Trade Center. But at that point, no one was aware of what was going on.

Most people thought it was like a pilot that got screwed up. A small Cessna, right, exactly. blew in the wind. Right. So I was driving to work. I'm in the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel at this point, and the second plane hit, and now people, the radio was saying basically that it's terrorists.

They believe it's terrorists. And now traffic in the battery tunnel is a hara, bumper-to-bumper. So I put my siren on, and I can't, nobody's moving out of my way. They just got nowhere to go. It's a tunnel. And it's going into Manhattan? Going into the city. Wow.

So a fire truck pulls A fire truck Is blasting their sirens And they're They're actually People actually moving for the big fire truck So I jump behind him with my siren With my, you know

My cherry on the car And I get out As soon as I get out of the tunnel It's still a horror So I just pull over into a hydrant And I run to the buildings Which isn't that far And so once you get through the tunnel

You can see the buildings. Yeah. And you just see smoke. Yeah. I don't remember for you to actually see the buildings will see smoke,

but I know where the buildings are. I've been working. I know Manhattan. And so you just park and just start running. And I run to the building. And what are you thinking?

Like what is going to your head at this moment? Well, what happens is before I get there, I call my wife in a bodegao because my cell phone isn't working. No cell phone went out

because the antennas were on the World Trade Center. So all cell phone service, well, most cell phone service went out. And mine went out. So I go into a bodega, and I tell the, I ask the guy that I ID myself, and I used the guy to use his phone.

So it gives me a hardline phone. I call my wife, and she's worried. I said, Vita, don't worry. I'm fine. I said, but I'm going to go to the building and help people come out. I go into the building. I park the car, and I run into the building. I have to ID myself because I'm in soft civilian clothes,

and they had it, you know, blocked off people who get in the building. So I ID myself, I run into the building, one of the towers. And I start to go up the steps in the building, and people are coming out. So now I'm kind of like impeding their traffic of coming out. So I was useless going that way. So I went into another staircase, and I opened the door,

because the door wasn't open. I opened the door, and now people start coming out this exit, the door that I'm opening. This is in the building, in the lobby, and now people are coming out. and then all of a sudden the building shook. Like the whole, it felt like an earthquake, actually. The whole building shakes, and I see the firemen start running out.

So this is the time to get out. So I stopped running out with them. And next thing I know, I'm on the ground. It's really dark. I mean, I can't even, I tell people, I can't even, you can't even explain. First of all, everything goes silent because when the building, the building collapsed, the air became so thick

you can't hear anything through that thickness of all the of all the building. The dust, just particles, it's just concrete turned into vapor. Exactly. All right, and it dark, really, really dark.

And I end up on the ground from the impact, I guess I got thrown. To this day, I don't know where I was. Yeah, you know, in this mess. So I get thrown, and I always tell the guys my students you know you hear about people seeing their life

past before their eyes it's true really so my life passed before my eyes really yeah what did you see I see my whole life go quick right being right by my eyes I'm on the ground I thought for sure I was going to punch out and then I really thought about you know I really

says look I'm not this is not I hate to sound arrogant but I They said, of all this stuff I've done in my career, this isn't going to be the thing that takes me out. And somebody put a flashlight of a big, it happened to be a guy from the Austin Explosion Squad, who I happened to know. I didn't know what was him at the time, but I later found out. He was in the Austin Explosion team, and he had this big light that he always carried in his car, and he just flashed it up in the air.

And he said, if anybody could see the light, walk towards the light. And I saw it, I got myself up. and I stumbled over to me and grabbed me. He recognized me, but I was kind of out of it. And he brought me in the building. And what happened was there was a guy throwing up in the building. And that usually wouldn't affect me, but it made me throw up. And to this day, I'm sure that's what saved my life

because when he threw up, I started throwing up. And I threw up all this black stuff that I had swallowed, obviously. I threw up it was horrible but I'm sure to this day that's what saved my life I threw up all of this stuff and then I had to go to the hospital

because I couldn't see my eyes were all from the broken glass and stuff that came out I was screwed up I went to the hospital they cleaned me up and then I went back

to the building an hour or two later and after the building collapse you went back yeah after they cleaned me up because we had to start digging you know they started digging

people out you know with the buckets and what do you think when you're walking? back to the building after seeing it collapse on you and you almost die? Actually, I'm thinking there were people under the bubble. Wow. Obviously, they did find a lot of people later on.

Mostly dead people. But the worst part of the story is I never thought to call my wife back. And she was watching the TV when the building went down. You asshole. Honestly, I never thought, I just felt that she would have felt that I was okay. Not realizing she would know the bill. I'm in the bill. I told I'm going in the building.

And then she sees it collapse. And then she doesn't hear from you. Right. And then my neighbors were in my house. My mother, my sister. They thought I was gone. Obviously, they thought I went D-O-A. And then I walked by the time I came home late that night.

Not too late, but maybe, I don't know. 9, 10 o'clock, 8 o'clock. You show up at the house? Yeah. And so what happens when you walk in the door? They were, you know, crazy. Everybody went nuts. What is your wife's reaction?

Crazy, man. They were all upset, obviously. It was my fault. I really screwed that up. It was horrible. So you spent all day digging people out of the rubble of the World Trade Center after you almost died because the thing collapsed on you from a terrorist attack. And then you finally make it home, totally exhausted, saving lives, traumatized, shell-shocked.

And you opened the front door and your wife goes, why didn't you call me? That's what happened? That is insane. It was crazy. Yeah, it was stupid. Yep. Yeah, terrible. But, you know, I actually did try to call, but all the phones were out.

All the cell phones were out. I'm sure she accepted that excuse. I'm sure she was like, oh, honey, I totally understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no worry. That's what she said, right? Yeah, nobody was bad at me. That is unbelievable. I would be so mad.

I come home after like two hours of a podcast, and my wife's like, why didn't you tell me you're doing a show? And I'm like, hey, I'm busy, okay? I'm a professional, all right? I got stuff to do. That's crazy. You just accept. Didn't it? I asked you this question before.

You have such a funny answer. What's harder? 22 years in the police force or 32 years being married? No question. Being married is tough. It's tough. It's not easy. I'm lucky.

I got a really, really good wife. Well, I mean, that's the only way to make it. I mean, if you're 32 years, she's probably got to be pretty awesome. I can imagine. Yeah, she's good. She's going to put up with you not calling after you almost die in the World Trade Center. Yeah. That's crazy.

So then where are you at the time that building 7 where your actual offices collapses? Well, it burned for a long time. I don't know if you remember. The building burned for a long time. So you weren't in the building, obviously. No, no, no, no. That whole building was evacuated. Yeah, that building was evacuated.

Because that building wasn't in danger, really, you know, of any immediate danger. Right. So it was evacuated. Then eventually it burnt out. And they say that, you know, I'm sure you know, the conspiracies at that, you know, that had a lot of, I think CIA had an office in there. Secret service had their offices there Right, your office was in there Yeah, we were with the secrets

So my office was in there, yeah And what did you think of the collapse? Did that make sense to you? Or are you like, hmm, this is bizarre? You know, to be honest, I never really gave the conspiracy stuff A thought with this, with the building one and two and seven

But I don't know, so much But so much of what the people say Makes sense about why it shouldn't go down I'm kind of up in here You've seen the video of the thing going down at like free fall It collapses really fast Yeah

But at the same time I was also on fire for a while And getting debris From these two giant skyscrapers That just fell on it Right So I'm not an engineer Me neither

That's really wild Yeah And so you go home that night Are you pretty traumatized Do you feel like shocked Do you have PTSD from that What do you feel like your mental state is At the time you mean?

Yeah No really bro I was tired, and we had to get back. I had to be back at, we were going to get together my unit. I was going to get together next morning at 4 o'clock and work on the pile. Wow. And how long did you...

I went to shower and went to sleep and got up. How long did you work on the pile for? We were only there a couple of days, and they took my whole unit, my whole division, and they put us in the morgue to deal with the incoming bodies. And that's where we said. And honestly, that was a break because... even though we're dealing with all the dead people

and the dead cops and firemen, we didn't have to deal with that inhaling the poison every day. Which is, I think, we're killed a lot of these. Yeah, unfortunately. That's wild. Yeah. And now, I mean, as all this time has passed, you know, over 20 years, do you still feel like you have residual trauma from that day?

I don't know, to be honest. I really, I don't know. It's a good New York cop answer. I don't know. I'm super tough or anything. I just don't know. Yeah. I mean, do you ever dreams about it, nightmares?

I mean, you know, it was like going into the building, running into the building, you could actually see people jumping off the building because there was a fire up there. And, you know, when we were in the morgue, we saw. I mean, does that, that stays in your mind. You see people jumping out of a building hitting the ground. And even in the morgue, there was a, we saw the woman that had the tire marks from the plane, brought him into the morgue. She was a civilian walking over.

running and one of the tires hit her and she had like the tire you know landing tire on her you know yeah and you know for months we were there for months when we did all i do not only me other the other detective and bosses what we did was deal with the uh the dead bodies you know wow i mean that's remarkable did you ever go to the memorial i went before it was finished i haven't been back did that bring up emotions for you yeah it was that um yeah it was that Yeah, it wasn't the greatest. I can imagine it's a probably pretty traumatizing thing. You can walk back through there and to feel it and see the videos and that kind of stuff.

I like to go back now that it's done. I just haven't, but I will. I mean, that is wild. What an insane, insane life working on this forest. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because we've got to talk about your amazing dick game. Yes, you. You right now, listen to my voice, my deep soothing voice.

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It can always be better. Let's say you're in the 1% you're about to be in the 0.01% with Bluetooth. Let's get back to the show. Who was the kingpin that you ever heard of or saw or dealt with that was making the most money? Well, the most money was made by heroin guys. Heroin guys used to laugh at the cocaine guys.

Really? Seriously. How much money were the heroin guys making? Like I tell you that one guy, the main guy, It was making $101,000 a day. $101,000 a day. And he testified to that. And he, you know, because he had,

he had an accountant that was a junkie that he took care of and cleaned up. But he was still a drug addict. And he was an accountant, and he used to do his books. So he knew every ounce of dope, every $10 bag of dope that went in and went out. Wow. So he had it. It wasn't like.

Guestimation. He knew. This guy had the records of what he was selling. Wow. And who was this guy? Do you remember? Yeah, his name,

well, yeah, his name is Danny from Alphabet City. Danny from Alphabet City. Yeah, he was an ex-marine. He was, uh, he went in really young. I think his parents signed the papers from him or somehow he got into the young age.

He got out. He was a big guy, man. He was a killer. I'm like a top guy in the city. One of the main guys in the city. I mean, yeah, he's making millions of dollars. millions of dollars a year just pushing heroin

yeah and they and at some point he even shook down Colombian like some Colombian opened up uh was doing coke moving a lot of coke in Queens and they met

in a club in I don't know if you have familiar a hundred years ago it was a club called 1018 it was on 10th Avenue in 18th street it was like like a young guy's studio 54 It was a nightclub and a lot of bad guys went there. It's a crazy story.

It's actually, it's in my book, but it's a crazy story. But the Columbia went there with a couple of guys with guns, thinking he was going to scare Danny into layoff. And Danny came in with a whole club of guys, like literally 100 guys, 100. Like his whole people he didn't even know he would pay just coming with us. with your guns. When the Colombians tried to pull out on Danny and scare him, he gave the nod.

All his guys turned on this guy with their guns. 100 guys in the club turned on the five Colombians. Wow. So basically, you do what I say. That's wild. That's the kind of guy Danny is. Yeah, the tough guy. And how long was he working for it, you know?

How long was he moving stuff? Yeah. He was a long time. I mean, a long time. He was a kid. They were all, you know, guys in the low east I were young, you know? I mean, it was some older guys,

but they didn't last. A lot of them got killed and went away. So they were young, but it was different. It was different than, the heroin was different than the Coke. It just made one month, you know, per ounce you made a lot more money. Per kilo, they used to sell it in units,

which I think is 90 grams, but per per unit of heroin, he made so much more than Coke. And it was, you know, they used to look down on the Coke guys, really. Did you ever talk to this guy, Dan? Did you ever... I've never...

I spoke it to his people. I locked the... You know, I... See, he basically ran the whole alphabet city. That's the bottom line. So we took me and my partner. We took off his underlings

constantly. And that's how we got in about with the DEA. The DEA had done a case on on Lower East Side guys. And they didn't have enough to lock them up. They arrested them and the U.S. attorney said,

no good. You know, it was the low east side Puerto Rican guys were buying heroin off of Chinese. Sorry, man. They were buying heroin off of Chinese. And they didn't have enough to lock them up. So they came, everybody knew that me and my partner knew everybody in Alphabet City. We were there for many years in plain clothes. We locked up everybody.

We had 100 informants. So they came to us and they asked, you know these guys? They set up some pictures. I mean, like, yeah, this is him, him. We knew them all. by name, by nickname, where they live, what dope they moved. Because people stamped their own dope with their own name. We knew everything.

So they wanted to know if we'd work with them. So they actually absorbed us into the DEA, me and my partner, Jeff. And we worked with them a couple years. Quite a few years, well, three, four years. But this case lasted the year, a low-easide case. Wow. And we were beating them up so bad that we were knocking on with Danny's people. He was losing money.

You know, like he'd give a couple thousand dollars worth. to his people to sell or $50,000 worth of heroin to sell, and we'd end up seasoned and confiscating, locking his guys up. So they actually put a contract, they made him and my partner. And the way we found out about it was, there was a bank robbery up in Midtown, and the detectives had an informant

that knew about the bank robbery. So while the Fed, I think it was FBI and detectors, were interviewing his CI, he gave them what he knew about the bank robbery, and then he blurted out basically. By the way, they're looking to kill these two cops on the O'E East Side, and he gave my nickname and my partner's nickname. And they're like, what?

He said, yeah, they're looking to kill him. So they find out, they told us, and they gave us a radio to take home, and they tried to isolate us a little bit. But there was a hit on you. $50,000 for me and $50 for my partner. But they had a problem. Nobody wanted to... They couldn't secure a hitman,

is the bottom line. Nobody wanted to kill two cops. Wow. They were afraid, you know, that was a lot of times. They were supposed to be getting guys, two guys in from Dominican Republic, but apparently it never transpired.

But they put in a couple... Like, they all put in some money. Like, the main guys put in some money. How do you feel when you find out there's a hit on you? It wasn't surprising, you know? Like, it's just... Does it scare you?

You know, when you're young, it's a lot different. I didn't have kids. I wasn't married. I just had to watch out for my cadela, you know. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't an easy target. I wouldn't have been an easy guy to hit. I mean, I could, anybody could get killed, but it wouldn't have been easy. Wait, why would you have been hard to kill?

Because I was looking in my mirror. I never, you know, I drive erratically. And, you know, I mean, like I said, anybody could get killed. but and I knew guys when I'm looking to kill cops for the most part so what happened to Danny so eventually

so we do this big case on the low east side we go up on a wiretop with the DEA we introduced an informant we introduced an undercover civilian guy to to the group we tell we don't do it personally because they knew we were cops obviously me and my partner

but we in an unmarked van and we pointed out a guy and we said that guy well we had an informant that we trusted and we pointed out to the informant who we wanted him to bring this guy to so our informant brings the undercover civilian undercover

informant to meet one of the bad guys and he says he wants to buy and he bought a couple of thousand dollars worth and he just climbed up the ladder to some of the top guys but not Danny Danny was way above he wasn't touch anything. And he insulates himself pretty well.

Yeah, these are all his guys, but he was not touching this stuff, not meeting anybody. But when we take, we go up on a wiretop and we end up taking out 40 Alphabet City heroin dealers. Wow, 40.

Yeah, 40. Top guys, a lot of money. We see these beautiful vehicles. I mean, these guys were driving back then. Brand new Benz's, Alpha Romero, and that's before you calisa cars. See, nowadays you see Alpha Amaro, you can't lease a car.

But back then, you couldn't lease a car. So these guys were driving, paying for these vehicles. Cash. They had big money. We used to call. So much money, you had to weigh it. Wow. You can't count it.

You got to weigh it. That's a flex. Yeah. Yeah, they were making money. But we couldn't get Danny. Danny had a falling out with a couple of the main guys, and he wasn't on the phone at all. So we take these 40 guys down, and Danny's down on the phone. phone at all. So he skated. And I was really frustrated. In fact, it caused like some

tension with me and my partner because I really wanted him because he was the guy who initiated the hit. You know, it was him that wanted us gone more than the other guys. And he, you know, he just reached me. Like he was a guy that just, I really wanted to get him. I never really had dealings with him in the street. I think I only saw him twice. Although I knew who he was, of course. And I've seen pictures. which is his rap sheet. But, so after the case gets taken down, I'm at home, and I'm reading the newspaper. And I see that there's a big heroin guy in Williamsburg, Spanish guy, that was cooperating.

His last name was Hernandez. I'll never forget. His last name was Hernandez. And he sold a dope called Unknown. And I'm reading the article, and he's like, they're making like this guy to be a major, major guy in New York. And now he's cooperating. And so I says, if he's that big of a deal, he's got to know Danny. And if he's cooperating, you have to cooperate with everything.

So I go to the U.S. attorney. I said, listen, ask this Hernandez guy if he knows this guy. And he did. And they were able to get Danny because of that. Wow. So how would that work hypothetically? I don't know if you know the details, but, like, you have this guy that basically becomes, like, an informant. Who Hernandez?

Yeah, Hernandez. So how does his information take down Danny? He just says, like, oh, he'll be at this place or this is where he lives. Is it that simple? Well, he probably said, I did this deal with him. I did this deal with him. I did here. Maybe I got package wrappings with Danny's fingerprints on it.

Here you know. I got a phone call. Look at my phone records. Here's 100 calls between me and him. So it wasn't a matter of getting to Danny. It was a matter of proving that he was committing crime. Right. Interesting.

Right. And that's how it went down. That's how he went down. How did it feel? I didn't put the cuffs on him, but it felt really good, man. No one I did it. Yeah. Oh, that's wild.

Yeah. So how long were you working as an undercover, like, plainclothes officer? I was a plainclothes cop maybe seven, seven, eight years. Then when I was in the DEA, I did a lot of undercover work, you know, where, not just plain clothes, where actual undercover, where I bought drugs and fainted, fainting drugs. Yeah, the undercover game is a pretty interesting little, ripple within law enforcement that I don't think a lot of people really think about. You know, being a obviously uniformed officer, that's very obvious.

We see these people. But then there's a whole subset of undercover officers that are basically operating with regular clothing that are working with criminals, going undercover into different gang units, basically observing crime, and in some ways they're complicit with crime in order to, you know, prove that people are, you know, doing illegal things. It's a very interesting thing. Yeah, I like it. Can you tell me about some of your cases and kind of like how you got involved

and some of the more interesting things that happened to you as a plane close officer? So when we were in the DEA, we wrapped up that big case, the Alphabet City case. And then Danny got taken down, although I didn't have much paperwork to do on Danny at all. But at some point, the chief, it was a good guy, Chief Keating, was his name, Keating. and he said Mike I like you guys to see if you could get these guys in Coney Allen They were

They basically Sold crack and dope heroin But they would actually take over like a building A project Where old people couldn't leave Couldn't go in like they would tell people You can't come in this building today Until we're done selling

So like the old lady would have to wait outside Until they sold out whatever dope they had on them Same thing if you were coming out of the building, they wouldn't let you leave. Stay here until we finish. So they actually took over these buildings. And the chief worked in Coney Island when he was a captain. And when he'd drive

to work, they would salute him or give him the middle finger or just be obnoxious to the chief. So he had it out for these guys. He hated them. So he tells me, he gives me their names,

or one of their names. It was a couple of brothers. he says these guys see if you can work something on these guys for me I said no problem chief so what I do was I would wear like a tank top or t-shirt let them know I didn't have a gun on me

you know or a badge and I didn't even tell the DEA which is what kind of got me on the outs later on but and I'd go to Cornell and hang out like just use a pay phone just drive around I had a government car on the cover car and let them see me in the neighborhood.

And I couldn't tell the DEA guys because they'd want to do surveillance on me. You know, they want to keep an eye on me. And it's bad enough that there's one Italian guy walking around in the neighborhood. Now there's going to be 10 cars for the white guys following me. It would have never worked. And why the DEA guys want to, why do they want to keep tabs on you? So I don't get killed. I see.

But you're taking more risk by not telling the DEA. Yeah, I'm taking more risk safety-wise, but getting a case going, I would have never been able to get a case going. Because they would have saw one guy in a car. Like, don't fuck with him. This guy shows up today and these cars are here today and driving around the neighborhood? Wouldn't have gone.

Wow. So I used to go on my own. And I eventually meet, while the main guy is, I see him getting gas one day. And I pull up in the gas station next one. him. He had a nice, at the time he had a 190 Mercedes Benz. And I think I had a firebird or train A.m. or something, the government gave me. And I started talking to him about his car. And then we go all on separate ways. But I let him know me, like I let him, you know, see me, obviously. And then I

drive on Mermaid Avenue, which is a busy avenue, and I meet a black girl. And I don't want to say flirtatious, but we were talking. And she's like, what are you doing here? And I'm like, I'm looking to score some weight. So what she does is, she says, oh, I know somebody that you're going to like. And she calls up an Italian guy that was in a car accident with a General Motors. The General Motors truck hit him. Now he's paraplegic. or I don't know about power

collegiate but he couldn't he could only use I think one arm so he had a special Cadillac that they gave him that was his settlement

every year he'd get a brand new handicap accessible car that was a settlement that this guy settled for no cash according to him

this was his settlement now maybe he got cash and just didn't want to tell me but that was a settlement crazy so this guy's a character I can imagine yeah so she calls him

and he came from like a wise guy family and she introduces us and he asks me I said look I'm trying to score dope you know some weight Coke or crack whatever and he says I know guys he calls up the guy that I sort the gas station

now he the Cadillac guy was a junkie and he had bought dope from them so they knew him and they was under the assumption I guess that he was a half a wise guy his family or whatever. So now when he vouches for me to this guy

that Mike's all right, he's just good guy, he's, you know. So now I'm pretty much in because he vouched for me. So the one day I was going to meet all the brothers and discuss a deal, we were at a diner in Coney Island or right off the highway, I'm still on Avenue. And a guy from my neighborhood pulls up.

Now this guy, he's half a time, and a half Irish, and he was in the construction business, but a big shot. He drove a Rolls-Royce. And he was hooked up, major hooked up. Major hooked up with Sammy and some of the major main guys. Sammy? Sammy the Bull.

Oh, really? Yeah. He pulls into the diner, and now this guy played football. He was two years. He was my sister's age. He played high school football, as did I. But he was two years older than me. But he had been to my house a hundred times, swam in my swimming pool,

with me and my sister. He was a friend from my neighborhood, a little older than me, but my sister's friend. Went to the same elementary school as me. He knew I was a cop. I see him pull up in the Volsvarez. I'm like, oh, I'm done.

But he was so sharp that I've seen him since. He's in my book. And even the last time I saw him, and he tells me I hadn't seen him since the book came out. But the book came out. He read it. And he sees me and he says, page 58, right? Because that was the page I took about this.

That was the page I talked about the story or whatever page it was. He remembers the page. He comes out of the car. He sees me and he hugs me and he kisses me like a Brooklyn kiss. And how are you? Of course, he didn't say nothing about being a cop. But these other guys, the black guys from Corny Island,

they see this. They say, holy shit, this guy. Yeah, it's a real deal. He's a real deal. Look at this shape of this guy. And look at him. He's got it. be the real deal. So that's how I got into that crow.

Wow. And then I just bore right up the ladder. And I think we end up taking 17, 17 people now. Wow. And so how long do you just stay in a crew before you can actually execute a, like an arrest? Just as much time as it takes to get as much evidence as you want. You know, we kept buying. I'd buy off for different people, which was good and bought weight, and which was, you know, pretty cool. so it's just opening the net and let more fish come in, you know? Oh, wow. And they were greedy. So I had money to spend. They'd call their friend, buy it off of him.

Okay, buy it, bought it for him. Oh, that's wild. Yeah. Did it ever get dangerous? Yeah, got dangerous a couple times. That case got dangerous. One time in particular got kind of hairy. Because we were doing this, we were doing the case.

And we had gone up Washington, up, Washington High School uptown Harlem to do a deal. They were introduced me to one of their connections. And DEA agent was parked off the set, but taking pictures. One of the guys driving up, one of the bad guys driving onto the set, saw the agent with a big, long lens camera, taking pictures.

So he doesn't stop. He keeps going. He calls up my guy, who I'm standing with, And he tells him, there's a fed, presumably a fed, taking pictures of you guys. So my guy doesn't even say goodbye, basically. He just leaves. And I don't hear from him no more. Like, at the time, it was like, you know, I knew what was going on

because he basically told me somebody's taking pictures. He gets in the car and he leaves. It doesn't return my calls, doesn't return my beeps. So it looks like the case might be having to get taken down. And then I call him or beep him and he answers and we're going to set up I guess maybe because he hadn't gotten arrested right away he felt safe But we had to meet we were going to meet on Mermaid Avenue and this is the first one I'm seeing him or any of the guys since that incident with the camera

So I'm meeting these bad guys and one guy had already shot a cop one of these drug dealers That's why that's another reason to cheap wanting me to go into them because they had got away with it. They shot a cop and they didn't get convicted. We're sending one of our guys in. The chief hates him for, you know, his reasons. And then now the cop gets clipped.

Yeah, the cop had gotten shot. So when I, anyway, I meet these guys. I don't know if they're setting me up. And they want to walk away from where we were. And I have to go with them. And DEA can't go. The agents can't follow me. The cars are way off the set.

Because now if they get seen, it's really bad. It's over. So they had to stay really far away, and they take me in this alley. Off of a mermaid avenue, they were doing construction, and they take me in this alley. So now I'm completely out of sight from everybody. And I thought this was going to be either they were going to try to rip me off or finish me right there or whatever. What are you feeling as you walk down there? I was very apprehensive because I didn't want, I didn't know what to, I didn't know if I should just say, fuck it, I'm not going down with you.

I'm not going there with you guys. But then it kind of shows like, well, what do you say? I was never skated before. Why are you skate now? So it was, you know, I didn't know how to play it, you know. But I went with them and they just wanted to get off the set and get away from anybody watching. It turned out that they weren't.

They didn't do anything to me. Let's just say that. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's a pretty scary thing. Walking into a dark alley after they see the DEA guy. Yeah. Now, what happens after these guys get busted? Like, do they know that it's you?

Yeah. You let them know it's me. I'm a cop What does that day look like? You know, it depends on the people Like some of them You grow Not too many here

But you kind of feel a little bad sometimes Because you grow over a little bit of a relationship with them But I always keep in the back of my head These guys are selling drugs man They're killing kids They're screwing up families But I have to We walk them by

Like I hung out I hang out with my shield on In soft clothes And they walk right by me so they know I'm a cop. And they, you know, not a civilian. Like after they're arrested. Yeah.

So when they're getting taken from the cop car into the station house, I make sure they walk by me or into the DA office, make sure they walk by me. And do they look at you? Yeah. And what does their face look like? Shocked pretty much. Yeah.

Wow. And what is your face? I don't even know if I'm looking at them, to be honest. It's, you know. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's a tricky thing, because, like, I don't want to betray anyone's trust, personally.

But at the same time, these are bad guys doing bad things. So it's like, that's the game. You know what I mean? And they know what the game is. They're getting paid a lot of money to take on a lot of risk. So it's like, it's not like this is, you know, they don't know what's going on. Yeah. I mean, it comes down to greed.

You know, they're greedy. They want to make money. They don't care who they hurt. When you were undercover, who were some of the people you became friends with? some of the criminals you actually began to like? There was a couple of guys from Brooklyn Red Hook projects that I became friendly with. But again, I know what it's all about. I know who they are.

They're my friend because I'm spending money. Do you ever hang out? Like, would you guys, like, go get food? Like, would you guys talk about your girlfriends or life like that? Yeah, yeah. Really? Were those conversations enjoyable? Was it fun to hang out with anyone?

You know, like one of those guys, we were driving to Manhattan once. And we were actually doing a deal. He was actually a Spanish guy. He had actually, he was a bad guy. He was a shooter. He had a bunch of, you know, shooting victims. And we're driving and we're talking. And I'm driving quick because there's a DEA agent following us.

You know, I know he's following us. I got a couple of cars following us. But he's an old time and he hasn't been on a store. street in many years. And he's got a car that looks like a cop car. It's not a, really an unmarked car. It's not a police car, but it looks like a detective car, you know, like a Crown Victoria at the time, Crown Vic, right?

And he's literally on my tail. Literally, I don't even mean a car between us. I mean literally on my tail. So you got to say something. So I'm hoping that they don't see it. Well, it's this guy and a guy sitting behind me who's also a really bad dude. And you're driving. And I'm driving.

And that guy said, bro, this fucking guy's been honest since Brooklyn. And he looks like a cop. He's an older guy with full-headed gray hair. So you got to agree. So I'm like, yeah, maybe he's following you. But, you know, this is the first one I'm seeing. And maybe he's following you guys from Brooklyn. And so you guys get in my car.

So I can't talk on a cell phone because you could hear, you know, they'll hear both conversations, obviously. Even if I tried to be covert, they would hear the other guy's voice. So I tell them my phone is dead. I got to use a pay for him. Regarding something else. I get out, I use the pay phone, and I tell him, bro.

I tell the agent. I call one of the agents up, the head guy, the head agent doing the surveillance. I said, you got to get someone so off my tail, man. He's literally right on my bumper. Okay, okay, we'll take care of it.

I get in the car. Not even two minutes later, he's back. Literally on my tail. So now I say, I got to make moves. I got to get this guy off my, I got to shake my own DEA tail. So I start driving really quick and like a bad guy trying to get away from a cop, right?

Because if you act like, oh, no, he's not following us. Then the guys are going to be like, what the fuck? It's obvious he's following it. We're a cop car, no less. So now you've got to start acting like a real criminal and be like... So I'm taking lights. I'm sort of kid next to me says something to the effect that, man, you drive like you got an effing shield in your pocket. I said, no, man, you're just used to taking a subway.

This is how guys drive when they're trying to get away from cops. Wow. And I get away. And then eventually they must have yelled to him. And I lost him. But I end up losing half the surveillance. But they picked me up again, and I think they must have told him to go home.

Wow. I mean, that's sketchy. Yeah, it was bad. What about prostitution stings? Is that a thing that happens? Like undercover cops try to, like, get, like, prostitutes? Yeah. I mean, I never dealt with that, but yeah, they do.

They used to. That seems like a wild thing. Because you got to, like, basically, like, see a girl, try to, like, pay your mom. money. They come right over to you. But then, like, how do you prove that this prostitution? Do you have to actually, like, do something with them?

No. You just have to get the mirror offer. Oh, really? Of a sexual act. Yeah, and usually the cops or all the car is recording. Uh-huh. But they're probably so covert, right? They'd be like, hey, you want to hang out?

No, they come right out. And they'll say, I'm a prostitute. It's this much money? They won't say, I'm a prostitute, but they'll say $50 for this, $50 for that. And that's enough. Yeah. Oh, wow. That's wild.

Did you know of any cops that were on the force that got injured or even killed doing undercover work? A cop got killed doing undercover work in the projects where I worked in the Lower East Side. Oh, really? Yeah, I was in Brazil actually at the time. You were in Brazil? Yeah. Was it work-related or is this? No, no, no.

I was through the training out there. Oh, sick. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was in Brazil and when I came back at the airport, I guess customs or whoever, started to go through my bag, just like a random check. And I just, nothing matter, but I told them, they're going to go through it anywhere.

I told them who I am. And, or maybe my badge might have set off the metal alarm or something. And the guy asked me, where do you work? I said, Alphabet City, Louis, I usually. And he said, oh, cop just got killed there this morning or last night or something. I'm like, holy macko. But it was a D-E agent that got killed.

Wow. Yeah. Do you know the details of what happened to him? I think it was trying to bio for some of the guys in Lower East Side that were involved with our case. And they found out he was a cop. Yeah. Fuck. I mean, it's so high stakes.

Like, just one slip of one thing goes wrong. I think they tried to rob them. Oh, really? I think they tried to stick them up, yeah. If I'm not mistaken. Which is a part of it, right? Like, if you're an undercover cop. Like, you're dead if they find out you're a cop.

But you're also dead if they just decide they want to kill you. But I was doing a case on a pretty well-known. guy from Brooklyn. He's the guy that Jay-Z supposedly took his identity. Calvin Klein-Bocode is his name? Jay-Z had a mentor, basically, when Jay-Z was in the drug selling business.

Yeah, and it was this guy, Calvin Klein. So like the other case, similar to the Coni-Anally case, there was several groups in Red Hook and other parts of Brooklyn that were shooting each other, civilians were getting caught up. And I was able to infiltrate both gangs, both sides.

But one of the main guys on one of the sides was this guy Calvin, Calvin-McCline. And my first, so again, I was hanging out. I just went down to the projects in Red Hook and hung out with these guys. And eventually they just started talking to me and liking me. So I brought off another guy, but his main connection was. this guy Calvin because this guy couldn't get me the weight I wanted but Calvin could Calvin was a big drug deal in Brooklyn like well they call him the Brooklyn Don and he was a big guy out there so my first buy from him I met him in the Knappia in Kanasey which wasn't

far from my house and he pulls up with a jeep I remember what kind of Jeep I really hooked up nice jeep with black windows. And back then a lot of people didn't have crossovers or jeeps. Mostly it was cars, to be honest. But he had this Jeep and the windows were really dark, black. And he tells me to get in his Jeep.

And he had his brother, I think, was in the backseat behind him. And they were, you know, they're bad guys, both of them. And Calvin had been involved with a lot of shootings. In fact, he did one with Jay-Z, supposedly, that he took the rap for in Virginia, out of state. I think Virginia or Maryland. Yeah.

Anyway, so I get in the car and I had ordered three ounces of crack because they had that crack law back then. So for every, I want to say for every gram of crack, it equal like 10 ounces of Coke. So the idea was to get crack because you get more time by selling crack or by buying crack. The Pope gets more time because crack was killing people and it was, you know. People think it was a racist law, which I guess maybe it was, but the bottom line was more people were dying from crack, and it was ruining households. So anyway, the bottom line was I ordered three ounces of crack.

Three ounces of crack was equal to like 20 kilos of cocaine. That's powder, cocaine powder. That's pretty expensive probably. The crack? Yeah. Was it significantly cheaper? Yeah, it was cheap. Three ounces of crack was a couple thousand, maybe, I don't remember,

maybe $6,000, $8,000? Okay. We're one kilo of Coke. Like 15, 20? Yes. Right. So three ounces, I'm locking you up for 20 kilos of coke. Wow. So when I get into, first of all, I was a little hinked up

because I didn't want to get in their car with the black windows because surveillance couldn't see what was going on in that car. I never dealt with them, these guys. I think we spoke on the phone. Maybe I met them, but I never did any deals with them. Anyway, I get in the car and they give me a bag, black paper bag. and he gives it to me

I start to get the money on he says I don't you go to try it? I said what do you mean try it so I open the bag it's coke so I'm like

well when he gives me the bag I'm like yeah I don't I don't smoke coke I don't smoke crack what are you talking about try it and then I open the bag and it's cold

it's powder it's not cooked up so I says I don't want this I want the crack I don't want powder I can get powder from my own guys So he said, why don't you cook it up?

I'm like, if I knew how to cook it up the right way, I wouldn't need you. That's why I'm paying you for the cooked cocaine, right? So I give it back to him. I says, go home, cook it, and call me when you're ready. Because this does me no good. And I give it back to him. And then that's what he did. They actually did.

He went home and called me the next night or that night, and we did the actual transaction. But getting in the car and then getting in this little argument with them Wasn't you know it was a little hairy Yeah, that's wild You gotta be pretty confrontational I feel like right Like you can't be you can't You can't let them think your pussy Right like you gotta you gotta kind of be like

Yeah what the fuck is this And it's your money too Like if I if this is a legit deal Yeah like you gotta really Yeah it's my money man What am I buying? Wow I mean 5,000 6,000 ain't fortune but still $6,000. Are you a good actor?

I mean I've with them guys I am but then again they have a you know they're greedy is there something that switches in your brain like when you're in a high-stakes situation you're in the back of a car

this guy just gives you product that is not the thing that you ask for and because it's such a high-stakes environment you have so much adrenaline going do you just say yo I'm just going to snap into like a character right now but you know what I grew up of bad guys to be honest like I grew up in Brooklyn

with tough guys and you know if this was in the back of the car with these guys or would my knuckle have friends, you know, just act the way you would normally act. Hmm. So it's not that distant. It's not that distant. I mean, I never did drugs or anything, but, you know, you're not going to be made a jerk out of.

Did you ever have to do interrogations? Did I what? Do, like, interrogations, like, sit down with people and, like, an interrogation room and have to, like, get into them. I'm so curious about that. I see a lot of interrogation footage on YouTube. It's really popular now. Yeah. Like they'll, you know, take these long five, six hour, you know, interrogation videos,

and then they'll sort of like speed them up and subtitle it and go through the specific parts that are interesting. How long were your interrogations typically and how often were you doing them? I was a supervisor in the detective bureau. So mostly the interrogations were done by the detectives, although I've been involved with a detective doing them. And then when I was in the DEA, when our interrogations would involve who they're supposed. supplier was and trying to break them. One was really funny.

One of the ones from the low east side, this guy, we had heard him on the phone. We had seen him do, you know, heavyweight transactions. But he also owned the livery company, like a black car livery company, like the nice cars that they drive. And every once in a while he would drive, even though he had all this money. And he owned, like I said, the cars. but every once in a while he'd drive. On this particular day, it was the day we were locking them, grabbing them.

So we grabbed them all simultaneously. So they can't call each other and tell each other to run and all that stuff. So we grabbed them all. Anyway, so we knew this guy. Like I said, we'd heard him on the phone, we had seen him. He's a regular guy, you know. When we pull him out of the car, he all of a sudden plays or acts like he's mentally not there. Like he's having a seizure.

He just stays into space. And we bring him into the, you know, into the DA. He's not saying a word. And he's acting like a, he's not doing anything overtly other than just acting like he doesn't understand us. Like, I'll never forget, he had on a suit because he was actually picking up a celebrity at the airport. I don't remember which one.

But that's usually when he drove when he was getting somebody cool, you know, so he could meet him. And he had a suit on, and he had his time. on and it was summer and he was across from here and I'm talking to him and he's like I said you would think he's not there mentally and he frustrated me so much I got up and I tightened his tie as tight as you could make it and he turned purple and he still didn't leave get out of character like he didn't say stop or I'm choking he still stayed there and then I obviously

eventually let it open and Then we put him in the cell, and I grabbed one of the other guys that were locked up. Because some of these guys I had dealt with before. And I was like, I don't remember his name. I'm like, see, I know I've heard him on the phone. I'm like, is he mentally, what's the deal with him? Is he having a seizure? What's up with him?

He said, no, he's acting. I'm like, acting. I was shocked. I'm like, that guy's acting like this this whole time. We got him in a room for hours. He said, yeah. That was a great actor. Wow.

Yeah, it was crazy. That's what ended up having them? He ended up breaking? No. He ended up, he ended up taking a, he never spoke to us, but he ended up taking a plea. He went to jail for a couple of years. Wow. Yeah.

And what was the crime again that he did? I missed it. He was selling the heroin guy. Oh, got it. Okay, wow. And he was using the delivery company as kind of like a cover type thing? Yeah, he had it, like a taxing, whatever, to hide his money, and every once in a while, he would actually drive the cars. Wow.

That's wild. Yeah. So when you're interrogating someone, you're just about to sit down inside a room and it's going to be you, another detective, and you've got to get information out of them. What is your strategy? What do you go in doing? And how do you guys kind of coordinate to get the information out of the criminal? You know what? It really depends on each case, man.

Like it depends on who the guy is. Like tiny, I may believe, like, screwing around what your kid isn't a big deal. Sometimes you have to come on forceful. It depends on what the crime is. Depends on who he is. Depends if you know each other. Have a relationship. You might like to talk to women better than you.

You know, maybe he's a ladies' man, so you let the female try to elicit the information. Depends. So you hear about this thing, obviously, all the time, good cop, bad cop, that whole thing. Is that legit? That's a real thing. But, I mean, I don't think it's not really,

at least in my experience, it's not really an acting thing. I mean, sometimes you might have a little more sympathy than I have towards this guy. I mean, sometimes you'll say, you but you know you give up I go at him hard because I I went at him

you know like a friend or I tried to have him confine no good just go at him hard then you come in you try to shake him up so sometimes it's just tactic change yeah or sometimes it's organic like where you really I don't like this guy and I'm threatening him where you think maybe you legitimately could help him out

interesting I see all these videos where it's like oh now like the officer's gonna like lean in and like try to create like a rapport Or like, oh, he'll like lean back or like he'll mimic like body movements or things like that. Right. Is that something you guys are trained in when you're doing interrogations? Like what would be like an obvious tip or like an obvious thing that you guys would do when you're interrogating someone? Like just a small little like trick, I guess, to try to create rapport.

Yeah, well, sitting next to the guy or touching them. So you say like side by side instead of across the table. Yeah. And then like you would. And then it depends on the chat. Like a lot of times you want. the bad guy's back in the corner and the door behind me. So in other words, you got to get through me to go home.

So kind of subconsciously, it's like you are in the way of me and the door. Yeah. Interesting. Oh, that's very interesting. And then as far as questioning, is there like open questions? Like, how do you make sure you question someone in such a way to like, I guess, trap them into a confession, so to speak? Like, if you know someone did something.

You know, it's really hard because I, So I've had cases, I've had one particular case where this guy was, he was robbing this family. This guy was going fishing with his kid. And he was robbing the guy, and the guy had a heart attack and died. So that's a homicide. In the commission of a crime, the guy dies, that's a homicide. Wow. The guy that did it was doing the robbery.

I actually knew from the Avenue, from Avenue D. low east side, like when I was in plain clothes. I didn't know him well, but I see him every day with his wife. They'd go shopping. I'd literally see him almost every day. And I didn't know he was a criminal, to be honest. I knew 99.9% of the guys wasn't surprising me that he was a criminal,

but I never had dealings with him personally. And like I said, I'd see him and his wife, and the kid walked by me, and we'd nod hello and goodbye. Anyway, at some point the detective realizes he's the criminal. He's the suspect. And we bring him in. And he swore up and down

that he didn't rob the guy and killed the other guy. Because there was a one witness didn't die. There was the family. And the father died. I think the friend or somebody else didn't die was at the scene.

And this guy swore that he wasn't there. He didn't rob him or wasn't him. He had nothing to do with it. And we had him for hours. And the detective. was a great detective. A guy named Tommy Biddle

was a great detective. And he was interviewing him for, and we couldn't get, Tommy couldn't break this guy. I knew him, I tried, I couldn't break him. We had the witness come and have him in a lineup,

say the same statement, whatever it was, give me all your money to see if he could recognize the voice. I don't remember if he did it in, but in any event, it wasn't enough to lock him up. And I was at the point where

I don't think he did it. You know, I think he would have gave it up. You know, I kind of believe him at this point. It turns out subsequently months or years later that he gets arrested or he confessed to it. He did confess to it. He did he do it. Wow. Yeah.

And how did he confess? I don't remember. All I know is I later learned that he did do it. And I was like, man, that guy really had me fool. Wow. He was able to dodge all the questions and interrogation. Yeah. The answers.

he was, I didn't do it. And like I said, I used to see him every day. It wouldn't surprise me if he did it. This guy, I don't know what everybody's doing, you know. But, like, he wasn't like an outwardly guy that I knew was a robber, who robbed people. So when he was swamming up and down, he didn't do it. Frying, the whole, I'm like, hey, maybe he didn't do it.

Are you pretty good at telling if someone's lying to you? Pretty good. I mean, listen, everybody could get lied to. Yeah, of course. But what would be a giveaway if someone was lying? I don't know. I just get a, I get a feeling, I think, where I could kind of tell. And then if I question somebody, obviously, it helps. I can figure it out.

You know. Wow. The thing that I always see in the video is that it always seems very compelling in interrogations. You have two people that are arrested, and then you give them the prisoner's dilemma. Where you tell them, like, hey, your buddy, you already told us everything. Have you ever had to do that? Yeah, you know what I did? One was a pretty cool one.

there was a guy on the avenue. I don't remember what the crime was, but there was a guy on the avenue and he had this specific jacket that was an unusual jacket or coat. And him and another guy, I think it was a robbery. I'm almost sure it was a robbery.

So we had the one guy in, we didn't have the guy with the jacket in. But there was another guy walking around neighborhood that had the same jacket and it was an unusual jacket or coat so I called him in I saw him and I said come to the station house so I came to the station house and I hung the jacket up now I put him somewhere else and I hung the jacket up where the guy we were going to interrogate would see it and we marched him in and he saw the jacket and he walked right by the jacket and he go oh shit they got my they got my partner I said bro I know what happened I know everything

that happened. If you don't give me the story, you're going to go away. I already have the story from somebody. And he told for sure we locked his friend up and his friend gave him up. And of course he didn't, but then he ended up giving it up. Wow.

That's wild. That's very clever. Wow. I'll tell you another one. It worked out. Well, we didn't get a confession, but I don't think the person actually did it. But we had to go to Pennsylvania it was a missing it was a it's a crazy story man this kid went missed this teenager weren't missing

I think was like 19 it was New Year's Eve and it just so happened to be on low east I had nothing to do when I was a cop down there because I'd already been transferred but this was when like low east I was getting gentrified

and like some yuppies were moving in and stuff so it was all 7th Street between I think it was 7th Street C&D wasn't a bad block it never was the people on that block always took care of the buildings the houses it was always a decent block anyway

and maybe it may not be 7th Street but in any event so this guy and his roommates go to this apartment I think it's their apartment it's New Year's Eve

they're all high they said they only smoke pot and dick coke but I don't know anyway the one kid Vernon Jones was his name His real name wasn't Vernon But that's what everybody called him Vernon Jones

He He started throwing up So The other two, male and female Leave the apartment Go literally across the street Not even an avenue, a small street To the bodega

To get cleaning supplies And they bought like paper towels And something else Literally took three minutes, tops Maybe probably less I had timed it it's maybe less when they come back

he's gone Vernon Jones is gone never ever seen again there was another person in the apartment their friend he had been passed out for a long time already they wake him up

he don't know what happened to Vernon these two people interrogated nobody knows what happened to Vernon Jones it's really a one day if ever get a chance there's so many

look up how many male whites go missing New Year's Eve a lot. In any event, and that's another thing with a cult. They say that's a big occult day. New Year's Eve. New Year's Eve. And they look for male whites to do stuff with. That's what they say,

and that's what I've learned working in some of these cases. But in any event, Vernon Jones disappears. So that happened, I think, in the early 90s. I look back at the case, only because I had nothing to do, I grab this case, I start going to it. Then when I saw it was a Lower East Side case, I know people on the east side

I figured maybe I could get something going with this case so I asked the people on the air like the drug people and stuff what they knew about nobody knew anything they knew about the case because the press was there

every day for a couple of weeks and they had the dogs all the time but none of my informants I think nobody knew what happened to this guy in any event I wanted an interview the female and the male the male the male

was like a tennis pro teacher or whatever they call him, tennis pro, teaching pro. And he had given statements. By the time I wanted to talk to him, which was years later, I hear lawyer up. Which, that didn't make him guilty. He's tired. I mean, he's spoken plenty of times to the cops.

He wants to move on with his life. The female hadn't lawyered up. So we go up, I think she was in Pennsylvania, if I'm mistaken. Anyway, what I did was, I get pictures of the house, the apartment, the bodega, old cars, and I put them, I use the state trooper barracks.

I put them on the wall. I get a, like I did with the other guy, I get a manila envelope, and I put a yellow pages in it. And then I get a, you know the tapes, you used to watch, you used to put them in the machine and watch it. Yeah, they get it.

VCR. VCR. VCHS. Yeah. VHS, yeah. And I put on it the other kid's name that went to get the towel with her, and I put confession. And I put it where she can see it.

So we have her in the room. She sees all the pictures of the old cars, you know, the cars from that year and the bodega. She knows what she's there for. Mm-hmm. And I have that with other tapes, but I made sure that that one was very noticeable. And she comes in and she's sitting down and we're talking to her. and she was cooperative because honestly to this day

I don't think they had anything to do with it unless they had me fool all I honestly don't think they had anything to do but you know and we're talking to her and I leave the room and her eyes moved around obviously while we were gone

when I come back she's crying hysterical and what are you crying about and she points her tape and she says how could he confess what did he do I didn't know anything what did he do but

we may believe he did confess and we were hoping that she would fess up as well yeah oh wow but she didn't do you think based off her reaction they had nothing to do with it I don't think that was one of the thing

but yeah I don't think they had anything I don't know I don't think they had anything to do with they had no reason to kill this kid right and even if they killed them what were they doing what were they going to do them why did they make them

disappear yeah and he some people think he walked into the East River but it's a far walk from where that building was to the East River rivers a far walk. Because the morning you have to walk through the projects.

Then you have to cross over the bridge. And then you have to walk like along a, let's say a beach into the water. It was a long walk. There's no way we've done that. He had just thrown up. He was half out of it. So that's a real mystery. What I think happened was I think while they went to the store and it only takes, like they said,

two or three minutes because I have time to, I tell. timed at the time, many times. I think he stumbled out behind them. And I actually think somebody came and picked him up and put him in a band and kidnapped them. Really? And how old was the guy? He was in his, like, 19.

And why would someone have abducted 19? I think it's one of those things, man. Have you heard about, have you heard about this place called Brooklyn Mirage? No. It's a music venue in Brooklyn. It's kind of in, like, Bushwick area. and it's there's been I don't know how recently I mean I don't know if there's any been anything more recently but a couple months ago there were like three or four like young men that just went missing like kidnapped basically from that place and some of them like they found their wallets later like in the river like there's just been like weird details I don't have all the facts personally but there's just been like weird things in the news where it's like this guy went to a party he went to like a rave and left at three in the morning, got into a car that he thought was his Uber, and then no one ever saw him again.

Unbelievable. Have you heard of stories like that? Yeah, yeah. So these abductions are happening to, because as a man, I'm never afraid of being abducted. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's mostly my wife, girls I know, they're like afraid of being abducted. But as men, I don't think it's something that we're concerned about. But it still happens to men, huh?

Well, yeah, I think it does. But most of these kids are vulnerable at the time. You know, they've got their head on straight. Right. They're doing drugs. or drinking, something like that. What's the case that you've heard of where, you know, an adult, not a child, but a grown person was abducted or kidnapped?

Well, it's this one, and it was another one that was a, he was at a Jesuit school. I can never think of his name either. It'll come to me. But he was studying to be some kind of minister. And it was the same thing, New Year's Eve. It was a couple of years prior to this. he was walking down Housson Street

You're familiar with Housen Street? He was walking that Housen Street Well actually he was in a party Off of Housin Street And he was feeling warm So he just went outside to take a walk And he disappeared Never seen again

And Sam Sam is his first name It'll come to me And So they don't know what happened to that guy And he disappeared Exactly Very similar to Vernon Jones

but when we were doing this satanic case with berkowitz and stuff there was a guy that was an artist that did time for a homicide it was a very well-known case out here it was like an S&M case but he actually killed the guy and he was supposed to be involved with the satanic stuff

anyway he supposedly told somebody that him and his people took this kid and he had hair from him this kid. What? Yeah. He saved it, but he lawyered up, he's Crespo, I think his name is.

I'm not mistaken, I'm not mistaken his name is Crespo. Wow. Yeah. Because if someone gets robbed, like, typically it's like, oh yeah, someone came up, they took my stuff. If someone gets killed and robbed, it's like, oh, they shot him, his body was left there, and they took all

his stuff. Why would you take a body? But to kidnap someone, no ransom, You dispose of their body. It's just a lot of work if you're just trying to rob someone. Right. So they must have an explicit interest in trying to actually kidnap them specifically. Right.

Is that fair? Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's an abduction. Yeah, those cases are so bizarre. Yeah. And obviously, sad, but it's just strange. Like, why would you want to abduct a grown man for no ransom? Like, what is the purpose of that?

Just I guess you're a serial killer? You're a psycho? Right. Wow. Did you deal with any other serial killers other than, you know, obviously, like, your connection to Berkowitz. No, Berkowitz and Rand Under Rand. Interesting.

Yeah. Yeah, it's just, I don't know. Yeah, the abduction stuff is just strange. It's scary. Is there any cold cases or any files that you worked on that still keep you up at night?

This case, I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say it keeps me up, but the Vernon Jones case was an interesting case that I would have liked to have seen something happen too. Yeah, you think, I just ran out, you know, there was nobody to talk to.

just hit a dead end. It had been worked on a lot before I got to it. But it just, you know, the kid don't just disappear into thin air. Mm-hmm. You know? Any other cases like that? Anything else that comes to mind when you think of, oh, like, man, how did we not get this? Or I wish this one got closed out because it's just so bizarre.

No, I think, no, I think that's it, honestly. Were there any cases that had particular, like, quirkiness or strangeness to them? Like, obviously, the occult stuff, things like that, were there ever any crimes you saw where it was just too bizarre, too strange to even fathom? There was a case, I'll tell you, an interesting case. At least I found that interesting. So me and my partner, like I said, we worked low East life for a lot of years in plain clothes. We got to know everybody.

And everybody was, like even drug dealers, the heavy drug dealers would give us some information for a couple of reasons. The more, and they want to ingratiate themselves with us. So we would look the L.A on some of their dealings. And they want to take their competition off the street. So if a guy put a new brand of dope out, we knew whose doper was as soon as they got on the street. That's how somebody would tell us.

Did you see there was a guy Savage. He just got out of jail. He was jacked up. And he just started a brand of dope. He named the L. President. He wasn't even on the street like two, three days, and another drug deal told us. That savage got this drug called.

When we saw him, we said, oh, hey, Mr. President. He couldn't believe it. He had just got the dope out, and we already knew it belonged to him. So he had to, like, change the name. But in any event, so my point was everybody knew us, and we knew everybody. We were, my partner, were working one night, and that girl comes up to us,

and she wants to talk to us. in private in the building, like off to the side. So we meet her in the building, and she tells us that, I believe it was the fifth floor, but I have a pretty good memory for that kind of stuff. On the fifth floor, on her floor, her friend,

the guys came in and basically confiscated the apartment. Her mother died. She needed money, and she let these people live with her. What they did was they took over the apartment, according to her. She hadn't seen her friend for a long time. She ran into her at the throwing garbage down in incinerator.

And she said she looked really bad. And the bottom line was, I don't remember if she told us what we later find out, but they turned her girlfriend into a drug addict. They started putting dope in her food, and then they started injecting her. They made her a drug addict. So she tells us that they were actually dealing out of that apartment.

These guys are dealing heroin out of apartment, which we would have heard, but we didn't hear about it at the time. Nobody told us about it. I mean, it was a lot of spots, but usually not out of an apartment, usually on the street or different areas. So we went and we asked a couple of people on the Avenue D. And they said, yeah, somebody just opened up in the fifth floor in that building.

We don't know who they are. So me and my partner go, and we go up there. Now with the intent purpose of the drug dealing, We were looking to take care of a girl, basically. So we grab a junkie off the street and we bring them up to the, because they weren't going to open the door for us. We grab a junkie off the street,

we say, go up and make believe you want to buy from here. As soon as they open the door, just take off. So that's what he does. The junkie opened the door. They look through the people. They recognize a drug addict. They open the door. Me and my partner bust in.

So the guy that answered, He was a big muscular straight out of jail, jailhouse rock, jailhouse muscles and that kind of the crap. And we see the girl, it's just like on TV, there's one mattress, there's a hanging light bulb, places up, it's a disaster, no furniture, it's a disaster. And she's on the mattress, the girl. And so we grab this guy, he gives us a hard time physically. gives us a hard time. And we do what we have to do, we have to do to lock him up to cuff him, right? And then he tell, so not only that, we get him to give us a written confession, right

there and then, because she's pregnant, the girl's pregnant. So we grab her and we said, what's going on? She said, he, me. And another guy, the other guy lives here, she said, you know who the other guy is. and I forgot what his name, but I think he was a really ugly guy and they used to call him something like ugly Hank or ugly something and she said, you know who he is, you know him. Anyway, make a long story short, she became a heroin act.

She tells us, they shot, she's got all track marks. They were living there for months. We take this guy into the station house, we give him to the detectives and they're going to like enhance the case, work on the case. They remove her and we're going to look for this other guy. the second piece, right? So we asked the guys on the avenue, the people we know. What's the deal with this ugly Hank guy?

They said, oh, yeah, yeah. He might have been in that building. That might be. And everybody tells me the same thing. You know who he is. And I can't picture who this guy is for nothing. And they know that he. And I would tell the guys.

I said, you know, the girl? And I tell everybody, even guys on the avenue I don't like, drug deals I hate, bad guys I don't like. We told him what happened. And they were angry also. So now weeks go by, everybody knows we're looking for them. They tell us, oh, he's out of here. He went to Brooklyn.

He went to Queens. He's not around anymore. So me and my partner, weeks later, and like I said, every once in a while, we still guys guys have anybody seen him? No, nobody's seen him. Me and my partner was sitting in the car. Now, we tell everybody when we get this guy, we're going to really make him regret. regret it.

Now at this point, IEB is watching me and my partner because we worked like on the shadow of doing things 100% by the book so we were always being watched by internal affairs which was fine.

We're in the car and we see I see an ugly guy walking up to the car I tell my partner that's ugly Hank. It's got to be him. Because he was that ugly? That ugly as hell. And I see him walking to the car

and he sees me, he says, yo, you guys looking for me? So now across the street of all the bad guys that we've told when we catch this guy we're going to fuck him up. We're going to fuck him up.

But I can't just get out of call and fuck this guy up, right? You got internal affairs watching you guys? No, internal affairs probably watching me and my partner. So what I tell him is, bro, you got three seconds to run. He said, no, I don't know what?

I said, you got three seconds to run. So now what does he do? He turns and he runs. So now I have a, not only am I going to catch him away from the prying eyes of the internal affairs, I have a reason to grab him and rough him up because he ran, right? So we chase him, we chase him, and we finally catch him. And we took care of it. Wow.

And then we left him up, of course. And he got convicted? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So, and then months later, she actually came to the station house to go. All cleaned up. I wasn't there.

All cleaned up. Sober? Sover. She had the baby. She, the detectives got her move to a new apartment out of, I think, in Queens. And she left me a note saying, in fact, thanking me. Wow. That's crazy.

That guy was so ugly that you knew he was ugly. I knew it was the guy. Because everybody said you know him. And the minute I saw him, I said, that's him. He was probably uglier after you got to him. It was ugly pop. That's crazy. Yeah.

Damn. Yeah. And she was really great. That's one case I really feel, I mean, there was several, but in that case, I really feel we saved that girl's life. You felt proud of that. You're like, yeah, this one, this was solid. Yeah, we took care of her.

Oh, that's awesome. What's the funniest case you ever dealt with? There's everything that, like, you just look at it and you're like, this is hilarious. Like, it's not that sad. Maybe it's a little sad, but it's just so funny. Yeah, we did a cash. This is funny. We did a, I find it funny.

So we, um, we were in playing. clothes doing drug, drug arrest. And this is my unit. I was in a unit called Operation 8. It was four of us. Me and my partner and Toella, really good cops. Plaintclothes cops, great cops. They told me a lot.

Tony Master Antonio, Jerry Staples, great guys. Frankie Diaz was there before us. Really, really good guys, great detectives. And a guy named Pete McMahon. We learned a lot from these guys. Anyway, it was that night. It was me, Jeff, Tony, and Jerry. and we're driving up in the avenue

and a plane close car, but again, everybody knew us. We see a, every time we drive by, this guy would, it was a meter made, traffic agent, they call him, but a meter made. Tall, tall, tall, real tall, heavy, big guy. Every time he'd see us,

he, right away, write in his book, like he's giving a ticket. So we knew he was up to no good, right? So we grabbed one of the drug dealers. We said, well, what's this guy doing? He said, he's looking. the cop heroin, you know, he's looking a cop, but nobody wants to serve him because they think he's an undercover cop.

I'm like, that's the best of the cover year for me. I said, do me a favor. Serve this guy, he's dope. Sell him whatever he wants. When he's dirty, take your hat off. So we leave. We come driving around. My dealer takes his hat off.

We see the meat of mate making down every day. That means, you know, he's scored his dope. So Just as we're pulling up He jumps on a city bus Walks on City bus stops He jumps on the bus

He goes right to the back By the time we get on the bus He's sitting in the back And there were You know, all the people on the bus So He closes his, like I said He was a big dude

He closes his hands And we're trying to pry His hands open Open your hands Open your hands, open you don't want to He opens his hands No dope Search is pot

Nothing But then we look on the floor It's right there a couple of bags, five, six bags. Okay, so we knew we was, we knew, and the guy gave us a signal that he was dirty, so we knew he had a cop. So we put him in a police car,

and we put on the radio, central, we have one meter maid under arrest for possession, taking him to the station house. So by the time we get to the station house, there must have been 20 cop cars. Everybody was had their horns, was clapping,

Everybody was happy we locked up the meat. It was really funny. When you get out of the car, his hat fell off. And Tony says to me, you better, you're out of uniform, you know, put your head on. I mean, it's a tough look if you're buying drugs as a meat or mid. You know what I mean? It's doing off the job, you know what I mean? Don't wear the uniform.

No, getting arrested in your uniform is pretty brutal. Yeah. Especially a meter mate. Nobody likes meat on. Yeah. Oh, that's so funny. Even cops are like, fuck this guy. this guy man that's wild yeah that was funny and last thing i want to know about can you talk to me about

some of your uh your mafia involvements yeah i know obviously your grandfather was kind of like a well-respected mafia associate yeah but then even growing up you know in like an italian neighborhood you kind of yeah you knew some wise guys did while you were working like in the forest did you ever see any uh i i i you know what i actually steered away from the italians on the mom because i was when i was a cop because i was italians are annoying right yeah and i've run into it i don't want to you to see them at any weddings or anything, you know? Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, I didn't want to deal with them, to be honest.

And I really had no reason, like, they didn't really, we didn't really cross pants. Other than an Italian guy with a car and Connie Allen, other than him, and we didn't end up because he was a sickly guy. Yeah, I grew up in Brooklyn, Connoisse, which had a lot of Italian mob guys. And my good, good friends, their father owned the bar that was Vicum Muso's, very much. real place. He owned it. Vic was the head of Lucchese family. Okay. And Vic grew up with my uncle and my father. They all grew up in Connoisse and they, you know, everybody knew each other. My father actually knew my friend's fathers. That's just the way the

neighborhood was. It was a nice place to grow up. But one night we were, my friends and I, we were like 16, 17 year old. We were hanging out and we were in front of a pizzeria. And we were getting loud and obnoxious with each other. And the guy walks out. and he says, you guys got to move. He didn't ask us nicely, but he don't have to ask us nicely. It's his restaurant, you know. He asks us to move and keep it down. And we're like, okay, you know, we were kids, you know.

Yeah, we'll move, you know. Came out again. I told us to move. We'll move when we're ready. That kind of, you know, that's the kind of answer we gave the guy, to be honest. And then at some point, me and one of my friends do leave. Not because of him, just because we were dumb for the night, you know? These guys want to hang out.

Definitely not that guy. Yeah. I was leaving. I'm just taking... Like you still got the chip on your shoulder into this day. You're like, not because of him. That's schmuck.

Yeah. He had nothing to do with it. I was ready to go. 17 years old, I was... But I was going. I left. My friend stayed. Shortly after I left, he came out with a bat,

baseball bat. He was a tough, you know, tough guy. He wasn't going to take shit from teenagers. And he, unfortunately, got the bat taken from him from my friends. I mean, like I said, we were 17-year-old. We all played high school football. Everybody was pretty tough.

They take the bath from him and they tune the guy up. He turns out to be a really well-known mafioso from my neighborhood. That we'd all heard of him, but nobody had ever really seen him. His name was Bruno Faciola. His niece was one of the mob wives. Her father was also a wise guy. I forgot her name, but in any event, her father was a wise guy, this was the brother.

He was the guy in Goodfellers that brought Joe Pesci to get killed. He was the real guy that brought the Joe Pesci character to get clipped. This guy, Bruno? Bruno, right, because the reason why he was a Lukazi guy, his brother was a Gambino guy. They both wanted, they were both in collusion

to get rid of the Joe Pesci. character. So they would ask the one brother, talk to your brother, and that's how they, and so he brought, Tommy D. Simone's the real guy's name. He brought Tommy to get clipped. And so now you and your boys just beat the shit at him. Well, not me, thank God, my boys. Well,

is this one of those things that you say, oh, I wasn't at the, I left right before. I wasn't there. Gotcha. I was, I was really lucky that night. Yeah, you were lucky. But what happened was one of my friends gave everybody up. He didn't get me up. because I actually wasn't there.

So if he would have said Mike was also, I would have been there. But he, and we don't know for a fact, but I know the guy. And he has since got arrested very recently, very recent within the last four or five years, for moving a lot of Coke, which I knew this guy in my whole life. I haven't seen him in a lot in many years. But I never knew even Del Coke, to be honest. I was really surprised. I saw it in the paper.

I was disappointed and surprised. but in any event his father was a connected guy too so in this mix was the two brothers whose father owned the bar that the head guy really owned so they were connected

and this guy but apparently his father must have told him you better go and tell them who did it before they the brothers do or maybe nobody does but he'll find out So he went and he gave up the two brothers

and two of the other guys So four of them Five people were there Me and my friend left So five people were there He gave everybody up And of course Bruno got

Even though the two brothers Were connected heavy Because of their father They own the bar The main guy went Everybody got retribution One guy got a play in his head My other friend got shot in the legs

With a sort of shotgun Supposedly he said says, the guy who I think informed, says that they blew his car up. But no one believes that happened, that his car got blown up. But, um, wow. Everybody got paid back. One of my friends took off. He wasn't around for years.

He just up and left for many years. That's wild. Your boys that you grew up with all beat the shit, have a mafia associate. That's crazy. No, mafia, big shot. Big shot. Yeah. And you're lucky that you haven't a leave.

Me and my friend just happened. Because if you were there and your boys are all getting beat up, like, I would be a job. You have to get involved. Yeah, the two brothers, they were told they were going to go get this taken care of, that they were going to like a sit-down, and they was all going to be whitewashed and taken care of. And they got jumped on the way there. Wow. Oh, so this is a serious issue.

Yeah, I mean, they did a number on Bruno. Wow. And he was, like I say, he was a tough guy. He's a well-known guy. Years later, he got killed. And you ever heard of the mafia cops? So they were two cops that were dirty. and they were doing, giving the mob information.

They would get it from police computers. They were really, like two of the most dirty cops, NYPD ever had. So they were given information. And their information was that, and I went to the trial. So one of the guy, Vic, the head look casey guy, he was on trial during a case. I was doing a separate federal drug case. And in between, like, there's a sort of,

much downtime. I'd go sitting in on his trial. And the day I was there, they were actually talking about this. So the mafia cops gave the Lucchese boss information that somebody's a rat, and they think it's Bruno. And the reason they thought it was Bruno was because the mafia cops had heard from one of the other cops, one of the other NYPD guys, not knowing he was talking to the two dirty cops. He said that Little Al so Little Al is the guy

I understand now. He's the witness. He's testifying. He's cooperating. Little Al said that they had told somebody that Little Al did this homicide. The only person that called Little Al Little Al, was Bruno. So when the cops heard that little out, they told

him, they said Little Al. He said, the only guy that calls me Little Al was Bruno. Bruno. That was a little guy. enough to kill Bruno. They went and they killed them and they put a canary in his mouth and they put him in the trunk of a car and supposedly he was begging them on his knees. My daughter's

getting married in a couple of weeks, please. They killed him. But it turns out, it's verified that it wasn't him. He wasn't a rat. It was somebody else. But because the term little owl was used, that was enough for them to kill this poor guy.

Well, poor guy. I mean, he was a criminal. That was his life he chose. I mean, that's crazy. Is it that crazy? And they put it to make an example and they put a canary in his mouth and left him in the trunk of the car. Literally a canary. Yeah. Thinking he was a rap, but he wasn't. Wow.

Tough, right? That is what? I mean, that's a tough neighborhood to grow up. These are the kinds of guys you're growing up around. Yeah. And I think you had said that this is the kind of stuff that you saw growing up that kind of led you into cleaning up your act a little bit, not being involved. Yeah. I mean, there's no, there's no loyalty.

Look how fast my friends were giving up. I mean, I would have been giving up just as fast. Yeah. I mean, they got Bruno, I mean, I'm sure the list goes on of guys that get given up. Yeah. And there's obviously a lot of talk about family and loyalty and not snitching and all this stuff. It's not. Until the deal gets put on the table.

It's all greed. As a quote from Napoleon that I always love is that everyone's got a price. I'm just surprised at how low most people's is. Wow, it's true. It's true, right? It is true, man. And nobody, you know, even nobody knows how they're going to be. Like, sometimes you hear people say, I would never rat, I'm not a rat, I would never rat.

You don't know, man. When you're, like, the case we did on the low east side with all of them guys, the main guy was a Spanish guy. The number two guy was a black guy who had done a lot of time. It was a tough guy, looked tough. The Spanish guy was very soft-spoken. They were like the top of the echelon of the 40 guys. everybody thought that the Spanish guy was going to flip in a minute

because he was soft-spoken and never did time and everybody thought the black guy who had dumped time and looked like a hard rock and he cooperated the Spanish guy who we had the mother on tape the sister on tape

we were seizing his house we were seizing the mother's house we told him we'll let your mother walk we'll let your sister walk we won't seize your house we want you to flip he stayed strong the number two guy flipped in a second

you can never tell man that's wild and once he flipped the number two guy flipped all the 40 people cooperated wow except the main guy

he didn't they either cooperated or they pled out pled guilty that's so wild yeah you can't tell man you think you know people and crazy

until something comes across their table bro now there's a you had said before that there might have been a story or two that you had never really

share before that you might have thought of that you that uh well that i the story i never shared before was actually that girl the young girl that we saved her life oh yeah yeah yeah that's yeah i never told me about this story wow okay i appreciate you sharing that man that's that's wild um but dude this has been so fun that i could listen you tell stories probably for the rest of the night we got to do this again i really really enjoyed it you're a great storyteller this is i mean my mind's blown um and we can edit this part out if you want but i think it'd be fun for like the intro, maybe even like in the episode. Do you have a gun on you right now?

I do have a gun on me. Okay. So I'm not saying anything wrong. I'm not going to, I'm glad I survived. I didn't say anything that would make you have to, you know. But pull it out? I mean, yeah, you never know. You never know.

Oh, I don't pull it out. So we're good. Yeah. You know, you want me to tell you a story that? I haven't told anybody that's kind of an interesting story. I would love that. Kind of a sad story, too, actually. And it just goes to show the neighborhood that Alphabet City was.

and so me and my partner in uniform this is when we were both in plain clothes in uniform we knew this kid he was mentally challenged I guess you would say and we'd see him all the time walking the streets he was probably at the time in his late 20s or 30s with the mentality of a young boy five six seven year old kid and he loved cops

and he knew us when we were in uniform and then he knew us when we were in plain clothes and we'd always thought My partner had a good heart. He was a tough guy and wild, but he had a good heart. And we'd call him over, and we'd let him play with the police radio. And we'd ask, like, you'd ask Central for a time check. And she, what, basically ask him what time is it?

So if you're doing a report, you want the exact time. So you'd say Central, give me a time check. And she'd say, 15, 50 hours. Okay. So we'd let him say it. We'd hold it here. He'd say, say, Accentual for time check. And he'd get that.

And he'd talk kind of funny, right? and he'd say time check central he would say it you know not so clear and she'd say what like she'd ask him five times and then she'd finally get it and he'd say okay 15 50 hours unit okay and he'd get a kick out of it right that's awesome that she was answered him yeah and then we let him hit the siren and all that shit so he probably loved it you know it's really sad because he's not you know he's a guy that want he knew he wasn't like everybody else so one day he comes to me my part of my part It was a spring day. He had a jacket on. And he says, I want to show you guys something. He opens his jacket and he takes out an envelope with an inch full of money, maybe two inches. Like, what are you doing with that money? He says, my settlement just came in. What settlement? But when I was born, the doctor screwed me up. This is my, my mother got a big settlement today. Either she gave him some money to walk around it or he took it out of the house. This is my settlement. I don't remember his name.

I don't even know if we only knew his nickname. But in any event, I'm like, you've got to bring that home. And don't show it to anybody. Okay, okay, I'm going to go home. As we're talking to him, we get a call on the radio, like a gun run, something heavy. Either a robbery in progress, a shooting in progress, something heavy. We jump in a car. And he was literally 100 yards from his building.

We jump in a car and we take off. we go to that job all the cops are there we handle whatever it gets handled maybe 15 minutes later another job comes over mail shot in the lobby

of I think it was 80 Baruch Place 80 Baruch Place sounds familiar we knew it the minute we heard the address we knew sure is how we get there he's in his lobby

of course dead Of course we're no money Crazy right What would take this kid's money And why'd you have to shoot him Why do you have to shoot him I mean just Why do you have to shoot this kid

His whole life he suffered He finally gets Some money to make his life a little better According to him The mother was gonna move them out of the projects And they fucking And they kill him I mean brutal

Crazy, crazy neighborhood How do you like I don't know how you cope with this Like do you think you get a little desensitized Yeah I think so Like after a while, like you see this sweet kid, like, and he dies. Yeah, that was a horrible, horrible case. That's got to be one of the worst.

One of the worst, for sure. There's no way that you can... And the minute it came over the radio, you just feel it. We know. Who else are going to be? Terrible, right? Oh, that's awful. I mean, what, it's...

I mean, I'm very grateful that there's people like you and, you know, your co-workers and your partners that, you know, do their best to protect the neighborhoods. And, you know, obviously, there's... issues with police and I'm sure you know better than anyone there's corruption and problems that happen and you know there's definitely no organization that's perfect and there's a lot of bad cops that's for sure but uh I'm very grateful for the good ones that you know that try to I don't know to try to keep the community safe so I appreciate everything you've done me this is this is this is wild this heavy shit but also some some good parts too of being a hero saving some people's lives yeah not a hero but more of a hero than me okay of the people in this 10 you're probably the most of I'll give you that.

I really appreciate it, brother. Thank you so much for coming on, man. We've got to do this again soon. This would be awesome. Cool, man. Thank you, bro. You're welcome. Mike Cadella.