Danny Jones Podcast - #95 I Slept with the Wife of the Mafia’s Most Dangerous Assassin | Larry Mazza
Episode Date: June 3, 2021Larry Mazza is a former soldier, hitman and protégé of Colombo crime family captain Greg Scarpa who was also known as the Grim Reaper. Larry has admitted to murdering four people and has alle...gedly participated in around 25 murders. Mazza has since relocated to Florida and became a fitness personal trainer. He released a book titled "The Life: A True Story about a Brooklyn Boy Seduced into the Dark World of the Mafia." https://larrymazza-thelife.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Mr. Larry, is that here pronounced it, Maza?
Mazza or Mazza.
Maza or Maza?
Yeah.
Okay, cool, man.
Well, I appreciate you coming here and doing this.
Doing this with me, man.
My pleasure.
Coco Beach.
You live in Coco Beach.
Yes.
What's it like living over there?
You know, it's a little quieter than like the Tampa area.
Yeah, definitely.
It's beachy.
It's right on the beach.
And it's old school.
They really haven't caught up with the times yet, like, you know, Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
There's not many high rises.
Most of them are, I think they stopped in eight stories, you know, the condos.
Yeah, Cocoa Beach is an interesting place, man.
Yeah.
Hometown of Kelly Slater.
Yes, yep.
They got the nice big shrine of him right there on the main entrance.
Yeah, and I got a gym there.
Oh, do you?
Oh, yeah.
So someday they can have a shrine to me.
Okay.
I've trained so many people at Coco Beach over the years.
Yeah, so.
That's awesome.
Do you ever surf?
I never surf.
It's a big surf town.
No, I never did it in my life.
I enjoy the ocean.
Yeah.
I love the waves, all of that.
have never, never surfed.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
So for people who aren't familiar with your story and I know you have a book out and
then you just sold or would you, you, you optioned your film to a big company that purchased it?
I'll option my life rights.
Okay.
And to a company that Joe Palletto is the producer.
Uh-huh.
And he's ultimately going to have his own platform, his own Netflix type.
And it's going to happen very soon, probably in a few weeks.
So he's looking for lots of material.
He's already licensed probably hundreds of movies.
So it's going to be a mob TV like 24-7.
Oh, cool.
So, yeah, that's going to be a real, and like I said, it's just weeks away now.
Wasn't there also a movie or something that you starred in that you...
Well, I didn't star in it.
I was a consultant to De Niro in the Irishman.
Oh, okay.
And I did get a part in the movie.
I played a hitman.
Oh, wow.
That's recent, right?
that movie.
Yeah, that movie came out a couple of years ago.
Oh, okay.
Right, baby, I think last year it came out.
Yeah.
So I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself, but for people who aren't familiar with
their story, just give me like a brief background of who you are and where he came from.
You know, it's always nice to start it that way, the way you did because it's such good stuff.
I've got, you know, where I am now, it's a blessing.
I have, you know, a screenplay in the works.
Nick Pellagie's writing it.
Terry Winter is also involved
He's written as Sopranos
And you know
So many movies like
Wow
And gangster boardwalk empire
But you know
And what got me there was
The cops that were on my case
They were part of the task force
Back in I guess around the 90s
9089
9091
Ardale De Niro's
Private Security
Really
So yeah
After they were
retired, they went into that. And when he was looking for somebody, they all knew me well,
and they says, Larry's the guy you want. He read the book. It's called the life, and he said it was
terrific several times. And he had a plan for it, but, you know, he's so busy and got so much
going on in his life. It's too slow for me. So this Joe Palletto came in and took it, and
we're moving. But now go back to what got me is, you know, I was, you know, I was,
a maid guy in the Colombo family.
And I, you know, I didn't start out that way.
I started out a normal upbringing.
My father was a lieutenant in a fire department.
My mom worked in a bank.
You know, we went to Catholic school, my brother, my sister, myself.
And, you know, we had everything we wanted growing up.
You know, not that we were rich, but we were expected to do well in school.
You know, we were pressed to do well.
And I went all the way up to college.
I did a year of college, John Jay College, Criminal Justice.
It's ironic.
Yeah, that's funny.
But somewhere, you know, just about six months before I went to college,
I met an older woman while I was working in a supermarket.
And her name was Linda.
And very attractive.
And I was not quite 18, and she was about 32.
So it was sort of a mutual attraction and seduction,
whatever word you want to use.
We wound up having an affair.
I found out soon after that she was married.
I knew she had two kids, but I never met the husband.
The husband was always gone.
He was always away.
So I was assuming he was a businessman or a doctor just with crazy hours.
Get that thing a little closer to you?
Just pull it towards you.
Yeah.
Or you can.
Yeah, either way.
And ultimately, I find out later on,
that he is one of the bosses in the Colombo family.
And his name's Greg Scarper,
and they called him the Grim Reaper.
He had the, I mean, he told me he stopped counting at 50 bodies,
and he's probably got 100 or 200.
I mean, it's probably one of the most feared mob guys in history.
Yeah, so.
Holy shit.
Yeah.
The way I found out was,
Now, sorry to interrupt, when you were that age, did you know anything about mafia?
Not a lot.
I knew there was these social clubs all over the place where the guys always dressed better and never worked and had the caddies, that type of thing.
You knew it was there, but I didn't know anything about the rules or the real actual lifestyle, the life.
I didn't really know what it meant to be in that life until later on, obviously.
So, and I did have an Uncle Albert who was a dinosaur with the Colombo family.
He died at like 93 years old or 94 years old.
And he was very, very well liked in and out of that life.
He was one of those guys that you see in, like in movies where they like the mob guy.
He was that guy.
Greg, on the other hand, was just a vicious, greedy.
you know,
ruthless mob guy.
So, and I wound up somewhere in between
because growing up under Greg Scarpa,
you had to produce.
You couldn't be weak.
You couldn't show any weakness.
So I learned to be a gangster like, Greg.
It's summer.
Camping season.
Let's talk about pitching tents.
That's right.
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Okay.
So you're having an affair with this woman who's over more than 10 years older than you.
And then you find out that she's married to a guy who's an infamous murderer.
How does that not freak you out?
How do you not run for the hills when you find that?
It did.
here's what happened. She broke it like little bits and pieces. She said, told me first he was an
influential guy. He could help you in business. And they actually put me in charge of sales.
They had a company, paper products and fire extinguishes, cleaning supplies to furnish, all kinds
of businesses, restaurants. And they just made me to a sales manager. Just came in and she told him
that she had a guy that can do it,
and the next thing I know, I meet him that way.
So now going to different establishments to get the business,
if they said no,
the next day he would send somebody to the place
and say, all right, Larry, you go back tomorrow.
I would go back.
They were so happy to sign me up.
So the business was, I started understanding, you know,
of exactly what he was.
but where I
She was strong arming people to do business with you
Yeah to make sure they gave me the business
Yes, that was his influence
And it was going well for a while
But what happened was
Because now I knew him personally
And he was helping me
And making me successful in this
First legitimate business
I started feeling guilty and paranoid
I says now it's really really bad
If he finds out he's got to kill me
You know I know who he is now
So this went on for months
And he saw
The you know
I did some things that were paranoid
Like when he would call me to a meeting
I wouldn't go
I said he's gonna kill me tonight
You know
Or if you want to me to drop him off downtown
Or bring him somewhere
And I was always the one to do it
But I started boring
I said one of these trips
I'm not coming home you know
Because he's gonna find out
But you his wife
Yeah
So ultimately
Somewhere along the way
They discussed it
Or
She told him
him, you know, there's a lot
of theories now. There's people
think he might have known from the very beginning,
very possible.
Some say, well,
the other thing you gotta know is he had two other wives.
Yes. At the same time? Yes.
So he had three. He had one that was
living in Vegas. It's
really beauty queen. He had
Connie, who
was his first wife, with
his first children.
And
and then he
Linda, who actually was a common law, I don't think, I'm pretty sure they never got married.
You know, we found that out later on.
So he was juggling three lives, three wives and three lives.
So the other theory is that I made it easier for him because his youngest wife now wasn't
going to complain when he wasn't around.
She had, you know, her own little toy or her own keeping her occupied.
Right.
So, so anyway, he confronts me with it one day.
We're driving to the club.
And he knew because just a couple of days earlier,
I didn't show up somewhere.
And he said, this is not like you.
He said, something's wrong.
So on the way, he started breaking the ice.
And it's just us two in the car.
And we would get to the club every day, about a half hour before the rest of the men showed up.
And on the way, he's saying things like he loves me like a son.
You know, Linda loves you.
I'm going to have this conversation with you because I think you're very mature for your age.
I'm only 19 now.
This was about a year and a half later.
We had this talk.
And we wound up getting out of the car walking into the club.
We go, he sits down behind the desk.
I sit at my spot on the other side of the desk like we do every day.
And he's going on and finally he says, I know about you and Linda.
So my heart's beating.
And I remember always saying that I would never admit it.
I would never, ever admit it.
I just have to deny it.
But something came over me like it was do or die.
It was time.
I mean, I loved that.
I didn't want to not be with her.
And my answer to him was, Greg, I have a lot of respect for you.
You know that.
And I think you are far from an idiot.
But only an idiot wouldn't see it, what was going on.
I mean, he knows I'm there, you know, constantly.
I'm with her all the time, even when he's away.
You know, and I didn't believe he really thought I was helping her around the house and shopping for her.
You know, I mean, come on.
after all this time.
So I sort of, maybe deep inside, I knew that he knew.
It's just a weird, weird time.
It was very rough.
It was tough.
But now the weight of the world was off my shoulders.
But I did learn one of the main rules that day.
He took me outside.
You know, we would hang out on a parking meter, lean on the meter, get some sun.
And he told me that it's okay.
He says, I'm fine with it.
if anybody outside the tree of us finds out,
he says, you and I will be killed.
It's a rule.
Somebody could kill the Grim Reaper?
Well, yeah, we're breaking one of the rules that is told to you
the day you become a made guy.
You know, you never turn on the family.
You have to come whenever the family calls for you.
They come first.
No drugs.
Obviously, a murder, no talking to the law.
And no messing around with other people.
wives or girlfriends.
You know?
So I learned that rule that day, but as the years went on, I also learned every one of
those rules is broken.
It's a facade.
Wow.
Everyone.
There were so many guys dealing drugs.
So many guys dealing with the feds, my boss himself was a 30-year informant.
You know, that's like the coup de grace, the end of the story of my life to find out that
he was, you know, an informant for 30 years.
That's interesting.
I had a guy on here.
I think the only other guy that I've had on the show who was, like, previous mafia was John A-Lite.
Yeah, Johnny, I don't know.
And he was saying the same thing, basically.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it isn't.
Like I said, the drugs is running rampant.
You know, there were guys messing around with people that, and it was known.
It was like, John Gotti was with his boss at the time, Delacroach.
He was with the daughter.
And Sammy the Bull told me that.
He didn't have to lie about it.
You know, he says he's, you know, the biggest hypocrite of all of us, you know.
He was big into the drugs.
He was sleeping with his boss's daughter.
And they were both married.
I mean, it was, you know.
So Sammy the Bull was running around the same time frame?
He was, uh, was he in a different?
He was a Gambino family.
Gambino family.
Another family.
We were to Columbo family.
But I was friends with him in the street.
We played ball together.
Really?
A racquet ball.
What was he like?
Sammy was no nonsense.
tough guy all the way, a killer, a big money earner.
And did you know, like, this guy's a killer?
Well, later on, I did when I was in the life, yes.
This is not like, you're just like, you hang out with these guys, you guys are both
them.
No, no, no.
This is not casual conversation.
No, we used to go to the same racquetball and weight club.
So, and he was into boxing.
I was into martial arts and then boxing also.
So we actually spot a few times, you know, but he's, I like him.
I like Sammy.
He's very witty.
He's a smart guy.
And, you know, he's a survivor, obviously.
You know, to be up against what he was up against, you know,
everybody wants to call people rats and things like that.
But I always say there's a lot of different ways to break that rule.
Okay, some guys cop out and admit things that are hurting the next wave of defendants.
That happened on my case.
Where guys came in, they admitted there was a war, they admitted they were part of the Colombo family.
They don't have to prove that anymore.
These guys just admitted it.
So that becomes evidence against you.
Okay.
But they got their reasonable deal, and they were happy.
John Gotti talking on the tips the way he did and being flamboyant
and being in the public eye the way he was all the time.
That's not a good thing, you know.
And then other guys do it like my boss did.
The smartest way of all, just be partners with an FBI agent.
Your whole career, you'll never get arrested.
And that's what happened with him.
Wow.
He sold his own son out, Greg Jr., who I'm still very friendly with.
He did 33 years, Greg Jr.
And when the father died, he did a deathbed confession, and he saved other people.
He didn't put me or his son as part of the deathbed confession exonerating us.
So, yeah, and he, yeah, it's...
And is there stuff that he could have said that was?
He could have exonerated you?
Of course. He could have said that all I did was drive in places.
He was my driver.
He didn't know anything about the hits.
It's what he did for Allie Boy, Persico, who was the boss of the big boss of the family,
Carmine Persico's son.
And while I was away, Allie Boy told me that him and his father knew about Greg for the last 20 years.
So.
Knew about him talking to that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then I found out later on there was an actual case.
from one of the attorneys on our case that I'm friends with now way after,
there was a very big tax indictment.
Okay?
And about eight of the guys, heavyweights in the family, were all indicted.
Greg was one of them.
So they all show up to the first arraignment, and it gets delayed.
You know, they always put it off for weeks.
They come back to the next one.
They're all there except Greg.
they have to delay it again.
A few weeks later, they show up again, no Greg.
The fourth time, they show up, no Greg, they throw the case out.
Okay?
So those guys, Junior Persico was on that case.
So he had to know something.
But either he felt he helped us.
So what's the problem?
Right.
Plus, they knew he could kill.
without having a problem.
They're never going to arrest him.
So they had him doing a lot of work over the years.
Plus, he was an enormous earner.
So all those things, they gave him a pass for having a, being partners with an FBI agent.
Is that a super rare, valuable trait in somebody to be able to murder without emotion?
Yeah.
And the truth that it is, because most of the guys that I know,
aren't that way. Like, you know, even Sammy, you know, he told me, he says, I never, you know, Pete,
they got me like I love killing. I don't. I hate it. I hate it. He says, and when I get, when I have to do it,
he says, I'm so mad at the person for breaking a rule and forcing me to have to do this, you know,
it's business. It's, it's hard to realize that, but, and they say the human body can get
used to anything, you could endure anything, and eventually it just becomes a way of life, you know.
But Greg could kill you.
Like, there was a lawyer that once described him as good-looking, articulate.
He said something like he could sit down with judges and lawyers, have dinner with you,
and for dessert, he'll kill you.
That's how he described Greg, you know.
we had the tape, this, this, this, uh, a lawyer got caught with heroin, got arrested, so he
immediately cooperated.
And they were interviewing him about all the guys from the Colombo family that he dealt
with.
And we had the tape.
So how do we get that tape?
You know, Greg's connection got it.
And this was became, as we looked back on, you know, uh, in time, the handwriting
was on the wall.
We just couldn't believe it, no one he was such a killer.
You know, I'll tell you what happened during the war, which, I mean, really made it certain.
But there were things like Greg Jr. told me that just weird things that would happen where his father wasn't part of something, the next day he found out that they all got pinched.
You know, a lot of that.
But there's a lot more of that going on.
You know, like Whitey Bulger.
Yeah.
You know, I'm sure those aren't the only two.
You know, there's...
Yeah, Whitey Bulger.
Yeah, that's a fascinating story.
about him.
Oh, absolutely.
And how they tested,
did those experiments on him in prison,
I don't know if you heard about all that stuff.
No, I didn't.
I didn't.
It's all that.
There was like a famous government program called M.K. Ultra.
During the,
during the,
what's the serial killer's name?
Charles Manson,
during his whole era, his brain.
They were testing these mind control,
CIA mind control tactics on prisoners
by basically giving them certain doses of
LSD every single day.
Wow.
And they were doing that to Wadi Bouljah.
He was in prison.
I think he talked about it.
But it was like a CIA experiment.
A mind control experiment.
Wow.
Huh.
Anyways.
So I'm curious about like what
what kind of like human traits
did you notice in a guy
like this, Gregory,
that makes him able
to just murder somebody.
Well, you know, it's the same thing.
It's, it becomes second nature.
He was born in the life.
I mean, at 15, 16 years old, he was already in the street, stealing, beating people up,
doing all the things that...
So he's conditioned a very young age.
An up-and-coming guy.
And somebody that's already in the life sees this trait in him, sees that he's tough, he's got balls,
he's got, you know, got what it takes, okay?
And then they groom you.
Okay, I was groomed.
I was taught, educated.
the way of the life.
I don't think that's happening anymore today
because I could see the different people
that are in the life now.
It's not the same.
It's definitely not the same.
They miss that grooming and teaching
and having a person become a consummate wise guy
that when you walk into a place, they know who you are.
You don't have to tell them.
This guy's somebody to respect.
And Greg always had that.
He got straightened out.
I think he was 18.
He got his button.
What does that mean?
When you get made into the family.
Okay.
Officially inducted.
Okay.
Become an official member of the family.
To have it at that age, you had to have somebody that saw a lot about you.
And he loved money.
He loved money.
So there's nothing he wouldn't do to earn money.
I mean, every racket there was he was in.
You know, from Joker poker machines to the number of business,
he was a Shylock to Shylock's.
What's the Shylock?
You lend money at exorbitant rates.
So you give a guy $1,000.
And you could charge anywhere from, he would charge me $10,
but I would charge $30, $40, or $50 per week.
That's the interest.
They have to pay that every week until they hand you back to $1,000.
Okay.
So he was making, I mean, just what I knew about from the close guys,
about $25,000 a week in interest.
every week without fail.
Nobody missed payments.
All the people that were getting these loans from him
knew that the collateral was their life.
Yes.
Well, their well-being.
Right.
He would probably kill them.
They're going to get their legs broken or something.
Right.
We went to work on guys all the time that didn't pay.
And even that become second nature.
They start you out where you're doing,
where somebody you're beating up
did something very bad.
Like robbed an old woman.
woman in the neighborhood, okay, or found out they were selling drugs by the school.
We go give them a beating.
You feel proud in a way.
You think you did the right thing.
You got this drug deal away from the school, or you got even with this person that robbed a friend's grandmother.
You know, then you participate just because a guy owes money.
But you're already seasoned.
They take baby steps.
they never ask you to kill your friend
that's like a myth
like your best friend
no they're not gonna ask you
right
the ones they're gonna ask you to kill
is somebody again early on
somebody that did something really bad
later on it becomes
looser
this guy you know had a fight
with junior purser
and junior person's nephew
and junior person's nephew
lost the fight
we have to go kill
the guy.
I mean, it's a fight.
I got fights growing up.
If I, if I, I would have been killed five times for winning a fight.
You know, I lost fights too.
Don't get me wrong.
But it's just, I actually got called to a meeting that I had a, I was in an after hours.
And we weren't supposed to be in after hours.
What's the after hours?
Okay.
The nightclubs close at 4 o'clock.
Uh-huh.
And there's clubs that open at 4.
Oh, shit.
Yeah, and they were illegal, but, you know, they were all around.
So I was in one of these places, and I get a beef with,
I find out later on, it's Paul Castellano's nephew.
I didn't know.
And he picked a bad time because I was really at the peak of my martial arts.
I was good.
And I won the fight, okay?
I didn't abuse him.
I didn't keep hitting him when he was down.
Once he went down and I walked away, it was over.
The next night I get a call.
I have to go to the diner.
and it's like late at night
almost morning
it's one of those 24 hour diners you know
and
I'm thinking to myself
why do I got to go see Greg
at 2 o'clock in the morning
you know it's his little
oh it's Greg you had to go see
well he's doing that call for me
right so I get there I see Sammy the bull
hanging out outside he says hello to me
I walk in who's sitting
scappy our captain
Greg
and Paul Castellano.
You're shit in your pants?
No, I don't know what happened yet.
Greg now comes over to me and walks me outside,
or to the front door, and he says, what happened last night?
I said, what are you talking about?
I said, we went out, you got a beef?
I said, oh, yeah, I got a fight.
I said, you know, it happened once in a while.
He says, well, that was Pauli's nephew.
So I said, I didn't know.
And he's telling me he wants satisfaction.
He wants to kill me.
So scappy.
But I learned a lesson here, too.
So Scappy is talking on our behalf.
He's captain.
He was a boss for a while, very well respected.
And so I remember, now Paul's talking to me.
He says, if it wasn't for Scappy, I'll say, you'd be dead already.
Now, Greg got mad.
So he says, if the hair is harmed on his head, I said, you'll find more bodies in the street.
Now Scappy had it
Greg, you know, he shouldn't have said that
But he's feared
But Paul would have shit his pants if they had to go to war together
You know, Paul was no Greg
Right
He was a boss and he was a businessman
So anyway, long story short
I had to like, I owed Scappy my life now
Right
Because he saved me
So now I owed him
What kind of a guy was Scappy?
Scappy old school, old time mob guy that died in prison
he got a 133 years
and he's the guy that they quoted the newspaper
when he got the 133 years he looked at junior
persker he says well we only got to do two thirds
and it was in the newspaper
and when he got the time he was about 65
so obviously he was never coming home
junior never came home
so anyway the funny part of this is
after it's over with
I walk outside I talk to Sammy real quick
and he said while I'm walking away he says
you should have killed that cocksucker.
Oh, shit.
He didn't like the kid.
So that was funny, yeah.
So did Sammy kind of have your back too?
Was Sammy part of the same gang?
No, he was there to be with,
he was the other guy.
Yeah, yeah, with Paul Castellano.
The Gambino family.
But we were friends.
So it says we had a rapport, you know,
and he knew me.
So if this guy would have had his way,
Sammy would have been the guy to kill you?
Oh, yeah, that's a good question.
That's a good question.
Could be.
Could be.
It's a great question.
I don't know that, yeah, I don't think Greg would have allowed me to get in the car there.
And then the other thing is this.
Typically, they wouldn't let somebody else do it.
If it came down to, and I'll tell you a story where I had to be killed,
my own family would do it.
They wouldn't allow Gambinos to do it.
And there's a reason.
They'll torture me.
They'll make it real hard.
Do you want them away?
We'll get rid of them.
We had a friend of us, Tony Fressa, who used to like to go out and drink,
and when he did Coke, he got a little crazy, and he liked the Coke.
So he was in Sammy's club called Talley's, and he winds up getting out of hand, acting crazy, whatever.
The owner, Joey DeAngelo was his name, tells him he's got to leave.
And he's a good fella.
Tony wasn't a wise guy.
so he doesn't go.
So now a couple of the guys bounces, they physically take him out.
He goes home, gets his gun, comes back, and kills the good fella.
That's a mortal sin.
Can't even raise your hands to a good fella.
So he winds up, scabby tells him, get out of town.
He goes down, comes down to Florida.
I might have been in this area, Tampa.
So he comes down to Florida.
Yeah, I think it was Tampa.
It's funny.
And he's trying to sort this out.
So he goes to have the meeting with the Gambino family.
And I'll never forget this either.
We know he's at the meeting, and we're waiting for him to come back.
We all like Tony.
He's one of us.
He's a tough guy.
He's good, you know, we all liked him.
He comes walking in, Scap, he used to walk in, you're bouncing his keys in his hand.
So we heard him come in.
And he always said, gentlemen.
He said, that's what he did.
He says, gentleman.
And we're all waiting.
He says, I got good news and I got bad news.
He says, the bad news.
The bad news is Tony's got to go.
The good news is we get to do it.
How chilling is that?
That was the good news.
But I understood they would have probably tortured him
for what he did to Joey DeAngelo.
So, yeah, it's, you know,
and I was on the outskirts of that,
one of my early hits.
Were you there for that?
I wasn't at the actual shooting,
but I was there.
I actually picked Tony up with Mario at the airport
and drove him to where Greg Jr. was waiting for him.
Did he know that he was about to be executed?
No.
He thought it was a matter of fact we made a stop
and Mario ran in and bought Coke.
Really?
So he thought everybody was going to go party.
And at that time, I didn't do a lot of, you know, drugs or anything.
I drank a little bit.
But anyway, and the hole was already dug.
in the woods behind Gregory's house.
Somebody flipped years later and told what a body was.
Why wouldn't they just be like,
if they really loved this guy like a brother,
why wouldn't just be like,
yo, go to the Bahamas, don't come back?
That's what I said I would have done.
Again, it's a difference,
but a guy like Scappy,
who lives by the rules of Kosoenostra,
he probably couldn't live with himself.
He says if it was the other way around,
if they hurt one of our good fellas,
you know, we'd want to be.
the same satisfaction.
So there are guys at a certain level who live this life that know the rules,
and they just taking it to the grave with them, you know?
Plus, I guess you have to always have that concern in the back of your mind.
If this guy does come back, then we're really fucked.
Yeah, then there's a war.
Then there's a war.
And then they could ask for two guys.
Then Scappy's life could.
You like to us, you know.
Right.
So, yeah.
And there were others.
I mean, Bucky was a friend of ours that, but not a good friend.
fellas when I say that, but he was our friend, that got into the drug business. And he was
supposed to, he was told to stop. And this is why it's hypocritical, because just five, six years
later, we were the biggest drug crew in Brooklyn. And I'll tell you how that happened in a minute.
But Bucky got killed for dabbling in the drug business. And he was one of us. But again, it was a rule.
You're not supposed to be dealing drugs.
Could you guys find a more humane way to, like, kill your own...
I mean, these guys are kind of like your friends.
I mean, you just always shoot them, or was there a better way to do it?
No, the only thing I ever knew was a gun.
I never heard of guys with knives, never heard of poison.
The only bombing I heard of was when they tried to bomb John Gotti,
and they got Frankie DeChico instead, who was on the Paul Costellano hit.
and it was another family, the Chin's family,
and some of the other families never sanctioned that hit
that John Gotti did on Costalano.
You can't kill a boss.
It's a rule.
You just can't do it.
Because if that starts happening,
John's own consulier told him,
what you did, there's a bullet waiting for you now.
You broke a rule.
Yeah.
And also, who's going to want to be the boss
if you could just start whacking bosses to take over?
You know, so you don't hear about it that much.
It's very rare.
And it's even more rare to kill a consular, because a consular year is, his position is to save lives.
Right.
And like that night with me, if it was our family, this was two different families.
But if it was...
The consular, he's like the lawyer, the negotiator.
Yeah, but he's the mediator.
He's not.
He's liked and respected by all the captains and all the good fellas.
Okay.
Okay.
So if he calls you to a meeting at two in the morning, you'll go.
and you have no, you have all the confidence in the world, you're not getting killed.
And again, that's a sacred rule of the life.
So if you really believe in the life and the, and he calls you, you go.
You know, that slipped over the years too because guys in that position were,
shouldn't have been in the position.
They were cold-blooded killers, you know.
It's typically a position where guy did his work, made his bones over the years.
He's well-liked.
He's smart.
He can, almost like you said,
The movies make it like a lawyer like Tom Hagan and the Godfather.
But as a matter of fact, Greg told me that's the best position in the family.
Because you're untouchable and it's a lifetime assignment.
They can never break you.
If you're a captain, they can demote you.
If you're the underboss, he could demote you.
If you're the counselor, yeah, it's for life.
And that's the other reason.
It's such a trusted position, you know?
So, you know, when, when, you know, when,
And that's why Sammy the Bull Committee counsel you.
He'll kill too fast.
You know, he'll kill you before he negotiates.
And was that just because of the, is that just his nature?
Or was that his job?
Yeah, no, it's probably his name.
He would kill people whose job wasn't even to kill him?
Well, he, like, they weren't all orders.
Usually it was orders from the top.
Right.
And he would be the guy because they know it would get done.
Okay.
But I'm sure, just like Greg and most of them.
of us, we had some that weren't put on record.
Just emotional killings.
Not emotional, but where you know you're, even though you're not going to get the
approval, you still want the guy.
So we were involved in a few of those with Greg, you know.
But I remember him telling me, I put so many on record and I've done so many hits for
the family, they'll never question me if I, if the guy turns up dead, they're not going
to think it was him because he always does it by the book, except those four or five times,
you know.
Right.
So, that was what hurt us, our family, would let us into a war.
Carmine Sessa was a guy that I grew up with under Greg.
He's a little older than me, got his button first.
Then when there was a split in the family, which we'll get to a little bit more,
Vicarina asked our consular, Jimmy Angelina,
to approach all the captains.
if all the captain, and Vicarina was named acting boss by Junior Persico
when he got that 133 years with Scappy.
Okay.
But he didn't want to step down.
He still wanted to be the official boss, even from prison.
And he has that right.
Some people say he was wrong to do that.
That's a valid opinion.
But the rule is if he doesn't step down himself or get voted out unanimously by all the captains,
he's the boss.
So Vic asked Jimmy Angelina
And the consulia who all the men trust
To go and
Pull the captains canvass them
See if they were all vote
For me to be the official boss
And vote Junior out
The problem with that is
Junior has two sons
That are captains
They're never going to turn on him
Junior Bersico
He has
Lifelong friends like Scappy
Greg and others
that are never going to turn on them.
But there's also guys that have vendettas against Junior Persico for whatever reasons over the years.
So they jumped at the opportunity.
So now there was a split in the family.
There was the Persico faction and the arena faction.
And he has Jimmy go to all the captains and they don't, you know, it's not even 50-50.
Most of them are back in junior.
I shouldn't say that.
It's probably about 50-50.
within two weeks, Jimmy Angelina's dead, and he's a concierge.
Even me, this is like 10 years into me being in the life.
I've never heard of a consular year get hurt or anything.
It's coveted, like I said, Vicarina gets a message to Junior Persico
that Jimmy was trying to take over the family.
He was talking to all the captains.
So Junior thinks he did the right thing.
by, you know, the treachery.
Turns out, that wasn't the case, obviously,
because now he promotes Carmine Sessa
from captain to consulier.
Carmine and Greg Scarpa Sr. are close.
He grew up under him as another one.
He's like a son to him.
At 15, 14 years old,
Carmine was already on record with Greg.
And that's why he put him there.
He figured he could,
convinced Greg to come over.
But when he came to see Greg, Carmoy, and Carmine Sessa came to see Greg, he told
him that Vic wants me to talk to all the captains.
Greg busted out laughing.
He says he's going to do the same thing to you.
He's going to have you approach everybody and say that you're trying to take over the family,
just like he did to Jimmy.
Oh, my God.
So, this is the treachery that goes on behind the scenes.
So now, Greg, now Carmine goes back, and he decides he's got to kill Vicarina, the boss,
because he can't get the captains to come over.
He botches the attempt.
That's his first mistake.
He should have told Greg what he was going to do.
Vicarina would have been dead.
Instead, he wanted to go and do it on his own and try to beat that big, big shot, the consular, yeah, whatever.
He boxed.
He's trying to kill him?
Yeah, he had two other guys with him, and they just thought they would.
I guess they weren't prepared.
I mean, they saw the details of what they did.
tried to do? Well, they were in a car, and they saw, they knew Vick's daily routine. He came home
just when they were supposed to, but he saw them in the car. So I guess he took off. So it was a,
how'd you let them see? I mean, there's a whole bunch of questions to that, you know,
and they still should have killed them. I mean, if they really went there to do it, so he saw you,
a big deal, you know. That's why I says they, they weren't really, uh, ready for that move. I
They didn't have what it really took.
If they would have had Greg with them, like I said, Vic would have been dead.
Right.
And I said if he would have been on Vic's side, I remember later on in prison,
Vic telling me he wishes he had us on his side.
And I says, well, if that was the case, there'd be a lot of dead persecos.
That's what I told.
So anyway, that's how that way.
Oh, just a month earlier, Jimmy called for Greg.
Okay, counsel, yeah, called for him.
Okay.
Sent, if he wanted him to come to his club, to talk to Greg.
Greg had just gotten out of the hospital.
He had, like, multiple operations on his stomach.
He had ulcers from taking aspirins with nothing, just popping aspirins all day long.
He was nuts.
He didn't want to get a headache.
Even if he didn't have a headache, he took him.
And he had me taking him with him.
And I was taking him for years, you know, a couple of years, two, three, then I stopped.
But anyway.
If you want to make a, if you switch those, the wire probably be better.
It'd probably be easier.
Oh, I just switch, like, switch the side.
Yeah, there you got you.
Okay.
Oh, very good.
Yeah, that won't be crossing you.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, perfect.
Cool.
Yeah, I got to keep the head good.
I got a couple appointments today.
The aspirins.
What were the...
That was just not to get a headache?
Was there anything else?
Well, you know, we would go for a drink every night after the club.
The aspirins and the liquor have a nice little effect.
No, I think it's just so, you know, if you drink too much, you get a headache.
Yeah.
He had the aspirins first, so he wouldn't get the headache.
That was his thinking.
I do that with ad bill sometimes.
I wonder if it's, if that's bad for you.
Oh, you know, I don't know.
I think it's the aspirin itself that is very acidic and caused these holes in his stomach.
So they burst all at the same time anyway.
He almost died and he had to get a blood transfusion.
This is another story that you can't make up.
30 of us show up to give him blood.
One match.
First of all, he should have took the hospital blood.
It was screened.
They knew there was no AIDS in it.
And this is right at the height of AIDS.
One match.
One of our guys.
Pauli pumps, big muscle guy.
He's the match.
He gives him the blood.
It's tainted with AIDS.
So Greg winds up with AIDS.
And Paulie got it from needles.
He was steroids.
They would share him, yeah.
You know, he, he, I always say it because, you know, again, it's the way things
are now, it doesn't even matter, but he wasn't gay.
I mean, he had, everybody thought it was a gay, gay thing.
Right.
And it was for the most part.
Right, back then.
But he was, he had more girls.
He was polished.
He's the first guy that taught me how to drink wine
and taught me about the final wines.
So poorly, but it was divine intervention
that this is what God wanted for Greg to go out that way.
Or just dumb luck, I don't know, but he wound up with AIDS.
And he had enough money that he was able to survive it
because he kept using all the trial drugs.
But eventually he lost so much weight and the dementia was kicking in.
And during the war, he had dementia.
So we were out, you know, hunting.
How old was he this time?
Probably, it's funny to say it.
I got to say early 60s.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
Because I met him.
He was about 51, 52 when Linda was 32.
He was like 20 years older.
and her, and this is 10 years later,
60, 61 years old. Okay. Yeah,
that's about it, yeah. So,
you know,
I'm 60,
so it's like, you know,
you're making me think about it. I'm saying it's,
really, I don't feel like I'm ready to go
soon. No, dude, you look great for 60, man.
Great shape. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that.
But,
so he, eventually, he died from
that in jail. Yeah. Yeah.
But, yeah, the war was a nightmare.
How long after he was in jail did he finally
die? Probably
four years. He still hung
on. Yeah, they sent him to the hospital in
Springfield. I heard
at the end he was like literally,
I want to say like 50 pounds.
Just really
just started eating him up.
Now was he
was like
in the beginning when he was trying to groom you
and like he told you he was
treating you and bringing you up as his own son.
Right. Was his
objective to make, turn you
into a trained killer?
No, he was turning me into, again, the only way I could describe it is the consummate wise
guy.
He wanted all of his guys when you walked into a place, they know you're a good fella.
And not because you're banging the place up or getting fights, just the way you carry yourself
and the way you talk to others, the way you dress, you know, the way you tip.
You know, there's a whole bunch of things, and he taught me every one of those.
He never walked into a restaurant where he didn't give the matrily a 10.
And then again, this is back 30 years.
Maybe we'd give him 20 now, you know.
I still do that, you know.
A person that took me to the table at Burns, I tipped her.
I just, it's just, you know, she walked me to the table.
She was shocked.
But, so, no.
So you had to be, and you had to be able to kill.
and hurt people when they had to be hurt, you know.
So, yeah, there's a grooming, and I tell you baby steps,
the first hit that I was even privy to in any way, shape, or form,
I was asked to give a guy a flat tire.
Okay, he gave me the ice pick, and that morning,
very early in the morning I went, I gave the guy a flat.
I didn't think none of it.
I thought it was, silly, I thought he parked.
in his place or in his driveway or did something disrespectful and he just wanted to give the guy a flat.
The next day in the newspaper, man killed fixing flat tire.
So he's, was shot.
And I didn't say anything to Greg about it.
I read it.
I knew it.
I knew it was the car I gave the flat to.
But I think it was my first little test.
You don't have to wear those.
You can take him off.
You sure?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was my first test where he, if I would have came in, like, panicky, or Greg, is that the same car?
Like, nervous?
But I knew better.
And I was probably only 20.
But I was already around these guys.
They treat me like an equal.
I go everywhere with Greg.
He's bringing me to meet other bosses, other captains.
So I can't, I just know, okay?
A few months later, he asked me to go back.
buy a shovel. I buy the shovel. A couple of, a year goes by six months, it's not like we're
killing every day. Somebody's got to go, and it's Tony Fresza. So me and Gregory have to go buy shovels
and dig a hole. Okay? That's what I said. The hole was already dug. Okay.
Is that the first murder you witnessed? Yeah. Yeah, that would be the first one that I was
really, really privy, that I actually brought him to his demise, you know. Uh,
But later on, the first one that I was a crash car now, and I was right on the scene,
and I saw a guy getting popped, and they jump in the car and drive away.
So that's what I'm saying.
You don't ask you to pull the trigger for quite a while until you're, you've been around enough of them that you...
You're kind of desensitized to it by the time you actually...
Yeah, you know, it's hard to use words.
That's a great word to use.
It's sad to say, you know, but that's a good word.
You do get desensitized.
That's a great word to put it.
because I fumble over that to say how it's possible.
Right.
You know, especially growing up the way I did.
From a normal family, one of the cops on my case, Tommy Day,
he's a dear friend to this day, said in an interview,
you know, one of those interviews among cops where they're trying to figure out,
you know, the mind of a killer or whatever you want to call it.
And he said, he used me, he says, if a sweetheart like Larry Mazur could do it,
anybody can do it.
So, you know, it's how you.
you brought up. And here's the other thing you've got to realize. We're recruited at a very young
age, where you're maybe easily misled or you like the cause. You gravitate. You gravitate.
You like the Cadillacs. You like all the money. And you don't really know the bad side of it.
So you recruited at 15, 16, 17. I was 17. The guys that were younger than me that were
coming into the club.
My point is, all these years later, they can't recruit me.
Nobody could recruit me to do something like that.
I know better.
I mean, I, you know, I learned the hard way in some ways, but I would never.
You know, I wouldn't, I, you know, the hitman thing is another myth.
I'm not a hitman, you know.
The newspaper one day put an article out, hitman to testify against,
what they call them a G-Man, G-man, hitman to testify against G-man.
Because I wound up, that was my saving grace at the end.
I mean, I made a deal with the government, but basically it was about the corruption
because all their cases were going to get blown out of the water.
You know, so.
Whose cases were going to get blown out of the water?
Well, all the guys that were going to be going to trial, it came out now that Greg,
my boss, was an informant.
for 30 years.
So we didn't know who it was,
who he was getting information from.
We thought it was either a cop
or somebody on the other side during the war,
which I'll explain to you further.
So we knew there was somebody.
But now he admits,
fast forward while he's away,
that he was a government informer.
So he wanted leniency.
Even at the very end, he wanted leniency.
After all the murders we did during the war,
You know, and the judge says, no, can't do it, not this time.
And he sent him to 10 years, which was life for him anyway.
But I went off track there.
So if he was protected by the feds.
That's why the trials would get blown.
Not only that, this agent was giving us addresses of our enemies.
So you're giving, he gave us an address.
Oh, it was a dirty agent.
He gave us an address.
So these are all the things.
And I'll get to them.
The last casualty of the war, well, not really the last one, the last one that we did.
Then when I was away, there were a couple more when we all got arrested, just sort of cleaning up the mess.
So did this agent get in trouble?
Is that how Greg eventually got trouble?
No, him and Greg were together for many, many years.
Like he was working for the feds for 30 years.
It goes all the way back to the Mississippi Burning Story.
You ever see that movie?
No, I've heard about it.
I'm familiar with it.
What is the, can you tell it for people who haven't heard of it?
It's about these three civil service workers that they're fighting to abolish the racial tensions and all of that.
But the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi was still very strong.
And they killed these civil service workers.
One was black and I think two were white.
And they buried the bodies.
The FBI couldn't get anybody to talk.
None of the clans guys would talk.
So they recruited Greg Scarp.
They brought him to Mississippi, and you could see it in the New York Times.
This is very public now.
He went, and the words that were told to me later on, because sometimes the FBI says more than they should,
was that he did unspeakable things.
Yeah.
So, you know, that leaves you a little imagination.
And then later on, I heard he had a knife to their, you know, their groin area.
Cut their dicks off?
You know, again, you know, I wasn't there, but, you know,
These are things that you piece together yourself.
Unspeakable things.
It's not unspeakable if you're talking about KKK member, though.
No.
He didn't care.
He'd cut his balls and dick off.
It's all right.
We can smile about it.
That's true.
So anyway, he finally gets to the guy that knows where the bodies were buried.
It's like only one guy really knew.
Okay.
And what it was, the second in command or whatever.
And so since that day, I used the term cop blanche.
He had cop blanche with,
to do whatever he wanted in the street he was never going to get arrested and he took advantage of
that to you know i mean making a money-making machine and a killer he was making a good he must
have been getting paid quite a bit to be oh he was getting paid too yeah yeah that came out later on
in the trial uh the fbi i won't mention his name because he did beat the case the reason he beat the
case oh really was yeah uh gregg's the linda the the the the last wife the one that i was with
for 10 years just about, had conflicting stories.
Earlier on, and this is my deduction, she was still on the payroll to keep her quiet
because she knew a lot about this agent, okay?
And once they stopped paying her, I think she got scorned, okay, because now she had no money,
She was not living well.
Greg is dead.
So she comes clean and admits what she knew about him.
So the things that I knew, okay, during the war, he would get, we had this big,
I don't know if you're too young to remember these big shoe phones,
these big, the stockbrokers used to do, Calvian.
You know, now everybody has a little cell phone.
We didn't have phones back then.
So he would call somebody or the person would call on that phone.
And he would refer to the person as his girlfriend.
It's my girlfriend, meaning his connection.
Whoever it was, we didn't know.
We thought it was a cop based on some of the information.
Then we thought it could be somebody on the other side.
He said, someday I'll tell you.
He said, he wouldn't tell us.
Me and Jimmy, my partner,
were the only three guys were together every day during the war.
Nobody else could come near us anymore because we knew somebody would give us up.
Our own friends now to get this over would kill us.
Right.
So we were one.
The three of us were one.
and he uh what was i talking about what i'd lose my train of thought the the big shoe phone
calling his girlfriend yes so that so we had i had phone records later on the feds got these phone
records so they know exactly who he was talking to okay we had a scanner which had a secret code like
a five or six digit pick any five or six numbers random seven two one six five four or three
we had that code.
So we were listening to the FBI
and local task force police
as they were following us and our enemies.
We knew when they were behind us.
We knew where they were going.
So how did we get this?
Then it came a little later on.
We were getting this information
that had to be from surveillance.
Like it came back, like we knew exactly
what time this guy leaves his house.
3.40 in the morning.
Because he goes to a school bus company that he owns.
Okay?
We get there at 320, 340, the lights of the car can turn on.
Somebody was doing surveillance.
So that information later on we knew came from him.
Right.
We also had access to FBI badges and credentials because there was one guy he wanted to go
and call him out of the house as the FBI.
and get him in the car,
and once he gets put in the car,
Greg was going to be sitting in the car.
I mean, picture that scene, how that guy would have felt.
He's in cuffs, and he's sitting between me and Greg.
You know, because the guy knew us.
Actually, it was Wild Bill, Billy Cotola.
And he knew me, so I couldn't go to the door.
But there were a few guys that he didn't know
that would dress in cheaper suits than we usually wear
and go up to the door and show the credentials
and call him out and tell him,
We're not going to cuff you in the house.
You know, sometimes the FBI would do that.
Just, we'll cuff you outside.
You know, if they want to be nice,
not to do it in front of the family, you know,
because they know we're not typically going to shoot it out with them.
Right.
So anyway, we had this whole plan.
So all these different things led to FBI, okay?
Later on, two of the agents themselves were sitting in the office with this agent
and they have an episode on The Sopranos.
about this.
When the biggest hit of the war happened,
Nikki Black,
Nikki Grantio,
who was Vick's choice for consulier.
Okay?
When we got him,
he banged the desk,
the agent, and he says,
we're going to win this thing.
We're going to win this thing.
The other agent says,
we?
Like, and then they started
putting pieces together, too.
we had this is what made them know
there's one agent underneath
this was a supervising agent who was bad
the underneath agent
the name's Chris doesn't I want to give his last name
gets an address from surveillance
of where Vic Arena is hiding out
that's our number one target
if we kill Vic the war's over
right okay
Greg gets this address
okay
we go there
there
there's no house on the lot
it's a wrong address
so
the only person
Chris gave that
wrong address to
was his superior
how does Greg wind up
with the same exact wrong address
so now they knew
that he saw they followed Greg there or something
well no just
he only
Chris didn't give it to Greg
okay
this address
he gave the address
from surveillance this is to
his superior
oh right right right so
that's the only
so he's wondering how Greg
got that address
you know and this all came out in the trial
later on you know that's how
how did Greg initially
if he had that protection
how did that protection dissolve
because the other agents found out
that Chris was dirty
well no Chris wasn't
his superior
His supervisor, yes.
And you won't give his name.
Partially that.
Partially that.
We don't know his name.
Well, you know, it's alleged.
Yeah.
His name's Lynn.
Okay.
You know, I see, I don't like to come on in, because he beat, he beat the case.
Okay.
So.
He isn't, he doesn't speak about it publicly.
He does.
He does.
He wrote a book.
Oh.
You can read the book.
It's called Deal with the devil.
Deal with the devil.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he's done documentaries.
Oh, really?
So he's out there.
I mean, yeah, just, just, you can research it and find his name.
It's his first name is.
And so the way it all ended was Greg at the end of the war, okay, his dementia was setting in and he wasn't making good decisions.
His son, Joe, Joey, who's my godson, I stood up for him in confirmation, winds up getting into drug business, okay?
And I'll backpedal that a little bit and tell you how we all, how the club went downhill.
But Joey was now in the drug business.
And I guess there was a corner that he claimed was his
and somebody else was selling there.
So he went with a baseball bat.
The guy pulls out a gun.
So he leaves.
He comes back to the house.
He tells his father.
His father calls me.
I was home.
It takes me five minutes, eight minutes to get there,
depending on lights, you know, in Brooklyn.
I drive to the house and he tells me what happened.
So I said, all right, I know the kid, Mike.
I'll go talk to him.
I know who he's talking about.
We go to the corner, he's not there anymore.
He probably knew something was coming.
But before we go, Joey has a gun.
I took the gun from, I put in the glove compartment,
and then I locked it.
I said, we're not going to kill the kid.
Okay, your father asked me to talk to him,
and straighten this out.
This kid was, I'm becoming a little nutty.
You want to be like his father, you know.
Yeah, he's got that complex.
Misled to be, right, to be the Grim Reaper.
So we go looking, 15, 20 minutes.
He's not a real thing.
around. I said, let's, let's go home. I go back. I tell Greg, I says, I think it's best anyway. I said,
let everybody cool down. We'll find them tomorrow. Cool aheads. He agreed with me. He says, yeah,
that, I think you're right. I go home. I'm not home one minute. I don't have my clothes on. I'm
getting ready to get on. And the phone rings, and it's Linda, screaming on the phone, panicking,
like a lunatic. She thinks Joey got killed.
Greg shot
She's just
I'll be right there
She's telling me she needs me
Come over come over please
I get in the car I drive back
On the way
I passed the block where this kid lives
There's unmarked cars
There's police cars
Ambulances fire department
I mean it's a crime scene
I go around the long way
Go to the house
I get to the house
The car that I was in
Has bullet holes all over it
Joey's friend who was in the call with me also with Joe.
He was sitting in the back.
Joey was sitting next to me is in the back seat gasping, trying to get a breath of life.
Every once in a while I hear, he's dying.
I go upstairs into the house.
Greg is on the phone.
He has a scotch in front of him.
He's got a towel.
He got his eye shot out.
Okay?
And he's telling the parole people,
Because we were already, he was arrested and was given bail,
which is the biggest, the biggest force in the history of mankind
because no mob guys get bail.
Nobody.
They gave him bail.
And he had the bracelet on.
So they were calling this as your alarm went off.
You were further than 50 feet from your house.
And he's denying it.
It's, nah, I never left.
I've been here the whole time.
Now, I got to bring him to the hospital.
Okay.
What do you mean?
when you say he got his eye shot out?
Oh, he went there with Joey.
Joey was probably still breaking his chops.
We got to get this guy.
We can't let him do this.
He pulled a gun on me.
And probably I knew he used to get under his father's skin.
He said, all right, you want to kill him?
Let's go fucking do it.
You know, just like that.
Just let's go.
So he goes, they were waiting.
They were in front of the house, and there's about eight guys.
As soon as Greg gets out, he starts shooting.
They're all shot.
They're open a shot.
This kid's in the back seat.
He gets hit in the head.
Joey runs.
He runs in a drive where I heard a kid hit him in a garbage pail or something.
So he wound up surviving
And the fart against his eye shot out
So I got to bring him to the hospital
There's four or five hospitals in Brooklyn that I could bring him to
He insists on going to the hospital that saved him
Mount Sinai and Manhattan
So I got to go through tall boots with cops
It's the days when the cops manned them
At the tunnels
I got to drive through Manhattan
With this guy dying in the car
And I do it
I was loyal to a fault back then
Oh the kids still on the kids still
the back seat? No, no, no, no. I took him in my car, Greg, Big Greg. He's got a guy, he's going to die,
he's going to bleed to death. Right. So I walk into the hospital with him, and the nurse comes,
and she said, oh, my God, what happened? I said, he fell in the yard. I think a pipe went in his eye.
So she wheels him in the, they wheel him in the back. They put him on the gurney. They wheel him in the
room. She gives me paperwork to fill out. She comes back out. She says, you stay right here. I know
she saw a bullet. So when she walks away, I go to the door, I open it, I says, Greg, I got to go.
He's laying there like this. He goes like this to me. Thumbs up. That's the last time I've seen him in
the free world. Really? Yeah. That was the last year because now they locked them up and he couldn't get bailed
again. And they had to leave him in Rikers Island for a while, which is a jungle, but they had the
best AIDS unit because of all the junkies in there. And a few months later, I got arrested.
You know, they just rounded everybody up from the war.
They had guys talking.
Four or five guys flipped.
Carmine Sessa, our consulier, the first one to flip.
And call a big meeting.
And at that meeting, everybody got arrested.
Except him.
So, I mean, the treachery and the backstabbing is, there's no, there's no parameters.
It's just, it's, uh, mind-boggling.
How the fuck did he survive getting shot in the eye?
With AIDS and everything.
Yep.
Yeah.
And then the bullet, like what?
Well, here's what happened.
Here's what they said.
It didn't go in this way.
Okay.
It must have deflected off the car and went in this way.
Oh.
So it didn't penetrate deep into the brain.
Okay.
Right.
Yeah.
So.
What a lucky and unlucky exam time.
Yeah, well, exactly.
Exactly.
So, but he was running out of his nine lives.
You know, the AIDS was going to eventually now being in prison, he was certainly not going to, you know, survive.
You don't get good medical attention in there.
Yeah.
And how much time did you actually end up?
doing in prison?
10 years.
I got a 10 years since.
What was your whole trial?
What was your whole thing like?
Well, I didn't go to trial.
I was offered the deal to tell them what I knew basically about the corruption.
Okay?
I walked out three times because they wouldn't let my partner Jimmy come in under the same umbrella as me.
They wanted to catch him.
He was on the limb.
Jimmy was on the limb.
I got arrested in Florida in Cocoa Beach, as a matter of fact.
Oh, really?
I came down for a vacation.
after the war, I figured, let me just get out of here.
I don't want, this way they don't see me around.
And Jimmy and I had plans.
He was going to come down and meet me, and we were going to drive off and go somewhere.
Okay.
You know, we set up our pipelines and just to stay out of their faces.
Time would have helped.
Time would have helped because our boss, I confuse you with our boss all the time.
This, Joe T, was our acting boss on our side for the Persico's.
And he went on the Lamb.
They caught him, I think, five.
five, six years later, okay?
And they made a deal with him like that for five years.
And he's the boss, okay?
Because as new prosecutors, they have their own cases, they don't want this one thrown up now.
So if we would have went on the land, we would have probably got that same five-year, seven-year deal, you know.
But ultimately they says, okay, because they couldn't find them.
They came back and they said, all right, we'll keep the door open for Jimmy.
but and I couldn't admit knowing where he was
so I says I'll see if I can get a message to him
and you know I'll try to grapevine my family
if somebody can you know I have no idea where he is
you know right I really didn't
but I knew how to contact him right he had that you know
so he was able to come in
and you know I had to cop out to zero to life
so if I would have lied or I would have gotten
if they would have found out that
I didn't come clean on things that I did
I could have been charged
or I could have got life.
Ultimately, he gave me 10 years, the judge.
And, you know, the guys that, like Carmine
got three years, Sammy got five years.
So the guys that really give them a lot,
we'll get in the door immediately.
You know, but they didn't really like me
because it was the corruption.
It wasn't, you know,
not that they didn't like me, you know, personally,
but the case that I brought them
was basically their own.
Right, you know, so they,
Right.
They weren't going to fight tooth and nail.
Give this reformed guy.
Give him a second chance.
You know, they did what they had to do.
They said he lived up to his obligation.
How much time did Lynn get?
Did he get any time?
Oh, he didn't do anything.
No, he beat it.
Yeah, like I said, he walked out.
But the judge, it was a New York Supreme Court.
Because they didn't want to leave a stain on the agency.
Exactly.
The judge said in his closing argument or closing whatever that wreck it is,
I read it, said, even though you're walking out of this courtroom, I'm not convinced you're innocent.
And he was the jury.
He was the judge in the jury.
He waived the jury trial.
Oh, my gosh.
And he ripped into him.
He ripped into the FBI for how they allowed this monster.
That's what he called him, to survive all these years in a partnership with you guys.
So he ripped the manure, to put it that way.
And he was the best judge out of all the judges I was around.
I mean, I had one, our first judge, what's the word, reclused himself, or recused himself, he stepped down.
He told us, he says, you can't get a fair trial with me.
I think you're all guilty.
He said, and I feel like an honor I remember to Clumbo family that I've heard so many of your cases.
He says, you can't get a fair trial.
So he left.
We get this other guy, Sifton, who was the most miserable.
human being on earth.
Even other judges hate him.
They just was a hated man.
And I wound up with him.
And the same judge earlier on at the very, very beginning, when I first met Linda, I was
on the fire department test.
I took the test.
I got a 99 and I got a 95 on the physical.
I was going to be called within a year to the academy.
This same judge, because at the time, minorities and women claimed the test was
too tough. It wasn't fair. So it took him two years to rule on it. And then another two years to
set the next date. So four years went by. I'm not blaming him, but it just shows you how some
things happened in life. I would have taken the fire department. I was still early on. I didn't
know Greg. It wasn't a year and a half in, two years into my relationship with him. Now he knew
and he was bringing me along. And he's the same judge that had a sentence me.
Wow, how wild is that?
It's amazing, it's amazing.
But this judge, going back to Judge,
it's something like Reebok or Reichbach, R-E-R-I-C-H-B-A-C-H-H-R-E-H-R-E-H-B-A-C-H-Rash-Bach.
But research him.
Right-Shbach.
Yeah, he's a really...
Is he still...
He died.
No, he died.
He died.
But this guy, you know how they always wear the black robes?
Yeah.
He didn't.
He wore a John Gotti suit.
Really?
Had his hair impeccable.
but he was a smart, smart guy.
And he would ask me questions.
Like, while I'm sitting in the, you know,
even though the lawyers are asking questions,
he says, I want to ask a question.
And he'd ask me a question.
And very, just brilliant.
And it was very, very polite to me.
You know, like the other judges, the Fed judges,
you're a piece of garbage to them.
You're nothing but meat that they're going to put away for life.
They're all the same team.
This guy was very fair.
And that's why when it had to get thrown out,
it got thrown out, but he told him,
you're not innocent in my eyes
Wow
So
But he was able to
You know
Obviously he may keep his pension
And everything else
So he would have lost all of that
What kind of a prison were you in?
Was it like it was like a federal maximum security?
Maximum security
And then
As time went on
I wound up in a medium
Okay
A medium
But the very very
Pretty violent
Yeah yeah
Yeah but yeah
They are
But you could avoid that
It's not like you know
Again like you see
TV.
There are prisons like that where there's just gangs and they're always, you know, that's their
life.
Yeah.
You know, but most federal prisons are not that way.
If you don't, if you're not into the state penitentiaries or whatever.
Gay stuff, you'll, you'll avoid the fights.
They'll actually fight over a guy.
If you don't gamble, which I did every single day, but I made sure everybody had
put the cash up, you know, stamps was cash in prison.
Yeah.
You want a better football game, cash has to be put up.
That was my main business, bookmaking.
And I booked every day that I was away.
I supported myself.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
I'll tell you, this is a funny story.
I said it a thousand times.
You're allowed three books of stamps.
Everybody's equal.
You can't have more than three books of stamps
because you can use that for currency in there.
Three books of stamps in what time period?
At any one time.
Like if they come and shake my room down, my cell.
You can only have three in possession.
Right.
If they see 10 books, they're going to write me up.
Okay, maybe I go to the hole, maybe I get extra duty or whatever.
When I got released, I had 2,000 books of stamps.
Oh, my God.
And I left them in there with different guys.
I gave one guy 500, one guy, you know, so I made their time.
Because you use them for, I pay a guy a book of stamps to clean my room once a week.
Pay another guy a book of stamps to bring me good food out of the, like broccoli and hard-boiled eggs.
I don't want to eat the garbage.
So, you know, it's, you can live a little better.
Right.
If you, you know, if you want to, if you got that mind, that's, it was always my mind.
I'm, I'm going to put these 10 years back on at the end.
Were you still in contact with any of these mob guys when you were inside?
No, it's, because everything's monitored.
The phone calls, you know, you can't really call.
Right, but didn't you say some of the guy, like, one of the original bosses was still the boss after he got locked up?
Yes.
Like, how do you do that?
He would do on visits.
He would have, you know, Chuckie was a captain that was his nephew that would go visit him.
His son would go visit.
So he would bring, and they put him all in California, Lampock.
And he still would get messages.
And that was also a problem during the war because his brother, Teddy, was not very smart.
He was a, respectfully, he was a simple-minded guy.
Okay.
he wasn't trude, he wasn't street smart.
But he was going, because he's a brother, he can go deliver messages.
And he wasn't bringing the right messages back.
Ultimately, we found out he was soft-coated because Vic made him a captain.
So he sort of liked Vic.
And I remember Junior saying, how do you make him a captain?
His own brother.
How do he make, you know, but he did it with the Machiavelli tactic.
You know, by bringing one of the brothers as a captain, you know.
He's showing good faith.
Right, right, right.
But he was bringing, like Greg would say,
you bring this message to Jr.
Tell him that we are not going to stop shooting
until they, the first word out of the mouth
that the meeting has to be, you are recognized as the boss.
Teddy would come back and say,
nah, he wants you to keep talking.
He wants peace.
He wants peace.
He wants to keep talking it out.
And Greg told me, there's no way Jr. said that.
There's no fucking way
Junior say his message would be
take that talk sucker out.
One person he had an answer to
in the whole wide world, Vicarina,
and he wasn't happy.
That's the greed.
That's that ego.
Yeah.
I want this position officially.
You did have it.
You were an official acting boss.
So all you had to do was run the ship
and split it with Junior.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I think he was worried
he was going to be knocked down when Carmine's son,
Jr. Persko's son came home.
And I don't think that was going to happen.
I don't think that was the case of my personal.
And I had conversations with Ali about it.
I remember saying, if he would have behaved,
he could have kept the position.
He says, I come out.
I take that position.
I'm back in the can in six months.
You know, so not immediately anyway.
Maybe ultimately he would have wanted the position.
But he was a cousin.
He was Junior's cousin.
So he should have been more loyal.
But Greg said he wasn't a powerful, tough guy.
He was a very big earner, big money.
And Junior thought he could control him and never lose the power.
But the problem was other people controlled him too.
Right.
Greg had said, if he put a guy, like himself,
if he put a guy like me, not me, Greg telling me this,
or Joe T, named four or five guys,
they would never try to take the family from Junior.
You know, and anybody comes to tell them to do it,
they're going to tell them, talk like that once more, you're dead.
You know, you're done.
I don't want to hear that.
You know, ficked it and do it.
He listened.
And then John Gotti was integral,
major problem for us because he wanted Vic to win.
The reason is, Vick's underboss, Joe Scopo, grew up with Johnny, John Gotti.
And John, all the egos put together, his was still bigger.
He wanted to be the boss of all bosses.
There isn't anymore.
You know, there's equals.
The commission, they're all equal.
but he wanted to have the strongest vote on the commission.
So if Vic wins the war, and this came out later, it's a fact,
they were going to kill Vic themselves and let Joe Scope will become the boss.
So him and John would have two votes on the commission.
Wow, man.
Yeah.
Shit is ruthless.
That's unbelievable.
It's unbelievable.
What is it like, is there anything left over in this kind of,
mob gang world today?
I'm going to tell you what
Nick Pilegi said
in one of the write-ups
for our ultimate
TV series. What's
left is
a few
scattered guys
going after the road kill.
I forgot the exact words.
But that. There's just a few guys left.
There's vultures picking meat off the bones.
Exactly. Pick it. Yeah, there's nothing left.
You know, because the guys that I grew up under that I saw and I had to answer to were seasoned, old school guys that you may see in some movies.
Right.
Okay. Now they scrape the bottom of the barrel.
They don't dress the same.
They don't act the same.
They don't have the same ethics.
You know, they wear hoodies like street gangs.
I mean, you know.
It's a different culture for sure.
It is.
It is.
And the families are totally weakened.
I think it must be harder to kill people nowadays, I would think.
Oh, it is.
And I think, you know what?
I had always said that was our downfall.
I said, if I ever started something, I would say no killing.
Beat the guy up until he leaves on his own.
Just keep beating him up.
Every time you see him give him a beat, eventually he's going to leave.
Right.
It's just as good as, and we don't have to face it.
life. I believe, and Sammy told me just recently, and he might have heard it somewhere, too,
there's a no-kill edict, if that's the right word. Edict is like a law, right? Yeah. Yeah,
I think that's the exact words he used. There's a no-kill. So there hasn't been. You haven't
read it. I mean, you used to read, you know, almost a few a month, a few a month. You know,
did you see a body? Somebody got killed. Somebody's missing. Now you don't. I mean, the last one that I
remember reading about was a famous pizza place. Okay, that was somewhat mob owned. Yeah. I say that
because I think there was partners. There's a mob guy and the guy that knows the recipes.
Yeah, exactly. They split up. There was a problem, okay? And one of the guys tried to take the
recipe and they killed him. He was killed in front of his house. It had something to do with the
recipe, a pizza recipe.
L&B.
Spamoni Godd is.
That's ridiculous.
It's still a great pizza.
If you ever go to Brooklyn, go to L&B.
L&B.
Spamonee garden.
And there's Spamoni Ice is phenomenal too.
But I got a book for you, so I'm going to give you the book.
Okay.
I wish you would have read it first.
Yeah.
Because a lot of these things I'm telling you, you'd sort of would have known about it already.
Like the restaurants and stuff in New York are just to die for.
But not right now.
I mean, I wouldn't go to New York.
If everyone I know everyone I know that was born and raised in the Brooklyn, Queens area, they, they never want to go to New York.
Like, I would rather, I'd rather cut my arm off and go back to New York.
Especially now with the politics, the way things are going on.
Oh, yeah.
Well, now it is.
It's terrible.
It's terrible.
I mean, it's dangerous.
It's more dangerous than we were there.
And some people want us back.
They said, really more dangerous?
Yeah.
When you guys were in the street, none of this shootouts and, you know, the, the, you know, the,
the nonsense that you're seeing now, just the rioting and looting and stuff.
They couldn't.
When Al Sharpton marched through our neighborhood, okay, the cops knew it, and they were happy.
We had more mob guys there from the five families lining up the street.
They weren't allowed on the sidewalk.
They had a walk, they could do that much.
We didn't care.
But they were not going to come near our stores or our houses, okay?
So we lined the street where they were walking.
Until one knucklehead, and I know the kid, too, I knew.
his brother well, runs in there and stabs out Sharpton.
He stands the IRS.
He did time for it.
Right in front.
There's cops all around, all the mob guys are there,
and he just runs in the middle of the parade and stabs out Sharpton.
Yeah.
That's insane.
Needless to say, he's not a good fellow.
I've never made it there.
How did you end up getting in touch with Robert De Niro?
Well, the cops that were on my case, I told you, became there security.
dirty guys.
Yeah.
And he was looking for somebody from the life that can give him some tips on playing like
a Frank Sharon type of guy, a mob guy, a hit man or whatever.
And they all said me.
And, you know, and it's funny, too, I've said this a few times.
It's a double-edged sword.
They all said me.
So I'm going to tell you how to kill a guy, how to get rid of weapons, how to bury a body.
I mean, that's what you would think.
But he also wanted to get the verbiage, the words, the, how, and in situations, how would this happen?
How would a guy knowing he's in trouble, not run, not just run when you reach into your pocket, you know, things like that.
Because there's a scene there where he's got to kill a guy, and the guy knows he's in trouble.
So I told him how Greg did it.
Greg used to have a handkerchief, and he would sneeze.
or cough
and he'd reach
and rode his pocket
and the guy
would see the handkerchief
come out
and he'd actually be relieved
so he'd wipe his nose
when he put the hanky back in
he comes out with the gun
so that was a little trick of his
yeah
so I told him how we got rid of weapons
and all of that's in the movie
I mean probably a dozen things
that I sat and talked to him about
so what was like a one-time meeting
no I was with him probably three or four times
where did you guys meet
like what did you guys
well we met it his his
He has a hotel in Greenwich Village
and his office is right there.
So the first time I spent about three hours
with him and he was just listening to me
and I kept saying, Mr. Dee, you want to say something?
I mean, you know, he said, no, no, keep going, keep going.
He was just listening and getting words
and hearing about hits from my book.
Then the next time he gave one of the cops
a list of things
and I got on the phone with him.
Then another time we went back and we sat in his
living room
we went to Scorsese's house one time.
Really?
Yeah, yep.
And he wanted me to meet Martin Scorsese.
And he had two casting directors there who were also listening to me.
So they were all using it for their own casting reasons.
You know, and ultimately I was going to get a part.
I didn't know why.
And I wanted to be the small part where I kill Albert Anastasia in the barbers seat,
which was a famous or infamous hit.
in New York back in the 50s.
So it was an incredible experience.
And then probably a month or so later,
I'm in Nick Pilegi's house.
And Nick Pallegi wrote Goodfellas,
Casino, part of American Gangster.
Yeah, he's, he's, the three at them,
you know, my wife was with me
throughout the whole thing.
We said, we are sitting with cinematic royalty.
That's what it is.
The Niro Scorsese and Pallegi.
It was amazing.
You kidding me?
And then I met him twice after.
As a matter of fact, the last day, I got a picture here, I can show you.
The last day of filming, he invited us in to watch the last scene.
It was him.
He was filming just, you know, a small scene.
Just, when you see the movie, you'll see that he has to put a lock on a truck.
And there's significance to that.
But it was funny.
He tied a knot two different ways.
And Scorsese caught it.
He says, Bob, earlier on, you tied a different knot.
So he had to tie it the same exact way.
So then they went like this to him.
But they're right.
I mean, and he went back and he had to do the scene again, you know?
Yeah, it's crazy.
You think about all, like, the little continuity details like that when you're making a movie.
Yeah.
Everything has to, because in case they got to cut shit together.
Well, Kelly got to watch him film my series through the camera.
He still uses the old-fashioned cameras.
A lot of guys use these new things, handhelds and stuff.
He uses the old big one that rolls.
Film cameras?
Yeah, the old, just, yeah.
And she was able to look through it and watch exactly what he saw.
So we did my scene, when you see it, it's really short, but it's probably 20 seconds.
We filmed it 40 times.
Really?
Once he got too much of a brick wall, and he said, people aren't coming to the movies to see a brick wall.
He always got it.
It's always, then another time one of the girls walking by me smiled.
And he says, what are you smiling about?
What do you think?
You're in a movie?
She was walking her baby.
So she couldn't smile.
And then, you know, Big Bob, one of the cops,
that actually wrote the forward for my book,
the only part of the book I didn't write,
because I had to write about myself, you know, in the foreword.
He's the bouncer, the bodyguard.
He's a big guy.
He's probably told us this and comes walking through.
They want them to look menacing,
so a bunch of times he came through,
and he would give me the eye,
and that makes people think he was in on it,
because nobody knows for sure if the bodyguard was in on it,
Or he wasn't.
So him looking at me, you know, gives him, and then we walk up the steps.
And then I played, I had another part in a TV series called The Perfect Murder.
Yeah, yeah, I heard of that.
I played a corrupt ex-cop working for the mob.
So, and the mob guy I was working for was Joe Pesci's character in Casino.
Oh, no shit.
Tony Spilatro.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's funny, too, we have on our desk a possible story about, you know, a possible story about
more about this
guy because he worked
the bar I was
I was behind the bar
in the scene and I also popped out
of the back seat with the gun
you ever see that it's in every show
somebody comes out of the back seat with the gun
yeah of course I was the guy
but uh in the scene in the
in the bar was this
this guy
and now it's called
a crazy
horse two
it's a cabaret in Vegas
but it was a violent
I mean, the bounces in there were killing people, burying them in the desert.
If they weren't paying bills, they were beating them.
I mean, it was bad.
There was drugs.
It's almost like a Studio 54 type of movie.
But we have, you know, we have somebody that wants us to see if we could get our producer to do that.
My wife's the manager now.
Oh, cool.
She does all the managing for all the people we bring in.
And we've got several.
We've got several.
We have a show starting.
They're going to start filming it in June.
It's all about paranormal and bigfoot and stuff like that.
But it's mob related because it's an ex-mobster that really, really believes in this stuff.
And he goes tracking him down.
Tracking bigfoot's?
Yeah, and paranormal stuff.
But they have all the equipment.
And they say that, you know, we're using our skills from tracking people in the street that we had to go after the years ago.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
But it's going to be, I think it's going to be lighthearted, but it's real, but there's going to be humor.
I mean, there's no way it's going to be because these are ex-mob guys.
And they're talking like mob guys, you know, and he tells, there's a scene, he tells one of them who's a martial arts guy.
He says, we run into Bigfoot.
You're going to have to use all your moves on them.
Dead serious, you know, but I laugh too.
Like you just did it.
Or like if you see a ghost, you have to pull your gun on them, shoot him.
Well, they have stuff.
They're going to have rabbis and priests in case they run into.
an exorcism situation.
Right.
So, but we have like a little portfolio, you know.
Oh, that's awesome.
You know.
Anyway, yeah.
What was it like going into Martin Scorsese's house?
Where was his house?
Okay, it's near Central Park in Manhattan.
Very exclusive.
It's a four-story brownstone.
Those are very, very rich houses.
Yeah, very, very.
What do you mean?
What does that mean?
It's a, it's a type of house.
Yeah.
It's, they're all built together, side by side.
Is it like on the ground level?
There's a ground level.
Okay.
Then there's four stories.
But each one is your house.
They're huge.
So we go in.
A butler opens the door.
Is it kind of like what?
I don't know if you've ever seen the pictures of Jeffrey Epstein's house in New York?
Probably.
Or it's like between these big buildings and just going.
It looks like a cathedral.
Yeah.
No, this, no, this, I know what you're talking about.
It's more, how would you describe it, Kel?
Can you find it on Google?
Yeah.
You could, yeah.
Katie, could you find a picture of a brownstone house in New York?
Yeah.
So anyway, his was white.
Yeah.
And it's four stories.
We walk in.
I don't know I'm going to his house.
I know I'm meeting him, but I'm assuming we were going to go to a restaurant or a studio or something.
So he brings us upstairs, the but like the third floor.
And it's one huge living room.
Okay.
There was another room the other way.
It might have been a bedroom where, but so we're sitting down.
All of a sudden, I just start walking around.
And Kelly's telling me, sit down.
You can't be walking around.
We don't know where you're at.
You're just looking around a shit.
So I go, I see the Oscars.
He has a thing.
Oh, no way.
So I'm looking at the Oscars.
I said, this is Marty's house, Martin Scorsese's house.
So I turn around, who's standing in the door, the Niro.
So he comes over, he says hello, sits down, then Marty comes down with the two girls.
And it was, it was amazing.
We were talking, and it was, you know, a couple of times, I cursed, and I apologized because I don't like to curse.
I don't, you know.
Anyway, it's another story.
But, and I would say, I'm sorry.
Excuse me.
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Those are all over New York.
Yeah, and they, like, last in off of the distance.
Yeah, exactly.
So you see, the red one in the middle there?
That one?
Yeah, but it was like that, but a white one.
It was a white one.
Okay, okay.
You might have zeroed in on his house.
Who knows?
It, like, it just blends in with the rest of the houses.
You can't even tell it's...
Exactly.
But inside, they're incredible, and, you know,
they're very, very...
expensive. I mean, very expensive.
Nick Pilegi...
And those...
Has those, like, stairways that just go right to the sidewalk?
Yes. Every single one of them.
And then there's a basement. There's a floor level also.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, so it's a style from back then.
Yeah, those are cool looking.
Nick, Nick, when we went to see Nick Pledgey, he had...
We went on the second floor.
And there was nothing but books.
When he came in, he came from upstairs down.
He says, my wife made me buy this unit also for my books.
He lives in the penthouse.
And that downstairs was sort of his office, his read, his library.
Yeah, amazing.
But he had a big spread of food out for us.
I never forget it.
He says, my mother would never forgive me if I didn't put out food for guests.
God, that would have been so serious.
No, it was amazing.
He's a very nice guy, Nickville.
Very nice.
I call him.
He always answers back.
Who's Scorsese?
No, Nick Pilegy
Pallegi. You know, at the beginning, I was in contact
a lot with De Niro, but he wound up with
personal issues with going through divorce
and I think other things, now with the pandemic,
he's got businesses all over New York.
They've got to be getting killed.
His restaurants, his hotels.
So he's sort of just been,
I think he's in seclusion almost,
you know?
Scorsese, I haven't talked to again.
But, you know,
when we were leaving, he made
just come back in because his wife wanted to meet us.
So we went back in and we met her.
And then at the final day of filming, she was there.
And she has, I believe, Parkinson's.
I think that's what it is.
So she's having a little trouble.
But she remembered us all these months later.
She was very, you know, so down.
And he's a nice guy.
He was very personable.
Like De Niro's quiet, shy.
Scorsese, he talks, he laughs.
You know, he's outgoing.
You know, they're almost opposites.
That's so funny, man.
Yeah, yeah.
And the other thing I learned is that these casting directors,
you don't have to be the greatest actor, okay?
Because if you see, if you start watching a lot of De Niro's movies,
his idiosyncrasies are always there.
You know, most of his movies, the way he laughs,
the way he look at you, you know.
So when they're casting somebody,
They're looking for certain things.
You know, like, not that he's not a great actor.
I mean, because he's done things.
Like I saw Out of character, like the Deer Hunter and Cape Fear, those were fabulous.
I mean, fantastic.
The gangster movies to me, you know.
He's got, like, some fascination with gangster mob stuff.
Yeah, well, it's been a huge moneymaker.
It's a huge moneymaker.
So, you know.
But, you know, and then there's guys that can, you know, go back on stage and play Hamlet, you know.
Right.
You know, but those, you know, those, you know,
Those are, but anyway, I've noticed that.
That's why you see a lot of the same guys in the same movies,
not because they're great.
Just because they almost don't have to act, like in the Sopranos.
Yeah, it's almost like he's got like that brand built around himself
where it's like, you know, you just want this guy in your movie because it makes it marketable, you know?
Right.
Oh, yeah, no, definitely.
No, he's a brand, without a doubt.
You know, he's in a movie, it's going to sell.
So, well, he still may be in mind.
And let me, the name of the book I'm going to bring it to you,
I wish I had to hear of a show.
you.
Yeah.
To show the fans, too.
It's called the life.
Tell people where they can find it and where they can download it, whatever.
It's called the life.
There is a Kindle version.
The difference is you don't get the pictures.
And I have some really nice pictures in there of all the people I've met, including
De Niro, Pilegi, Mike Madsen, Armand de Sante, who wrote a testimonial.
That's just phenomenal.
And he's a great guy.
Armand DeSante.
He's the one that played John Gotti.
Oh, okay, okay, yeah, yeah.
The original.
And he also...
Not John Travolta.
No, no, he wasn't good for that part.
And I like John Travolta, but not for that part.
Yeah.
So, yeah, you could get it on there.
Okay.
Or you can go to my website.
It's www.
Larry Mazza dash the life.com.
Awesome.
Yeah.
And there, I sign every book that goes out.
Some mornings I spend hours signing them, like, probably after your show,
I'll get a bunch, I hope.
and so I sign everyone
and like I said the pictures
it's worth getting the book for the pictures
Right
There's pictures you could put a face
To every name I said today
Like Junior Persico
You know and then Carmine Sessa
When you look and see them
And I think they're important
I think they're important
Yeah absolutely yeah
I love pictures
Yeah and you get a picture of Greg
Grim Reaper and when you see the picture of him
You're gonna say
If
in the
On the mobster in the dictionary
Is his picture
Oh really?
Yeah, he dressed that way, you know, the fancy watch, the pinky ring.
And he was the guy who did the 6666, like he would carve 666 when he killed people.
No, no, no, no.
That's a myth.
What happened was we all had beepers back then.
We didn't have cell phones.
So we would have a code.
Like, say the guys from 13th Avenue, which is our avenue, we're going to beep us.
It would be 013.
So we knew who was beeping us.
then the next thing would be a number of where to meet.
And we had like 12 different numbers.
One was Nathan's.
One was L&B.
One was a McDonald's somewhere.
One was a diner.
All over the city.
Actually, it's right.
You know, Jersey.
So we knew this was the per- and if it was 11, it was the Persico's.
He took the code 666.
So they knew it was him.
So he would put 6-66, there.
which was a restaurant in Sheepshead Bay dashed at 1.30.
So that's how we communicated.
Because we didn't have cell phones.
Did he listen to like heavy metal music or was he like into the devil or anything?
No, he liked, no, definitely not.
No.
He was traditional.
He liked Barry White.
He liked that type of music.
Oh, okay.
He liked Frank Sinatra, of course.
Yeah.
You know, Jerry Vale.
And I listen to all that, even to this day.
I still like that kind of music.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, cool, man.
Dude, thank you so much.
This was a...
It's a pleasure.
Super fascinating story.
You know, what I like about, what I really enjoyed was we talked about some different things.
You know, I'm tired of talking about the hits from before the war, you know?
Yeah.
They were never easy.
I regret those.
The hit store in the war, talking about them, it's a little easier because it was kill or be killed.
You know, and, you know, you had to survive.
And you couldn't show a week.
this, but a lot of people want to hear, oh, the first time you did this, the first time you did that,
I'm so happy you didn't do that.
There's more to me than that.
Yeah.
You know?
No, I think it's a lot more fun.
Do you just get to know somebody and just have a lose conversation and then just like go,
you know, do bullet point questions like some of the other interviews?
Yeah.
No, definitely.
Kel, come here for a second.
I want to introduce my manager.
You don't mind, do you?
Not at all.
You look great.
Yeah.
It's my manager.
Hi.
Get a little lower-in-fish.
And I was her training.
That's how we met.
Oh, really?
In the gym, yeah.
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
That's beautiful, man.
Yeah.
Well, cool.
Thank you.
I'm happy for you guys.
Thank you so much for being here again.
Maybe we'll do it again.
We'll have to.
We're only a couple hours away from each other.
We could do a part two for sure.
