Julian Dorey Podcast - [VIDEO] - Mafia Hijacker: John Gotti, Sammy the Bull, Dark Mob History, Prison Wars | Louis Ferrante • 185

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

(***TIMESTAMPS in Description Below) ~ Louis Ferrante is a former Gambino Crime Family Mobster, author, and TV Host. You can buy his recent books using the link to my Amazon Store in the “EPISODE LINKS” Section of this description. EPISODE LINKS: - BUY LOU’S BOOKS IN MY AMAZON STORE: https://amzn.to/3RPu952  - Julian Dorey PODCAST MERCH: https://juliandorey.myshopify.com/  - Support our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey  - Join our DISCORD: https://discord.gg/9fQG8raW  JULIAN YT CHANNELS: - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@UChs-BsSX71a_leuqUk7vtDg  - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily  - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP  CREDITS: - Hosted & Produced by Julian D. Dorey - Intro & Episode Edited by Alessi Allaman ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - How Lou got into John Gotti’s Mafia; Mobster Bobby “Cabert” Bisaccia 9:25 - Mob Killers vs Regular Killers 13:59 - Leaving the Gambino Mob Life; Merited Hits 21:43 - Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso; Lou’s Truck Hijacking beginnings 32:41 - Prison Chemistry Teacher; Latin King vs. Ferrante 35:51 - Illegal Animal Poaching on Discovery Channel 42:07 - Rhino Horns; Lou’s Show in Africa that never aired 50:59 - Lou’s early career as a hijacker in New York City; Lou’s Mom Dies 58:17 - No Mask Hijackings 1:07:16 - Reading people when they stare at a gun; Crystal Ball Brain Theory 1:14:18 - Working at the Chop Shop; Lou’s Uncle Billy; Joe Watts 1:25:25 - Uncle Rats Story; Pete Gotti; Lou remembers when Vinny the Chin Gigante “went crazy” 1:35:25 - The 5 Families of New York & their empires; “Honor & Loyalty” 1:44:18 - Lou hates rats; Sammy The Bull Gravano 1:51:25 - Lou goes to prison; Little Vic & Gregory Scarpa 2:02:25 - Friends with Benefits in Prison; Jimmy gets life; First day in prison 2:11:53 - Lou heads to Otisville and decides to leave mob; Lou put in “the Hole” 2:23:26 - Lou’s first book; Lou’s relationship with the Gotti’s 2:33:05 - Lou’s father’s last moments; Mob Rules 2:41:26 - Lou does National Geographic Prison Show; Mob History 2:52:18 - Lou finds God 3:00:05 - Lou’s projects ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “JULIANDOREY”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Music via Artlist.io ~ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 185 - Louis Ferrante Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up guys, if you're on Spotify right now, like a piece of leather that's tied to a machete and it's dripping blood. And he runs by my thing. Had recovered a knife from somewhere. So what happened was that guy that I was talking to in the yard went in to his tear block and he stripped down to his boxer shorts and handed out machetes. So that's what I felt at the time i feel the same way now you guys got him you got his balls to the wall so we'll talk about it on camera if you want yeah i mean we're already on right now but i mean we're just chilling yeah yeah it's it's it's very relaxed like we'll just start talking and go but yeah i mean let's get into your whole background is wild and thank you for doing this last minute by the the way, you and I.

Thank you. Before you went to Florida, this just popped in my inbox through our mutual friend, Mark McRain. But, you know, the time that you were around was a very tumultuous time with the mafia being that you were coming in right at the end of John Sr., who you were just talking about. We'll talk about more today. But where did you – let's just start at the beginning. When did you first get involved running with these crews and getting around this and how did that happen? So it kind of happens on its own. It evolves like anything else. I started with stealing cars and we just steal a car for a joy ride. It had nothing to do with money, no profits involved, nothing. Just do some donuts

in the parking lot, ditch the car and go home. Ha ha, that was great. That was fun. Let's do it again tomorrow. How old are you? A kid, 13. Yeah, 13. And then at some point or another, we had a friend of mine whose, his uncle was in the body shop business auto collision shops and he asked he saw us in stolen cars and we thought we were in trouble and instead he asked us for the parts so here we're off to the races so now we're giving parts to my friend's uncle and eventually uh i started opening up like sort of i guess quote unquote accounts with other shops and before you know it yeah i'm i'm 15 16. Probably for the most part, like when I really hit my stride with that was probably about 16. We were running shop shops,

all the auto body collision shops. I don't know if they're still there, but there used to be a whole load of them on College Point Boulevard in Queens. And we sold to all of them. Did you ever get caught at this age? I never got caught in a car. We had a couple of really close calls with chases. I'm probably the best getaway. Fast and Furious got nothing on me. One of the best getaway drivers you've ever seen in your life. Even at like 15, 16?

Bro, I was flying around. We had a thing. We broke into a car once. And we had my friend started out with, he had just gotten his license at 17. And he had a little pickup truck. And we went out to get our first car that night with his pickups. Usually we get a car and then each stolen car we'd use to get the next stolen car. So we went out with his pickup truck, which was the first one. And we're robbing a car. And next thing you know, there's gunshots. It's an ex-cop,

it turned out to be. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Gunshots coming over, whizzing over your head. We're like, get the fuck out. We jumped in the truck. We're out of there. And the guy chased us for about a good, probably about a good 10 minutes before my friend had the wherewithal on Union Turnpike. There was a big center divider and he figured out that he could cross the center divider on a truck. The guy had like a, it was like one of those Fiero GTs or something, very low to the ground back then. And I don't even know if they make those cars anymore. Yeah, I haven't heard that one. It's like a DeLorean, right? That's like an antique. So he jumped the curb and then we literally were going the other way and we waved to him. We waved to the cop, you know, and we just

like, and you know, he slammed his head on his hand on the thing. This guy has gone out, you know, I'm surprised he didn't shoot at us, but, and we took off. So, but anyway, we were stealing cars. We run in a chop shop. In the beginning, we would dump them in the woods, different woods, casino park woods. We lived by Colden, Colden projects. There was a little sort of like a lot over there. We would dump them in Cunningham park.

And then after we dumped about half a dozen to a dozen cars, we'd sort of move, get another spot. And then at some point or another, believe it or not, we'd be smoking a cigarette, watching auto crime, dragging out the skeletons. And we'd be laughing, playing handball in the court, going, look, they got our car. Oh, look, that was that. That was ours. That was ours. Yeah. And then eventually the body shop owners started renting us, leasing us. They'd lease us a warehouse. We did that a few times where we'd fill up the warehouse isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill.

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you know you may as well just like tape a gps to your head right you know when you when you hijack it so and then there's cameras everywhere that's that's the amazing thing about stuff like this you're not talking about like that long ago right but today there's so many different types of crimes that even 20 years ago would have been like yeah let's do it and now you can't yeah can't do it it's crazy can't do it think about even just like spark steakhouse when john got oh yeah castellano i was just teaching this kid about that this morning a half a dozen people would be filming it on their iphone right but they'd be like oh shit there's a there's johnny yeah exactly so you know i mean you said robert passaccia bobby biscocia i was close with bobby cobert i was close i got really

tight i met bobby cobert i never met him on the street you know yeah i met bobby cobert in jail and i hit it off with him he was a man of of men. In that life, obviously, I don't live that life no more, but in that life, man of men, I still have respect for him. He was already doing life. They pulled him up for another case. He was doing life in, I think, Passaic or one of the Jersey jails. They pulled him over to the feds. I was with him. And it was on a case with another dear friend of mine who I love, Orazio Ozzy Stantini. They were on a case together. Nice Irish boy.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Ozzy was a man among men too. They had killed somebody in Astoria, if I'm not mistaken. And Sammy kind of like forgot about it when he went bad, Sammy the Bull. He forgot about it and then he was reminded of it. So it was like, could Ozzy beat it? That was the big question.

You know, we wondered, but eventually Ozzy got convicted. Bobby Cabord, I forget what happened with him, but I was with him for a while. Yeah, I mean, he did a ton. I'm trying to think if I can actually tell that story. I'll say this. My, a friend of mine, let's put it that way. His godfather was Bobby Cab kubbert oh okay and so yeah the story of how that happened i'm gonna have to rain check that some maybe if i have you on again i'd love to do it i can check if i can tell it i'll tell you but i'll tell you

i'm gonna tell you i'm gonna tell you a story that was told to me maybe you heard it did you hear the story about when bobby was younger apparently they had a snitch actually i'm sorry bobby told me the story so it must be true because bobby never lied they had a snitch bobby had a snitch on his case and they not only killed the guy but they dumped the corpse on the courthouse steps oh yeah so we send a message yeah we might be able to research that but yeah he was he was an old school. And he could go from here to here in like two seconds. The way my guy was telling me about it is that he was the most fun guy to hang around. Yeah. But then-

Last all day. Oh, yeah. And just a normal ball breaking Italian guy. Yeah. But then someone did something he didn't like. Yeah. So actually, I can say this part. Joe Pesci, when he went to play Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas.

Now, Tommy DeVito was a real kid in the mafia and whatever, but he wasn't. He was no longer with us when that movie was coming out. So when Joe went to figure out how to play that role, he imagined his childhood buddy, Bobby Biscaccia. Really? And that's how he channeled that. And so when you see like spider dance motherfucking right that's from bobby really like you're what and i didn't know him but like i've been told this by the guys who do yeah obviously you knew him yeah that's what he was like yeah

in that era yeah gem i mean hilarious he was a gem and we laughed we laughed all day when you hook up when you hook up with a funny guy in jail and you hit it off with him you know he knew my whole story you know he knew i stood up i I was facing life too. He had life. I was facing life. He knew I was in there three years already. I ain't going bad. And, uh, we laughed every day. You know, once you, once you get tight with somebody, some of these guys that kill are the funniest guys you ever met in your life. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, that kill a hundred guys. Sammy's not a, Sammy was never a humorous guy. Sammy the bull. Unfortunately, that's what people, people's view of the mob killer is, you know, but believe it or not, he's a different cat,

a different cat. But there was a lot of people who you'd never, you know, if you were bullshitting with them in a bar and I told you that guy killed 30 guys, you go, no way, no way. He's so, he's too bubbly. He's too too happy so no way you picture a guy all twisted up like norman bates you know you know like a serial killer type you know jeffrey dama yeah not happening you know a lot of it's it's it's different you know i and i never want to be misheard on this or anything but there's a huge difference to me when i'm sitting across from like louisa who i have known for years who's you know definitely seen a few bodies in his life right versus like not that i've done this but sitting across from

some dude who killed his wife you didn't accidentally call me luisa no no his name is luisa so it's like luisa but it's like luisa yeah yeah different guy it's a huge difference between sitting across from a guy like that okay versus like the dude who killed his wife right there's just they're completely different guys who are in that life i'm not condoning murder in any way let me be very clear it's wrong there's a lot of these guys who are sick fucks i would i would characterize by the discussion as one of them but there is a difference when you like when you get into that life this is what you sign up for you go to the can or you get a bullet in the back of the head if you get it wrong with somebody.

Now, like if they kill a civilian or something, totally different story. But when it's gangster on gangster crime, I mean, that's the life, man. That's what it is. It's a different life. Now, Bobby wasn't sick, actually. He was very sane. That's not what I heard. Oh, really?

Yeah. He was a little off but you know in a good way uh but i mean he i'll tell you guys there are other guys who like are really off like a roy de mayo obviously roy de mayo well he just racked up bodies yeah enjoyed enjoyed killing exactly uh i had a dear friend um who supposedly uh blow torched you know a pecker off or two. Nice guy. Yeah, he was actually, believe it or not. It's hard to say this.

I was even close with... It's hard for people to understand this, I should say. But if you're in that life, you understand there are guys that creep you out. Like if you're in... I've been around killers that creep you out. And you don't know if they're just... You're walking down a staircase with them, if they're going to just hit you over the head, the back of the head with a hatchet.

Yeah. Because they might just do it just to see your brain. You know, like they want to like just see some red cauliflower for lunch. That's the way these guys are, those sickos. But there's other guys like, I remember I was talking to somebody and I said, Jimmy Coonan was a gem. And the person was- Westies guy? Westies. I was close with Jimmy Coonan, Jimmy Coonan was a gem. And the person was- Westies guy?

Westies. I was close with Jimmy Coonan. Jimmy Coonan was a gem. And they said, how could he be a gem? He carried a head in a bag. He chopped up people in a bathtub. I said, but he wouldn't do that to me. You know, I knew not to cross him.

So that was your part. If he didn't do it to me, he's a nice guy. When you're in the life, you know, if you cross him, you got that coming. You know, you double cross them, you got that coming. You know, you double cross them, you got that coming. But if you don't, he'll still put his own balls up for you or his life up for you. Is this something that you kind of knew naturally growing up in Queens and running with the crews you did or did eventually kind of learn this is the way? No, I don't come from a mob background, but it was either through being around people and in some parts intuitive. You know, you understand this is how life is.

This is like, you know, you could be around a guy at school. Let's say you're around a guy at school and everybody hates the bully. You know, the big bully at school. Everybody hates the guy. But you knew the bully from a different angle. And you knew that inside. He lost his mother and father when he was young. He's acting out. He's not such a bad guy. He cried on your shoulder a few times.

You know him differently. So there's sort of like an intuitive sense you would have that where everybody's going, I hate that effing bully. I hate that effing bully. You get where they're coming from. Just like I understand when people say, how could you defend a killer? I get where they're coming from. But I also saw the different side of the person. And I did a show for Discovery Channel. I locked into maximum security prisons all over the world because I understood both sides of people. I could hang out with killers. I went into a Zalco prison in the middle of the jungles in El Salvador, 600 guys, every single one of them had at least one body because you can't get into the gang. Like all the MS-13 guys.

Oh yeah. It was 18th Street, which is their rival. And I hit it off with them. I mean, I hope they kiss them. I locked in with them. Bro, I was literally like we were friends forever, some of these guys. And because I see them, their human side too. Look, we're all human. We're all created by the same God. We don't like to believe that all the time.

But the same God created every one of us. Whether you're black, white, Asian, men, woman, whatever gender you choose, whatever you, who you are. I don't care who you think you are, who you are. You are created by the same God. So to me, everybody's got a human side. And I was able to connect with people in those prisons because of that. Now, I feel you on that. And I, and I appreciate that. That's the empathetic side. And we're going to get to your full story today. Oh, I forgot the hijacking trucks. Obviously, what I'm saying is you're a guy who never ratted on anyone.

You went away. You did your time. You left the life. You are a religious dude, someone who is completely out of it. You can kind of straddle both as far as like understanding how it works and having some empathy for your guys there but like that's not what you do no it's interesting though to still hear that at this point i don't want to say like you're over emphasizing empathy because i feel you they everyone did come from a usually in those situations came from a very tough background

very tough situation whatever but there's got to be a line no like if you if if you are growing up dirt poor in el salvador and your ms-13 or your 18 street gang guys take you in and you eventually kill for them i do have empathy for that but like there's a lot if you're dropping 20 bodies and it's random and a lot of times down there the way i understand is it'll be like civilians and stuff too now the line the line is what it is no the line great great great point great point and the line that i uh sort of found in prison there was a line that i drew and i'll tell you what it was and i didn't see the line when i was outside and i'll tell you how i saw it and where i drew the line because it's a great question. There is a line, you know, how, how much can you like somebody who's murdering everybody? I get it. Uh, and here's the line. When I was on the street, I believed in the mob.

I believed in the life. I believed in every bit of it. So I felt if somebody disappeared, let's say they said, Oh, you know, Julian ain't around anymore. He took a one-way ride. Okay. You know, you get it, right? Okay. He's gone. You will automatically assume, I did at least, that Julian did something against the Borgata. Julian did something against the family and he had it coming.

Just like if somebody commits treason against the country, if you sell nuclear secrets, you may be electrocuted. We as a country, as a society in America, at least the consensus is that that's okay. I don't agree with executing anybody. I'm not for the death penalty. And there's many reasons why we could discuss it another time. But I understood it that way. If you go against the Borgata, if you break the rules, you slept with somebody's wife, maybe, I don't know what you did. Maybe you're talking to the government. I don't know what you did, but you went, you disappeared. Now I'm in jail and I'm in jail and a lot of the people

I lost, a lot of friends who disappeared. And I never questioned it because you can't go, oh, why'd Julian disappear? Why are you asking? What is it your business? You're reporting to somebody, you're an FBI handler you're talking to. So you just leave it alone. The guy disappeared. Now I'm in jail and everybody's indictments are laid bare. We're all talking about them all day. I'm talking about my indictment. I was heisting hijackings, armored cars, armored car depot, you name it, they claimed I did it. I'm with guys who were there for a lot of murders. And I'm realizing that maybe Julian didn't die for the right reason. Maybe Julian died because Sammy the Bull wanted his apartment, his money, his wife, his business, or somebody else had an eye on something Julian had.

Maybe Julian had a loan shark book and this guy wanted it. He knew Julian had 5 million on the street and was collecting great vig. And he wanted that book and he desperately wanted it. So now everybody's indictments are laid bare. We're all talking about our cases and I'm saying, son of a bitch, I'm in a snake pit. I couldn't kill Julian for a trillion dollars. You couldn't give me all the money in the world to kill Julian. However, however, if Julian slept with my friend's wife, Julian's going in a body bag tonight and throwing him in the Hudson River. I got no problem with that. It's right over there. Yeah, I got no problem with it. But I do have a problem with killing you for money. And that was against my beliefs.

That was against my ideology. And when I was around that, that was my first indication in prison when I'm listening to reason why all these guys died. And I'm going, son of a bitch. Gas Pipe Castle killed people I knew and people he had doing the killings were dear friends of mine. His big hit team were all these young Turks who were close friends of mine. Now, you know, his big hit team were all these young Turks who were close friends of mine. Now these guys were following orders. Okay, but gas, they didn't know gas pipe was mislabeling people

every time he wanted to kill somebody, a rat. And that's the problem. Right. So, you know, you hear, oh, so-and-so's a rat. And then you say, okay, he disappeared. Okay, he was a rat.

He had to go. Then you find out in jail, the guy wasn't a rat. And that's the thing. At the higher echelons, if someone says you got to do something, this is why. There's no question. Well, I don't believe it anymore because I'm not taking orders. I'm not killing a friend.

You know, my childhood friend was Ronnie G. Alonzo, Ronnie G. I love him to this day. Ronnie was a man's man. I remember him and I when I got home from prison. He was there for me, by the way, when I came home. And we were talking and we could never kill each other. We could never kill a friend, no matter what the order is. You know, if they told me to kill Ronnie, I'd tell Ronnie, get out of here.

They're looking to clip you. You know, I would never. I was close friends. I'm still close friends with Mike Faraci. Mike Faraci's brother was Gus Faraci, the guy who killed the agent. Okay. So they put a hit out on Gus Faraci at the time, theaci, the guy who killed the agent. Yes. Okay. So they put a hit out on, on Gus Faraci at the time, the mob did because they killed an agent.

He didn't know he was an agent. He thought he was a snitch. He killed him. He made a mistake, but you still killed an agent. The mob puts a hit out on him. And I get deep into this in volume three of my new mafia trilogy, Borgata. But anyway, they, they put a hit on Gus. Hold that book up.

Yeah. Give me, give me that you've written seven books now yeah seven yeah seven yeah yeah i'll have the links to this down in the description but i'm gonna check this out myself as i said we're doing this last minute so i haven't seen him yet but yeah cool i'm sure if they're anything like the way you express yourself i'm sure they're great brother i appreciate that thank you yeah so uh so anyway the guy one of the guys petrocelli was told to clip gus he says he's my prison buddy and he's my street friend. I ain't clipping him. They killed Petrocelli for saying no, for saying no. So Petrocelli died for one reason. He refused

to clip Gus Ferracci. Right now, if you go back to like, I think it was Aristotle who's to define like the true nature of a friend. He, he meets Aristotle's definition of a true friend. You know, few of us do, and he did. So, you know, that's where you find a guy on the streets who he's far and above, far and beyond like Ronnie G was for me, always, always there for everybody he could be and always there for me. So, you know, he is a perfect example of where, you know, you know somebody from a different angle and I disagreed with ever killing a friend so that life isn't for me

I'm not clipping a friend if I'm close with you for the last 20 years 30 years or from when we grew up and they tell me Julian's gotta go even if you did wrong it's hard for me I can't do it so you know that's sort of like where the life for me was these guys are

treacherous mf's and i'm i'm lucky i'm here that nobody put a bullet in the back of my head yeah you know that that you know just because they wanted something i had um you know thinking back and i would have been so naive i would have i would have went to my grave never known why it happened how it happened because look at all the people gas pipe killed he mislabeled them rats gas pipe castle yeah can you tell people who he was gas pipe castle was the under boss of the lucchese family uh he he ruled from uh uh probably the 80s and until they they snatched them up and they put them away for life it's a great book on that called gas pipe by philip carl yeah phil carlo had the voice philip carlo unfortunately

yeah so uh gas ends up becoming a rat himself so how do you believe in a life where the guy mislabels people's rat people everybody a rat kills them and then becomes a rat himself you got to rethink your life what what business am i in yeah right i mean what business am i in that you know everybody died because they were mislabeled a rat and they weren't. And now he's a rat. So. I think people learned what a lot of these guys were made of, no disrespect, after they invented Rico. I mean, that just, once they did that.

I talk about that too, my boy. In their early 70s, G. Robert Blakey. Yeah. And were able to put that to work combined with the whole wiretapping phenomenon and everything. You know, you sit across from a dude. And I told you about my friend Jim DiIorio who worked a lot of cases like this. You sit across from a mobster. You're like, dude, you're facing 40 years minimum.

Right. Right. They're going to protect themselves. Yeah. Most guys do. Unfortunately, nowadays, me, I face that life sentence. And I just say, you know what? It's not me.

If I have to die in here and i made that decision now i could say too because i had no faith in god when i made that decision i just believed in not doing not ratting out your friends no but by the grace of god yeah i respect that yeah thank you but by the grace of god i'm here now to look back on it and say i faced it i faced it so i really don't have a lot lot of patience for these guys. Why go to the pen when you could send a friend? I got no patience for them. You eat in people's houses, their mothers, their daughters, their wives, their brothers. And then you sit on a witness stand and you point to them and say, send him, don't send me. I didn't know. And a lot of guys make excuses. I didn't know what I was really getting into. You know, everybody knows what they're getting into.

Exactly. Look, if you're driving by in your car and you spot a bank robbery and you have nothing to do with it and you tell the police everything you saw, I'm fine with that. But if you go in and rob the bank with the guy and then get caught and tell the cops everything. Fuck you. Fuck you. You made the decision, buddy.

You know, lay in your bed. It's your bed. You made it. So I have no patience for all that shit. And everybody, all the rats always very few just go. yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm a rat. And then it's never, they do that. They always go, they have to dignify it. They got to justify it. Someone didn't send me commissary. Someone didn't take care of my wife. Someone took my business. And, you know, I was close with Joey Amato from the, from the Colombo family. Joey Amato was a

man's man too. When Joey was away, there was a few guys who were trying to glom on a few things he had. Joey had every right to go bad and he didn't. He did not. He could have said, look, they're taking my joke a poking route. They're taking my whatever he had on the street at the time. I remember I was privy to it at the time when it was happening. He did not. He could have made a million excuses and says, I'm ratting. I got every reason to rat. Why not? He didn't. He said, look, this is what I chose. I'll take care of these people when I get home. You know, I mean, you know, that's a man's man in that world, in that life. Again, not justifying the life. I'm not in it anymore, but I'm just telling you the people

who are men and hold up to what, if you know, I appreciate that. If you believe, if you believe in something, you know, don't, don't, don't don't don't don't abandon ship you know how how much respect do we have for captains when the ship's going under and what was the one the the italian ship the captain was the first one off the ship he was he got a little too close to the coast maybe 10 years ago yeah yeah about 10 years ago you can't do that the guy in the helicopter's going uh whatever his name was when you when you find out when if you find him, he's going, get back to your ship. The guy's going, you can't leave your ship. Get back to your ship.

He was the first one to abandon ship. Do we have any respect for this guy? No. Probably one of the most powerful scenes in a great movie I've ever seen is in Titanic. When you see the captain standing in the main room, he knows the water's about to come in and kill him. What a man. And that's it. He's a man. He's like, well, we knows the water's about to come in and kill him. What a man. And that's it.

He's a man. He's like, well, we fucked up. It's my ship. There you go. I have to go down with it. Perfect. There's just something about that. Perfect analogy. You're right.

Perfect analogy. You're right. Yep. And as a society, we respect that. And he fucked up. Do we hate him because he fucked up? You know what? He kind of redeems himself because he's saying, I fucked up.

I'm going down now to the bottom. I'm going to be laying in mud for eternity. you know, and you know, he messed up and there's no comment That's the thing. There's no coming back. Oh, no, there's like a little death But there's something about that symbolism that you want to leave behind in life for people to know about you that makes us in that situation not that I've been in it it but face that reality and accept it and it's the end there's no more chapter it says it's such a bizarre thing game over yeah book close game over finished done finito and and it is incredible because

you know what the thing about that is though compared to some of the situations you're talking about you're done when that happens it's over your pain's gone you're dead you'll face your maker in the afterlife at that point but with the prison thing you may be facing 60 years here doing the same thing every day it's torture it's right uh i was close with richie paglia rulo richie paglia rulo was uh lucchese family uh he was convicted of murders. He had an opportunity. I don't know if they made him a skipper. They might've made him a skipper before he went away. They might've elevated him.

I can't remember, but he's away. And we got really, really close in Lewisburg and he never came to the yard, but he took a liking to me. Now and then he'd come to the yard to see me and bullshit with me. And my last day in Lewisburg, which is a whole story of its own. I'll let you know if you want to hear that.

I mean, I landed there for a double homicide. We got to get back to the beginning. We got to, where we want. I'll just really tell you quick then, Richie, he walked the yard with me my last day. Actually, let's go back. We'll come back to Richie because he's in Lewisburg.

When we get back to Lewisburg, we'll talk about it. So I'm stealing cars and I'm providing chop shop parts for all the auto body collision shops. And at some point I'm in a shop and this dude goes to me, he goes, oh, there was this huge toolbox, the size of this table and about my height. And I said, wow, look at the size of this thing. He goes, yeah, they go for about five or six grand, he says, these boxes. I says, really? I says, yeah. And he says, these tools, you open the drawers,

this one's a hundred, this one's 60, this one's 80, that one's 120. I said, wow. He goes, yeah, yeah. I said, who brings them here? He goes, there's a truck that comes, he says, every couple of days, he says, snap on Macko. He goes, the truck's probably worth over a hundred grand. I said, you want one? So that's how my hijacking career started. That's how my hijacking career, I left from cars to hijacking. Now I wish I didn't. Hijacking a truck is way different than a car. Yeah. Yeah. Big time. So look, I, I speak about it lightly now. I had my regret. I used to stare at the ceiling in prison and wish it fell on me. I just want your listeners and viewers to understand that before I go further, because I do have regret. You can't grab a guy, put a gun in his mouth, and just laugh about it

for the rest of your life. I suffered psychologically myself for what I did to people. I get it. And I went to prison for a long time. At the time though, you're 16 years old, I guess at this point. Are you even thinking about any of that? No, absolutely not. Great question too. Not thinking about it. It went right over my head. Any of the deep questions I have now or deep thoughts about it, completely incapable of thinking about that. Yeah. Well, what was your home life like?

Did you have a tight knit family or were you kind of out on your own? Yes. So I mentioned Ronnie G. Me and Ronnie G hijacked trucks together when we were kids. I would literally leave the truck with the guy in it and leave my friends and say, I got to be home at 5.30 for dinner. I'll catch you guys later. And I would run home to be, my mother wanted us home at 5.30 for dinner. Whether my mother made macaroni, whether she made chili, whatever she put together at that table, she wanted us home as a family

together at 5.30. And she worked all day. My mother worked till five, came home, put the dinner together quick. Did she know what you were doing? No. Now my mother came from a family of, my father's family were legitimate law-abiding people, all of them. My father's family never sped. They never passed the red light. They did the yellow, they hit the brakes. Yellow, hit the brakes. God almighty, sorry. You're sitting at home like, what a pussy. Yeah. My father's family, i'm like what a pussy yeah my father's family that forget it so now my mother's family was the other side my discovered the exciting action of bet mgm casino check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer or enjoy over 3 000 games to choose from like cash eruption ufc gold blitz make instant deposits or same-day

withdrawals download the bet mgm ontario app. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. My uncle went away for hijacking when I was a kid. And I can remember going,

we used to get in my grandfather's old jalopy and drive up there to visit him in Sing Sing. His old what? His old jalopy, an old shit box, an old car. You know, my grandfather, you know, my grandfather ran heavy machinery. Now my grandfather, my grandfather was a war hero, World War II, eight bronze stars, Asiatic Pacific,

comes home and hangs out in the bar the rest of his life and runs bulldozers during the day. After work, he would finish his bulldozers or backhoe or excavators, whatever he did. He ran heavy machinery, built the BQE, everything. Oh yeah. Incredible story. I used to work in the Midtown Tunnel and he was one of the best operating engineers. They all won. You got some good shit. Oh, incredible. But at night he hung out at Tom's Piano Lounge where he took numbers. So, you know, he ordered in Manhattan and he started taking numbers. Yeah, 6 o'clock.

So he was a little bit, my mother's side was a little shady. And if something fell off the truck, you know, we had extra things. You know, like my grandfather would drop, my mother would say, get that out of the house. I don't want it. He goes, it's legitimate. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah. She'd fight with him.

My mother was trying to be a little better and then her family. But my uncle, I can remember sitting in Sing Sing visiting room. My feet didn't even touch the floor. I remember my grandmother, Josie, Josefina, Josie, we're on the visit one day. And she goes, Anthony, to my uncle, she goes, Anthony, do me a favor. She goes, get on that. It's so hot, freaking hot in here. Get on that chair and open a window. He goes, Jesus Christmas. He says, they'll shoot me right off

the chair, mom. So like we had laughs as a family. Yeah, we always laughed. We had laughs in the visiting room. Sing Sing was no joke. Sing Sing was no joke. I gotta tell you, when I pulled in there as an adult, it all came back to me. I said, son of a bitch, you know, are we destined when we grow up this way to end up here? Because I got a lot of friends who came from criminal families and ended up where I ended up. And here I am as a little kid visiting Sing Sing, Art to Kill. You know, I'm going up to Ossining, New York. Nobody, my friends don't even know where Ossining, New York is.

And I'm heading up there for prison visits. And then I end up there. You know, eventually I did time in the feds, the state, the county, across the board. I had three different cases. Yeah, you had to get a taste of each pizza. Exactly. Exactly. And so I'm going, shit, is this in my blood? That was something I thought about one day too. I'll tell you a story in the state joint, just to fast forward before we rewind. I'm in a state joint and I was complaining to this guy. He was a guy,

there's all kinds of sorts in the state. There was a guy who was a chemistry teacher. And I said, can you do me a favor? At that point, I had been teaching myself. I've been reading 18 hours a day, educating myself in prison. For years, I did that. And at some point, everybody I'd meet, if you told me, I'm a producer, I'm a host. I did a YouTube show. I'd say, can you do me a favor and teach me everything about the equipment, everything about how it works, how you do the video, how you put it out? I always wanted to know everybody's little bit. How do they do it so you can learn about life? So this guy's a chemistry teacher. I go, can you do me a favor and teach me about chemistry,

maybe even some physics? He goes, absolutely. So he recommends some books to me, the Wooley something or another I read. I read a couple of other books about physics, eventually read a biography on Einstein. And he's teaching me. And one day I hear, I'm in my cell reading, and I hear whack. It was a slap and it reverberated down the tear block. I said, and then I hear somebody whining. I said, son of a bitch, what's his name? This guy, this teacher, I shouldn't probably say his name. He might be out there, but this teacher, maybe he'll, maybe he'll email and say, I know you could say my name. I'm proud and happy you did it. But, but anyway, he's a legitimate guy. Maybe he doesn't want to better know he was in jail for a few years, wherever he is today. So I said, let me, let me go see. So I walked down, I go into, I go into the cell and there's

this dude who was Latin King and he was the guy who slapped him and his face is beet red and i said to the dude i go yo what's up in here and he looked at me and he's thinking you know almost like an animal was thinking should i attack or not me meaning me and he's thinking and i go yo what's up in here and and he walked out and so i go you all right to the dude who got slapped now. The Latin King walks out. I usually got along with the Latin Kings, by the way. This was just this one dude. Love the Latin Kings. I got along well with the Latin Kings everywhere. I liked the Latin Kings. It was just this one

dude. Latin Kings were all good people in jail. Got along with all of them. This one dude. So he walks past me, slides out. I go, you all right? And he's got the big handprint on his face, you know? And he goes, yeah, I'm okay. He goes, I walked out, went back, my cell, pick up my book and I'm reading. And he comes to my cell and he knocks on the door. They didn't lock us in yet. Obviously you could go cell to cell during the day. So he comes by, he knocks on my door. And I had been telling him now previously, maybe a week before, I said, I got to be more like my father's family. They were law abiding citizens. They were good people. My mother's family were all crooked. I got to get this crooked shit out of my system. So now he knocks on my door after the slap and he, can I talk to you for a second? I said, yeah, put down the book. What's

up? And he goes, don't complain or curse your mother's side and your mother's family's blood in you. That's what just saved my ass. And he was right because my mother's family took chances and they weren't afraid to help somebody. My father's family, if they heard that slap, they would have just pulled the covers up and said, I didn't hear nothing. You know, that they were different people. I'm not going to get involved. I don't need to get involved. Yeah. So he pointed out to me, don't curse your chemistry, make use of it. And I thought that that's a good thing. Maybe if I take chances in other ways, law abiding ways and did things to help people.

P.S. my documentary series with Discovery Channel. P.S. I did an animal trafficking documentary that's yet to air in South Africa and Mozambique trying to help the animal trafficking trade, trying to stop it. Put your risky behavior into something good and create something good out of your bad, out of what can be conceived or perceived as a fault. You should have talked to me before you did that. I wish we knew each other. That's awesome.

So when did you shoot that? Well, you'll come with me next time. And I love that idea, by the way. So I get, off the Discovery History, the Discovery Channel series, I wanted to do something about animal trafficking. I love animals. And I feel like they're little humans. Anybody who has a pet knows. If you look at them too,

they have the same eyes, the same tongue, the same nose as us. You got a dog? Oh, I have cats. I have cats, but I love dogs. Love dogs. I'm in my friend's house. I'm staying in Staten Island now. His dog loves me so much. She comes and puts her head on me as soon as I sit down on the couch. Doberman the size of me. The size of me. She'll knock me over if she wants to. And precious dog.

But she knows I love my friend. She knows I love animals, I guess, because she loves me. So P.S., I said, I want to do something about this. So I pitched it around. I went to every person, every place, trying to green light a documentary about animal travel. person, every place, trying to green light a documentary about animal trafficking. I wanted to do something called Planet Mafia, where I go and do all of the environmental crimes and all the crimes against either the earth or the animals.

Wow. And yeah, I get greenlit by Univision. Actually, Fusion was part of the Univision umbrella. So Fusion greenlits the project. They underwrite it for $350,000. We go to South Africa and Mozambique. And now I go there. I was telling you earlier about- Were. We go to South Africa and Mozambique. And now I go there. I was telling you earlier about- Were you in Kruger?

I was in Kruger, in and out of Kruger every day. Yeah, it was wild. And so I land there and I hated the poachers. I wanted to kill every poacher I saw when I got there. But I was telling you about, I could see the human side in people. When I got there and started investigating how this shit works, I see that the poachers are usually these young African kids who live on the outskirts of Kruger Park. Sometimes, yeah. Yeah, a lot of times. And they're given, here's a bullet or two bullets and a gun and a machete to cut the horn off the rhino. Go in there and get me the horn. And here's $10,000.

$10,000. These guys never had more than a bowl of soup a day. What's $10,000? There is some of that. There's some bad ones. But what I found was it was the next level with the bad guys, the guys who are manipulating those poor peasant kids that have nothing. And that's who I began to hate. So I says, you know what? I don't hate the poacher who doesn't know any better. He was as dumb as me when I was a kid and I didn't know any better. Now they don't.

So I found it hard to continue to hate them and despise them knowing they didn't even, you know, you got a guy who never had more than a dollar his whole life and now he's off at 10,000. He's never had a pair of shoes. He's walking around and beat up like truck tires yeah there yeah there's some of this for sure yeah alessi on youtube real quick we're not gonna be able to put

in the corner screen but maybe we can have it flashing on the screen over here can you type in ryan tate discovery interrogating poachers i want to tell you about this because i i wish i i wish i had known you before well we're gonna do it again but you'll come back with me if you want go down a lot of seats you see i think it's that yes it's that one right there so pull this up so this is my buddy ryan tate who's been on been on the podcast episode 117 he's coming back on very soon as well it was it was intense. Now that was when, that was like right before we got out as a call, right? Yes, and I actually, I chased them too.

This was badass. So we have this vehicle checkpoint and... Out of nowhere, and it comes in on the radio, and then there are Amtrak tanks, the amphibious tanks just flying over the Euphrates River. He runs an organization called VetPaw over across the African continent. They don't talk about all the places they are. Leave the volume off for a minute, Alessi. So he runs this organization and it's all a bunch of U.S. veterans who work with the African governments over there through this organization, VetPaw, to protect the animals that are being poached. And they've been around for a decade, and I will go ahead and say they are responsible for the reason that white rhinos are recovering and aren't extinct now.

I mean there were 15,000 white rhinos that were around when they started. Now there's around 30,000. They've never lost an animal, and they have patrolled tens of thousands of miles of land when you take into account all the different places they've been in Africa. You should hook me up with them if you can. I would love to. But if we cut to the end, cut to like, how long is this video? Eight minutes, something like that? Six. Six.

Okay, cut to four minutes right there. That's him. Cut right here. Okay. So these were poachers that he caught. And in this, they actually had the documentary film crew with them when this was happening. But these guys were what you're talking about, more your prototypical poor guys who were brought in there to poach. And so what Ryan convinced them to do is he said, I'm going to give you a day, and I want you to be on our side.

And I will work with the courts to make sure you get like a lesser sentence. And when you come out, you're going to have an opportunity to be a park ranger. But you need to tell us where all the poachers are. And one of the guys the next day took him to every fucking house where these guys you're talking about are. So, again, there is a little bit – there is both sides to it. However, he will tell you there are a lot of people – I'm talking the ones on the ground pulling the trigger who are quite literally terrorists. There are guys from Boko Haram who do it. There are guys from ISIS in Africa who do it. And it's like it's not just as simple as – and this is the part where he's about to go into the room.

I totally agree with you. It's a nasty, nasty business and disgusting. Right. So being on the ground, I think my job as a host, as an investigative journalist, is to figure out who's who, right? Always like, you know,

there could be some tuturu who's being used and there could be some really Machiavellian guy who's really manipulating everybody else and causing people to die and causing animals to die. And for example, here's a perfect example. I am totally pro park ranger. I hit it off with them. I love them. We went to dinner together. We hung out together. We did a safari together. I love the park rangers because that's all that stops the animal element, the human animal element

from destroying the animal element. So I'm totally with the park rangers. However, there was one instance where I did talk to a park ranger who said to me, there was apparently a poacher who was shot. And there was a poacher who was shot and he was laying there half dead, but he wasn't dead. And the guy said, I regret that they told me to shoot him in the head now and finish him off. And I said, why? You know, you got a guy who could go to the hospital, recuperate, rethink and reevaluate his life and maybe feel like he's done something horrible. And then help the people who are trying to combat this horrible tragedy, this horrible trade. So why would you kill him? Well, he said, we get funding from all over the world and big

funding from New Yorkers and Londonites, et cetera, and Parisians. To keep that money coming, we have to show that we're doing something. So nothing's better than a body. And he goes, and that's why the team told me I have to kill him. And they explained to me why. So to me, two wrongs don't make a right. And if you're a good investigative journalist, you go out there to stop the trade, which is what I want to do. But you also get into the human element, who's who in the process. Well, then you'll love that, Paul, because you know how many people they've killed in 10 years? Yeah.

Zero. That's great. Zero. Yeah. I love these guys already. You got to hook me up with yeah no that's he's one of my very very close friends i'd love to hook up amazing work but yeah and they'll they'll probably be able to get you access to some things if that's a story you're interested

in hunting down i mean it's yeah i want to save animals yeah yeah and and i and i hear you i i think again there has to be there has to be some empathy for some of the people there. It's just – it's very sad. To me, the idea of shooting an elephant or a rhino or something like that, that is a fucking dinosaur, bro. Disgusting. It's horrendous. It is so bad. Makes me sick.

And elephants are in many ways smarter than we are. How about this? I went to a rhino orphanage. And if you want to break your heart, sometimes the rhino mom is left dead with the tusk, the horn cut off, and the baby is sitting there crying until somebody rescues the baby. And then they go to this. I have great footage of me playing around with a rhino baby. You know what I mean?

This is incredible. And you want to break your your heart see the mother with the kid next to her You know and like this is and you know, it's crazy I told with the rhino horn, which is a disgusting trade because it has no benefit a rhino horn for people out there It is a fucking toenail. It's made out of keratin It's the same thing that your that your fingernails and toenails are that's right But you know They go in and they hack it off and the reason they do it the way they do where they they hack it really fast with the with you know the mother or father rhino wherever it is in the situation where the calf is there

and they leave a giant gash i can't put on the screen because we'll get demonetized but they leave a giant gash and leave the the rhino there to bleed out it's a horrible slow painful crying crying like humans but the reason they do it is because it's the fastest way to do that if they sat there and did it correctly not that there's any excuse for doing they should never do this but they could sit there and saw right towards the bottom of the horn and they'd be a gross thing to do but they're just dehorning the rhino they don't do that though they're like fuck you we'll leave you here to die yeah that's a great great point you made too about the dehorning the rhino which is on't do that though. They're like, fuck you. We'll leave you here to die. Yeah. That's a great, great point you made too about the dehorning the rhino, which is on the

flip side of that, which they could do. We, we went out with a crew that darts the rhinos and then we dehorn the rhinos. I took part in doing it. You dehorn them so that they're not valuable anymore to the poacher. So we dehorn them ourselves. So in other words, when the poacher goes out there, he's looking for a horn and he doesn't care how many mothers of babies he kills he wants the horn so we once you dehorn the rhino now it's a different story they take those horns then because it is you know something that's valuable to some people even though it's exactly what you said keratin from a toenail not even a fingernail it's less it's like a toenail so you even a fingernail. It's less, it's like a toenail. So, you know, it's horrible, but I thought that this, this strategy was good in combating the illegal trade because once the

rhino was dehorned and the rhino runs out there, the poacher sees it and goes, I can't get nothing out of it. What the problem is, it's affecting their gestation and their genes. So part of the reason they're using horns is to be able to mate right that's a big part of it and so but with the elephants here's a great example with that with them taking the ivory there is now a genetic problem in the african elephant where more elephants are being born without tusks because they've been cut off for so long so you are literally i mean you think about the african elephant you think of the whole yeah the giant tusks the larger than life creature and now they're seeing that gene like it's still there but it's in danger so you can't just cut these things down

or something like that it affects nature what we just got to do is not kill the fucking animals yeah yeah yeah don't kill the animals period right but it's not it's not that hard yeah you know i feel like there could be a more concerted effort from around the world with our... Look, it can't go astray, but the governments of the world should do something. I mean, we're constantly fighting climate change, climate change, climate, climate, climate. What about the animals in Africa? Why don't we put as much work into that, into saving those animals? These are creatures. Some of the governments are funding it.

Yeah, exactly. That's the problem. Well, my documentary, I end up, my trail leads me to the Korean embassy. There you go. Yeah. The Korean embassy. And I pushed my way in, which was a great scene. They didn't want to let me in. I pushed my way in and I got in there. It was a great scene. No, you step out of the way. It's not to kill me. I don't give a shit. Kill me. Kill me. I'm coming in. I would love to see you just sticking it. Is there an image of you sticking a finger in the face going, no, no, I'm walking in?

Yeah, kind of. Pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Like a mini bobblehead. Get my way in. But I got in. So what happened was one of the guys, we found a trail where somebody from the Korean embassy was arrested. The Korean embassy bailed the guy out, sent him back to Korea. So we wanted to know why the embassy, do they condone this? Because he was arrested for stealing horns, for paying people to get horns for him. So why is the Korean embassy

getting involved? Why is the ambassador to South Africa from Korea getting involved in this? So we went deep into that. That's amazing. When did this come out? Well, here's the thing. You tell me, I'll put it out on your channel. This is what happened. So Fusion did it under the Univision umbrella. Univision was Spanish-speaking people mostly, but a lot of young Spanish-speaking Americans speak English, so it's fine. So when they greenlit it, it was Isaac Lee who greenlit it. Isaac Lee was the big head of Univision at the time. And Fusion, under the Univision umbrella, greenlit the show so we finish it and then they said well we're going to start we're going to stop doing new content and we're not putting out any new content anymore we're just rerunning it they changed their whole formula and then new people came in isaac lee who greenlit the show left everybody loved the documentary it's been sitting on the shelf for a few years now so this is a few years son of a bitch yeah exactly all right we we got to talk to some

people we gotta figure out i need to see this yes but yeah we gotta undead this like yep okay yeah so i've been writing for the last you know seven years to this trilogy this was actually that's how long it's i'm sorry it was probably completed about five years ago but i filmed it about seven because it's before i started the trilogy oh my god right this is getting dust at this point dust dust and it should be out. So I've been tempted a few times to just say, F it, throw it on YouTube. But I wanted to do it the right way.

I'm not a criminal. I want to get it out there and I want to do it the right way. Right, right, right. Where also, but I should talk to you. Is it locked in contract, I assume? Well, I'm going to ask you to help me figure it out. You know, maybe these ins and outs

behind the scenes better than I do. But I wanted to then use this as a jump off to go now do the elephants, which was originally my primary animal I wanted I do. But I wanted to then use this as a jump off to go now do the elephants, which was originally my primary animal I wanted to do. And then there's other animals on the verge of extinction. I wanted to keep going out there and then I wanted to do environmental crimes. There are people destroying the Amazon rainforest. There are computer companies. Man, speak in my language, bro. Oh yeah. There's computer companies that are ditching these computers laptops and everything and it's destroying the earth and they don't give a

shit it's like you know when i was a kid the mob dumped needles they dumped waste they dumped asbestos and shit too everything exactly they're washing up on rockaway beach you know and and like you know hypodermic needles are coming in tons on walkaway beach i didn't agree with it then i don't agree with it now and that's what the computer industry is doing to us now so you know i'd love to let's talk about this another another very close friend of mine who i was introduced to when i met ryan because he brought him but paul rosalie down in the amazon's most popular guest i've ever had on on the outskirts of manu national park this guy local guy started going into the jungle and like leaving them piles of bananas because they're they're hunter-gatherers they don't have they don't have metal they missed out on the wheel they've never held a spoon these are people that are out

there and so if you leave them a machete and some bananas and they'd come take it then after like a year he would start being there when they came to take it and then after some time he was actually able to interact with them and he couldn't he could only speak a few words of their language this is what they speak they're called the mashupiro tribe and so they speak some sort of uh some dialect of the yin-yang language but this guy who was interacting with them one day they found him they call it porcupine arrows sticking up out of his body like several arrows we don't know why they killed him he has lived in the amazon jungle now for the last 19 years oh wow and he is sitting there he's

been sitting there going oh my god watching china funded in the u.s buy it and everything's just getting burned down and shit it is wow brutal right what's happening there so is he doing a good job on covering it i think he's doing i think he's doing an amazing job he's one guy though yeah you know what i mean it's a big. Why don't we go visit him? Let's go visit him. Let's do it. Yeah, we're working on it. We want to go down.

This fucking dumbass, he's a Sicilian from Brooklyn. He don't carry a gun on it. Those are the best. He doesn't carry a gun out in the rainforest. I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you? He's like, ah, no, we work off the land. I'm like, fuck that. If I got an uncontacted tribe shooting six foot arrows at me, yeah, I'm going to have a fucking peace with me.

What about the animals? The animals. This motherfucker will fall asleep next to, he has a story. He fell asleep next to, what was it, a jaguar? Really? Yeah, with it just breathing. And I'm like, Paul, dude, listen, I'm all about not shooting animals too. But if they're about to eat me, you don't really have a choice.

Hopefully God watches over them. Well, clearly. I mean, the guy's got nine lives or bots yeah oh my god yeah unbelievable but yo that was a great little tangent right there i love that you're interested in that but we were talking about your we got into this because we were talking about your family life yes at home life yes and with your mom's side and your dad's side so you did grow up in a home where like you said you're coming home to dinner at 5.30. And your mom, when you're a teenager, starting to do this shit, like what did she think you were out doing at night? My mother, I brought home a tag job Eldorado. I remember.

Yeah. And I remember I bought a rack. Back then, there's so many numbers on a car now. But back then, you used to take out the windshield, pop the VIN. There was a tag in the left side of the windshield, just in the very front of the dashboard where the windshield meets the dashboard. And there were two little rivets. And if you got GM, the GM, original GM rivets, you could literally just pop that tag out, put your own tag in and replace the rivets, put the windshield back in and that's your car. And now if auto crime stopped you back then, they didn't go too crazy. Maybe sometimes they check the door, but they usually just check the VIN number or for traffic cop, auto crime, I shouldn't say. Auto crime did a little better job. But if a typical traffic cop stopped you at a light, he'd look and he'd say, okay, the VIN matches and your registration and everything,

it's good and give you a ticket and you leave. So you got away with this. So we were tagging cars left and right. So I bring home an Eldor barrettes and I remember my mother came on the porch and I she goes Your father's never stole anything in his life. Oh and I said mom I didn't either she goes, please Please Louis. You're breaking my heart. I said mom. I'm fine. I'm not doing it I'm working at Ciro shop Ciro was my friend who eventually became my co-defendant years later. I go, I'm working at Ciro's shop and he pays me. He gave me an advance. He gave me the car. I'm paying him off. She goes, you're breaking my heart, Lewis. Please don't do this to me. She knew. It's a mother, right? It's a mother. So she went inside and she was all choked up. And I said, son of a bitch, I got to park the car around the corner for an hour or something. I'm breaking my mother's heart. Yeah. Forget about taking your family for a ride.

So my mother knew. And then what happened was, I'm going to tell you what happens. This is how the trajectory of my life went and how I went off she gets sick. And she, she's, she goes, we're in, believe it or not, tell you a crazy story. I'm in Florida with a friend of mine and his car broke down. So I says, all right, it was a Trans Am. I go, all right, let me steal you one. We'll pop your tag. I'll put it on that one and drive home so we did that so now he's got a beautiful brand new trans am we're driving home in and my father i call home to say hey dad how you doing i'm coming home i'm on my way home from florida he goes your mother's got a lump he said and he goes i'm taking her to the doctor he goes you should really get home i said what's a lump he says a lump she feels a lump in her back he said you know so i'm taking her in he says but

get home. Get your ass home, will you? I said, all right, Dad. I'm on my way. So my friend drops me off at his tag job. I go home. My mother went. Turned out she had lung cancer.

And most beautiful woman you ever saw. Absolutely gorgeous. Could run a marathon in great shape. And all of a sudden, they gave her a year to live. And she's got lumps the size of cantaloupes growing out of her head within the next few months. Yeah, and she fell apart in front of me and I took care of her. And I would literally just like,

I was still a criminal, but I would spend so much time with my mother taking care of her knowing that's it. When she died in my arms, because I didn't want to take her in. I said, I'm not putting her in a home. I'm not putting her in a house. I want her to die with us at home. So we literally kept it to the last minute.

She used to stop breathing. I would roll her over and she'd catch her breath again. She'd stop breathing again. I'd roll her over. That's how far we went trying to keep her at the house. The last day she dies in my arms, we just get her to the hospital. We called in. We said, my father goes, we have to call Lewis. We got to bring her in. And we did, but there was nothing they could do for her, obviously. So she dies when we get there. I went off the deep end after that. So if I was criminally minded then, or if I was a little, you know, how to, if I was the kind of guy who would defend myself, then I became the guy who would be violent. In other words, if there was any, she taught me from when I was a kid, there is a God. If me and your dad, you know, if me and your father aren't around one day, I always remember there's a God above.

My mother would teach me that when I was a little kid and my sister, you know, we would sit and kneel down on our beds and pray at night with my mother. I remembered all that. It's weird that my mother would say that not knowing she would die young. But so anyway, all of those lessons went out the window. I said, if there's a God and he let my beautiful mother, who was the moral compass in my life, the only thing that broke my heart when I saw her saying, oh, Lewis, with the car, please. I said, it's got to be an evil God because she melted to nothing. How would God let such a beautiful woman disintegrate like this in front of my eyes? And there's animals, the wise guys around the corner who kill people, shoot people.

They're doing fine. The body shop guys who are buying cars from me, they're doing fine. Chopping on a cigar. The guys who buy hijacked trucks from me, they're doing fine. They're going to Florida. They got a tan in the winter. They got a $30,000 Rolex with a diamond bezel on. Why are they doing okay? Why are they on vacation? Why are they going out to dinner every night? And my mother melted away in a bed. If there is a God,

you can't be a good one. That was my feelings at the time. Obviously, that changed later on in prison. I reevaluated things. I looked deeper into things. I studied philosophy, history, et cetera, et cetera. We'll get into that if you want. But at this point I said, if there's a God, it's not a good God. And I went off the deep end. Now, if you want to hurt somebody, send me, send me. Julian owes us a hundred thousand. He ain't paying. I'll go get it. It's the villain origin story. Oh man. I was off the charts like that. You know, and I, you know, I started, you know, getting a little bit of a trigger finger, you know, my, my trigger finger started itching a little, you know, I wanted to,

I didn't care anymore. So how'd your dad take it? My father was a mess. My father, this was the love of his life. This is the, I used to go. I used to bring my father the year after she, within the first year after she died, I'd bring my father, like I'd say, dad, I'd open the room and he'd be laying in bed with his arm around the pillow. You know, he was a broken man. And I'd say, dad, did you eat today? What? What?

I said, did you eat today, dad? And I go out and I get him something to eat. You know, maybe I cook a spaghetti aglio e olio, bring it up and leave get him something to eat. Maybe I cook spaghetti aglioglia, bring it up and leave it on his dresser. And then I go back there two hours later, it was still sitting there. I thought he, you know, my father was done. So I had no supervision.

I mean, that's like when I was running all over the United States too. If you gave me a tip, they got surveillance photos of me knocking off. I was planning an armored car heist actually. We went out to California to knock off a Loomis armored car. And the FBI, thank God, grabbed us the day before we were planning to make the move, to jump. But we still had guns in the room. We had duct tape. We had two-way radios. We had walkie-talkies. We had the makings of everything ready. We're going. And the FBI grabbed us in California. But I'd just take a trip to California.

If you gave me a tip, I'm going. Get on a plane. Back then, before 9-11, I'd go to a girl, book me a ticket, put down Joe Russo. You can't do that now. I get on a plane, I'm Joe Russo. Wendy's most important deal of the day

has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for four dollars new four-piece french toast sticks bacon or sausage wrap biscuit or english muffin sandwiches small hot coffee and more limited time only at participating wendy's taxes extra so you can't do those back then you could do that stuff no more our discord and patreon links are in the description we are starting to do amas on. And we are also now releasing a new show called The Julian and Alessi Show with my producer Alessi Alamon on Patreon,

along with some other exclusive content from episodes that we have been putting out on YouTube that are not seen on YouTube. What was like a prime... I mean, that gets complicated when you start talking about going out of state just to go do something. But when you were first... After you did your first truck at like 17 and it started to become a thing doing the truck, what was, how would you decide what job to do, what truck to target, where to target it, and how many guys you needed?

Yeah, so the first thing is the best thing. The best thing is a tip. You come to me and you say, look, I work for such and such a company. And, you know, the truck leaves every morning at 8 o'clock. And this is where it's going. Or you're a driver. You could come to me and you say, there's a million reasons why people give tips. Maybe your wife's a spendthrift.

Maybe you're a gambler. You're always at the racetrack every free moment you got. You're at Aqueduct or Belmont or one of the tracks. And you're always in debt, maybe. And you come to me and you say, look, I'm working for this company. I drive this truck or that truck out of this place. And this is what I carry. Those are the easiest ones. You're going to give me the truck. How easy is that? The next step is maybe you route the truck. Oh, that's like when they just walk out of the truck.

Yeah. It's a give up. How you doing boys? Yeah. The guy, you know, so I've had guys ask, tell me, give me a good crack. You know, they don't want to go for a lie detector and they want to be able to tell the cop with a straight face look i got hit what what's what's the commission on that 10 20 percent usually 10 you know we we had we had a few incidents where a guy wanted more you know after the fact after we agreed to the 10 and it ends up going with sit down he goes and digs up a great uncle who's a wise guy and the wise guy wants to talk to me. And I say, look, this is really, really did happen actually. Ronnie One Arm, if you ever heard of Ronnie One Arm, he was a great guy. He's been away for life.

Ronnie One Arm was a good guy. I get a phone call. Ronnie One Arm wants to see me. Ronnie One Arm told Pete Gotti. Oh, like the brother. Pete, John Gotti's brother, Pete. I was in and out of Pete's house every day for about six, seven years. Pete's son was my friend. Yeah. And I was close with Pete, the father, because Pete saw me there every day. And so they called Pete Gotti and they said, Ronnie One-Arm wants to see Louie. So I go there, Ronnie One-Arm, I got to tell you, was a diplomatic guy.

And I told him the story. It was a guy that gave us a truck. Oh, actually, no, this wasn't a thing over the commission. We hijacked the truck. The truck was being stored in a friend of mine's yard and the yard got raided. So we lost the truck. And the tipster goes, I want my 10%. And we said, we lost the truck 10 minutes later. We don't have your money. What are we going to do? We never got paid. So, you know what I mean? Not my problem. Right. Yeah. It's a coin flip. It could go either way, but Ronnie went on was the ended up defending the

guy. And he called me down and I said, look, we took, he goes, we'll take a walk around the block. So I took a walk around the block with him. I explained to him what happened. I said, look, Ronnie, I'm not trying to hustle the guy. This is what happened. Maybe the guy gives us another tip. We'll take another truck, whatever. I'll make it up to him. I'll give him 20% next time. Whatever the case is. I don't remember exactly how I said it, but Ronnie said, it's done. Don't worry about it. Yeah. He squashed the beef and ruled in my favor. So yeah. I mean, look, I lost the truck. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I shouldn't have to dig into my pocket, but somebody could have technically said, you still have to, he gave you the truck,

whatever the case is, I won the beef. And sometimes these guys though, if they gave you the truck, they make you hit them to make it i've had guys i never wanted to hit somebody i knew but i've had guys say you know give me a shot so i would call one of my what got ended up being you know a guy in my crew maybe someone ended up being my co-defendants later but i would call a guy in my crew and i turned my back i'd say give him a crack yeah remember that scene in the sopranos where he's like all right mikey give him a whack he's like yeah right here and then he goes whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa stop he keeps going he's like fucking kicking the guy no we never did that yeah we never did that but so yeah i mean so yeah sometimes you know sometimes we tied the guy up so make it look good you know there you go we

did all of that now that's now did you like zip ties or rope there's usually zip ties zip ties with the easiest things in the world. Yeah, they're pretty good. Yeah, yeah. It's funny when I ended up with zip ties from the FBI one day, you know, right? So, yeah, yeah. Were they zip ties? No, no, no. But, yeah, I had zip ties on me for once.

Yeah, I don't remember exactly who was Secret Service or FBI. Somebody zip tied me once, yeah. Wow. Yeah, but whatever. Federal government's getting a little light in the pocket over there, I guess. If they do a big raid with a lot of guys, they zip ties the fbi i'm almost positive oh actually that's fair yeah yeah yeah i wasn't i wasn't thinking like a raid like that yeah no they gotta put people yeah i was thinking like a regular arrest i'm like no regular arrest they mark you out of your house

yeah yeah i had that too so but uh so so the yeah i mean that it. The next best thing is if a guy gives you and he tells you, look, I route the truck, so I'm in the place, and this is the tip. That's the next best. But you got to take the guy on your own, though. You know, there was like, you know. How many guys would you need for that? Believe it or not, I could jump on the truck myself. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you got a gun, right? You got a gun. You tell the guy, listen, one time a guy, I was telling my friend recently, there was a battery truck, we took this on the fly. It was a truck full of car batteries. And the guy panicked. And he drove the thing into the wall of a cemetery. And I just got out and said, I'm out of here. What the fuck am I going to do? I can't get this truck out, you know, now. So, you know, so shit happens. But for the most part, if you bring a big gun and you put the, you know, fear into somebody, they usually comply. And then the first thing we would do is say to the guy, and again, I regret this now. I want your viewers and listeners to know I've gone through the years of regret. I'm on the other side now of that. I could speak about it more lightly. I believe you. Yeah, I promise you I did. I promise you I did. Thank you. Thank you. So, you know, I mean, if you use a gun, you put the fear into the guy. I don't want to say the fear of God. I don't want to use God's name in this. But if you put fear in the guy, the next thing you do once you got him subdued, the first thing we would do is say, listen, you're going to be with your wife tonight for dinner. You're married. You got kids. I promise you, we don't want to hurt you. Are you wearing a mask ever? I did a lot without a mask on, which was a little wild. One time I was hitting these trucks.

Somebody gave me a tip. I was a kid. And they gave me a tip on these lawn... The guys, they used to have these little vans with a drop box in the side. And you would pull down the drop box in the side of the van and put a big bag of coins in there and drop it into this big, big tank that's locked inside the truck. A friend of mine gave me the tip. He worked for the company. They emptied the industrial size laundromat machines in buildings all over Manhattan, the Bronx, everywhere. And at the end of the day, these little trucks with coins would add up to 15, 20 grand in quarters. So I hit one. It's easy. I tell the guy, get out, drive the truck away. I hit another one. My co-defendant eventually becomes my co-defendant. He hits one. It got to the

point where we would just pull up at a light and I go, there's a gun under my seat. I'll pick you up around the block. Go get the truck. And he'd get out. One of my co-defendants did that once. He got out, jumped in with the guy, followed him. I followed him off to the LIE. He got off on the LIE. I saw the driver get out, kissed the ground and my co-defendant drove away and I followed him. We took the truck, but we were doing them so often that the guy who worked in the place, he goes, Hey Lou, I think you got to stop hitting the trucks. So I didn't, I go, look, maybe they're not all us. We hit a couple, but maybe somebody else is hitting them too. He goes, no, no, it's you. He goes, they got a picture, a sketch that looks identical to you in the building. So I said, okay, I'm done.

I better stop. Yeah. So, so yeah, I mean, they got, somebody did a sketch of me. How many of these do you think you did in your life? Oh, trucks overall trucks dozens dozens dozens it was a daily you know it was a regular thing i'm doing and heist i should say heist too if you told me there's a business with a safe in it payrolls you know payrolls 85 000 could you crack a safe yourself oh it's funny because we had we had i can't no i had a guy i had a safe cracker once one day i called the safe crack he was famous for safe crack and i got a big safe called the guy up he was vinnie the safe cracker

or g notice whatever his name comes over and he takes out a sledgehammer blow torch i go what the i was picturing it i thought it was gonna slide gloves on yeah like this put his ear to the thing you know yeah exactly yeah so i got to see firsthand what a safe's made of. It's concrete with like this rebar inside, netting. And then, you know, obviously we got into it. When you're opening a safe, some tips are good where we got something. Some tips, we opened it up one time. All that was in there was the receipt for the safe.

Yeah, so that was a letdown. So, you know, it depends, you know. But the streets, believe it or not are exciting I'll never have that excitement again as long as I live and I don't know no doubt Yeah, I don't want it either because it's it's it's a bad excitement. It's bad karma that comes with it Yes, but I will never have that sort of that to run boys on the range type of thing that feel right It's crazy that you can live in a city like this Right with all these

people packed in so close and it can be like the wild wild west movies that's right you know where everyone's supposedly spread out and everything but that's you know that's what it is and and you know you get a chance to see look i i know some of it bothers you personally because obviously you wish you didn't do this stuff but nonetheless you get to see people at their worst moment yeah when you're doing this stuff you know you stick a gun in someone's face yeah i don't want to say you learn who they really are because we most of us would be like panicked i mean how do you react to that but did you i guess the way i want to ask this is could you did you get to a point where you could read right away if you were dealing with someone who was fearful and was going to do whatever you said, or you were dealing with a cowboy?

Pretty quick. Yeah. So it's intuitive. What did you look for? Well, you know, right away, somebody's reaction, because a lot of the reactions are instinctual. So somebody's reaction, they're either going to start shaking, you know, and they're traumatized right away, which is the best reaction. I hate to say it. Or the reaction is we had one guy who went to come at one of my co-defendants eventually, became a co-defendant, was a crew member at the

time. Came at him, he rushed at him. That was his instinct. And, you know, thank God we were able to subdue the guy. Nobody got hurt. It was fine. I look back and say, somebody could have got killed. We could have got killed. Anything could have happened, but it's instinct. It's like I study the brain. I wrote a book about the brain, the three pound crystal ball. It's about the dreaming brain. It's a theory I developed in prison. I wrote about it now. It's been praised by an MIT scientist. It was praised by a Nobel laureate, science laureate, Carrie Mullis, read it, loved it. Said I can't put my name to it, unfortunately, which sucks.

Can I look that up? Yeah, you can check it out. Carrie Mullis? Yeah. That sounds very familiar. Brilliant guy. I assume he's still alive, but when I wrote it a few years ago, I contacted him.

And there's also- Wait a minute. Hold on, pull that up. Pull that up and stick that on the screen, Alessi. I'm sorry to cut you off. Yeah. No, this guy's not alive oh oh my god when did he die because i wrote the book oh my god i thought it was i thought that's who you said yeah okay this guy while he was alive det detested Anthony Fauci.

Oh, wow. Detested him. Wow, interesting. Like RFK. Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess same type of idea, but this was, that's interesting. Yeah, yeah.

That's the only time I ever heard about this guy. He and Fauci, like, had beef. Yeah, that's interesting. So the reason why I contacted him was I had- He's very dead, though. I'm sorry. Yeah, I didn't know that. What a shame.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What a shame. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What a shame. Yeah. Well, I contacted him because I read somewhere he was open-minded as far as stuff like, my book has a lot to do with time. And it's an experience a lot of people have where you're dreaming something. It's called the theory of sleep aid a id anticipatory incorporation dreams by me louis minus the s it's a little better now yeah yeah and uh he was sort

of open-minded to stuff that was more so not based in solid scientific uh um research but more so if there was something that was interesting that's happening in the paranormal side, he was open-minded, ready to listen to it. Not that he would concede that it's true, but he was willing to listen. And when I found out that, I said, well, this is something that's going on in the brain when we're sleeping. And I put all the neurological traces together, by the way. I traced it all in the head. I premised the book with my own experiences, by the way. And then I used as a foundation a lot of work Einstein did in the area of physics and a lot of work Sigmund Freud did in the area of psychology. Oh, baby. Yeah, yeah. It's deep. And Freud, obviously, for the most part, has been debunked for a lot

of reasons and a lot of things he said. He's a nasty guy too. Yeah. But I go after him in a sense too. I call him as like a hostile witness in the way I laid out the theory. I do it as sort of like a case, like a trial. You got some experience with that. Yeah, exactly. That's why I did it. Exactly. I've been in a courtroom so long. So I use Einstein's, my sort of like chief witness. He's my prosecution witness because I'm the prosecutor in this case for a change. This is interesting. For a change, I'm the prosecutor, right?

Instead of the defendant. So I'm the prosecutor. And as I'm prosecuting the case, Einstein's my chief witness, my star witness. And I call Freud to the stand as a hostile witness because he did not believe. It starts out with a dream that appears in the interpretation of dreams that he talks about. And he evaluated this dream completely wrong. He analyzed it completely wrong. And I reanalyzed it right. You should read the book and see. Yeah, you have me sold. Yeah, the three pound crystal ball, the theory of sleep aid, and the unconscious mind's exclusive access into the corridors of

time. A little bit of a long title. So you got to be kind of like into that to even follow the title. You know, most people like, yo, you lost me at sleep aid. You know, I'm asleep already. But if you're into this, the people who are into it, look, my books, my books sell tons of copies. My last book, international bestseller in 20 languages. Hopefully this one. Yeah. Hopefully this one will sell off the charts, but, uh, that's a great cover by the way. Isn't it cool? Thank you. Yeah. That's the u.s cover uk did a pretty good job simple design thank you for sure thank you uh but i don't the sleep uh the dream book the dreaming brain i put it out myself my agent goes i can't put it out for you you're not

a neuroscientist i said i'll self-publish it then that's fine oh you self-publish that one she goes i can't sell it yeah i'm with harper collins random house orion simon and schuster but this one wasn't my agent goes it's impossible you don't have the credentials right you're not a scientist you're not a neural scientist you're not a physicist you're nothing you're just an ex-convict and an ex-criminal you know and an ex-mobster god damn it that's why i'm right yeah so i said son of a bitch i'll self-publish it now i don't the very few who read it, my royalties are like five, 10 bucks a month. There's no money involved. I wrote it.

It took me a year to write. I put the time in myself. I didn't get paid for it, but I had to get it out there for humanity. And the reward not doesn't come in money, but it comes when somebody emails you because of the few people who do read it. They send me the most beautiful emails going, son of a bitch, you cracked this for me. I've been having these dreams since I'm a kid. Finally, someone defined it for me and put it all together in the human brain.

And so that's where my reward comes from. That's very cool. You have a lot of different interests. I do, like you. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, that's why I do this. Why we talk to each other. But I'm saying, man, it's crazy to think that when you're young and

coming up you know one way to do things right you you got it this is this is the world this is how i make money this i move forward boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom because you're kind of like a fat obviously people could tell you're a fast-paced guy let's get to the next thing but then you get a little older you get some i guess some time to think about some stuff in prison and suddenly you're like wow there's wow, there's a whole other world out there. I've never sat back and thought about this. Like, did you, what was the latest you went to school? Like, did you graduate high school?

High school, that's it. And I never read a book of my life. You were still going to class during all these years? Believe it or not, I had a chop shop while I was in high school. I would literally go right there after high school. I drove stolen cars to high school. I mean, this is like totally like while I'm going to high school. I would literally go right there after high school. I drove stolen cars to high school. I mean, this is like totally like while I'm going to high school, I played JV football. And then I remember I made the varsity team and I quit because I was then too deep by then. So by junior

year, I couldn't play football anymore. It's like, I got to get out of here. I got cars waiting for me. The football field, hey, ho, hey, boom, go, go, left, right, left. I'm going, I ain't got time for this shit. You know, who's got time for that? I got a chop shop sitting waiting for me. So, but my mother said to me, my mother's brother who went, who was a hijacker, she goes, my brother never graduated high school. I think my mother did, but she goes, my brother never graduated high school. If she didn't, she wouldn't have told me, but, but she goes, my brother never graduated high school. Please, please, please finish high school and go to college. So I told my mother, I'll finish high school, no promises on the college. So I did finish high school,

even though I was doing all that already. So I made sure I finished. Now, having said that, I was literate. I went to high school. I got through it with C's and D's, no star student, but I never read a book in my life. If was a book report somebody did help me you know I'd get somebody to to help me with the there was a nice girl who used to help me you know there was a guy I knew who I still know to this day he used to help me with my reports or my homework you know when I come in the last minute get it together or copy something I remember Jorgeia, who was a close friend of mine, go like this. He sat in front of me a lot. He had A, B, C, D. I go, George, number six. And he go like this. So everybody was always helping me get through without me having to do the work, which was a bad thing to have that horrible foundation because I had to learn it then later

on. How I learned the importance of hard work believe it or not everything was a scam going through high school just get through never read the book never did the homework myself always scamming paid somebody to help me if i had to now here i am i'm in i'm in jail and i reversed my own case from prison i went through seven attorneys hired and fired seven attorneys the late william kunzler the radical civil rights attorney, was my attorney. He was the Chicago 10 or Chicago 9 winner? Chicago 7, yeah. Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Road to Freedom, buses. Incredible man.

We became close. He represented me on my first case. He died, unfortunately, but he was my first lawyer. I went through six more lawyers. How'd you get hooked up with him? Which member of the family hooked you up? Yeah, I went to see consular. Actually, I went to see him and he said, any friend of John Gotti's is a friend of mine.

Oh, that's a good friend to have. Yeah, he goes, come in. Yeah, he goes, come in. So he repped me. Yeah, he repped me. Yeah, tip my hat to him. But you were sentenced to like 13 years or something, but you only did eight and a half? I faced life.

And eventually what happened was the government offered me 20 years and my co-defendants like 17, 18, you know, because they were all less than me. I was considered the boss of the crew. How old are you? I went in when I was 25 and we fought our cases for three years. So I'm probably like between 25 and 28, we're fighting our cases. Wow. So what years is this? Like 94.

I went in 94. And so I'm in there and they're offering now, we're trying to get a plate because we know we can't try them. They had no, they uncovered, they excavated my whole life. Ex-girlfriends, you name it, they went to every friend. The FBI did an incredibly great job tearing apart my life to get me. And I'm going to tell you, the agent, I tip my hat to him. He went a long way in changing my life because I said, you can't beat the FBI. First of all, they have the resources of the world behind them, right?

It's unlimited resources. But on top of that, the agent that went after me was like- What was his name? I don't know if I could say it. Actually, I guess I could. Yeah, you can say it. Agent, agent Jim Wynn. Yeah. You're complimenting. Yeah. Yeah. He, I am complimenting him. He was a great agent. He was actually, you know, went a long way in changing my life because he was a dogged, he was, he was a dogged agent and dogged pursuit of me. And I said, just, you can't win. You can't beat these people. You know,

everywhere, every time I turned around, he was knocking on another door. He was here. He was there. He was looking at me. I'm driving here. He's over there too. So I'm like, he made me feel like public enemy number one. And eventually they ended up offering somebody the witness protection. When they started offering

people witness protection program and guys were calling me saying, the feds offered. I said, I'm dead. If they're willing to pay four or five grand a month or whatever to give these guys 10 000 he said you had 17 and 18 year olds on on the on the case as well with you no i was the youngest one so i was the youngest one i misunderstood that oh everybody everybody was older than me all my guys my crew were the 30s and 40s so let me rewind tell you how actually i where did I hear 17, 18?

When I started, I was 17, 18. Maybe me. Sorry, I missed that. No, it's all right.

So we had a fence that used to be the 47th street jewelry district was where everything big ends up. Like for example, let's say you stole all the diamonds in Tiffany's window tomorrow. Where are you getting rid of them? Whoever you sell them to, somehow, someway, they're going to- Oh, you got a fence. You got a fence.

And there's only like a half a dozen fences in the jewelry district that could handle anything. If you bring them the Queen's jewels, you stole them from the Tower of London. Or if you bring them the Stanhope diamond, there was only a few people who could do something with that. If you bring them a Frederick Remington. How would they do something with that? They got the guys to take it. So they have people, they might have a guy who's willing to stare at a Picasso the rest

of his life and just hanging in his room and stare at it. But because you can't, what are you going to do with a Picasso? You're going to sell it to an art gallery? Yeah, you can't. You can't. So you got to have somebody, you know, you got people or he's got people that cut things up or, you can't. Jimmy or tough guy in the UK, but there's real name was uncle Billy. I could say it now. It's been a long time. And uncle Billy was off fence. Anything I bought him, he took, I liked using it more than the mob fences. Cause the mob fences are paying the asses. Hey, Louie, they think

because you want to, you know, you want to rise up in the mob. They could chew you down to nothing. Right. Louie five grams. Good for this. Right? Meanwhile, it's worth 50. Go scratch your ass. So I would go to Billy, and Billy, if it was worth 50, Billy gave you the 50. So why not go to Billy? So we were always going to Billy, always going to Billy, and Billy would even sometimes do something that's unheard of. Let's say I went to Billy and I say, look, I got a tractor trailer full of microphones and whatever it is.

I'm just using this as an example. I got a tractor trailer full of microphones. You know, if you got the hookup for that. Exactly. Right. I'll bring them to you. I got to check where this one's from actually, now that you said that. No, just joking. So I said, look, I'd say to Billy, look, I got a tractor trail full. He go, how many? What's the manifesto? What's it say? Okay. This is what I'll give you. He would even take the money out in his apartment. He had an apartment over at Times Square. I'd stare at the going, wow, I'm in the big time. I thought I was a young kid. I'm in a big apartment over at Times Square. He's giving me 50, 100,000 at a time. Doorman's watching you go by up there.

Oh yeah. Doorman knows who we are pretty much. Yeah, exactly. And we're big tippers. Doorman gets 20 on the way in, 20 on the way out. All right. Yeah. Now it's like, you know, now I'm a regular citizen. If I give you a five, it's good. You know, but I gave you 20 on the way in, 20 on the way out. There you go.

So we would, and hundreds on Christmas, no problem with the doorman. Always tip well. Always. Always. Always. Joe Watts was the biggest tipper in the mob. I got to tell you right now. My friend, Fat George DiBello, worked the club at John Gotti's social club in Queens. Ravenite got to tell you right now, my friend Fat George DiBello worked the club

at John Gotti's social club in Queens. Ravenite. George said, I said, Joe Watson. Wait, the one in Queens? In Queens, not the Ravenite in the city.

The Bergen Hunt and Fish Club. Oh, Bergen Hunt and Fish, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, and George either worked that or something, usually the side street. John Jr. had a club on the side street. So Fat George DiBello, the late Fat George DiBello,

who was a dear friend of mine for decades. Yeah, rest in peace. Rest in peace. One of the greatest souls ever. I love you, George. He passed on now recently, but he was, where was I? I'm thinking about George now in heaven. You were talking about when you were in the apartment in Times Square and tipping, and you were talking about who the biggest tippers were. We jumped to Joe Watts briefly. So Joe Watts paid for one of my attorneys. Joe Watts

sent Charlie Carnese up to see me. I said, Charlie, I told you I had seven attorneys at one time or another. I says, Charlie, I says, I'm going to have my friends meet you on the street and pay you the retainer. He goes, it's already taken care of. Joe Watts took care of it. So Joe, give you an idea how generous Joe Watts was. I wasn't on Joe's case. I had nothing to do with his case. Joe liked me and paid for one of my attorneys, the most generous guy you ever meet. So George told me if Joe walked into the club, Joe would say, give me a glass of water from the tap, $100. He'd say, do me a favor, refill it, $100. On the way out, $100. George says, two glasses of rusty tap water. I got 300 from Joe Watts. That's generous. That's generous. Joe Watts was one

of a kind. But anyway, getting back to the thing, Billy would give us the money and he always, always, always either gave it to us up front. Defense guy. Yeah. And, or as soon as I got to where I was going, the money was waiting there, COD, but always got it. Never had a problem with him. There was one time, there was one time where we thought he was starting to low ball us and we didn't want to go to the guys. Like I told you, the mob guys who were chewing on cigars are really always looking to lowball you. I didn't want to go to them.

So I thought Billy was lowballing us a little. And I says, look, let's give him a phantom load. I told my friend who was his real nephew. Let's say we got a load and then we'll say at the last minute, we dumped it somewhere else just to keep him honest. Let him know we could go elsewhere. Don't let him think he's the only fence we use. So let's just, instead of taking a load somewhere and getting stiffed by somebody in the Gambino family or somebody on the West side or somebody in the Bonanno family, let's give him a phantom

load and say, we went somewhere else with it and we'll get the next one to you to build. So he says, all right. So we floated the idea that we had this loan. I can't remember what it was at the time. And then we said we went somewhere else with it. Done. Years later, this is years later, I hit all these things. I'm doing army cars. They said I did an army car depot, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Years later, we get subpoenaed by the feds. This is when the feds start coming after me. They come to my house. I went out the back door. I told my friend, pick me up around the block. I left through the yards. I did the fences in the yards. He picked me up. We tick off.

I went to my friend's store. I'm in the store telling him I just got subpoenaed at my house. And somebody else, Lou, the feds are coming in now. I said, shit, they're here already? They know every fart I do. I'm out. I went out the back door there. Eventually they got me. They subpoenaed me. When they subpoenaed me, they give a list of crimes to the lawyer, like a dozen things or something that we did, whatever it was. And all the trucks and stuff and the heist, I recognized. Here's something interesting. Let me not give a spoiler out. Let me do it in pace. Billy, the fence, calls us and says, I got subpoenaed. So we says, oh shit, I did too. And by now my friend, his nephew got subpoenaed. So I says, we got subpoenaed too. He says, come

to the city. We'll talk about it. I says, all right, good. We're on our way in tonight. So we're heading into the city. We're on the LA and we're approaching the Midtown Tunnel. And there was this eatery we used to eat at. This guy Bertino's. Bertino's mother used to do all the cooking. He was in like the Maspeth section of Queens. It was a big banana stronghold down there. And he used to do all the, his mother did all the cooking and it was all homemade Italian

food, like buffet style. If you wanted a plate, he'd make it for you. So let's go to Bertino's and grab a bite. We might be in the city all night. And we can't go talk about this at the cat's deli or something, you know, where, you know, this is something we want to stay in his apartment. So let's go get a bite to eat. Then we'll go in. So we're at Bertino's and we're on our way into the city. And I tell him, I'm looking across from my friend and I go, your uncle's a rat. He goes, what? I go, your uncle's the rat. What the fuck are you talking about? He goes, my uncle's a rat. He goes, what? I go, your uncle's a rat.

What the fuck are you talking about, Louie? He goes, my uncle's a rat. Your uncle's a rat. How do you know? I says, they gave us a list of things, the feds, that they're investigating. All these trucks we did, all these heists we did. This one.

You remember that one? No, we didn't do that. What was that? It was the phantom load we didn't do that. What was that? It was the phantom load. We didn't do that. We told him we were going to do that. We told him that we had, and then told him we sold it to somebody else to keep him honest.

Yeah. Only he would know about that load. He's the rat. Yeah, exactly. We never stole it. It was, it was a thing we never took.

So he goes, son of a bitch, my fucking uncle's a rat. So I go, yeah. Tough moment. Yeah, I go, if we didn't stop at Bertino's, we'd be sitting in the room now with Wyatt,

you know, the FBI probably in the other room, cameras on us, Wyatt, Billy would be Wyatt, we'd be done. So what'd you do?

I go call him up, tell him we can't come. So I see what his reaction is. That'll confirm it. So he calls him up and he goes, we used to have that'll mess up all my arrangements we had these cell phones that were bigger than this book i

don't know if you remember it was back in cell phones like the fucking wall street days oh yeah put in your pants your pants fell down yeah they were huge so he calls him up hey billy yeah yeah he goes look if we didn't stop at Patino's, we'd be in the house already. Go, we can't make it, he says. He goes, what do you mean you can't make it? You got to come.

We got to talk about this. He goes, no, no, we can't make it. Not tonight. You got to come. We can't make it. When are you going to come? When is your nervous wreck?

Yeah. They had to have him. Either he was wired up or like I said, they must have had the cameras set up. We were going to be in the living room

going through all the heists that we did. In the living room, you're done. So look have had the cameras set up. We were going to be in the living room going through all the heists that we did. In the living room, you're done. So, look, now to the FBI. Did you guys go whack him? No, no. He packed it up. He disappeared.

I believe. Yeah. No, I didn't. They eventually found somebody else who went into a witness protection program. So, in the end, the FBI, to their credit, it might have taken them another year, year and a half, but they got me. They would have got me that night if we went into the city, I believe, but they eventually got me anyway. To the credit of that FBI agent did a phenomenal job tearing apart my life, making me feel like I was public enemy number one. I thought I was John Dillinger. I was like, who am I?

Actually, though, there was a little truth to me feeling like from a mafia perspective, they might have thought I was the missing link because during the week I was in Pete Gotti's house, my telephone toll records went back and forth to Pete Gotti's house every day. Where did he live? John Gotti's oldest brother, Pete. Yeah, but where did he live? In Howell Beach. Yeah, and I was close with his son, so I went with him too, obviously. So my telephone toll records went back and forth. I saw all the toll records went back and forth i saw the i saw all

the toll records and eventually you know when i'm facing trial and then on the weekends i got close with the gigantes chin gigante oh shit you were just you were just hitting the big hitters yeah and that was that was strictly relationship that was nothing to do with the mob i was close friends with uh chin gigantes wife and daughter and i used to spend the weekends they lived out in jersey in jersey they lived in Old Japan at the time. They don't anymore. How old are you when you're spending the weekend out there? My 20s.

My early 20s. I'd come out. I'd say, I'm going to come by for the weekend. Had he started the whole bathrobe thing at this point? Oh, he'd been doing it for years. I know exactly who he is. Oh, yeah. I'd put on his bathrobes and walk around the house.

Oh, my God. All the people out there who don't know about this. A lot of mob people, obviously, who study the mob know about this. But Vinny the Chin Gigante, legendary mobster, he, like, faked that he was crazy. And he would walk around in a bathrobe with, like, you know, a 5 o'clock shadow and have people, like, carrying him by the arm every day. So the feds would assume he was nuts, but it was all a joke. He was really a mob boss running the family. Exactly. Crazy. Exactly. So he was, so he's still flipping between his gumad in the city and old Tappan in a bathrobe and pretending. Now, how about this? What are the odds? His wife, who I was close with, his real wife, who shared his name, Gigante,

her name was Olympia. His gulmada, who was really his, I shouldn't call her gulmada because he had a family with her. I was a little more than a gulmada. No, no, no. I mean, he had kids with her. It was his real wife. It was just, he was a polygamist, right? So let's, instead of calling it the gulmada- Let's give him the credit he deserves. He's a real, he's a real genuine polygamist. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. So I guess I'm, I'm kind of like bringing her up from a gomata to really, she was, she was his other wife and he had another family. He had a little son, you know, at the time, little he's now he's older son with him, with her. He had a daughter,

a couple of daughters with the other one and her name was Olympia too. Both of them were named Olympia. Yeah. Now Olympia, the one I knew, told me the first time she knew, she said, Lou, she tells me a story once. She goes, I used to once in a blue moon smell this perfume on him. So she always knew something was up. And he's, what are you talking about? You know, what are you talking about?

She goes, I get in the elevator. I smelled the, we were going to court for him once. She said, I got in the elevator. I smelled the perfume we were going to court for him once. She said, I got in the elevator. I smelled the perfume. I look at her and I gave it a look at death because I knew right away. And they looked at it. Yeah, they did the stare down.

They did the, like the okay corral stare down on the elevator, these two women. I'd rather be at the okay corral than between those two. Oh my God. Yeah. So that was the first time she kind of cracked the case, saw who she was, et cetera. And, uh, but anyway, when I came home from jail, there's actually a picture of me with Olympia on my website,

lewisfarante.com. Yep. And it's me with Olympia Gigante. Uh, if you go to the gallery section on my website, lewisfarante.com, uh, there's a gallery section. There's me with Olympia Gigante. She wanted to see me. No, she around? No, she unfortunately passed on, but she wanted to see me when I came home from jail. So I went to see her and it was her birthday party. I took a picture with her. And her daughter's a doll. Rita, I love.

That's me when I was a kid. Oh, that's you? Yeah, first time I held a gun is on the left. Look at that head of hair. Yeah, some head of hair, right? You're like a year old. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Hold a gun.

That's me on the left. On the bottom,. Hold the gun. That's me on the left. On the bottom, that picture right there. That's you on the left? No, no, that's Ronnie G. Alonzo on the left. Peter Gotti, Pete's son on the right. John Gotti's nephew. And then I'm just to the left of Pete's son. That's when I was a kid.

That's you? Yeah, that's me. That don't look anything like you. Yeah, it looks like, yeah, I'm a bookworm now. Yeah, you look like. Totally different. Holy shit. Those are surveillance photos of me in California about to hit an armored truck.

And then the picture to the right is a body shop. It's actually an abandoned building. It was once a body shop. In Maspeth, it was a very big mafia stronghold. That's where we used to bring our hijacked trucks. The FBI took those pictures. That's me we used to bring our hijacked trucks. The FBI took those pictures. That's me when I was one of my pinches. Do I look different there too, right?

I was going to say, you were hitting the gym a little bit. Oh, no, that's in jail. I was doing 1,000 push-ups a day. Yeah, but even if you go up that security footage picture real quick. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You look like a brick shithouse in that picture. Yeah, yeah, thanks. I was always, you know, like.

You were always lifting, you hit the bench. Yeah, a little bit like the house yeah i'd like the italian laborers bill too like you know that's what i'm saying you look like fucking popeye yeah and that's me in jail that's me getting arrested that's you in olympia right there yeah exactly right that oh that's me in olympia yeah yeah so she wanted to see me when i came home from jail that was her birthday party and then she died a few years later but she was a doll yeah she was a really really good person that's something else and uh when did you first so obviously you were doing these hits and stuff and it was all your own crew when did you first get sucked into like being a crew within the mafia like when did they yeah when did they draft you first round draft picks exactly what it is yeah nailed. I'm hijacking trucks. And I've explained it

this way before. I think it's the best way to explain it. If you open up, you have a show. You're getting millions and millions and millions of hits. Everybody loves you. You're making a living from this. At some point, if you don't pay your taxes, the IRS is going to come and go, hello, Julian, are you planning to pay taxes at some point? Because we'd like to know what's going on. And you're going to have to then figure out how you're going to answer to the IRS. Well, that's the government. The underworld government is the mafia. So if you're hijacking trucks and you're doing it for a while, eventually they're going to get wind of it and they're going to go, okay, who are you

with? Who are you paying? Who are you kicking up to? You're just running around the streets wild. You're going to end up in a trunk. So, and it's not something that you running away from. It's something you want. You want that. You want, you get your room with the mob. You'll become bigger. You get, I got better tips. I got i got better you know i'm making more money now i got protection i got a beef i hijacked a truck out of out of kennedy airport once the trucking company belonged to a guy for the lucchese family guy wanted to kill me it goes to a sit down now i have to apologize to him because i didn't know it was your truck that's who like henry hill and all them were hitting he was associated with them back when he was with

lucchese they would hit the airport yeah yeah they were the airport's been don't get hit my generation john god he did it most of us actually who come up if you're involved in a mafia family there's stuff that it's like built in it's grand grandfathered in there's rackets that you're involved in if you come from the conti key food patsy conti was my friend. Patsy Conti's kids don't have to steal. They have a key food. They have supermarkets. Patsy laid the groundwork for his family. If you have

Castellano had meats and chickens, his kids could sell meats and chickens. And legitimately, I'm not saying any of these guys are criminals. They're legitimate people. The key food guys are legitimate. Castellano's legitimate. His kids. But he wasn't and are criminals. They're legitimate people. The key food guys are legitimate. Castellanos are legitimate, his kids, but he wasn't and Conti wasn't, the people. But they come up and they find things to do that have been done already by their fathers or grandfathers.

When you had nothing and you're coming up like a John Gotti, what are you going to do? Your best bet of getting a lot of money quick is a hijacked truck. That's what I felt was my best. Actually, I wish I stayed with the cars because when I ended up getting pinched for all the heists and hijackings I'm facing life, you know, 10 years for each crime, five years on top of that each time a gun is used in the commission of a crime times 10 is 100 plus 50, 150 years. I'm going, shit, I could have stuck with the cars. I got a slap on the wrist. You know, so, you know, you move into the big time and you pay big time yeah because you're you're stealing product you're still yeah you're stealing serious commerce yeah yeah it's interstate commerce it's armed robbery exactly yeah yeah it's like so much into it

bad yeah bad so a whole different ball game but uh so anyway so yeah so the mobs i start meeting mom who was the first guy who approached you? I don't know if I could tell you the first guy who brought me around where I ended up. All right, you can tell me. He's active. I'll tell you off camera when we're done. Yeah. He's active now. He ever hit you up for old time's sake these days? What's up? No, but a funny story. Somebody did email me when I wrote my memoir and he said i hated the name you gave me yeah because he knew who he was right you know he's reading it and he knows i'm not a rap and he knows who he is right yeah so you know we know the crimes we've done so you know if you

start telling if you start mentioning 10 crimes you did and i know i was you know i'll know from the crimes yeah yeah which ones i was with you on yeah so i love that he emailed you did and i know i was you know i'll know from the crimes yeah yeah which ones i was with you on yeah so i love that he emailed you did he emailed me on electronic i can't even believe he emailed right like he knew where there's a fed going that's so stupid we're gonna let it go yeah yeah exactly exactly or maybe the feds should have chimed in and said we didn't like the name you gave him either yeah yeah or maybe they're calling them that name now on their own chart somewhere yeah kind of wild but uh so yeah so eventually then you're meeting guys who are full of shit and you're getting guys who are real how did you get approached though was it like on the street

was it in a restaurant people you need to sell your loads so you're dealing with different people and then you got i know a guy this i know a guy that i know a guy so you're meeting these different guys that you got to get rid of stuff too. So you're meeting some guys who are on the fringe. Some guys are real. And then guys who are real, they want a piece of you. And now it's up to you now. Cause it's like, it's, it's not just somebody puts a claim on you. You want to be with somebody or not. So I was meeting guys that, for example, one of my friend's uncle, we told him once when we were kids, we were going to take him a truck, bring him a truck. My friend said this. And then after we hijacked the truck, I didn't know actually that he told him we're bringing him a truck. I had already arranged to bring the truck somewhere else. This was before Billy. And we brought the truck somewhere else. And then my friend's uncle said to my friend, why you bring the truck to me and he broke his jaw exactly broke his jaw wired up his jaw so now i said to myself is this the guy i want to be around one little mistake you got a broken jaw and you're wired up for six weeks

yeah i'm done with that yeah i don't need this guy so you want to be around somebody and for all the attacks on the goddies that people might say out there, the Gottis stuck up for you. Richie Gotti stuck up for me at sit downs. Petey Gotti stuck up for me at sit downs. And I know for the most part, I don't believe John ever sold anybody out. John was, they wanted to kill Angelo Ruggiero at one point,

his best friend. And you know, they were going bodies since they were kids. He would never let them die. The Gottis stuck up. That's the key to john god he's success i don't think you can that's one thing i don't think you could take from the guy yeah you know you can say he was a sociopath and all that stuff he definitely was but that i mean he was a mobster's mobster mobster's mobster and you're with him he died in prison yeah yeah the whole bit you you you get on

the wrong side of gas pipe let's say a guy we mentioned earlier, gas pipe, and there's money involved maybe. Gas pipe will sell you out in a heartbeat. He'll say, I could get another guy like him. The Gottis did not sell you out. So I felt comfortable there, and eventually I felt comfortable with my friend Ronnie. Ronnie was my childhood friend.

Ronnie would give you the shirt off his back. He's a man's man in every which way. Honorable. Not just honorable in the life. Whose son was he again? Well, Ronnie G. Alonzo was Vinny Asaro's nephew. Oh, I thought you were talking... Oh, he was... Oh, yeah. So he was royalty, too. Yeah, I called him Uncle Vin. I was close with Vin. He just died

recently. I was thinking of the other guy you were talking about. What nobody knows is Ronnie's grandfather was a big wise guy. These guys went way back to Castelmar del Golfo. There you go. So they go all the way back. And then you've got guys that are like that. They come down through generations.

And then you've got guys like me who popped up out of left field. But you've got to vow at the end of your last name. It works. You've got to tell them to vow. And you're around people long enough. They're going to know who you are. You're around somebody 24 seven. I don't back up an inch for nobody.

If I got to go to jail, I'm going. I'm not scared of nobody. I'm not scared of nothing. People will see if there's cracks in your armor, they're going to spot them. And it's unfortunate that all the rats, a lot of times these rats, if you look back at their lives, there's a lot of cracks in all their armor that people overlooked.

Okay. That's Fat Sal Mojoto, my friend. He went bad. Fat Sal Mojoto. My friend was telling me one day, he goes, we went on this little vacation and we had these stolen snowmobiles in the parking lot and the cops came. And Fat Sal's screaming, my son's not going to go to jail for this. You guys got to better go out there and talk to the cops. My son's not going to, he gave himself up when he became a rat five or six years later. Why were you surprised? That's not a man.

My son's not going down for this. You better go down. My son's not. What are you saying? Your son stole the snowmobiles with the other guys. Why isn't your son going down for it? They all stole the snowmobiles together. If your son's got to go down for it, your son's got to go down for it. I would have said, this guy's bad. Whack him. You know, like he's something, something's up with this guy. Well, a lot, if you go back and you look at a lot of these guys, Sammy DeBorgavano, let's take him. Okay. If he kills all his friends to steal their businesses, why would he have a major problem with taking a stand and putting his friends in jail exactly it's easier but he also caught he would he would make excuses for stuff and say no that guy was a rat right you know right and

then you'd be like oh well i guess he was right right right i wonder why he has a huge business or he talked bad about he'd go to john and he'd manipulate John. John, Louie Melito talked bad about you. He's talking subversively. And then they clipped Louie Melito. John should have been more on top of that. John should have spotted it. John was a little too egotistical and might have had his head up his ass a little for certain things like that where he should have spotted things that, you know, a lot of times,

look, I was around Pete Gotti's son, who you saw in the picture. A lot of times people would be around him and kissing his ass and they'd say, I like that guy. But I saw the other side of the guy when you're not around. So I'd say, well, be careful. I see him when, you know, when he's at the bar and you're not around, he doesn't have somebody around him that has to, he has to impress or your father's not around. So what's interesting too, is I was in the house by fate. I was in the house. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life, but you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning.

You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile, different is calling. Eating either pizza or Chinese food in the living room when Big Pete came home and said, he had a long face. I said, what a long face. He says, my, my. Oh, shit. I said, who died? He says, my brother, Sammy went bad. That was the first anyone ever heard that Sammy went bad.

Pete was called by the lawyers when the lawyers found out. And then Pete had just left the lawyer's office and came home. And I saw like, he looked like he had the weight of the world on him. Well, you're done once that guy goes bad. Done. And I remember saying to the kid, I said, bullshit. I said, he ain't going bad, Sammy. It's one of those things from the Godfather when he takes a stand, then he throws the case or whatever.

He's going to help John. It was beyond my thinking because I could never rat. I could not imagine anyone else being a low, yellow-bellied, cowardly little rat that wants to just save himself and throw everybody under the bus just to save his own ass and not just john he convicted 30 40 guys oh yeah sammy you know guys he's so old they're my friends but i gotta and then he tried to say well i played chess with john and i won you play chess with john you play chess with john and 30 other guys that didn't have a say in the game that all lost because of you so you know he's whatever we know it's all out there now yeah yeah and the other thing is here sammy's also the prototypical prime example of the guys

who ratted and now monetize that and go out and talk about it and look i have mixed feelings on this stuff you obviously through your own experience have your opinions on anybody ratting because you didn't do it yourself and like you were able to leave the life and go about your own way afterwards i think that's commendable but like real quick did you you didn't have a wife and kids when you went away right i did not i had no wife and kids which made it which made it a lot easier that's what i'm saying i think i think there is and i'm not you know i'm not getting involved in in the world you came from and everything and and making my opinion mean much from as a layman from the outside i think there is a calculation that goes in there someone's face in 30 40 years they got three kids at home or

something like that and they know anyone else will turn on them they do but sammy the bull like what what do you think of when when you see maybe him specifically go out and talk on all these documentaries all these podcasts and go through all the stories uh obviously i hate him uh so i mean that's first and foremost right let's get that on the record yeah just put that on the record uh i think it's despicable i think he every single moment of his life he doubles down on the uh on the on the disgracia that he that he did when he ratted when he turned i mean here's a guy once again if if he's innocent you get caught for something you're not involved in the life, you didn't take an oath, you don't know nobody. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. You know, you do what every other citizen should do. You tell what you know and you move on with your life. I get it. I get that. But if you're involved, if you're committing crimes with people and here's a guy who killed all those people and he stole millions and millions and millions of dollars. And now he's caught. He just doesn't want to pay for it. And that's basically what it came down to. It was nothing else. It wasn't, whoa, John said this on the tapes. You were fine. You were carrying

the umbrella over John's head. You were fine with John. You had no problem with John. You knew what John was about. Everyone knew what John, we all knew what John was about back then. John walked in a room. He had his head barely get through the door. He had such an ego. You only realize that after you got pinched. So come on, you know, it's just a lie after lie. I remember, uh, Joe Watts, Joe Watts was going to, uh, he had bought a house down in Siesta Key on the West coast of Florida. And it was his dream house. And I remember he said to me, I said, I was talking to Joe about the house, and he says, Sammy the Bull took that house away from me.

Obviously in his freedom eventually too. But I never forgot that. What does it have to do with Joe? What does it have to do with all the other people he put in jail? Ozzy, I mentioned the Razio Azzi Stantini earlier, Bobby Cabert. He ratted on all these guys. And then he supposedly says, well, I played chess with John. I had a thing with John. I didn't like what John did. Okay. How about Frankie Lowe? Frankie Lowe hated John too, but Frankie Lowe didn't say I'm going to rat him out. So he's just a worm. he's a worm of a person i haven't looked at his case in a while

so refresh me on this but was he were there other people involved in that particular case that went down in 92 that he was then the witness and that he was concerned we're going to rat on him i know john wasn't that guy but were there other guys well basically what he claims and what makes sense is there was a lot of tapes that were from the apartment above the Ravenite. And on those tapes- I always call it the Ravenite. Yeah, Ravenite, Ravenite. It's actually, from what I understand, it was named after, a lot of people say Edgar Allan Poe was a favorite of Carlo Gambino's favorite poem.

I'm not sure if that story's right. I heard Armand Delacroix. I'm sorry. Right. Neil Delacro poem. I'm not sure if that story's right. I heard Armand Delacroix. I'm sorry. Right. Neil Delacroix. I'm sorry. Armand was his son. Yeah.

Yeah. Armand was his son. I heard Neil Delacroix had a friend, Rava, who was killed by Carlo Gambino when they took over the family. And when Rava was killed in the night, supposedly, this is what I understood it to be, Neil named it the Rava Night after Tommy Rava. His name was Armand Tommy Rava. Before my time, this is what I was told. Yeah, a friend of mine was Neil Delacroce's nephew. I was with him on Staten Island recently. So, you know, I mean, this comes from good sources.

Of course he was on Staten Island. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So anyway, he's like, you know, he's like the, you know, he this comes from good sources on staten island yeah yeah exactly right so anyway he's like you know he's like the you know he's like the the the the shit underneath your feet sammy you know that's how low he is to me you know and now you know to monetize it what else is he gonna do how's he gonna make a living he's gotta so you know look i'm trying to make a living from my past life if he is okay it makes, it makes sense too. But I left with honor. I bump into guys that know me my whole life. I face life. Nobody has a problem with me.

So I said, look, if I got to die in this place, I told them when I was in there, I approached the bosses, the underbosses, everybody while I was in there. I said, if I got to die in this place, so be it. I'll die. I'll leave you in a pine box. I got no problem.

But if I- Did you really think that? I did. I faced life. Let me tell you in a pine box. I got no problem. But did you really think that? I did. I faced life. Let me tell you, not only if you face life, but I landed in Lewisburg penitentiary and you could die any day you're in jail. I was in the maximum security prisons. I'm not in a low security where they're playing. They're teaching you. Yeah, exactly. And they're teaching you instruments and we're going to learn the piano today. I'm not in those places. Those aren't the places I was in. I'll tell you my first trip to Lewisburg, right? I get designated. They designate me. I got three violent felony convictions in the end.

Oh, so I didn't finish the story earlier. They were off for 20 years. Eventually the rat went bad. The guy violated the program, the snitch on us. He violated the witness protection program. We didn't know that. So the government came down and they said, if I take 13 years, then my co-defendants could get 10, nine, eight, seven down the line. I had eight co-defendants. So they said, Louie, take it, please. Let's get out of here. I says, I'll take the 13. So I took 13 years on a plate and my co-defendants all got less time than me. And then that's how I ended up getting out of the life sentence. We didn't know until I appealed my case years later. I had six and a half years in before I won an appeal on one

of my cases. And that's when I learned that the guy had violated the witness protection program was thrown out. They never had a rat against us. So we didn't have to take nothing. And they have to tell you that, right? No, not necessarily. If you're pre-trial until that guy's got to get on the stand, they're not going to disclose that. Well, maybe not who he is, but they have to say they have like- That he violated the program and we threw him out? No way.

Then they know that we're going to go, then we ain't taking the plea. Shows you I ain't a lawyer. Yeah, no, no, no. And if they do, they're not going to. Put it this way, the prosecutors, I've heard prosecutors say, oh, that paper, I dropped it behind my desk. I don't know where that is. They want to convict people too. So they know how to play dirty too. But anyway, that's true. So when I get to 13, I go on my way. So they designate me as violent for, for the things that obviously the crimes I committed and et cetera. And the day

that the bus comes, I'm going, they designate me to Lewisburg. So my, all my co-defendants went to better places than I did. I went to Lewisburg and I get on the bus. I'm a little guy, not that tall. And I had needed glasses when I was on the street, eyeglasses. I started having trouble seeing at night when I was driving. So I was too vain to get glasses. I'm not going to wear glasses. I'd rather, you know, bump into a construction cone now and then and run one over than get glasses. So I'm driving. Now I'm in jail. I go, I need glasses. I got to see if somebody's coming at me in the yard. I need glasses. So I take an eye test. I get glasses. My friends send me glasses and I'm wearing glasses. So now it's the first time I'm leaving MDC, Metropolitan Detention Center of Brooklyn. And I'm going to be on a bus and I'm going to go

all the way up to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. And you went to school up there, did you? I did. I landed in Lewisburg too. It was just a little different. Yeah. A little bit different college, right? Different education, different curriculum. Yes. Definitely. Might've been a little interrelated. You never know. It could have been. You never know, right? Yeah, exactly. So I'm on my way up and I'm on the bus and they put me on. They picked up everybody at MDC first. I'm the only guy getting on. And there's a few guys as we go up to making our way up.

The bus is picking up people along the way. MCC, we picked up people, picked up a couple of people from state holdovers or whatever. You know, the states used to, Nassau County used to take overflow from the feds. And now we've finally got a full bus and we're heading up to Pennsylvania. So I got my glasses on. I'm taking in the- Stay close to the mic, by the way. Yeah.

I got my glasses on. I'm taking in the scenery. And for the first time, I've seen the outside. I've been stuck inside this holdover, Metropolitan Detention Center, for three years while me and my co-defendants were fighting our cases. So it's the first time I've been out. I had literally skin peeling off my cheeks from the fluorescent lighting. I haven't seen the outside. So now I'm like, I'm in awe of the outside and we're going on the expressway and stuff. So all these guys

are talking and all these guys that got on the bus covered in tattoos. Like you saw my show for Discovery Channel when I did his Alco prison in El Salvador. These guys were tattooed head to toe. So these guys that are tattooed head to toe so these guys that are tattooed head to toe were getting on the on the prison bus and they were all big muscular guys you know and you know i was kind of buff myself but i'm in this like oversized jumpsuit you can't tell you know if i had any any any muscle to me you weren't going to see it and it's like they don't make a you know size super small for me so so i'm okay. So I got this oversized thing cuffed up like 15 times. The cuffs on the pants have cuffed up 25 times, and I got the glasses on. I'm the least

threatening guy on the bus. All these other guys, whether they're tattooed head to toe, gold teeth, the tear drops because they killed a friend, tattoos on the knuckles, et cetera, scars. They're going, yeah, I'm going to Lewisburg. I'm going to kill somebody as soon They killed a friend. Tattoos on the knuckles, et cetera. Scars. They're going, yeah, I'm going to Lewisburg. I'm going to kill somebody as soon as I get there. Yo, that's gladiator school. This is what I'm hearing on the way up. Yo, yo, yo, I don't know how many bodies they got out of Lewisburg the last few years.

They've been piling up bodies there. I'm going, shit, where am I going? Where'd they send me, right? So we finally get all the way up to Lewisburg, and they're talking about this place like it's, you know, we're going to Dante's, you know, the ninth or tenth circle, whatever. I think it's nine. It's 10th, maybe the 10th or the 11th or the 20th circle of Dante's Inferno beyond what Dante could think about, his circle of hell. So I finally get up there, big steel doors doors open bus pulls in and these guys come out

just mirrored sunglasses like right out of like the cool hand loop movies you know shotgun on the shoulder sunglasses tinted sunglasses mirror sunglasses rather and that guy gets on the bus he's got a clipboard and he goes uh he goes everybody on this bus will be going into Lewisburg holdover isolation unit. You're going to be staying in the hole for either a few days to a week, maybe two weeks before you're transferred to low or medium security prisons. He goes, I got one for the max, one for the pen. Ferrante? That's a son of a bitch. They were all bullshitting.

They were all bullshitting. They knew my God. They were all bullshitting. They knew they were going here, but just for a short stay. And they probably figured that that guy wasn't going to give them up, you know, like blow their cover. We'd all just get put in cells, and they would pretend they got released onto the compound. Meanwhile, they're getting taken out at midnight, two in the morning, getting on a bus, going here.

I was the only one for Lewis Burks. I said, wow, shit. Okay, so I already knew, don't I said, wow, shit. Okay. So don't, I already knew, don't judge a book by its cover. I already knew that, but it's a reinforcement, right? So now I get in, they got to clear you now to let, before they release you onto the compound, they got to clear you, make sure there's not a threat on your life. Why? Because guys have been released onto the compound and been killed 30 seconds later. Because if they get word that you're going to get released onto the compound, you can either, let's say a rat is getting released onto the

compound. So when he wants to kill him, or if you're not a rat, but your rat is there and your rat knows he's got to kill you before you kill him. So sometimes the guy could be an honorable guy. He hits the compound. He gets killed in 30 seconds because his rat doesn't want to face him. So there's a million reasons people got beefs. You know, you stabbed the Latin King. The Latin King maybe wants to stab you for his friend. Whatever the case is, they got to clear you, make sure there's no death threats on your life. So I'm waiting. They go, finally, I go in front of the administration, this board, whatever this team meaning. And they go, you got any threats to your life? We pretty much checked you out. It looks good

on our side. What do you, do you know what I said? I never ratted on nobody. They go, well, you got 12 steps on you in the system, just so you know. People who were afraid of me from the street got locked up. Maybe they ratted. Maybe they were just, I had a beef with them. I had 12 people who put themselves on separation from me. In that, in just that? No, no, not in Lewisburg.

I'm sorry. In the system, throughout the system, which is part of the reason why there were places I couldn't go in the end. Can I say how many fucking guys that you pissed off? Well, a lot, I guess. When they dropped me to a medium, in other words, it was very hard for me. All the places I wanted to go when they dropped me to a medium, when I left Lewisburg a year and a half later,

I couldn't go there because I had seps there. People who put themselves on sep from me said I'm scared of him for whatever reason. So, you know, I said I'm not a rat, and I never put myself on sep from nobody. So I was like, you know, baffaffled that's the first time i learned that but anyway in lewisburg they you know they tell me look uh you're cleared for the compound you got no steps here whatever they tell me uh but you had steps in other places and i learned where later but um and i never learned who but i learned where and i could imagine who a few of them i didn't put all together but so i get released onto the oh before I get released. They also said

We had the Colombo war in the early 90s. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so now I was very close friends and still am today with the arenas So little Vic arena senior who was the guy who challenged call my Persico for the for the throne little Vicks doing life man among men a. And I talked to him a few months ago. I was with little Vick Jr. And the father called from prison. He put me on the phone with Vick Sr. He goes, Louie. He was thrilled to talk to me. I love the arenas. Little Vick Jr., again, man among men. He left a life with honor. He beat a major racketeering trial, murder racketeering case having to do with the Colombo War. He helped Billy Cattolo, Wild Bill Cattolo, who went missing, died. Me and little Vic actually said to Billy Cattolo in jail, when Vic beat his trial,

and Vic still had another murder rap that he was fighting, but me and Vic approached Billy and says, look, Billy, if you beat this... Oh, no, I'm sorry. Billy went first. We told Billy, though, if you beat this case, pack it in. It's over. You can't win. There's too many rats. There's too much treachery. And Billy swore he would. Billy did.

And then he disappeared. He got killed. But that's besides the point. It's another story. But anyway, little Vic. Little Vic did all the digging to dig up all the stuff that all the misdeeds that the government was involved in with Gregory Scarpa. Oh yeah, yeah. That was all little Vic, I got to tell you. Tell people about Gregory Scarpa. Gregory Scarpa was an informant for 30 years and he basically had a license to kill. He

used to call himself 007. He used to tell people I got a license to kill because as an FBI informant, the FBI, unfortunately, his handler, not the FBI as an organization, but his handler. Was that Linda Vecchio? Linda Vecchio supposedly, allegedly overlooked a lot of things that Greg was doing. And Greg was out there and killing people. And there's also allegations against Vecchio for feeding Greg the addresses during the war. Yeah, he went to trial for that.

He was found not guilty. That's right. Yeah. Because DeVecchio was a part of that legendary squad of like, you know, Giuliani at the top of it with Bonavolanta. That's where Joe Pistone was a part of that squad when he was Donnie Brasco. I mean, he was, who was the other guy? Jim Kallstrom. Bruce Mal, Kenny McKay. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. A lot of really famous agents that made their bones on, on these big cases back then. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, so, so, you know, Hey, uh, so Vic, little Vic, who was an absolute genius,

by the way, could have did anything with his life. He said, if I beat this case, this murder racketeering case, and I'm fortunate enough to get a plea, he copped to another murder. If I could get out of here, I want to leave with my honor. I'm never going to rat on anybody. His father took life. And he did just that. Vic, I'm still friends with Vic today because of that, because he left like I did. Good for him. Yeah, good for him is right. Man's man. So he's not in the life anymore. I'm still friends with Vic today because of that because he left like I did I said he said the same

Yeah, good for him is right man's man. So he does he's not in the life anymore Not in the life and Vicks a legitimate tough guy I mean Vicks a little guy like me, but he's like a Jake LaMotta that Vic was always into boxing when he was young I watched one time. There's a guy he ended up becoming a rat, but he got smart with Vic as if it the committee bang knock them out and I saw shit so yeah he put him out the guy was snoring on the floor yeah so you know Vic was a tough guy legitimate tough guy but anyway um so uh I'm in Lewisburg they asked me if I know anybody involved in the Colombo war I says I'm fine with

the Persico's and the arenas i didn't get into my relationship with the arenas so look i'm fine with everybody i says i get along and that's the truth i did get along both i had nothing to do with it and persicos he's long in prison at this point now oh carmine died alley boy's still away alley boy's the son alley boy got life too alley boy persico yeah yeah i know but in the time period we're talking carmine's still alive carmine just died recently he was alive thatico yeah yeah i know but in the time period we're talking carmine's still alive carmine just died recently he was alive that's yeah yeah but he was already locked away down that's right uh long park or he was down with madoff wherever the fuck that one was

that's right that's right he put he put the bull on madoff too i think from what i heard he put the what he put the bull on madoff like you know he grabbed him he took him in like you know oh yeah yeah yeah yeah they were friends yeah friends but you know friends with benefits like he grabbed made off and says like you know he was looking at the mob works in funny ways if if persico wants sorry did you say what i think you said what's that no put the bull on him like not not not uh in other words muscle muscled him like fucking him no no no no way why did you say friends with benefits friends with benefits i hear friends with benefits i'm, no, no, no way. Why did you say friends with benefits? Friends with benefits mean money. I hear friends with benefits.

I'm thinking. No, no, no. Money, money. In other words, benefits. In other words, if he's, Madoff supposedly had multi-millions. Supposedly. I think they dried his ass out. Carmine Persico was a heterosexual through and through.

He was getting a blowjob from one of the attorneys. He got caught in the visiting room. Yeah, he did. He got caught on camera getting a blowjob from one of the attorneys. He got caught in the visiting room. Yeah, he did. He got caught on camera getting a blowjob from one of his attorneys. No, he was a total heterosexual. Isn't that attorney-client privilege?

Yeah, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I guess for the retainers, he was given, he expected more in return. But yeah, so- About a blowjob.

Yeah, exactly. So Persico was legitimate. You know, man's man. About a blowjob. Yeah, exactly. So Persico was, Persico was legitimate. You know, man's man. I don't take anything that way from him. Uh, but, um, I was just saying, if he, if they move in on a guy like Madoff and they go, come here, we'll take care of you. We'll look out for you. I understand.

There's a reason for it. There's benefits that they're expecting in return. That's, I don't mean sexual. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We got that cleared up. That would have been kind of funny.

That would have been kind of funny. Yeah. Now, look, who knows who does what? I don't know.. Yeah. We got that cleared up. Yeah. That would have been kind of funny. That would have been kind of funny. Yeah. Now look, who knows who does what? I don't know. I never saw it in jail, like with my own kind, but you don't know who sneaks off and does something.

You don't know. But yeah. Yeah. Who the frig knows. Right. But anyway, I know I'm look, I came home.

My ass was as tight as a tie. I never, I have gay friends and I'm fine with gays. My first book deal is from Bill Yosses. He's homosexual. He's one of the nicest men I've ever met. I consider him my dear friend. He's the reason why I got my first book deal. Nothing against gays. I'm not gay. I never had a gay thought in my life. So there are guys that go in there and they sort of like... I had a friend of mine in the state who says i found out he was fooling around with somebody and i says what are you doing he goes i got 25 years in i

says i don't care if i had 2500 in that's got to be in you yeah it's in you or it's not so i you know i don't know but whatever i don't judge anybody but like i said i'm fine you know i have a cousin who's gay i have a nephew who's gay i have no problem problem. We got it. I got you. I believe you. P.S., they released me onto the compound. I'm in Lewisburg now. I get onto the compound, and I go to the yard. I got greeted by a few Italians, and Jimmy Coonan, the boss of the Westies.

Yes. Jimmy Coonan says, Louis, we're waiting for you. Come on. I'll show you around. And I gotta tell you, I got tight with Jimmy. Jimmy was a man's man, too. In that world. Was he in there for life? Jimmy got life. Yeah. Jimmy, he told me one day though, he goes, I'll get out of here.

I go, how are you going to get out of here? He goes, oh, snuffing. True defense. Yeah, he goes, I've been in and out of jail my whole life. I always get out. Okay. I have no idea. Whatever delusion keeps you going, man.

Exactly. So I actually had a friend, Rene Tellia, who was a crash and carry guy. He gave back four life sentences recently. He got out. So there are people who get out. Anthony Sento, one of the murder machine guys, Roy DeMeo's guys. He's getting out. So there's people, I guess.

He's getting out. Believe it or not, Anthony Sento. Yeah, from what I heard. Yeah. I never knew him. I don't know him. Never met him. Yeah, DeMeo.

Before my time. Yeah. But this is what I heard recently. So anyway, I get onto the compound. Jimmy brings me around. He introduces me to the head of the Latin Kings, head of the Nientas, head of the Crips, head of the Bloods. And he's introducing me to the heads of all the different gangs.

And while I'm meeting him, I'm moving on my way through the yard. And he eventually introduces me to the head of the Aryan Brotherhood. And it's a big Nordic- guy, tattoos head to toe, you know, and he's got the lightning bolts, which is the SS things. I'm sure he had swastikas. I don't remember exactly, but he's got the whole thing and he's head of the Aryan Brotherhood. So everything that goes along with it, you know, his ideology, we all do. Okay. Eventually he starts to get dark in the yard. Now, he's talking to me, the Aryan Brotherhood guy, when Jimmy introduced me to him. As calm as I'm talking to you now.

Not an ounce of anything in his stature that would alert you to that something he's planning very shortly. Like usually if I'm planning a heist, not that I'm jumpy. Yeah, but you probably know I'm ready to do something. Yeah. You know, you start to get that, you know, you're ready to do something. You're tight, yeah. Yeah, you're starting to get wound, right? Nothing like that.

They called, they said, look, clear the yard. It started to get dark in the yard. As soon as it gets dark in the yard, the guys in the gun towers tell you, clear the yard. So we start walking in. I just get back to my block. I said, good night to everybody. See you tomorrow. I get back to my block and the alarms are going off and the prison becomes a loony bin, a nut house. Everybody's screaming and yelling, running everywhere. What the F is going

on? So this hack comes by me and he's got a pen, like a piece of leather that's tied to a machete and it's dripping blood. And he runs by my thing. He must've, he had recovered a pen, like a piece of leather that's tied to a machete. And it's dripping blood. And he runs by my thing. He had recovered a knife from somewhere. So what happened was that guy that I was talking to in the yard went in to his tier block. I think it was A block. And he stripped down to his boxer shorts and handed out machetes. And they said they had a hit list of black Muslims.

Apparently the area of brotherhood was warring with the black Muslims. And they don't say they went to the first one, hacked them to death, gutted them, went to the second one and then hacked them to death, gutted them. They're on their way. They gutted them.

Apparently they took, you know, they, they took the machete and they, you know, they were, they were stirring a pot of soup, you know, in the stomach,

you know? So they go to the next guy and they showed me pictures of these guys dead the next day and they look bad. So they go to, they didn't look good. They didn't look like, they didn't look like a mortician prepared them for the wake. They did not look good. So, uh, and they asked me, and they asked me, do you know these guys? How would I know? I just landed here. I just got here yesterday. So, and so and they ended up and they had a hit list of six guys but the cop pulled the pin they called the deuces hit the deuces or they pulled the pin it's like the panic button they wear a body alarm and they hit it and ran and then the the arians just started stabbing every african-american that they could get their hands on because they went

off script then. They couldn't get the rest of the hit list. How many people are in this section of the prison? Every block's got a couple hundred guys, maybe a buck 20 or something, every housing block. So maybe there's 1,000, 1,200 in the whole prison, 10 blocks, I guess 100 in each one, give or take. I never sat there and did a head count,

but that was my first day in population, my very first day in general population. Baptism of fire, baby. Baptism of fire, yes. I figured I go, it don't get worse than this. Better it happen now. And then I would call home. My father was still alive.

I lost my mother. My father was still alive. And he'd go, how is it in there? Now, my first phone call, right? Oh, I don't know, Dad. Yeah, yeah. My first phone call, they strip us naked. The goon squad comes in.

This was interesting. The goon squad. We're locked in. They call the goon squad like the guys who were dressed like big goons. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole, they look like, you know, when they wear the dog uniforms to train the German shepherd. They got the mask on, all that.

Well, these guys came in with machine guns, which obviously didn't shoot bullets because we're in a prison, but they must have shot rubber bullets, probably. Maybe beanbags, probably rubber bullets. I didn't stare at the guns, but they came in, they filed it to the tier block. And they said, look, the prison's on lockdown. You've been listening to the helicopters above. We have maximum authority from Washington to use maximum force. We have authority rather from Washington to use maximum force. Does anybody know what that means? Who's going to? Oh, yeah, I know.

Nobody answers, right? And he goes, that means we can kill any one of you and get away with it. Do you understand? None of us say anything. And he goes, okay. He goes, we're going to eventually give you guys phone calls, and hopefully we get this place back running at some point. And they backpedal out of the place.

So that was like, they're letting us know, you guys go off in here, you're all dying. So then they take me, eventually take me to the phone. They strip me down to my underwear, I guess to make you vulnerable. You're probably less inclined to fight if you're naked. So they strip me down to my underwear. They take me, they got a baton in the back of my head. They tell me to dial. I got one phone call.

I call my father. How is it in there? How is it in there how is it in there lewis i said that's great you know how to club club fed thing they talk about right you heard that that's what it's like that's beautiful in here no problems none at all dad none at all i don't want to put his mind disease right yeah no none at all dad he says you sure you wouldn't lie to put his mind at ease, right? Yeah. Nope. None at all, dad. He says, you sure? You wouldn't lie to me, right? Never, dad. It's beautiful in here.

I met all my old friends. I says, I haven't seen in years. I says, everything's great, dad. It's a fucking reunion. Yeah. He goes, all right, let me know when I could come up and visit you. Okay, dad. I love you.

Okay. Good night, Louis. I love you, dad. Good night. I said, wow, this is where I'm going to be though. 13 years. Yeah. 13 years. 13 years. So eventually I reversed one. I got out where I'm going to be though. 13 years. Yeah, 13 years. So eventually I reversed one.

I got out of Lewisburg after like a year, a year and a half. Where'd they send you? They dropped my security. That's when I found out concrete because the first time they told me you got SEPs. I was like, oh, I have SEPs. That's when they told me people put themselves. They explained it to me. You can't go to this prison.

You can't go to that. Why can't I go to Fairton? Why can't I go to Dick's? Why can't I go? People put themselves on SEP. You get to play like fantasy lottery go to this prison you can't go to that why can't i go to fair tim why can't i gotta go to dicks why can't i go people put themselves on you get to play like fantasy lottery for fantasy draft prison they ask you where you want to go and then they put you where they want anyway yeah and that's exactly what they did so they shoved me in otisville oh you went to otis otisville which turned out to be the best place i could have went it was like that was like club fed yeah that was a sweet it was like that's where louisa was teaching the uh

it's great gymnastic classes and stuff yeah i noticed film pretty sure yeah yeah could have been that they had stuff like that there yeah yeah he was teaching all that yeah you could take a computer class you could take the guy smoking the guys the guys smoking pot i go how the fuck is he got it on the visit they go no he's growing it i go what they go yeah he's the landscaper he's an in, he's the landscaper. He's an inmate who's the landscaper. He grows pot behind those big bushes. Oh, that's awesome.

I go, you got to be kidding me. So I was, that was the first time, like I was in a nice place. And I kicked back and I met some good dudes there. I got to tell you, shout out to my buddy, Marcos Pappas. Unfortunately, he's back in jail. Marcos had 35 years. He got out after like 26 or something. He went back?

I love him. I don't know what happened. I'm trying to get over it. I don't know what happened. I love him with all my heart. He was a good friend of mine. He taught me the law and he taught me, he was a legal eagle. And he taught me how, and he helped me reverse one of my cases from the feds.

How did he do that? Well, there was a technicality that, okay, my lawyer, after I pled out, the lawyer filed, I think he filed what they call an Anders brief. I can't remember the first brief he filed, waiving my appeal. And then by the grace of God, a crazy thing happened. The appellate court sent it back to the lawyer and said, you should review this. So now I figure, okay, if my lawyer is such an imbecile that he didn't file appeal, didn't spot something that the appellate court's telling him to look for, I better look on my own. So I end up with this guy, you know, this guy, Marco, selling with him. And he says, look, we could figure it out ourselves. He says, forget the lawyer. We'll do pro se. And then he teaches me the law, how to read law, how to study case law.

And I became like a legal genius myself. And eventually besides getting myself out, because I knocked out that FBI case, the heist case on a technicality, not to the FBI's discredit, but to the prosecutor and the judge, they accepted a plea where there was issues with the plea. They were supposed to ask me certain things. They did not ask me. They were in a rush to get me in and out of the courtroom. I kind of threw them off because when I went in there- Ain't that amazing? Amazing. Someone can have a quick lunch and need to get somewhere and they fuck up someone on years of

their life. I think God was with me because by then I had changed my whole life around. I was reading 18 hours a day and maybe I was ready to go home. I feel like there's a higher power at work here. Because when I needed to go to jail, nothing could keep me from there. Did you have any, did you have any inclination to go back to your old life? No, not once I changed my mind. Um, once I shifted my mind and I was educating myself, I was reading books about history. Was that more over time or was there a one moment light bulb moment after a while where you're like, Oh shit, I don't need this? Great, great, great, great question because it's both.

And one was it started to, my mind started to see things differently because I told you I had mentioned earlier, I'm going, oh shit, a lot of these guys did not have to die. That bothered me to hear that maybe someone was whacked. It didn't have to be whacked. I understood. If you got to go, you got to go. I'm with that. I'm all right with that. But not if I don't like you or I want your money or I want your wife or I want your girlfriend and now you got to go. I'm not with that. I didn't sign up for that. So I was

starting to feel like this is like a lot of crap here that I didn't sign up for. So my mind is already turning. Then what happened one day was, that's the gradual, like you said. And then the pivotal moment, which you asked me, which one is it the gradual like you said and then the pivotal moment which you asked me which one is it i'll tell you now the pivotal one the pivotal moment was we come back from these visits and there was this sob god who used to make us wait to go down on the visits he didn't call us as fast as he should and you got your family waiting downstairs to see you they're waiting on lines for two hours. They finally get in and you got, instead of a two hour visit, maybe you got a half hour left because this jerk didn't let you go down on time. So everybody's living. We come back from the visit and I'm living with all these old

timers. And it was a dorm at the time in holdover pre-trial. And I'm in a dorm and I'm living in the first row with these old timers. And there was an old Sicilian gangster. He was straightened out. I'm not going to tell you his name, but he was straightened out in Sicily, and he was straightened out in America. Oh, shit. Yeah, exactly. And I asked him one time, I will tell you,

I says, who are you loyal to? He goes, oh, I'm here. I'm with them. And when I'm over there, I'm with them. So I go, what happens if for them and them I had a beef? And he didn't want to talk to me about it.

You know? You know I worry about it. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Let's make it a sauce we used to make sauce with v8 v8 most delicious sauce i ever had a sicilian can make a sauce with a v8 with a v come on my mother my mother would my mother would have spit on the floor

she told me i'm lying i'm telling you right now by time they got the crushed tomatoes it was just the base no you'll never believe it that's cap sorry i i'm swearing to you and i grew up on sauce every sunday yeah i you make you make a sauce with v8 in and i'm kicking you the fuck out of here it's sorry you never know i can't believe yeah i would know i i'm convinced i would not so maybe maybe i was delusional in jail my grandma if she listens and she listens sometimes she probably definitely listens to this one because it's about the mob. She's kind of a heart attack hearing that. Well, we would have a bushel of crushed tomatoes that they used, but they would – it's hard to explain.

And we had garlic straight from the kitchen. Eventually, we bought the whole place. I was going to say, like at what point is it like good fellas? Let me go back to the guard that we – no, no, no, no, but I'll rewind for a second. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you can go back to the guard and then come back to this. Okay, then we'll tell you how we brib to the guard. Okay. No, no, no, no. But I'll rewind for a second. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can go back to the guard and then come back to this. Okay. Then we'll tell you how we bribe the guards.

So the guy throws an apple. The guy throws an apple at the guard. He goes, are you punk? It's in English, but with a Sicilian accent. And he slams off the guy's head, breaks it in a million pieces. The guy turns around and he sees all guys that are 60, 65, and he sees a kid, me. So when the goon squad comes up he points to he calls the goon squad they come he comes up and they point to he points to me he figures i'm the guy who threw it why would the old men do it a kid did it right so they yeah they

take me to the hole you know they roughed me up all the way to the hole now i'm in the hole they give me no clothes i'm naked in the hole they finally give me a jumpsuit no pillow no no mattress I'm laying on a steel bunk ice cold and oh before I got my jumpsuit I had to go to bed naked before I got a jumpsuit and I remember putting my hands over my my picture deal figuring you know it's like it's an instinct you know yeah I'm sleeping here people looking in the window with the guards that they make my rounds so eventually I got my jumpsuit and then I still had no mattress, no pillow. And the Lieutenant would come over and they must not, he must not have said it was me. He must've figured it must be him. Cause they kept asking me, did you throw

the apple? If they knew it was me and the guy said it was me, they would have had me, right? Even though I didn't do it, he would have, his word would have been enough. So he must not have said it because the lieutenant would come by and he'd go, did you throw the apple? I'd say, no, I didn't throw the apple. Well, who threw it? I have no fucking idea. Go find it. Go do your homework, Sherlock. So now, and he would talk to me through the reinforced glass. So now he says one day, he goes, no food for Ferrante. He goes, no food for Ferrante. No food. Is that legal? Probably not. Yeah, it's not legal. Probably not. What are we going to do? File a brief on toilet paper? So what are you going to do? So I'm like, okay, okay. So he goes, no food. So now I'm starving.

You miss one meal in jail. You're hungry because the meals suck to begin with. You finally are acclimated. I'm having V8 sauce, right? So are acclimated you know i'm i'm having v8 sauce right so i acclimated right so now i go okay there was a spanish guy who would come out of his cell he was in the hole with us but he'd come out of his cell sweep the whole corridor and he would collect the trays if you did eat so i go amigo amigo i'm yelling through the crack in the door uno Uno momento, uno momento. Venica, venica. Italian, I don't know, Spanish. Venica.

He gets it. I said, I'm starving. Give me something. So he goes like this. And he brings me bread, puts it under the door, dirty. You know, it's a slight thing. Half the side's all dusty. The other side's touched the door.

I ate it. Then he gives me jellies I suck them dry so I says I'm eating now fuck that lieutenant excuse my language I think I cursed already in here yeah you're doing fine alright

so he comes around the guard the next day so now I know I can eat I got my amigo over here he's gonna feed me so he goes hey you hungry he says who threw the apple so now it's through the he opened apple? So now it's through the,

he opened the food slot. So it's through the food slot I'm talking over. He goes, you want your tray, huh? You're hungry? I says, I didn't know who threw the apple. And another thing, and I reached through the thing. I grabbed his tie and I yanked it. I thought I was going to choke him. I was, you know, I was going to fix his ass, right? And it's a clip-on. Oh, no. It was a clip-on. I just wanted to bang his head against the door. So I end up throwing the tie back at him, and I said, it's a clip-on, you son of a bitch.

He looks up at the glass now, and he goes, he goes, you think we'd wear, he grabs his collar, you think we'd wear real ties with you animals in here he says really look at yourself he says you're an animal in an effing cage and he walks away and i said son of a bitch i guess i'm not being charged with assault by the way i thought i was going to be charged with the apple so i didn't care if i grabbed him by the tie you're going to charge me let me do something right? So now that was the first time that animal statement. And I said to myself, I'm in a cage.

And as if this big cage isn't enough, I'm putting a smaller cage. I'm in a cell within a cell, within a prison because of behavior. Whether I did it or not, I've done other things. I'm an animal. Whether I did this particular thing or not, which I didn't. But I'm an animal. I'm did this particular thing or not, which I didn't, but I'm an animal. I'm in a cage within a cage. And my mother didn't raise me that way. I told you, I used to kneel next to the bed. I used to pray at night with my sister. My mother taught me there was a God. My

mother begged me to do things right. This is her memory that I'm honoring. As mean and mad as I was when she died, she had been gone now a while. And I'm still, I'm living like this. And somewhere I believe that maybe her soul exists still. And this is what I'm doing. So I said, if I get out of here, I'm done. I'm done. I had nothing but time. How long had you been in there?

I ended up being in a hole a while. They probably let me rot like a monster. Yeah, but how long had you been in prison? Oh, I was probably in jail a couple of years already, I guess. So maybe a year or two like that, give or take like that. It was probably towards, it wasn't the full three years in the holdover yet. It was like, because I remember I had started to change while I was in the holdover because I came out,

and I remember one of the guys, come on, I need my Pinochle partner. I said, I'm done with Pinochle. Come on, come play spades. I'm done with spades. And then I called my friend Fat George, who I mentioned. I said, I called Fat George, and I said, do me a favor, send me books. He goes, what do you want? Big boobs, fat asses? I go, no. I go, send me books I could read. And he eventually sent me books. And I started to read and I started to educate myself. And slowly but surely, I became a book

worm. And then the time I got the play, I went away. So I went to Lewisburg. I wrote a novel while I was in jail about the antebellum South. So I'm living through a race war. You wrote a novel about the antebellum South. Believe it or not. And I promise you, look, I'm an international bestselling author. If I tell you I wrote this book- No, I believe you. It's a good book. That's just wild that that's what you chose to write about first. Yeah. Wild. So I'm in a race war where blacks and whites hate each other. I wasn't raised to hate people for the color of their skin.

We said things. We said bad things when I was young. We all called each other slang names for our own ethnicities. Blacks and whites did. Italians, Irish, Spanish, we all did. But we never hated each other. I grew up with everybody. I grew up between the Colden Projects

and the Palmanok Projects weren't far from me. My house was sort of in the middle. So you had blacks around. I grew up with Irish, Polish, Italian, Spanish. Everybody's around. I dated every girl you could think of, Indian, Asian. I dated, and every girl I brought home, my parents didn't have a problem with.

So it was like totally like, well, I'm not born racist. I'm not taught to be racist, but I do use the slang stuff. I got it. You know, that's like, that's a little bit of a different element when you're on the streets. New York. Is John Gotti gonna go, go tell those African-Americans they owe us money.

And then go buy, yeah, and then go straighten out that Asian American. Asian American, right? Come on. Right? Come on. Come on. You know? Straighten out those fine Asian American friends of ours.

Exactly. Right? Yeah. It would have been more like, go tell that effing egg roll to come up with the money. You know, and look, and nothing against Asian-Americans. I love them. I have friends who are Asian-Americans. I've dated Asian-Americans. I have no problem with that. But I mean, that's just the talk. Right. So anyway. When did you first start spending time around the Gottis? Like when did you first get introduced to Pete Gotti? So probably late 80s, you know, maybe 90, like that, probably 89, 90.

You hit it off with him right away? I got close with quite a few guys from that neighborhood in that clique. So I was close with uh actually uh not only pete's son but also joe butch had a stepson i was close with him joe butch corral uh jackie knows jackie knows the miko had a stepson i was close with him um uncle venice arrow venice arrow had a nephew ronnie i was close with ronnie why are you meeting all these guys is there like a networking event i mean it's like you gotta think right probably like you you meet guys you met so many people close with Ronnie. Why are you meeting all these guys? Is there like a networking event from all of a sudden?

I mean, it's like, you got to think, right? Probably, like you meet guys. Because you met so many people quickly, it seems like. Quickly. I mean, you know, you make them money and you know, I'm ambitious. I'm meeting people. I'm a good friend. Obviously, I proved to be a good friend because I went away and I never ratted on anybody.

They begged me to rat. I had three cases. I never finished that. I had a secret service case. I was arrested by the secret service. I go, I never threatened the president. What the hell is this thing? I practically had nothing to do with the case, right?

I thought- I used to think that too. Yeah, exactly. So they go, no, it's credit card fraud. I don't even do credit card fraud. What are you talking about? Apparently somebody was committing credit card fraud. They were opening up businesses,

running 50, 60,000 in credit cards through a business, then closing the business, draining the bank account, closing the business. It was a shell. And then they started screwing each other. So when one guy got screwed, he came to me and he says, can you do me a favor and stick up for me? Back me, go get my money. I says, you tell him I told you to pay the money.

Because I had had obviously by then i did what i did with people i was known don't test me so i says pay the money i'm paid the money one thing led to another wise guys got involved somebody got shot it wasn't me so you know the case blew up. Yeah. And the Secret Service pinched us on that. Then I had the FBI case, the heist and hijackings. Then I had a stick up that I didn't do in the state. You want to talk about not being a rat?

My co-defendant in the feds did the stick up in the state that the state charge I was charged with. I'm charged with a stick up in the state, a heist. It's a safe. We took a vault. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We took a vault, We took a vault, picked up a vault, threw it in the back of a truck and left. They charged me with it. I know it's my co-defendant in the feds. So you want to talk about Sammy, who's a rat and goes, oh,

he's got all millions of excuses why he ratted. I got every excuse in the world. I didn't even do this. Had nothing to do with it. And you took it. I took it. I go, look, what am I going to do? I did other things. What am I going to do? Say it's my code. Oh no, hold on. It's my code defendant and the feds you want, not me. That's a rat. So I go, fine. I took, I took, I think I got three to nine on that case running consecutive. I did another two years. Oh, you got them conceding concurrent. No. So they ran part of the state sentence concurrent part was consecutive. So when I reversed, it should have been concurrent had I finished the Fed sentence. So I reversed the Fed sentence from prison. And then they sent me to the state. So when I get to the state,

I tell my lawyer, tell the prosecutor, I go for parole. They hit me right away. I go, son of a bitch. I told a lawyer, I says, tell the prosecutor they got enough of me. They promised they would run the sentence concurrent. He goes, yeah, but you didn't finish the time in the Fed, so that's why it's still consecutive. It's not concurrent. So wait, how many years did you do total? I did eight and a half total. But you did six and a half in the Fed?

Six and a half in the Feds when I reversed my case from prison. So then you think you're getting let out one day, and then they're like, oh, hop on this bus. You're going to state. You're going to state. You're like, what the fuck? Right. So now I'm shoved off to the state prison, which sucks. Which prison?

I'm in the worst prison. Horrible. Horrible. Eventually, I got sent from Clinton, though, to Raybrook. Not in Raybrook, which was Adirondack. So Adirondack was a little better than Clinton, but still sucked. Clinton sucked. It was disgusting.

Clinton correctional. I was in Clinton when Vinicero was in Clinton. We were sending each other messages in the prison, but I was in a different way. How would you do that? Well, as soon as I got there, somebody goes, yo, there's an Italiano here named Vin. So I go, yo, really? What's his phone number? Yeah, hold on.

So I do me a favor, send him a kite. So I sent him a message. He sent me back a message. It was the first time we had seen each other in years or not seen each other, but communicated. Wow. So he was in Clinton the same time I was. So then I got shoved over to adirondack what years is where are we at now like 2000 like 2000 give or take yeah like 2000 so now um i'm i'm uh where was i where was i going with this right before you're talking about how your case went to went oh so i get

hit at the board so i tell them look i got i go to the board and they tell me i'm tell me the parole board for the state. As soon as I got there, I was eligible for parole because some of the time ran concurrent. So I'm eligible for parole. I go back to the parole board. They hit me. Oh yeah. I just got here. What do you hit me on? I got six and a half years in or seven by the time I went. So I go to the lawyer, do me a favor, tell the prosecutor, they said they'd run it concurrent, go straighten this out in court. So the lawyer, the last lawyer I had on record, although I did my own case pro se, the last lawyer I had on record. So he goes, fine. So he comes back to me, he goes, the prosecutor said, if you're willing to cooperate, he'll get you out right now. I said, tell him to go fuck himself. I says, if I wasn't going to

cooperate when I had all the time ahead of me and I faced life, why would I cooperate when all they could do is give me another two years, beat it. So now I go back to the parole board in two more years. Now, the first time I went to the parole board, I go, oh, I studied this. I learned that. I did this. I did that. And they go, you're hit. So now the second time I'm going, the worst they could do is hit me and max me out at six months. So they can't do nothing to me. So they go to the parole board. They go, what have you done with yourself? I not nothing. Do you want, what are you going to do when you got nothing?

You know, I was like, yeah, I was like, yeah. Okay, mother. Yeah. Go shit in your hat. Go scratch. I got nothing to say to you anymore. Right. I don't care.

Dame, I make parole. I make parole. What's that scene? What's that scene in Ted where he's like, you fucked a co-worker on the Frosted Flakes and he's like, and I came on the Apple Jacks to it. He's like, we need that.

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. That's what it's like. Exactly. Wild. So I make parole and then yeah, that was it, bro. And this is back in like 0-2, 0-1? Yeah, I got out in 0-3. So I make parole. And then, yeah, that was it, bro. And this is back in like 2002, 2001? Yeah, I got out in 2003.

So now I come home in 2003. I remember my last team meeting before I come home now. Is your dad still alive too? Thank God almighty. My father got to see my bestseller. Oh, wow. My father got to see my bestseller. My father got to see my Discovery Channel series.

He watched it on TV. And they kept repeating it over and over. So he'd see it all. He goes, you're on again. You're on again tonight. You're on again. So it was great. They were playing it a lot.

So he got to see, you know, I was like, I told my father on a visit. I says, dad, I'm going straight. I'm done. I won't do this to you again. I promise you. And he goes, please don't break my heart. He says, he says, you would have killed your mother if she wasn't dead already. So, you know, like, wait on me.

So I thank God. And thank you for asking that because it means a lot to me. I thank God to this day that he got to see that all. You know, that he lived. Yeah, he lived through that and got to see it all. And my father never said he was proud of me. He was old school Italian. Would never give you a compliment. One time he says, all these books around your house,

he says, you're still an imbecile. My father would never give you a compliment. And at one point or another, he was dying and I was sitting in a chair next to him. And he says something, he says, I'm very proud of you, Lewis. And it was the first time. I almost fell off the seat. It's also when I knew he was dying i said he's going soon a lot of those guys they don't say it with words though but they say it in other ways i guess you know what i mean yeah i know exactly what you i know a lot of people like that yeah yeah but that's cool that he they actually said it to you got it out he got to see all that yeah as well i got it out thanks yeah they have my books in the house you know and you know and every time like a country would buy mob rules 20 languages bought the

translation right so yeah what was mob rules mob rules was a freak thing my friend harry stein who's a brilliant writer harry stein is the son of joseph stein who wrote fiddler on the roof oh shit crazy yeah okay harry stein's a brilliant writer in his own right extremely intelligent man we're bullshitting on the phone one day and he goes you should write a book about the mafia's business savvy where if you take away all the violence and you just highlight how smart they are as business people i think it's i think i think it would do good i go yeah you sure i don't know about that. So I pitch it to my agent, Lisa Queen, who's a doll.

I go, hey, Lee. I go, what do you think about this idea? She goes, I love it. I could sell that. Now, Lisa's very, very, if Lisa can't sell it, she tells you she can't sell it. She spits it right out. If she tells you she could sell it, you got one foot in the door. So she goes, I could sell that. So she's kidding me.

So I put up a particular treatment together david moldauer who was working for penguin portfolio at the time scooped up the book i write it took me about a year to write unlike this book that took me seven years this trilogy this took seven years seven years three books three books and a lot of research i read hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books i was literally like going deep into the archives newspaper articles yeah we got world we'll have to bring you back and do a full podcast on this because this is all about like we've been talking more centric to you today but this is about the entire history i'd love to talk about the us mob and as i understand that you're an expert yourself you'll enjoy it back in the day i definitely i was pretty good at it that would be cool that's

how i mean i always i've said this a few times on the podcast before so sorry if this is repeated but when i was in high school i got assigned to write like a long ass research paper on the sicilian mafia right and so this was this was like when youtube was now fully around and there used to just be documentaries on documentaries on youtube and books in the library and i just read everything i watched everything i knew every guy whatever and it was before everyone in pop culture was like into the mob so when so when they started making you know when they started doing a lot of these interviews that were blowing up online in 2016 2017 i'm like where the fuck you been you know what i mean but i knew a lot of

this stuff and then when i moved up to north jersey i never ran with any of these guys i don't know any of them but i i knew a lot of people who did and not by choice either i might add usually and it's very interesting to see where it's at now it's it's a lot bigger than i thought it was at this point i will say that that was a big surprise to me. When I saw how much power some of these guys still do wield, that was a shocker. But back in the day, I mean, I always say, you see it right here on this wallpaper, but there's a drive. If you look on the far right, you see the tower in Jersey City on the edge there? So right on the other side that is 78 and when you

come around off the bridge coming on the corner by liberty state park on 78 you see the entire lower manhattan skyline coming to view i saw it today and every time i look yeah because you're coming from down that way so every time i look at that no matter what or when i'm walking along sinatra drive up here in hoboken i look up at all the the buildings i'm like not one of those fucking things went up without the permission of the mafia one thousand percent how crazy is that without the rebar without the concrete without the anything anything the trucks even today a lot of buildings that go up it's like you can think what you want of that but it is true it is it is 1000 true i covered uh in this book which is volume one it goes from 1860 sicily time to 1960 america yeah all right shut up don't go into it we gotta

do this we gotta do this because we have a couple other things to go through on you today you got it but yeah so so you write you were talking about the the the mob rules book and the agent could sell yeah so anytime they sold a country i'd call up my father and say, dad, they sold Italy. Dad, they sold Germany. Dad, they sold China. Dad, they sold Japan. Dad, they sold Vietnam. Dad, they sold Korea. Dad, they sold... And my father was ecstatic. My father was like, you know, Minky, not bad. You know, my father's... Was he an immigrant? My father's parents were, he wasn't. But my father grew up where his parents did not speak English. Where were they from?

Paris. Paris. Paris. My mother was not really down in Sicilian. My grandfather, my mother's father was from Naples. My mother's mother was from Sicily. And my father, rather, both his parents were from Paris. You're hitting the Arabiata in your vein spots.

Yeah. Yeah. The old Southern Italian. I see why you why you had that personality yeah all southern yeah yeah all colorful characters yes yeah yes you could see my mother's family coming from down the block too it's like you put sunglasses on when they walked in the house yeah you know the bright colors the loud we had a jewish family that lived behind us and they used to the jewish, and they used to come for

dinner all the time when they heard us through the windows. We'd start screaming and yelling, but it was like, sound like we're killing each other, but it's all love because we're just loud. And they would come in. And years later, I says, when my mother died and I'm talking to her, her name was Rhoda. I'm talking to her and she goes what did i said what did you think of us back then she goes the most colorful people in the world she said you know so which was a nice compliment you know what the sicilian translation for i love you is right go fuck yourself yeah i talked about in in the i won't get into this book but i do talk about these two sicilians are fighting on the street.

And it ends with one throwing a bottle at the other's head. And I said, usually in the Sicilian custom, that's like ends with a passionate kiss, these fights. Yeah, yeah, which is nice. You got to close it up. It's all love and war, right? Yeah. But I got you off it again, though, the mob rules book. Mob rules.

Yeah. Basically, it was really successful. And when I went to my last team meeting before I left prison, they go, what are you going to do when you hit the street? Construction, you know, join the union. My mother saw it, we're all in the union, operating engineers. I thought about it at one time right at the beginning. I got out of that education and I wanted to write. So I says, I'm going to go out and I'm going to become an international bestselling author, I said with a straight face.

Ah, I started cracking up. They doubled over laughing. Here I am today. That's exactly what I am. There you are. You've done a lot of reading. You had to learn how to write through that, I'm guessing, right? Yeah. I learned how to write by reading. I mostly read nonfiction. However, I went through a long period where I read nothing but fiction to learn how to write. So I read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, the Bronte sisters, Flaubert, all these great masters of 19th century fiction. And I said to myself, everything they know about writing is in their masterpiece. For example, Madame Bovary, everything Flaubert knows about writing is in Madame Bovary. You need only look deep into what he's doing, how he tells the story, how he introduces

a character, how he develops the plot, how he exits a character, how the middle is, how the end is, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I took notes in the margins. And that's how I taught myself how to write. Wow. Yeah. So each time. So instead of going to university or having a professor, I had the greatest professors

in writing history. Who could teach you more about writing than Tolstoy if you read Anna Karenina with that? I think since writing is a creative endeavor, I do think it's best learned experientially. I never – I do wish in college – that's one small regret. It's not a big one that I wish I had taken a writing course or two there i didn't but i am a writer and i don't think it really caught it would have been nice to have it just to see like how they did it kind of so to speak but i always just learn through capturing in my own voice how other people would structure things if that makes sense so obviously like i mean you

read seven books like you figured out how to do it but that's that's amazing so obviously like i mean you've read seven books like you figured out how to do it but that's that's amazing man yeah like self-taught through all that yeah and then how'd you end up with the with the national geographic opportunity and hosting documentaries which by the way like yeah as we've said aren't about the mob no necessarily they're about a bunch of different things i was in uh the brits were good to me they brought me over there a lot and i used to go on book tour there i was actually the Brits were good to me. They brought me over there a lot. And I used to go on book tour there. I was actually, the Brits, I tried to get into American prisons a number of times to help the inmates. I wanted to push reading. I wanted to build libraries in American prisons. And I've done a lot of pushing to try to get through the doors. And they always shut me

down. In America, we have this superiority complex where we know what we're doing. You're not going to tell us you're an ex-convict. Beat it, buddy. The Brits were like, oh, come over. Tally-ho. inside the prisons. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. So I was doing it for a while. I did the Prince's Trust. I did inside a lot of the prisons up and down the UK. And then one day, one morning, I wake up and I got a phone call. And it's a 44-001-44. And I'm like, oh, I got a UK's calling. Hello. And they said, yes, inviting you to Downing Street. Downing Street?

For what? You're given an award. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, through his wife. You went to 10 Downing? For an award. They gave me an award for minister gordon brown uh through his wife went to 10 downing for an award they put it on they gave me an award for promoting literacy in the uk the brits were great that's pretty cool it was wild i went to first of all i get the invitation and it says you have to submit to a search you have to do i go does everybody get this i asked or is this just me yeah i got the 45 on the waist. Exactly. Yeah. They said, no, everybody gets

it in the age of terrorism. I go, okay, fine. So yeah, it was wild. They brought 10 Downing Street. So anyway, I was in London and I was doing either BBC or Sky News for something. And this production company reached out to me and they said, look, we want to do a show with you. And I said, sure, what do you want to do? Let's discuss it. I don't want to do bada bing, bada boom, that shit. Leave me alone with that crap. I want to do something that helps people, the world, the animals, the earth, et cetera. So they said, well, you're going to, the pitch was inside prisons. You're going to go inside prisons and you're going to give the viewer an inside look at a subculture that they've never seen before. So I go, well, I guess I'm the right guy for it. I've been in state, county, feds, medium, max, you name it. I've been there. I've been there while people were murdered.

I've been there for the violin practice in Otisville. I've been there for everything, right? The worst and the best. Let's do it. So that was the Discovery Channel series. And then from that, I stuck with TV for a while. But eventually, I was in Sicily. The German media conglomerate, Axel Springer, somebody there read my book, Mob Rules, and says, we want to invite you to Sicily. We don't pay our keynote speakers big money. It's a retreat for editors once a year. But we'll fly you in first class.

We'll show you. Where in Sicily? Agrigento. Oh, it's beautiful down there. The ruins were incredible. With the ruins, yeah, yeah. Incredible? Awesome.

Yeah, incredible. Sicily's got everything, man. I love Sicily. It's got everything. It's my roots, too. My mother's mother. So actually, I came out of a Sicilian womb because my mother's mother's Sicilian to my mother to me.

So even though I'm not really down in Bades, too. The wombs are all Sicilian. Sicilian. The wombs are Sicilian. I don't think I've heard that one before. It's pretty good. It's too. The wombs are all Sicilian. Sicilian. The wombs are Sicilian. I don't think I've heard that one before. It's pretty good. It's true. Yeah.

So, yeah, they go, look, we'll put you in the presidential suite, et cetera. Were you right on the coast? I saw when I went up top, I climbed a couple of hills. I saw the waters right there. Yeah, yeah. It's not far. It was beautiful. So, I mean, I spent most of the time, though, at the Villa Athena, which is where not far it's beautiful so i mean i've spent most

of the time though at the villa athena which is where we stayed and i'll tell you why i stayed most i spent most of my time there they sit me next to the germans everybody speaks german as a first language english as a second it was axel springer from germany the media group so i said okay they sit me next to a guy who speaks fluent english he's he's 90 something years old introduces himself as George. I hit it off with him. We talk about history, the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Renaissance. And then we go up into the 20th century, and he says to me,

I fled the Holocaust with 16 shillings in my pocket. He left Austria when the Wehrmacht rolled in. Whoa. I said, get out. You survived the Holocaust? He goes, yeah, unfortunately, my grandmothers didn't, but I survived. He goes, I want to publish the next book. Who is this guy? It's Lord George Weidenfeld, the biggest publisher of the 20th century, published the memoirs of de Gaulle, Tito,

Pope John Paul II, Crick and Watson, The Double Helix, everything you could think of, right? All the great history books, Lady Antonio Fraser, Lady Elizabeth Longford, Hobsbawm, Toynbee, Arnold Toynbee. Arnold Toynbee, one of the greatest historians ever of the world, of civilization. He did it all. And he wants to publish my book. So we met for lunch the next day. And his lovely- In Agrigento.

This is so like such full circle shit. Maybe an offer I can't refuse in the middle of Sicily, right? Leave the gun, take the cannoli. Exactly, exactly. So the next day for lunch, it was me, George, and his lovely wife, Annabelle. And Annabelle was an absolute genius, brilliant woman. And she had a lot of input. And she also convinced me that a history of the mafia was what I needed to write.

And they felt like I had the insights. I had the experience, the knowledge from the inside. Nobody I needed to write. And they felt like I had the insights. I had the experience, the knowledge from the inside. Nobody's ever done that. All these rats that we used to have a thing said, if you inform, you never have an opportunity to reform. That's why Sammy ratted, then came out and sold ecstasy to kids and went back to jail for 20 years. You never reform. He still didn't reform. I promise you, even at 20 years, he did. Because if he could have ratted, he would have ratted. He just couldn't. There was nobody to rat on anymore. So anyway, I end up taking the book deal to write the history of the mafia.

And what I brought to the table was, which is different, and we'll talk about it another time, I hope, was I debunked a lot of myths. I spot shit right away. We used to read mob books in jail guys that I wrote history. I read history and biographies and science, but a lot of guys read mob books in there. You hear a lot of bullshit. Who wrote this crap? How much though, when, when you're, cause you, you went away right before you were going to get made right into the game. I would have been made before. Definitely. And when I came home, my friend proposed me, he's, well, he said, I said i'm gonna i want to put you up and i said i'm done

oh wow yeah my dear friend i said i'm done i'm done okay good for you well because that's that's tempting i'm sure but how much when you're coming up in this stuff with some of the old timers even the young timers around how much is you learning this history through the word of mouth, everyone talking about it? Good question. I talk about that in my book too, because it's a great question. It's almost like the oral tales told in the Homeric times or the Talmudic times, right? Homeric or Talmudic, the ancient Jews, the ancient sages or the ancient Greeks. A lot of it is oral tales. You learn things. The streets is, you know, but it's more contemporary. Vinnie Goomba did this, you know, or Joey Fingers did that. It's less Luciano, Anastasia,

that stuff. You might hear their name once in a while. I promise you, John Gotti didn't know a lot about the history of the mafia when he took it over. Didn't seem like the most scholarly guy. Exactly, exactly, exactly. This guy wagged that guy, here we are. Exactly, this is how you take over, right? So just like our presidents, I mean, I don't care what president it is,

Republican, Democrat, they don't know a lot about the history of the country, most of them. They're not, you know, they're politicians. They have the political animal instinct in them. And they get people who, if they're smart, they get people who are historians to say, well, in Athenian times, this is what happened. Like, well, look, when we invaded Afghanistan, I knew the whole history of Afghanistan. Oh yeah. Empire's dying. Exactly. You know, did anybody talk to these

people before we did this? You know, like there's something here to think about. Even Russia, they go, well, we could just hit Russia with missiles now. It's not like when Napoleon went in in the snows of Russia, you know, and fought Kutuzov and Kutuzov retreated until he could fight back and then start beating up the French, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Hitler didn't take note of that. Hitler, Barbarossa, right? Hitler, Barbarossa. Okay. Exactly. Yeah, I do. So, you know, I, you know, this is like, I feel like things are different, but things are the same. Yes. Be careful, be careful. They're not just going to roll over. So, would urge restraint in some ways where they're not.

I think that that would be important. But anyway, that's part of history. As far as learning all the way back in history then, did you do a lot of reading like Selwyn Robb stuff and things like that in prison? When I wrote this, when I began to research for this history, that's when I caught up with the Selwyn Robb stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. Let me see this because you had this is what i love to look at in books like this the the notes oh yeah yeah oh wow yeah yeah yep you could get those pictures

right there yeah yeah you could get a feel for it right all right yeah yeah yeah you did your homework i'm not even i'm still at the m Yeah, exactly. Yep. And that's just volume one. So each of the volumes, you know, was another room full of books. And, you know, I really, really wanted to get to the heart of how it rose the arc, how it rose. So the volume one is Rise of Empire. It's this one. Volume two is Clash of Titans. Once you have an empire, that's when people fight over the empire. So is that like 33 to 60 kind of deal? Well, this goes to 60. The first one does is The Rise.

Probably 33 to 60 are the most important years here. But you said you went all the way back to 1860. Right. So 1860 to 1960 is this book. And you're calling that The Rise? The Rise. Okay. Yep.

But like you said, though, I would say that if you had to pinpoint the real Rise, Repeal or Prohibition, actually. Yeah, yeah. And then Clash of Titans starts with like the Bananas War, that type of stuff. Exactly. Bananas War, Kennedy administration, 1960, goes into the Bananas War in the 60s. That'll do it. Gallows.

Yeah. Challenging Bafocci. Yeah. So I go through all of that that's the clash of titans everybody's fighting and then the autumn of empire is most unfortunately my own time um 1985 to 2005 when i came home dude i'm nerding out right yeah yeah you're gonna enjoy it this is right up your alley i'm gonna read all of them and then we're gonna do a podcast again for sure i don't even want to if we get into it right now, we're going to be here for another eight hours

unless he's going to want to murder me. Easy, easy. But I have another question for you that is unrelated to that. I read this this morning, because again, this was like last minute coming in. But you converted to Judaism? Is that right? I did.

What went into that? Yeah, so at some point or another, I told you, I realized there is a God. I realized I was being punished. I realized that there's a karma. There's karma, there's natural justice, the world is round. However you want to slice and dice it. If you're a Buddhist, if you're a Hindu, if you're a Jew, if you're a Muslim, if you're a Catholic, if you're a Christian, whatever you are, most of us believe in this idea that there's a higher power, that there's natural justice,

that there's karma, and what you do is going to come back to you. So I had that feeling to begin with when I'm in jail. I'm going, well, here I am. You want to stick guns in people's mouths, terrorize people, traumatize people. This is where you belong, behind stone walls where people are being murdered in front of you. This is what I got. Totally warranted. Most people go, I don't belong here, Sammy the Bull Gravano. I don't know. I didn't do this. I didn't do that. Not me.

I said I belong here. You want to play the game? You got to pay the price. Right? You want to dance? You got to pay the band. I can't believe you were only like 24, 25 figuring this out. Totally.

That's pretty impressive. Thank God. Thank you. Yeah. So I'm like, okay. So there is a higher power. The next question is now, instead of just taking for granted who that higher power is, I'm born Catholic, raised Catholic,

and I have nothing against the Catholic religion. My father and my mother were Catholic until the day they died. And my family's still Catholic. But I wanted to dig deep and I wanted to go into all the religions. So I read the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads. I read the Torah. I read the Quran. I read everything, the gospels. I read everything you could think Gita, the Upanishads. I read the Torah. I read the Koran. I read everything, the Gospels. I read everything you could think of. And I honed in on the monotheistic religions. It's for me. My mother always taught me that there is a God, a God, one God.

I felt like one God is the God of all of us. Adonai, Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echam. Hashem, your God is one. There's one God. That's the Israeli prayer, right? The Jewish prayer. So Hebrew, there's one God. And if there's one God,

now you have three monotheistic religions. You have Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Well, the first was Judaism. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob introduced the concept, Abraham of one God. And then Christianity came later with Jesus. And then Christianity came later with Jesus, and then afterwards came Islam with Muhammad. So I just cut to the quick and said, let me go back to the Jews who introduced the concept of one God and read the Torah. And the Torah struck a chord

with me. Having said that, that's not to say that Islam is wrong or Christianity is wrong, because both of them are grounded in Judaism, as much as some people might not like to say they are, and some people do admit that they are. Oh, there's a lot of overlap. Oh, a lot of overlap. Oh, yeah. Yep. So in the Quran, they have a lot about Moses, and they mention Jesus, and the Blessed Mother,

et cetera, et cetera, in the Islamic religion, rather. And in Christianity, it's the Judeo-Christian belief, right? You have the Old old testament which is the torah and the new testament i just went back to the original cut to the quick good enough for me i pray straight to god one day my father said to me he goes i told him i'm converting he goes really first of all he goes you look like a jew that's what so which was kind of funny right so then so then he said to me that's not what I would have expected him to say to you. No, no, not at all.

So then he says to me, explain it a little. So I says, well, dad. You're not like Jesus. Yeah, you know, he talked English, but you know, he's like that. I know, I'm fucking with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he says, you still believe in God, right? Of course I do.

So I said, let me ask you a question, dad. You pray. My father said, I pray every night. Who do you pray to? I don't know. He says, God. Who's God? I asked him.

I don't know. Whoever created all of us. I go, exactly. That's the same thing I do. I don't know who God is, but I know it's the creator of all things, and that's who I pray to. I'm on the same wavelength as you, Dad. He goes, oh, okay. That's a great way to look at it. Yeah, yeah. So that's who I pray to. I'm on the same wavelength as you, dad. He goes, oh, okay. That's a great way to look at it.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's cool. And I stay. I made a promise to God. God brought me home, answered my dreams. And I've been an observant Jew ever since. Did you get bar mitzvahed and all that? No, but I did take, when I converted, I had to take a little drop of blood. Luckily, my mother had me circumcised. You had to take a drop of blood? From my Pishadil. yeah wait what yeah so you got to get circumcised right when you're a jew jesus circumcised it's part of the religion you know god said to moses circumcise your son non-jews

are circumcised now right he had abraham do it right okay so uh i was circumcised my mother had me circumcised at the hospital The time they were doing that So why'd you have to prick your prick? Because you have to do a symbolic Just like the mafia Prick this hand and it burns in my hand I never even thought of that When I went in I couldn't wait to come home

I'm getting made When I went in I couldn't wait to come home To prick my finger And I ended up pricking my prick Look you joined the Jewish mafia. There you go. Where are you? Son of a...

You trained the Italians for a juice. Yeah, La Cosa Nostra. How do you say La Cosa Nostra in Jew? Well, my friends bust my balls. They go, don't forget you're still an Italian. That's what my friends always say to me. So I said, well, I'm an Italian Jew. Do you wear the hat around them?

The kippah, you know, no, I don't. You don't? No, no. I feel like they'd be ragging on you what happened well my buddy my buddy busts my chops he goes we got to get you a car he says like a cadillac where this visor comes down and he goes when you see you know us he goes the fedora pops on your head and he goes but when you see your jewish friends the kippah goes down so he goes you know like he busts my chops so yeah my friend kevin oh my god

man dude this was this was so entertaining i'm so glad you came in like i said we're gonna have to do it again we will i want to work something out i want to read them first and then i want to work something out next year maybe we can get creative with this and do a series where we have different people sit in with us i don't know i'm thinking i'm thinking out loud right here that'd be really cool because you're covering the whole era unpacking sicily is one thing that doesn't happen online a lot i would love to do some content on that because it's fucking wild over there so we could do that and then figure out some other ways to to get a meeting of the minds here on that.

But I'm looking forward to this a lot. And, Lou, thank you so much for doing this, man. Thanks, brother. I had a great time with you. All right. We'll put the links to all your stuff down in the description. So go check that out. Buy Lou's books.

I know I'm going to be doing that right when we're done here. So join me. Everybody else, though, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you for watching this episode, guys. If you haven't already, please smash that subscribe button and hit that like button on the video it is a huge

huge help to getting our videos into the algorithm on youtube so thank you to everyone who does that and also if you don't already follow me on instagram you can get me at julian dory podcast for daily exclusive clips that we put out from the show or on my personal page at julian d dory the links are in the description below see you guys for the next one