Julian Dorey Podcast - 😎 [VIDEO] - My Grandfather Co-Founded The Mafia | Salvatore Bonanno • #130

Episode Date: December 17, 2022

Salvatore Bonanno is the grandson of Joe Bonanno, the founder of New York’s Bonanno Crime Family, one of the original five Bosses of New York’s Five Families –– and one of the most famous mobsters to ever live. ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Growing up during Banana War in NY; Joe Bonanno Parallels with The Godfather 10:25 - Joe Bonanno’s childhood in Sicily 24:27 - Working for Salvatore Maranzano; Prohibition 32:52 - The Castellammarese War; Forming the Commission 48:49 - Bonanno’s view on non-Italians in business 56:24 - Mafia helps US win WWII; Apalachin Conference; First Mafia hearings in DC 1:06:01 - JFK, his assassination & the Mob 1:16:37 - The end of Pax Bonanno; Crazy Joe Gallo 1:25:57 - Abduction of Joe Bonanno; Salvatore’s dad Bill’s almost-assassination 1:32:44 - Salvatore’s mom’s mafia lineage in the Profaci family; When Salvatore realized he was a Bonanno 1:40:14 - Narcotics & The Mafia; Joe’s legitimate businesses 1:51:05 - The controversy around Bonanno’s book “A Man of Honor”; The Commission Trial 2:02:33 - Donnie Brasco; Bill Bonanno’s book with Joe Pistone 2:08:36 - Jules Bonavolonta & the FBI; The Russian Mafia; Hollywood Producers 2:17:00 - Michael Franzese vs The Bonannos 2:22:34 - Family’s opinion on The Godfather; The Making of the Godfather 2:29:06 - The Bonanno’s return to Sicily 2:32:16 - The Sopranos mafia accuracy; Salvatore’s connects to the mob today Intro Credits: “Boardwalk Empire” (HBO) “1899” (Netflix) “Peaky Blinders” (Neflix / BBC) “The Godfather” (1972) ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “TRENDIFIER”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Music via Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How well did your grandfather know Joseph Kennedy? They did business together in the bootlegging times, and my grandfather didn't like him because they were smuggling immigrants and they were smuggling alcohol or whiskey. And if they were getting chased and they needed to, you know, lighten the load, they would throw the people overboard, the immigrants overboard, before the alcohol. And my grandfather just, you know,e kennedy because of that tory i gotta tell you man you are a spitting image of your grandfather in the face. It's kind of trippy.

Well, I'll take that as a compliment. It is. It is. I think about that famous picture. I'll put it in the corner of the screen from the cover of Esquire when he was a really young man. And when you line that up and then you look at your face, it's all there. Like I said, thank you. I'll take it as a compliment

but you guys have you know for people out there listening i know a lot of people are very into the mafia and history and and really all the things that it affected in this country and not just talking about like crime like you know there's a lot of buildings in new york that went up with the permission of the mob for example right and you know it doesn't mean though that everyone who's even a fan of that is completely familiar with what is maybe the most unique family history in in the history of the american of the italian american mafia with the bananas yeah i mean and recently you know somebody compared compared the five families, you know, to basically the founding fathers. I think that's a bit of a stretch.

But, you know, I got his, you know, his sentiments were, you know, yeah, you're right. It's part of history. It's part of American history. It's part of history that people seem to be very intrigued with. And, you know, so that's part of why I'm doing this is to get it straight. Because my grandfather always felt that he was a little bit misunderstood and, you know, kind of unfairly characterized as this guy that was, you know, wanted to be the boss of bosses where that definitely was not a term he liked at all. He wanted, you know, he didn't even like, you know, he felt there was a big difference between boss and a family, right? A family had a father, I mean, a father and a boss, because a family and a corporation were very different things. And he kind of resented that,

you know, in America, you know, people started to, you know, equate those things. And then over the 30 years from the 30s to the 50s, a lot of, you know, corporate America kind of adopted the structure of, you know of what they had built with the commission and driving around in big black cars and all that. They were fans. That's, for lack of a better term, I could see that. That's what I said. Kind of the general term I use. They were fans. They welcomed him and wanted to be seen with him and take pictures with him.

He had celebrity status in what he called the volcano in New York City. The volcano. I never heard of that. That's pretty good. Yeah. He always referred to it as the volcano. Did he say why? Yeah, because it was just so tumultuous and there's always something going off and happening. And he would go out to Long Island and stuff and his dairy farm to relax.

But when he was in the volcano, he always felt that he was inside of it. And the way in his book, he talks about that quite a bit and how New York was just the energy and all that was going on was pretty intense. Yeah, it was. It was. And we'll definitely talk about his book today because that's a whole separate story as well with everything that happened afterwards with that coming out back in 1983. But before we get to your grandfather, which is a whole – I think it's really important to paint where his life started and how he brought that mentality over here and everything. But before we get there, you were born roughly in New York. You grew up when you were at your youngest in New York, right?

Yeah, from the time I was one to five, basically. Yeah, we lived out in Long Island. And that was the time when the war was, the banana wars were starting. We had a house with a basement and in that basement you know had all kinds of supplies and you know a number of cots I mean is basically they were supporting an army and that's what it looked like and you know there were there were guns there were ammo there were food there were cots there were you know everything you needed to you know to conduct you know conduct a war and you're just a little kid seeing that. So you have like no concept of what that is. Right. As a little kid, it's your normal, right?

Of course. They're all uncle, Uncle Carl, Uncle Frank. And they loved, as a little kid, I loved to roughhouse with them and play with them and did not. You don't know anything's different when you're a kid. It's not until you get older and people start saying wow really that's really happening yeah and then we you realize oh yeah that was kind of oh i just went out here oh your thing right there yeah don't if it just twist it like that and it'll be good but the mics are good when that happens oh okay so um yeah it was uh it was normal to us you know we did not um at the time have any idea i mean it was extraordinary but you don't

know it as a kid it's just it's just you roll with it and um as a little kid and then when you get older and you know people start saying stuff and that's when that's when you realize you start to look and ask questions is when outsiders start saying why are you know why are you why is this happening why is that happening or we read an article in the paper that said this. And I didn't see the article, but when they mentioned it, then you go back and, hey, mom, do you know what they're talking about? Then you go find out. And it's because your dad, I mean, we were talking about your grandfather,

but your dad, who's obviously your grandfather's son, he was the number two in the Bonanno family during this time period when you were a kid right right absolutely so he was born into it it sounds like at some point in his teenage years your grandfather kind of explained to him how things were and then he started moving towards that life immediately no my you know my grandfather didn't want you know their goal was to have that next generation my dad's generation you know become lawyers and doctors and project managers and teachers and stuff like that well you know when grant you know he grandpa you know was hoping that he would become a lawyer he was he was going to u of a he was studying law you know but circumstances called him basically to new

york and and have been raised you know by my grandfather you know he knew he was aware and he knew what he was supposed to do and you know it was not even a question for him he just you know that's just the way he was he was wired as he was going to go and and do what he could to you know help his father out uh and put his you know put his life on hold basically because of his sense of duty what did your grandpa think of that though because he as you said like he wanted them he envisioned his kids becoming like the lawyers and professionals or quote-unquote in society and not having to do what he did as a first generation immigrant in that case your grandfather was the kids aren't

like what did he did he at first resist that in any way? Like, no, no, no, don't do this. Or was it like, okay, you want to do this? Let's go. Well, when, you know, when my dad, you know, stepped up, grandpa was, you know, away. He had gotten kidnapped or whatever you want to call that. He had been abducted and, you know, dad kind of had to, you know, step in. And, you know, I don't think, you know, grandfather, grandpa liked to, you know, step in. And, you know, I don't think, you know,

grandfather, grandpa liked that, you know, the idea, but I think he liked that, you know, it was my dad and he could trust him and he knew, you know, he knew my dad would, you know, follow him and he was completely loyal where the other guys, yeah, he had, you know, strong ties with some of those guys, but his son was, you you know he was more comfortable with that yeah it's interesting when you think about the the parallels between the godfather and where like the movie and where they took inspiration from there's clearly several elements that specifically come from your father and your grandfather i mean and right there alone you talk about and we'll get to like the background later but you know the time period where your

grandfather was abducted and all that in the early 60s it's very similar to like when vito corleone was out of commission and michael who wasn't supposed to be a part of that life stepped up and took care of business very very similar line right there along with some other things. Right. There's a lot of indicators that Michael was basically modeled after my dad. And you can say that Don Corleone was modeled after Joe Bonanno. There was never – I don't think Mario Puzo ever said that officially. Right.

But he grew up in the neighborhood. He knew who they were. The wedding scenes were, I don't know, they look like could be one of our family weddings, right? Well, the wedding and the godfather was based off of your father's wedding. That one we know for sure. You stole my punchline, right?

So anyway, but yeah, that's where I was going with that. Exactly, right? Because they had But yeah, that's where I was going with that. Exactly, right? Because they had this huge wedding and thousands of people. And the Waldorf Astoria wasn't even big enough. So they had to have it. I think it was called the Astor Hotel in New York at the time. It was the biggest. And they had congressmen and senators.

And then everybody from their world know, their world, you know, even, even enemies showed up, you know, they were smart enough to sit them at different ends of the, of the reception hall, you know, but they all showed up out of respect for my grandfather. Cause you know, in 56, when they got married, I mean, that was, that was the height, you know, he was, that was his heyday. You know, he had, you know, 25 years or so of basically peace and, you know, they were making money every, you know, all the five families were, you know he had you know 25 years or so of basically peace and you know they were making money every you know all the five families were you know were um prospering under this you know peace that he had put you know carefully crafted um and they called that like pox banana i think literally right pox banana right that's exactly what he he liked that term and um he was very

proud of that yeah he's such an interesting guy because when you think about the stereotypical over time historical mafia figures one thing a lot of them have in common is that they're not the brightest bulbs but your grandfather and your father were like renaissance men they were extremely intelligent well educated went to college the whole nine so i always wondered like how that played out behind the scenes because there is a thing there where it's like you know your grandpa speaks seven languages all this stuff and then he's talking to some guy named vinnie he's like you want me to welcome yeah you know there's there's clearly like a little bit of a divide there no absolutely uh you know his his one of his main

skills was being able to read people right whether he was talking with you know a thug or you know uh some sort of intellect he can talk to people on both ends of that spectrum uh and you know because he respected people for who they were uh he had a story he He would say, if I'm in charge and I ask this guy who can only carry 10 pounds, if I ask him to carry 20 pounds worth of whatever up a hill and he fails, that's the boss's fault because he should know that that employee or that soldier who whatever can only carry 10 pounds. And it's up to the boss to know that. So he was really good at reading people. And he took time. And he prided himself on being able to judge somebody's character pretty quickly.

And I think that's what gave him the ability to work across that spectrum of people that he had to deal with on a daily basis. No doubt. Now, where was he born? My grandfather? Yes, your grandfather. Yeah, he was born in Castellammare. In Sicily.

Yeah. Yeah, we might have to edit this part because it's a little, it's a little, he might, you know, he was born in Sicily, they went there when he was young, then he went back to Sicily, his father got called back. They went to America when he was younger. They went to, oh yeah, they went from sicily to america and then back to sicily when his father you know things had fallen apart in sicily there was troubles so his father went back to deal with those things and you know took his family back and his father was a

part of the sicilian mafia right over there of right the you know but back then you know back there it was just you know it was clans and the way they ran things there was no uh separate organization that was the that's the way they did things in sicily so right but yeah he was born in in costa del mar del golfo so he's born there spends a couple years whatever comes over to america and then my understanding was it was like maybe when he was like 13 or something he came back to castellamare so he always he was born and raised in a sicilian household in new york during the time where you know it was all the immigrants living together and stuff so your grandfather had a very thick sicilian accent that

he maintained his whole life yeah speaking english absolutely and it's one of the things that he was always you know a little bit uh embarrassed, that he could never really master the English language. I mean, he was articulate and all, but he definitely had that thick accent that made it sometimes difficult for people to understand him. And then the way he talked in phrases and par uh wasn't easy to follow either so between the you know the high intellect the the the accent and then just the contents of the story he was telling because you know he didn't tell frivolous stories about you know a football game or anything it was always some story that had some historical significance or there was always a moral to the story that he was telling you well he was really into studying like history right like he was very into like the classics and and greek mythology and stuff like

that absolutely yeah and you know he could quote you know the odyssey and uh hilliard and you know machiavelli and um he can you know he just bring that up from memory and that's he was very intelligent man you know he can navigate from the stars and he was definitely like you said a renaissance man Yeah, it's it like language is so interesting to me how how it's like ingrained in people with how they train their mouth as a young kid to talk because Your grandfather's a unique scenario where he was born there came over very young was here for some years but then went back soon enough to where then he's speaking sicilian every day and he doesn't have like the the the parts of the mouth say that americans use to speak english or whatever so then he speaks

with an accent whereas a guy like lucky luciano is born in sicily spends like the first i think it was he spent like the first seven years of his life there, comes to America, and he's got a New York accent. You know what I mean? It's nuts. Yeah, he was fully indoctrinated. Grandpa used to refer to him as kind of the Americanized. And liked him and got along.

They did business together for a lot of years. But he always felt that he was more concerned with making money than anything else. you know got along they you know they did business together for you know a lot of years but um you know he's felt that he was more concerned with you know making money than anything else and you know grandfather didn't quite you know see it that way he wanted you know he was talking about he was more concerned with the structure of the family you know and living by the code uh and and priding himself on that where you know if they made money because of their dealings that was great but it wasn't there it wasn't his main focus and that was what he said was the difference between him and lucky right so well when he came back over to sicily i think that was when his

father died right yeah he got recruited to go to the war um it was world war one he got injured and you know apparently when he came back, he was never the same. And then he passed away from his injuries. Got it. Okay. So your grandfather goes over. He's still going through school, gets a college education, whatever. Like, at what point does he – because, again, it wasn't like here.

It was, as you said, your word, like it was more like clans and stuff over there at the time. At what point did he say, oh, I'm going to go do this now and go back to America and get involved with the mafia? Well, he was going to this naval academy in Sicily, and Mussolini, who was just coming to power, and they used to wear white shirts, all the cadets or whatever they call them in Sicily. We call them cadets that are going to this Naval Academy. And Mussolini came in and wanted them to all wear black shirts. Well, he wasn't going to do that. And the next day they were supposed to show up in black shirts. He didn't show up. He showed up in his regular white uniform.

And then the next day they said, if you don't show up with your uh you know your black shirts you're going to get expelled and he just didn't show up um in any shirt he just didn't show up and he knew he was uh he was going to be in trouble and that's when he you know said i'm going to him well he was leaving he didn't know where he was going but then uh it ended up he was going to america and that's right you know because he because he had been there as a younger kid and he made his way back. Thank you to all of you who have done that, and thank you to all of you who are going to do it now. And also, if you haven't already subscribed and liked the video, please do that. And if you're on Apple or Spotify, please leave a five-star review if you get a chance. That is a huge, huge help, and thank you to all of you who have already done so. And how did he – like when he came over, he obviously got involved right away, and he had contacts obviously from living here and everything.

Also considering his dad probably knew all these guys because he was involved but this was before like it's interesting that you talk about sicily as these clans and stuff because i almost forget it kind of was like that in america at the time too because they hadn't quote unquote organized it yet that that story still had to play out like with lucky and the five families and everything and all that came later absolutely right so when he came to america it's very it's a very similar setup to sicily at the time no right because they were you know the same people um they were just in a different place but their you know societal norms were you know what they knew from the old country.

So they stuck together because there was all kinds of other immigrants. There was the Irish and the Germans and the Polish. And they all stuck together. But the Sicilians, the Castellamarese particularly, stuck together and stuck to their old ways. They brought their old ways with them because that's what they knew. And they weren't really welcomed with open arms.'s what they knew right and they weren't uh you know they weren't really welcomed with open arms i mean there were so many immigrants back then they were just you know they weren't i don't think they have a tough time as a tough time to have today but um you know they weren't rolling out the red carpet they were just people coming

all the time and they didn't know what to do with them yeah and it also seems like the the castella maresi more than anyone else in sicily stuck together because like when you hear about other guys who were from other just other towns in sicily whatever might might be could be palermo or a really small town no one's heard of it's like there weren't like clans like that whereas when you look through mafia history they're constantly saying like oh he was a castella maraisi yeah right like they they that family was comprised of a lot of castella maraisi like that that was always curious to me like why was it so much different with that one place as opposed to the rest of the island i think

it was the way they were raised and you know from day one it was always the you know the greater good the group is more important the family is more important than the individual right you're part of this family uh and what you do is a reflection of that family and you're responsible for keeping that name up and i think they just had it indoctrinated from a day one that you know there was something bigger than self where in a lot of other places especially in america you know it's all about you know the individual and you know you know being able to make your own way and that's the american dream well um in sicily and specifically in customary

you know they were you know it's it's the family was more important the the greater good yeah that's a funny dichotomy there too. It is. Because you think about it, the idea of a family at least is a group. It's like it's the smallest, tightest community, but it's like it's a community. It's your blood. And then in America, it's like, oh, you're out for yourself to make money. But America, the idea was built on it's the land of the free of the American dream where we collectively are this great thing because we can trust in the system whereas in sicily this is an island that's been conquered a million fucking times they've had no competent government they've had total corruption

killers in the government way before mussolini and all that so it's like it was ingrained in their bloodlines to not trust anything down to the mayor of the town you know but they went towards like out of that they went towards the theme of like all right we'll pick the people you can trust whereas in america the system's better but people are more like all right what's in it for me that's really interesting absolutely i mean he because he saw that back to that comment I made about the difference between a father and a boss where a boss, you know, they have a goal to produce whatever widget, right. To make something, to be, you know, have this monetary reward where the role

of a father and a family is to make sure everybody's doing all right, to make sure everybody has what they need, you know, to be their best self to succeed. Where boss is only worried about what's best for the end result, the bottom line, where a father may make a decision that may not be beneficial financially, but it benefits his son or one of the people that he considers part of his family. So it's not all based on what's going to help the bottom line. It's what's going to help this person, like a father would do, right? A father, a good father anyway, would be more concerned with making sure his child has what he needs as opposed to being able to make more money. Well, I would hope good fathers thought that way.

Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense. So it's, yeah, it's a know distinction between a boss and a father but it's pretty important and it was important to him and um like i said he didn't like being called boss he wanted to be known as a father he saw himself more as a father figure than you know a boss and you guys called him i was just listening to how you said it you called him grandfather you didn't grab no grandpa yeah we called him grandpa oh you did call him yeah and because they you know they had a different mentality they wanted like they wanted us to become um assimilated they didn't want to they didn't speak sicilian to us in the house because they didn't want us to have accents they didn't want us to you know be thinking in sicilian and then have to translate

to english it was always english to us and you know they did not want uh not that they were ashamed of of being a sicilian but they thought it was very important that we got assimilated uh into the you know as americans as soon as we could and you know he wanted the goal to be he wanted his son to be a you know a a lawyer, and he didn't want his son to get involved. His son didn't get involved. But the next step was our generation, and none of us are in the game. We're all professionals, like teachers, doctors, lawyers. And your brother's a pediatrician.

And he's a pediatrician, right. So that was mission know mission accomplished right so took one extra generation it took right it didn't happen as fast as they wanted but uh it did happen and um i think he took a lot of pride in that there's a lot to unpack there that i'm going to wait on because i want to i want to like lay out so that people can understand exactly how your grandfather's career went and then what led to like the book and all that. I think we could really unpack that later. But when he – to get back to like when his father died, even right before he came back to America because you're bringing up this whole – he looked at himself as a father point. while Mussolini coming into power clearly was like the straw that broke the camel's back

and made him say, all right, I'm getting out of the Naval Academy here and going over. We're going to figure this out. Like did he – when your grandfather's father died, it sounds like he was obviously extremely close with him. But did he then kind of have that thing where he's a teenager and he's like, okay, well, I have to grow up immediately now and I need to take care of everyone like was that just like he stepped into that mode not not initially uh he was pretty young uh but he had some some uncles uh from on his mother's side uh and his cousins the magadinos that kind of took him in and um it was kind of thrust upon him.

He had to step up because there were some problems in Sicily, if I remember right, and it just, he had a choice that he could have become, like one of his uncles was in the seminary, he could have studied to become a priest, but one of the other uncles had an issue and he stepped in and entered the life, so to speak. Crazy how life works like that. It could be that far, like priest or like mobster. Right, and that was really, when it comes down to it, that's kind of the choice he had.

So he comes over to America, and he finds, through the contacts he had established, he immediately gets in with some of his Castello-Moraisi guys. And was he working for Maranzano right away or did that eventually occur? Yeah, it didn't happen right away. It happened eventually. He ran into, like you said, some of his buddies from Castello-Moraisi. Back then, all the sicilians had stills because they were making their own wine this is like 1923 24 exactly got it and then and yeah then through that um he you know maranzano came and you know he they whatever latched onto each

other he really admired maranzano and the way he was the way he dressed his mannerisms the way he made decisions and um you know learned a lot from him and marizano liked that and you know made it you know made it you know had him progress through the through the system until uh when marzano ended up being murdered uh you know my grandfather took over yeah that's a whole story right there that we'll we'll talk about in a sec but when when he gets there in like 23 24 even before he meets maranzano i would assume pretty much the whole focus of the business was just prohibition because like that's where the mob was spending all their resources well you know he tried to become a dentist um he had an uncle that really i mean not a dentist a dentist, a barber and a baker.

One of his other uncles had a bakery, and he went in business. He drove the truck, and he was going to do sales and help the bakery grow. But he just wasn't cut out for that. And then when he met his buddies who had a still running and they were kind of living a more exciting life than driving a bakery truck. And he got sucked in. And yes, that was the... And then Prohibition kind of was a gift to them.

It was the greatest thing ever. I was like, yeah, are you kidding me? They're going to outlaw this stuff? And it worked out for him, absolutely. Yeah, there's a really underrated show the greatest thing ever right it's like yeah are you kidding me they're gonna outlaw this stuff and it worked out for them absolutely yeah there's a really underrated show that was phenomenal from a historical perspective even though they fictionalized like some of the main characters called boar walk empire oh yeah you ever see that they obviously they had a lot of this era covered in that because that takes place during prohibition focused on

atlantic city where they would that was a popular place to to smuggle in a lot of hooch but like you know your grandfather was actually in it at the very end and the whole thing covered like the formation of the italian american mafia as we know it. And it's like, this was the most obvious thing ever. People aren't going to give up drinking. And someone's going to. I can't even believe that was an idea in Congress where they're thinking, this is a good one. Nothing bad will happen here.

Yeah, what could go wrong? But yeah, he definitely saw it as a gift. And it was. I mean, it was right up their alley and they could you know they created this whole market this whole need and they just you know filled that need and where was he like did you ever get some stories from him like where he was where he was running alcohol to or what his role in a lot of that was while prohibition was at its height? No.

And it's not something he would have talked to his grandchildren about. He was very much, when he did talk to us, he had a point he wanted to make. There's a story. There's a moral to the story that he wanted to tell. So he would tell stories about the Odyssey or historical things. He wouldn't, you know, even if I would ask him, you know, you would get this look, well, you knew. We just knew in Trisley, you don't ask those kind of questions, right? Just because you wouldn't, you know, if you might get slapped at the very,

you know, extreme, but you might just get ignored. They're like, you know, just you don't ask questions. You know you don't ask those kind of questions and um i never did did your dad ask those those questions i don't think he did i think if if uh my dad knew that you know it's if he needed to know grandpa would tell him right that's just the way it was you didn't um you know you didn't ask questions because they took you know took offense to it you know even if the phone rings and you pick up the phone you never said well who is it you just you just taught that at a young age right you just knew you don't you don't ask you know questions like you know when my dad came home late you know my mom would never say well where you been you know that's just not that's that's not how it worked you know that's just not, that's, that's not how it worked. Yeah. That's just, it's, it's a cultural thing.

Right. It's like, it's just, it's gotta be ingrained in. Right. And I, you know, when I was first married, I had a real hard time with, you know, even, you know, telling my wife where I was going. Cause I felt like that was a violation. Cause you know, right. I don't have to, you know, you don't tell me, ask me where I've been, you know, and

I don't tell you where I'm going. And it was, it was kind of a hard adjustment to, you to say because that's what was modeled for me right mom didn't ask um and of course that's my normal right that's what i knew and then you know when i got married it was uh it was a source of difficulty it's a passed down thing for sure because it makes sense considering that the way we think in america of like the wild wild west back in the 1800s and stuff that's really it's not a far cry from how sicily was and actually in some ways continues to be you know it's it's really i can imagine that when you know you look at different say smaller ethnic groups around the world who there's just a thing that's built in like especially

they've been persecuted look like the jewish people or something like that like it's unspoken they just get it like we gotta look out for each other because people tried to kill us not that long ago and when you're in sicily it's like we gotta look out for each other because we're always getting conquered so you don't tell anyone nothing i don't care who's in charge because we're gonna do our same thing because we know they're gonna come and go and we're gonna be here that's it and this guy maranzano for people who haven't heard of him as we said he was a costello morezzi but he he was a little crazy but he actually was he was one of the other guys who was really intelligent like he was like your grandfather and right like rena Renaissance type guy so your grandfather really

took a liking to him through that and then it sounds like he was based on your grandfather's telling of it he was pretty quickly like kind of his right hand no yeah he came up through the ranks pretty quickly and you know he was singled out as somebody that understood Maranzano, and then he admired him so much. I think that definitely helped his rise in the organization. And so you had mentioned Maranzano was murdered. This was like a whole, this is right towards the end of Prohibition, like 1931, I think.

In that time frame yeah right so the broad strokes of what was happening is you had the american side as your grandfather would call it like the lucky lucianos of the world americanized yeah they didn't like maranzano and like paul masseria and those old school guys right well yeah and masaria was more on the uh you know the the american eyes side where and i think the delineation is that those who you know put money for making money first as opposed to you know those who wanted to keep the structure of the family um as as the main goal and i think that was the difference the old school guys wanted to keep the old traditions where you know the masria and then you know was the difference the old school guys wanted to keep the old traditions

where you know the masria and then you know his you know the people that took over for him you know they wanted to you know make money it was it was definitely a business and you know what they you know like i said it goes back to that whole discussion between what's a father and boss and what that difference is did that was like you think about the the scenes that are painted in like godfather 2 especially in both in both of the first two movies but especially godfather 2 where you see like young vito corleone there's the element where he becomes the don of the neighborhood right so people end up coming to him they ask you know for a favor or someone had something horrible happen to them and they don't want to go to the police because they don't trust them and they go

to this guy who they trust you know he's like the head of the criminal organization it's like well no he's the head of our neighborhood the guys like Luciano though did they really have that or was that more like on your grandfather's end like he viewed it he and marizano viewed things like oh we got to do that too well yeah i mean from my perspective yeah that's exactly it right the my grandfather was more of in the family and then the traditional um structure of things where guys like luciano and and all those that followed in you know the 80s and 90s and up to today where you know more about just making money yeah and not caring about uh you know the structure and and following the code it's just it was like the ends well we're making money so it's okay well even if my grandfather was making good money at

something if it wasn't following his code you know they just he just wouldn't do it and again we're going to define that code as we go along here for people listening. They're like like wait what code but it was he literally wrote about it in a book called man honor but The the Maranzano thing they had first it happened twice technically because the guy we mentioned Joe Masseria They killed him like I guess lucky worked for him and Frank Costello. They got rid of him They made a deal with Maranzano like okay we're with you now but then very quickly they thought maranzano thought he was like julius fucking caesar or something exactly and so they're like well he's got to go but they didn't tell your grandfather that they were going to hit him right now that yeah because

he was you know he was too close to him right If he had known, he would have been honor bound to do something about it. Right. And right, he really didn't get with or meet, I think he probably met Lucky before that, but didn't have feelings with him until after Maranzano died. And that's when they had to come together because they were basically the bosses of two fam two of the main families and that's the question i have here because your grandfather was a really young man he was like 25 or 26. he had started young with all this so once they kill maranzano well he can't prevent it now on her bound to prevent it because it's over obviously it happened but he he meets with luciano and they make peace. Right. Did he not think like, oh, I need to avenge that according to his code or he put that aside?

What was the logic? The logic was that he had heard stories about that Maranzano was trying to – had a hit out or a contract out on Lucky and some of the other guys, right? So they were just you know basically self-defense and he believed that story right marzano didn't tell him he was going after you know lucky ahead of time but when you know he did his due diligence and looked into it and was satisfied that you know he was acting out of you know his self-preservation he was you know he wasn't going to go after marzano until marzano started coming after him and of you know his self-preservation he was you know he wasn't going to go after marzano until marzano started coming after him and then you know he got to him first so yeah that's interesting because i actually buy that too um i'll bet that probably was the

case because they they never according to pretty much any research on it they really never got along even when like lucky and maranzano and stuff like even when they hit massaria and kind of vacuum powered the thing like they still never got right yes that's the sense i got too from what i know but you know just from reading different things so your grandfather and this is why it's like so crazy that he he lived so long and then what ended up happening with him in retirement and all that and like having a lot of years outside of it afterwards like his whole story from immigrant all the way through it the the perhaps the craziest part of it is he was alive 40 years after and 30 40 years

after all these other guys who were there when they formed this thing because when maranzano gets hit now luciano clearly is like the dog around here and they form what's known as the commission and so for people listening who aren't familiar with the mafia can you explain what that is well the commission was you know the five families the the five families coming together and having, instead of having a boss of bosses, because Maranzano considered himself, I think he was the last one to officially use the title of boss of bosses. Well, they wanted to replace that one guy with a, you know, with a group, with the heads of the five families. And that was what it was

intended for, was to keep the peace between, you know, the families. And they decided it would be best if they cooperated because if they kept fighting each other no one was gonna make money so you know Luciano my grandfather got together and you know they decided that they would make this you know Commission to you know avoid having one guy that can call the shots for everybody was that the meeting was was that like the big meeting to say like all right we're going to call a meeting to do this now with everybody where it was just your grandfather who was from the maranzano faction meeting with the guy who had just back in power luciano it's pretty much the two that's the way i understand it that's that was

the genesis of it yeah wow that's crazy that That's historically. It would be amazing, right. That's nuts. But what they accomplished over the next 30, 40 years, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, they rose to power and they had influence in World War II. We'll talk about that for sure. So, yeah, it was pretty incredible. So they then have a meeting where the five families, most people know, they're based in New York.

They operate – they technically have operations in other places like Jersey and Florida and eventually even Vegas and stuff like that as well. only other faction that was a lot i might be wrong about this but the only other faction outside the five new york families that was allowed on there was the chicago outfit and then eventually i don't know when but eventually they gave philadelphia a seat they gave first well first first it was uh buffalo uh magadino was my grandfather's cousin right um. So he was also part of the Buffalo family, even though it was a small town. It was very influential in the whole path between Canada and all the stuff they did with alcohol and cigarettes with Canada. So Buffalo was really important. But Buffalo was the next one. And then, yeah, then Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit.

Got it. Okay. So eventually it all expanded. And then, then Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit. Got it. Okay. So eventually it all expanded. And then, right. At first, it was just pretty much New York and Chicago and Buffalo in this case. Right. So the way they would do it is the heads of each of those families would be the ones who meet to discuss, like a board meeting, discuss what's going on with crime, who's got what, you know, make peace

and continue to be able to operate so everyone makes money. Right. You know, and mostly it was, from my understanding, was it was to settle any sort of disputes, right? They would come together when there was something that was, you know, a major issue and, you know, people are about to go to war. Well, let's go and, you know, sit around a table and see if we can't, you know people are about to go to war well let's go and you know sit around a table and see if we can't you know figure this out let you know cooler heads prevail so you know when you got a lot of these hotheads and um you know guys that feel disrespected yeah they want to they just want to go after it but there was a way you know and yeah they made this structure so they can resolve those issues without having to kill each other and constantly go into war and costing everybody money and nobody's making any money if you're paying for

a war it's it's tough on everybody and you know they were able to keep that peace for a long time because they had that you know way to resolve the issues right they had the you know the the dons the fathers could get together and make a decision and then it was binding and they all you know they all bought in on that and you know it uh it put the organization into organized crime yeah it's really and that's what the you know the case was about in the 80s right yeah yeah and that's like that's kind of the full circle where it it went bad because the government caught up and like how to actually get to the top with RICO and all that. But it's such a long time later. Like they, you know, from the 30s, because they formed the commission in like 1931-ish.

From the 30s through when your grandfather went out to Arizona, I mean, they operated carte blanche. Pretty much. And yeah, it was that structure of having the commission. Pull that mic in just a little bit. Yeah. I mean, having the commission and having that structure, like I said, gave them a way to settle disputes. And when their bodies weren't piling up on the streets, they were making money. When everybody was happy and getting along, business was better. But they also had, I i mean they formed stuff like murder inc still right right things happened within the families right so the commission had couldn't tell the bonanno family or the colombo family provide you what they could do within their family there

was no yeah they didn't they didn't that was part of the in the commission hey what's happening here we only talk about things that our worlds intersect. But within your family, whatever you guys want to do, none of the bosses were going to agree to have them get in at that micro level. This was a macro thing for the disputes between the families and the turf wars. If they're going after the same things they you know they found a way to split it how did they i don't know if i've ever really properly researched this question so this might be a good one to ask but when you think about the mafia everyone can start to name like the main businesses right so they can be like okay gamblingitution, eventually there were some drugs as well, like extortion, loan sharking, yada, yada.

But, you know, for example, you have five families all operating across the different boroughs in New York and other states where they're in similar neighborhoods and whatever. Like, how did they decide, say, at the beginning, okay, well, within gambling, you're going to do this thing and that that family's going to do that thing, and that family's going to do that thing. Well, yeah, the thing is they all did whatever they could do within their own families, whatever was available, whether it was numbers or, like you said. And like my grandfather, he didn't believe in prostitution, so the Bonanno family wasn't into prostitution, and he wasn't into extortion just you know just for protection it was when people you know people didn't pay him back yeah they went out you know if you borrowed

money and you didn't pay it back yeah then you know you had to pay the results but he never just they never just leaned the bonanno family ever never just leaned on people just because they could where and he was he was not happy that he knew that went on with the other families where they would just lean on people because they could um he never felt that was that was right and he never participated so they didn't do that not the banana family yeah he takes yeah he makes in once again in his book he he talks a lot about how he doesn't he never you know extortion just for extortion is wrong because violence the only justification for violence in his mind was to um restore order so um when things were orderly and going along yeah violence there was no need for violence just you know to collect an extra hundred bucks or whatever from somebody see that was you know within his code that is very interesting

to me because you know i kind of treat when you're looking like the mob and organized crime the guys in it they know what they signed up for you know they're in that world like i don't you know someone kills someone it's a bad thing i don't mishear me here but yes there is a difference to me looking at a mobster who whacked another mobster versus some dude who killed his wife that's there's no compare you know what i mean like my dad had a great line for that he used to say nobody in the mob whoever got hit didn't know it was coming meaning you know if you you knew the rules and if you broke the rules, you knew the results of that, you know, of that violation. It was not a mystery. It was not, nobody was ever surprised by it. Right. Any of those guys that got hit, they knew they did something to somebody

that caused that. It just didn't, you know, they didn't just randomly hit anybody. It was, and you know, like you said, it wasn't wives't wives it wasn't children it wasn't anybody else it was the guy who you know the perpetrator right he broke the code he knew the price and the price was paid and when that when that line has been crossed you know in the mafia with people who aren't involved or people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time that's where it gets scummy and like that's why it's interesting that you say that he was adamantly against the extortion because i've always thought especially when i've i've never been around it but i know people who have fallen victim to it say up in in north jersey in new york it's like the one of the worst things

they do to this day is when someone just has a business right like they literally just have a business somewhere and they got an italian last name and these guys walk in and say you owe us 30 or we're gonna break your legs or kill you right like that that's the extortion i'm talking about so your grandfather wasn't about right he that was not part of his code and that's not something he ever uh endorsed uh or you know didn't proliferate within his family within his family when he was in charge. Now, what happened, anything that happened with the Bonanno family in the 70s and 80s, it kept the name, but he wasn't calling the shots. So, hence the French connection and all the narcotics.

Yes, the Bonanno crime family, and Dad had another good way to delineate that. When he talked about the Bonanno family with a capital F, he meant the crime family. And when he talked about Bonanno family with a lowercase f, he was talking about his guys and our cousins and our relatives, the people that were not necessarily the nuclear family, but just the guys, the made guys the guys that he um knew and and you know

whatever the guys he made yeah yeah no like culturally though too because that's like part of the mystique of the italian american mafia is that it is italian american like you got to be with very few exceptions it's like you got to be full blood and for a while there was like you literally got to be from sicily eventually that changed a little bit you could just be from like you could be in the apolitan something like that but you know a big difference between lucky and your grandfather again like the italian versus american side of it is that lucky growing up in new york even though he lived in an italian neighborhood he grew up with a lot of guys who were jewish and irish

some of his best friends like meyer lansky bugsy siegel these were jewish gangsters and so even though he wasn't like oh we're gonna induct these guys into the family he's like well they're our partners versus a guy like your grandfather was like no no we only deal with our own kind so did he eventually like change his mind on that a little bit or is that pretty much consistently like no we're only going to work with yeah yeah he only yeah he was you know because he stuck to his code and his you know he only felt that the only people are going to understand you code were fellow Sicilians. And he even had a problem with Italians from Naples and Calabria. He always felt that they were them and they're not us.

Did he get along with Frank Costello? He did. Because Costello, wasn't he Calabrian? Yeah. Yeah. So they were okay, though? Yeah, that was a different family of course yeah so um and once again what happens in the other families you know he yeah so he had a clear right he view it sounds like he viewed the commission is like okay this is good for business you know so that we keep the peace and other than

that you do your shit right you do what you do and and we'll you know we'll do you know so that we keep the peace and other than that you do your right you do what you do and and we'll you know we'll do you know the sassanians will do what you know we do and live by our code um and he took a lot of pride in that and you know there was a lot of animosity as a result of that because the old school ways were you know going by the wayside you know in in america you know things were going in especially the 40s and the 50s um and he was trying to stick to those old war ways and you know a lot of the guys didn't understand it right they'd been they weren't in sicily they didn't understand the the need to you know the strict adherence to the code um where he never yeah he never relented on that well when the commission would go to approve things in the efforts of keeping the peace for example which did involve in

certain cases certain guys had to go obviously you know I had mentioned it before but they they did use things like murder ink so people who were involved in this were not necessarily Italian there were a lot of guys who were Jewish and Irish gangsters involved with that so when it came to business that he is technically a part of where he's got to give an okay on stuff he he didn't have a problem with that he was just like okay it's not italians doing it no problem no i mean that once again it goes back to the individual families and the father of that individual family um could do you know what he felt he had to do. As long as it wasn't impacting any of the Bonanno interests or business, he felt he

didn't have a say. He might have had an opinion, but he wasn't going to speak that opinion or he wasn't going to inhibit any other father from doing what he thought was best because he would definitely not tolerate some other father coming in and questioning him now if there was an issue where they're both going after the same thing or you know their their interests you know clash then yeah you needed the commission to resolve those and that's what it was for okay so even on that he kind of had that was just a cost of doing business got it right so when when prohibition ended in 1932 or 33 somewhere right in there they already obviously did have

other rackets like they had gambling they had things like that you said your grandfather stayed away from prostitution and drugs which again you pointed out but it is ironic because right after he left the bananas were like the main drug drug family of them all crazy but he stayed away from that stuff how much like in the, in the 30s, you know, not necessarily, like, what was the size of the family, but how much was business, like, badly impacted by the fact that they were no longer moving alcohol at, you know, 2,000% markups every week? Well, I think, you know, the taxes on the cigarettes were a big thing, and that was always a good source of revenue because they would get the cigarettes from Canada that didn't have the tax seal on them, and they were able to make a lot of money. How does that work? Can you explain that?

Don't really understand exactly how it worked, but I know all the American cigarettes had, know even back in the day there was always high taxes on cigarettes and then if you can get them from canada they didn't have that there's a stamp apparently on the bottom of packs of cigarettes and that was the only difference they didn't have to any of the taxes so they would bring tobacco you know cigarettes from down from canada into new york stamp it and no they wouldn't they just you know they wouldn't pay the taxes and they wouldn't they wouldn't collect taxes so right um whatever the tax was you know the eight or ten percent that's what they were making uh it's like a built-in markup right built-in market and they made a lot of money with that and then you know with the garment district um you know they they controlled basically the you know the clothing industry

and they had a lot of uh you know people working for them um and they kept you know the contracts coming in and they were able to get you know that's where you know their connections and you know they're maybe they're forced but they were able to uh to get a lot of those contracts you know they were making boots and like there in World War II, boots and jackets. All those contracts were going to their people in the garment district. And they also had the unions, so they had the docks and stuff. So on imports, they knew when stuff was coming in. They wanted to hit certain things or put a tax on certain things, right?

They could do all that right okay and it's crazy i've said this before in some other podcasts just talk about people but every time i drive down 78 coming into new york city where you're on that strip in jersey city where you can just see the whole skyline never gets old to me i love it i love looking at it it's just like this crazy thing that humans created going up into the sky here i can't help though but think looking at every single one of those buildings i think to myself i'm like almost none of those went up without the okay and economic interests of the mafiaia some ways yeah some way shape or form yeah it is pretty incredible I when you look at it that way it's like all

the cement down there or like the zoning contracts they these were companies that they had a take on or you know we're literally sometimes they were like the president of the company itself or like the union that the company used for the workers. And like, you know, for better or worse, that's a part of history. Like they did that. And a lot of this happened to happen in the wake of the Great Depression afterwards when they were trying to create jobs, put up buildings. And you just had this boom of all these amazing buildings built for 30, 40, 50, 60 years. And it's like they're they're in the middle

of all of it they're absolutely and so they get through the 30s though and you've alluded to it a few times but i think this is a great story world war ii people don't realize that the mafia had a significant helping factor with the allied invasion of sicily which is how we entered europe so can you explain like what the what the history was there well in short i you know a little bit of you know knowledge of it not not the you know the details um but but in short they when they were going to go to sicily the you know the americans were smart enough to say, hey, we have all these Sicilians in New York that are Americans that have some pride. Maybe they'll help us. And they were more than willing to do their part because they loved America for sure.

I mean, it was a land of opportunity for them. Like we were talking about earlier with the prohibition it was a gift right so they were very proud to be you know my grandfather was a naturalized citizen and they were very proud to be americans and they wanted to help me on the war effort any way they could and and once again they were presented with this opportunity uh where they could help the you know the invading forces and it worked um you know they went right through sicily and right up through italy and um you know they told the people in Sicily, hey, we need your help. And they did. They all fell in line because they didn't want Mussolini or Hitler or the fascists taking over.

They wanted their freedom as well. And they admired America. So it was a natural thing for them to all team up and and make that work yeah the one urban legend of that story that a lot of historians shoot down but they're also kind of incentivized to shoot it down because it's like you don't want to admit that like oh the mafia helped us right but the one that I'm kind of on the fence about that i feel like might have been a bridge too far was when they talk about how lucky luciano arranged for them to do a flyover and they dropped like little leaflets into the towns saying like we're coming and letting like don calo vizzini and like some of the bosses there like know that way that that the forces were coming and they'd help them get across the island i don't know about that one but they did have i mean you know they were able to get through that operation

mincemeat thing which was a movie that actually was just made with the whole british intelligence operation that tricked the germans into thinking that they were going to invade greece and not sicily they did get some of the the nazi soldiers off the island before they came which helped but once they landed the guys like cala vizzini and the different bosses across the island who had strong ties to america it wasn't the mayors meeting the the troops it was the bosses going come with us and they're like in the tanks like leading the way through that's pretty fucking wild absolutely yeah it was definitely a source of pride for them you know they felt like they you know they swung the

they swung the the pendulum in the americans favor you know through that and they they always took a lot of pride in that yeah and it's it's like one of the many things where the mafia is ingrained with like american history with stuff you could talk about the buildings you could talk about that you could talk about kennedy which we'll get to it's like they're in the middle of all this so it's kind of like the government you have the fbi and and the police say like chasing these guys because they view them as street criminals but then like the government's like yeah okay that's fine but also they have access, so we're going to work with them. Right. It's nuts. I don't know. But after World War II, this is all part of that Pax Bonanno era, so your grandfather's just completely in power at the top of his game, I guess you could say.

Did it all start to, I don't want to say fall apart, but go the wrong way with the appalachian meeting in 57 like is that how he looked at it well i mean he was he was in uh italy he went to sicily um while all that you know came together and he said had he been there he would have not um you know that wouldn't have happened because they had a national meeting the year before. They didn't need another meeting, and it got called because he was away, and that's the only reason it got there. And he didn't want to go. He thought it was a bad idea, and it ended up being an awful idea, as we know. But, yeah, he wouldn't have allowed that to take place

had he been in New York at the time when all that was coming together. But he was in Sicily and kind of enjoying his success. Why did they have like, because it's a commission meeting, and as you said, they had done it the year before. For people that don't know this was 1957 town up in northern new york in the in the hills and they accidentally got cited because there were like thousands of a time not thousands right but all these big cadillacs and you know cars rolling through this little town in upstate new york yeah it drew a

little attention so the cops like descended upon and they're like holy shit this is the mother load why was this meeting like it wasn't just the bosses they had all kinds of foot soldiers like why would they do that at all ever yeah it was just you know it was somebody's um pride basically uh grandpa was away and you know stefano magadino they wanted to have this you know show their their prominence and have this meeting and have everybody come um and it was just basically uh you know flexing i guess is the word they would use now um you know his cousin stefano and and their faction in the commission were, you know, kind of showing that, well, Joe's away. You know, we're in charge now.

And it just all went to. Wasn't good. Wasn't good. So your grandfather comes home after that. And now there's heat because this is like when the first hearing started happening after that, where TV is a thing now in black and white and they're hauling some of these guys to congress i think they had i think they literally had frank costello there for some of the early ones he was like i guess the the boss of the fat of what used to be lucky's family at that point and he's sitting in front of congress on tv going i played the fifth

and you have all these these normal american citizens like what the fuck is that what's going on here you know it puts all the heat on them and then there was another guy joe bellacci that's it yeah so what was his story and he well he was just a low level you know guy that you know during you know they were at war you know all the source of all the commotion was the crazy Joe Gallo and trying to kill the head of the Perfacci family. And then they got Columbo. They went to war and they started letting people in

that weren't Sicilian. They needed soldiers. So their requirements lowered. And a guy like Valachi got in. He never met my grandfather. He was a low-level soldier. In what family? I think it was Genovese family.

I really don't recall exactly, but I think it was the Genovese family. But he wasn't really a higher guy and he got a lot of things wrong in his testimony he just you know wanted to be in the spotlight and you know said some things that were you know he gave a lot of the secrets away for sure you know not really just the american public they didn't know about this stuff until volace came out and kind of laid it out for him and showed him how you know that there was a structure and this was a real you know a real thing and it's real something they should be concerned with yeah i'm put while you're talking

i'm pulling this up to see if there's like something quick we could show but all the videos are kind of long on youtube but people can look it up you can type in type in V-A-L-A-C-H-I, and you'll see the video of him speaking at Congress, and he was going through how the making ceremony works and all that. So this was out for the public to see, and that was really what it was. That was something he did get right. Yeah, there were some parts that were right,

but there were a lot of key stuff and that was that was wrong and um yeah i i don't know my grandfather talks about it in his book and just kind of dismisses it as this you know they believed whatever this guy said and he wasn't really he didn't really have a whole lot of knowledge he knew some and but that was the first time the public really got a glimpse into the structure of it. And so now there's some legitimate worry about order of business because it's like, well, now we have heat. Now there's awareness. It's not just like the people in the neighborhoods that we operate in who know. There's people who are aware that there's something going on here so even if the government had no ability to really get to the top of the

structure at the time which they didn't because you have a you know you have a boss and you have layers to it so you can't really if some low-level soldier kills a guy you can't technically tie it back to the boss at the time so that wasn't a threat yet but now it's like the eyeballs are on us. So ironically, this is all happening when a former major bootlegger of the Irish-American faction happens to have his eyes on a son of his becoming president. And that was Joseph Kennedy. So before we get into John F. Kennedy, how well did your grandfather know Joseph Kennedy, his father? They did business together in the bootlegging times. And my grandfather didn't like him because he apparently had the reputation if one of his boats, they were smuggling immigrants and they were smuggling alcohol or whiskey. And if they were getting chased and they needed to lighten the load, they would throw the people overboard, the immigrants overboard before the alcohol.

And my grandfather just hated basically Joe Kennedy because of that. Where were the immigrants coming from? Yeah, wherever. Just wherever. Wherever, but they were slowing down the boats and they would just kick the people off before you know you would think you know a normal person would throw the alcohol over and save the people but joking you know that just spoke to his character so he liked to tell that story and that so he never liked uh joe kenny because i think he thought he was a man of low character yeah i'd say that's pretty low character right there just like dumping people and instead right and uh you

know apparently he was ruthless and you know he didn't he didn't like i mean he once again he did business with him because you know they had you know mutual interests uh but he didn't like him personally he didn't like his character Wow so but either way Joe was ingrained with all the different families from those years like he knew all the guys oh right I mean they were basically you know did in the same business except for you know they had the rights to all the you know the Irish whiskey and you know and the scotch from you know is that usually from Canada when they were doing at the the time, Prohibition?

Right. Okay. Bringing in, yeah, the whiskey and stuff from Ireland, you know, went to Canada and then down in the United States through the Hudson River Valley. And, you know, that's why there's all kinds of Scythians and Italians all up through there. Makes sense. Yeah. So your grandfather didn't like him, but either way, through Joe's connects, he goes to the mob and says, my son would like to be president. How do we make that happen?

So what did they do to get – I feel like a lot of people don't know this history in this show. What did they do to get Kennedy into office? Well, of course, the mob had a lot of influence in a lot of the unions, specifically the Teamsters union with Hoffa. And they basically said, hey, we want to get this guy in. And they went to their membership, and the membership basically helped him get elected. And they felt that they were key. My grandfather and the mafia felt like they did the right thing. They helped him get elected.

And in exchange, I guess the understanding was that they would kind of look the other way. There would be some upside for them helping to get the Kennedys into office. It would take some of that public heat they're seeing with Valachi. Right, off. That was in theory but you know as we know you know especially robert and john you know they went after the mob right they felt like that was one of the biggest scourges in the country at the time and they were going to put an end to it um knowing what their father did who knows if they really knew um you know what the father i have to think they did they had to know right you had to know but i don't think you know we we will never know

for sure but um because he didn't win that election he didn't like they between right you mentioned the unions 100 and then the other thing is like if you if people go look at the map i guess like the electoral map of 1960 of of kennedy nixon he won by razor thin margins in um in in illinois and texas in particularly and like there was the known fact that like the mob was have a dead people vote in chicago and and in Dallas and stuff like that and they put him into office and then like he said they make he makes his younger brother the AG and I mean Bobby Kennedy took this Valachi thing and made that look like a Swedish massage I mean he he put all these guys in front of the camera so you know it was it was nuts and and so the big conspiracy that everyone always thinks about

because clearly there was done is you know kennedy getting murdered in dallas in in november 63 and i've been comfortable with for a long time with the fact that the mafia was involved in that right but how much did i assume you never talked about that with your grandfather but like i don't know if you talk with your dad about it like how much information did did you ever get on that grown up yeah i mean this story my the line my dad used all the time was um it's not a question of of whether there was a second gun it's who has it now um and he he had claimed that when he was in uh he was doing time in terminal island um and the shooter you know the shooter, I don't recall the name. I wish I would have remembered the name the guy told me.

My dad did say that when he was telling me the story, he told me the guy's name. I just don't remember it. But he claimed that this guy said, yeah, he was in the grate under the grassy knoll, took his shots, walked out, got into a car and took off. So, yeah, it's hearsay. I've heard a guy told my dad this, but I had no reason to not believe my dad. And I don't think my dad would have any reason to make up a story.

Yeah, no, I bet he's not making it up. What I'm trying to say is I'm. I mean, that's what he believes. What I'm trying to say is I'm confident. My dad believed that's what happened, and I tend to believe that my dad was telling me, you know, he believed that for a reason, and he had, you know, some inside information. So I believe that's the way it went down.

I know in high school we did this whole thing about, you know, the lone gunman theory and trying to, you know, figure out how they could make that many shots in that small of an area in that amount of time. Not possible. Right. Just the physics alone. There had to be something else, and there. There was something else. So we will never know the truth, right?

But that's the story that i was told devil's advocate even if the guy telling that to your dad was full of shit and just looking for attention either way the evidence around it to show the involvement of to name a few names here the mafia for sure cuban elements and at least some members of the cia in the middle of that is i mean i use the word irrefutable between i mean just starting with jack ruby alone who was a known associate you know the whole bit like oh why is he there to make him shut up you know and the guy had cancer too it was he was on his way out. It was too perfect But how they did this so it's not a matter of like to me did they it's a matter of well All right Maybe it was maybe that guy was telling the truth

Maybe he told your dad the right story and he was down there or his friend was down there and he took credit But there was someone down there and I'll bet they were it wouldn't have been to me It wouldn't have been someone that they could have tied In any sort of like governmental or official capacity way to the CIA it would have had to be some sort of criminal element in the same way that like Lee Harvey Oswald was like a Communist sympathizer or something like that, you know, like they'd have to make that tie up so it only makes sense to me that the likely outcome was that the shooter was either a cuban or someone from the mafia right period i mean it's just easier to believe i mean it

seemed like a hit right it didn't you know it didn't seem like some lone nut just decided to take some pot shots at the president no there's definitely seemed like that was a that was a hit somebody double crossed and there's the story there's where the double cross happened uh and that was the price you paid um and going back to my you know brief is coming nobody whoever got whacked by the mafia didn't know it was coming so um i would put that in that category because they had to know bobby and and jfk that when they decided to go against the mafia that uh yeah they were not just gonna let it happen i mean that wasn't the it's not the nature of that beast i'll bet they did it you're right

so like knowing what we know you're right but i'll bet they didn't because they're they were so separated from reality right especially they were kennedys yeah they're kennedys they're the fucking president and the ag they're like no way they can't touch us all right you know but and they kind of and they didn't do it alone like in their i guess like defense like this wasn't like just the mafia like all right whack them it's like all right we're dealing with so and so at the cia or whatever okay there was a lot of interests that were you know satisfied you know they didn't shed a tear when he when he got shot so yeah that's a wild part of history and there's a reason you know everyone wants them to release those documents and like selfishly like yeah i want that too but if those documents show what we know it's going to show

which is that there were some people involved with the government even if they didn't even if they were rogue right they're involved with the government who were involved that's gonna destroy even though it's 60 years ago right like the cia is gonna they're gonna have riots outside that place like they can't you know what i mean like they can't let they can't let that information out they they need to leave out that point zero one percent chance because once it becomes a hundred they're absolutely but it's just crazy that the Mafia was in the middle and and I think like I might be remembering this wrong but like Kennedy who was a coos hound he was also wasn't he like with Phyllis McGuire or something

and then Sam G and I might be remembering this wrong but like sam g and khan of the chicago boss was also with her at the same times there was like some sort of jealousy there absolutely yeah i mean i don't know the details that story but i've heard that story as well i would totally buy that yeah so there's always some sort of like there's a woman involved somehow always is but this this is during that time so they had all the heat on them because it did still happen. RFK was the AG. He brought these guys in front of the camera and everything. And now we get into the 60s, and this is what you were alluding to a lot earlier in our conversation with the whole Pox Bonanno ending.

So you had mentioned your grandfather got, like, abducted, in air quotes and all that. Right. So what happened? Like, what led up to that the the bananos and the five families are floating along everything's good and then all of a sudden your grandfather has enemies like what what what went down well in short they um you know the the repercussions of the Gallo and the Perfacci, the battle that they were having internally, after Joe Perfacci died, Joe Malioco took over. And he wanted to settle the scores or even the score, however you want to put that you know with gallo and can you explain who joe gallo was to people well joe gala's crazy joe gallo was uh was his name and he was kind of a you know a low-level leader uh that wanted more um and felt like he deserved more and in the 50s he tried, he tried to become the boss of his family,

but then he ended up getting arrested and going to jail for like 10 years. But during the time he was incarcerated, all he did was plan his revenge. And then when he got out, he went after, at that time it was the head of the family, Colombo was head of the, well, became the Colombo, at that time, it was the head of the family was Columbo was head of the, well,

became the Columbo family at that point. You know, and he shot, he took him out, you know, he had him taken out while he was giving a speech. It's, it's in the, you know, well-documented, you know, the Godfrey movie and the offer, they have a whole scene, you know, that, that depicts that, but that was Joey Gallo who, who caused all that strife um you know in you know in the perfacci family you know which had become the colombo family which had become the colombo family right which actually because you mentioned we've talked about magliocco a bunch today because he was your your grandfather's cousin right he was uh joe perfacci's uh cousin and joe you know joe facha being the head of the profaci clan um and you know they became well it might you know my father married my mother who was a profaci you know who was joe profaci's niece you know his brother salvatore was my grandfather, my mother's father.

So, but Malioco took over after, you know, after Joe died. Early 60s. In the early 60s until, you know, and then, you know, then Columbo took over. And, yeah, I should know that history better. So he wasn't related to your grandfather. He was on your mom's side. Oh, on the Focci side, yeah. Got it. Okay.

So he takes over, and there's beef with your grandfather. No, they were still dealing with their internal strife. However, it's not clear to me exactly what happened, but they went to a meeting. Back in the 70s, they made a movie called honor thy father um it was a book written by gay talese and then it was made into a movie but the scene you know shows that they went to a meeting and uh joe malioka went to a meeting with the um you know with the gallows and my dad was you know happened to drive you know was at the

house because you know my mom was living there and at you know joe malioga had a nice house and you know we had come out to new york and we were living there so my mom was there of course my dad was visiting with my mom the story goes that he took joe to this you know joe malioga to this meeting the people they met with said hey bananos are with them you know he even had joe banano's son and that's how he kind of got sucked into that whole thing um and then that's when the kind of led to the you know the falling apart the war um you know because in the factions that were you know that were created um you know it all kind of they they went to war you know and got it so

hold on let me review this so that people can follow yeah i'm confused myself you know that that's it's a there was a lot i mean there's a lot written about that so i don't really know what happened um just going from what i remember what i've read and you know what i was told so right so you you have a good understanding of like what was going on with the war because like i mean like you said you were actually unknowingly witnessing i was there when you were a kid right so but before that if i'm if i'm understanding this profaci dies magliocco becomes boss of the and this is the profaci family that eventually becomes the Columbo family

as we know it today, which is going to happen in a few years at that point, because Columbo is not boss yet but Maglioco wanted to put a hit out on, I think some other bosses or something, and then what you're saying here is that the faction was Maglioco

and say like a crazy joe gallo kind of and then on the other side were like the profite the former profaci loyalists and then your dad's caught in the middle of this because your mom who's a woman not in the mafia but she's from the profaci family it's like there's a question of like allegiances there because he's married into it right and then mixed all in there was also, you know, it was at the time when, you know, Columbo wanted to become a member of, wanted to be on the commission. And he, the story goes that he went to my grandfather and, you know, asked him, you know, how he could, you know, can you get me on the commission, basically. And he said, no, that's not how it works. You know, there's got to be an open spot.

Then we'll fill it, right? Well, the only way to make an open spot is to take somebody out. So Colombo took what my grandfather said, interpreted it. Oh, what he said was, well, if I want to get on the commission I need to make my own spot so I need to hit either you know Lucchese or Carlo Gambino where that's not what my grandfather said and he

always argued you know he always felt really misunderstood because of that point because the rumor got out or you know well Colombo said hey Joe Bonanno said I should you know I should hit you guys to get on the commission oh he played him on the other end right so that you know that caused um the strife between you know lukeze gambino and my and my grandfather um but it

wasn't true right he didn't he didn't say he didn't say that and then right on the heels of that when you know my dad is with you know malioco for this other meeting it's like oh they you know they kind of cemented it and that's when they you know they decided to uh you know the commission said you know called my grandfather in said hey explain yourself and you know there's a long history of those commission meetings turning out to be ambushes and and unless he had you know the um wait at the commission meetings yeah well the commission he wanted to know what this beef was route because you know lucasian gambino says said hey this guy's you know he put a hit out on us and you know they said hey we'll come and

explain yourself and you know my grandfather wanted you know the guy is a rally from from detroit and i think it was Bruno from Philadelphia. You wanted the whole commission there, you know, so he would have an equal and a fair hearing. Well, they would never bring those guys in. They said, oh, no, we'll just handle this among the five families. And he didn't feel like he would get a fair trial. Plus, he was concerned that it was a setup, so he never showed up in front of the commission. Did they ever, was there ever, that we know of,

a hit that was done at a commission meeting? At a commission meeting, no. But he was worried about that happening. He was worried about, well, yeah, it wasn't an official commission meeting. It was the commission was calling him in to explain himself. So it wouldn't have taken place with all the fathers around. It would have been them coming before, well, at that point, it would be the other four fathers,

and two of those being the ones that were supposedly the hit. So he didn't think he'd get a fair shake. So he never showed up. And then they took that as a slap in the face the commission and uh you know that's when they you know went to the basically family members you know in the bonanno family and they you know they caused strife which caused the you know the internal war you know which led to my grandfather saying you know i'm uh you know i want out of this and he you know he proposed the terms you know that, look, I'll just gracefully bow.

I'll go out to Arizona. I'll leave all this if we could just call it quits. And that's in short. I mean, it's much more involved than that. That's skipping ahead. So let's get into the meat and potatoes. Because it's straight out of a movie literally like what went down in the 60s right when this happened so colombo goes to the commission and he he was kind of like a

snake and played the other end and said oh he told me to kill these guys so now they're all pissed at your grandfather your grandfather feels like all right he punched first they're not going to believe me we got a problem this is where this is where the quote-unquote abduction happens right well right and he's also under you know federal indictment at you know at the time what was he under federal indictment for like tax evasion yeah it was yeah some white collar yeah i think it was tax evasion i'm not really you know 100 sure why you know but they they were looking for, and he was subpoenaed, and he was supposed to appear before a judge the next day. And he was abducted outside his lawyer's house. Well, it was on Fifth Avenue, I believe, with his lawyer.

Right. So his lawyer was then like, hey, some guys came and said, Mr. Bernano, we want to see you. Come with us. And they left and so he wasn't seen people thought he was dead because he wasn't seen for two years almost two years right excuse me did you ever find out where he went for those two years well he talks about it once again in his book where you know he went out to arizona he went to el paso he you know he was in new york he was he was all over during time, but he spent most of that time in Tucson.

He didn't leave the country at any point. Not during that time, no. But no one could find him. Well, yeah. I don't know. Maybe when he was in Buffalo, they went to Montreal, I don't know, in Canada. But they didn't go to Sicily or anywhere else during that time. And so he then just shows up one day in court and says, like, I understand you want to speak with me.

And he's back. So this is two years later during that time though it sounds like you mentioned that they went and caused the in like the commission and people around at colombo guys like that they went in and caused internal strife in the family saying like oh your boss is you know the emperor has no clothes because he tried to do this but when my dad left you know when when my grandfather left that's when dad stepped in right not everybody was happy that my dad was you know the consigliere he was number two right there were a couple guys you know gasper di gregorio and others that you know felt that you know this young kid he was 26 years old 25 years old and he's coming in and he's gonna you know he just gets to you know felt that you know this young kid he was 26 years old 25 years old and he's

coming in and he's gonna you know he just gets to you know skip the line and and go to the number two but my grandpa you know trusted him and you know when things got really hairy that's when my grandfather decided to come back because what would happen with malioco uh and you know my dad being with them and you know grandpa felt it was time to uh come back what happened with malioco uh and you know my dad being with them and you know grandpa felt it was time to uh what what happened with malioco that's when he went to this meeting and they you know they were talking about you know they you know whatever their hit was or whatever their beef was and my dad was with malioco so they interpreted that as well it's you know the fachis and the Bananos are together on this and you know got it and they took away power from malioco and someone else like malioco was another one they

basically like retired kind of heart attack you know he died oh he died right and then that's when okay and then you know then Colombo uh took over for a while and then of course then he was shot um right we touched that at least with the crazy joe gallo thing okay we'll we'll get up to that too but your grandfather comes back 66 your dad has been in charge during this time but there's not full support as you laid out because they look at it some nepotism is young he also had been schooled out in California, so he didn't grow up there the entire time. They didn't like that. But he's in charge.

Grandpa comes back. Well, he's the boss. Now there's the quote-unquote bananas war that you were witnessing in your basement where, roughly speaking, half the family was like, yeah, we're loyal to Joe. And half the family was like, we need new blood. And so there was plenty of we need new blood. Right.

And so there was plenty of bloodshed during this time. It was not good. You've made it sound like, and I think your grandfather did too, like wrote about it and spoke about it on 60 Minutes. But like he just wanted, he was kind of like, I'm getting too old for this shit. I'm done. And that was, they just agreed to it. They're like, yeah, can leave new york and retire and we're not going to touch you in short yeah i mean he he he arranged it so he to appease them he said you know you can put your guys in power you know in my family i'm just you know i'm gonna pull out um i won't have you know i have no ties i won't have any pull back here

i'm just gonna go and you know they they agreed to that and he did that did he did he ever like wonder why they agreed to that well you know i don't know i mean i know he has you know he put him in a position uh because he was pretty shrewd like that, where that was in their best interest, and that's why they won't. Now, I don't recall the exact details of that, but it was a way. And I wish I could recall exactly how he couched it, my grandfather. He basically set it up, gave them what they wanted while he got what he wanted it was a win-win and they went for it no your dad that you know he was older but your dad

is a young man at this time who had just been like in charge and he's got to go out with him and retire as well did he i mean he was cool which it's not like it was his call i guess but he was cool with that just like all right i'm gonna leave all this behind um yeah i mean he was he was loyal to my grandfather and he knew that's what my grandfather wanted so you know he was gonna go along with that yeah i'm sure as a young man with his own you know desires and designs on you know on his life maybe he would have you know liked to stay there but you know he got he got ambushed on troutman street in brooklyn yeah what happened there you know they called a meeting you know he showed up for the meeting on his way into the

meeting you know they they started shooting at him and that's really uh that's one of the things that brought grandpa back you know out of um his hiding or his abduction was that yeah once they started shooting at you know my dad he felt he had to get you know back in there and you know try to calm things down also a little tie to the godfather there but your dad lived like the don came back in when sunny got hit right and he's like all right i'm coming back we're out of bed now so that's crazy art imitating life and life imitating art you know however you want to look at it yeah and we we had touched very early on about the parallel where your parents wedding is the basis of the entire

first scene of the godfather because you know your grandfather was such a powerful guy who that was one of the dudes they they modeled vito corleone after in in the movie but also and you've alluded to it your mom was she was the niece of joe profaci who was the the head of the profaci family so her she had grown up around it but she didn't you and i were talking in the car before they hid that from her like she really didn't know much about it? Right. You know, she was raised in a, you know, in a boarding school or a convent. And even when there were articles in the paper, she recalls as a kid, you know, looking at the paper and they were just cut out.

Certain articles just cut out. And, you know, it was, you know, pretty normal. So it wasn't, you know, it's like, show me what this article was. She just, you know, figures a picture or something that, you know, her parents it wasn't you know it's like show me what this article was you just you know figure it was a picture or something that you know her parents didn't want her to see and um you just went on about things because but then when she's an adult she knows who she knows your father's in it yeah i mean yeah she's not uh you know she wasn't completely obtuse but um yeah she wanted no part of it didn't didn't understand it um you know didn't like all the stress that he was under didn't you know didn't like paying the

lawyers all the money they paid the lawyers or her line was well the lawyers kids have new shoes because you know it was kind of tough for her when uh you know when people were incarcerated there's not like there's a um you know a Social Security fund for mobsters, right? No. When they're not earning, when they're not out on the street earning, there's no income, right? No. Yeah, we had uncles, and my grandmother lived there, and my Uncle Greg was really good to my mom and helped out but it wasn't like there was a a central bank sending you know the mafia bank of america sending a monthly stipend to support you know my mom and the kids while dad

was away that's it didn't you know didn't happen like that now if a soldier died in service yeah the don would take you know take care of that family but when you're up in the upper echelon like my dad was no they were if it gets turned off it's turned off that's it right there was no no reserve or no backup plan it was he was out making money or he wasn't and your mom's still alive today too mom's doing well in Arizona yeah so like does she ever I mean at her wedding she's got as you said senators congressmen judges mob bosses all these people tony bennett sing in there the cake that's 12 stories tall and then it becomes the basis of the first scene in the most famous movie ever made like does she ever like reflect on that now like

wow that was wild she doesn't i mean if she does she doesn't talk about it. She was whatever, 19, 20 years old. She was just a kid herself. And back then, the important families in Brooklyn would have those kind of, maybe not as lavish as the wedding my parents had, but they would be big weddings tended by a lot of people. And so it wasn't that abnormal. It was just a little bit bigger than everybody else and she knew you know they were you know the bonanno family you know they were special and you know her uncle was you know a man you know a respected man so they knew they were they were special in some whatever in their their little society but um no i don't think she ever you know reflects about

you know her role in any of you know the movie and all that she was just kind of uh you know she was definitely there and definitely you know a key piece of it and has a great story but um crazy story yeah i don't think she uh you know she sits around waxes about that what is like how did your parents meet though like just running in the same circles when they were families my grandfather salvatore profaci and my grandfather joe bonanno were friends um you know they were buddies they they you know they're both smart guys and they they liked each other right so they would you know families would visit families they were you know close uh you know they're sicilians and um you know my my mom knew

my dad from when she was you know what eight or ten years old and he was a few years older and always had a crush on him and you know the story is that it was an arranged marriage um grandpa denies that everybody you know my dad denied mom denied it and but mom fell in love with dad it was in love with dad at a young age, you know, it was a family friend. And, uh, fortunately for, you know, both of them,

it worked out. Yeah. Um, yeah. That mom, yeah. That mom really, you know,

just fell in love with them and they ended up getting married and the rest of this history. And he didn't die in the war and all this, you know, like things, things turned out. Okay. It could,

it could have gone bad, but like, you know, you, to go back forward with it like you talk about your grandpa coming back and then this war happens and then they just you allude to him having the proper leverage let's say to be able to pull off that deal to go out west but like now you're growing up in Arizona you know when did you start asking questions or wondering like, okay, you know, my family seems to be a little different here. What's the real basis of what we do?

Well, you know, growing up, I kind of had a chip on my shoulder because, you know, dad wasn't around all the time. You know, I would go to the father-son's, you know, games and things with my neighbor's dad, which, you know, I was very appreciative that he took me. But it's still, you know, I'd go with my older brother, you know, everybody else was, you know games and things with my neighbor's dad which you know i was very appreciative that he took me um but it's still you know i'd go with my older brother you know everybody else was you know had their dad there um you know even high school graduation dad was there so i was kind of uh i kind of had a chip on my shoulder kind of ignored it all and just wanted to you know distance myself from it um but as i got older it became harder because um you know people had you know they believe certain things right they just and doesn't matter what the truth is um they know your name they know who your family is and they automatically you know prejudge you and um at some point you know like you realize you can't fight it you got you might as well embrace

it uh and try to make the most out of it and you know that's what that's what happened and it wasn't really until college that i realized you know it's kind of extraordinary because you know you hear about other kids you know upbringings and i would tell stories and they would go wow really wow that really happened and that's when you realize you didn't have guys sleeping in your basement yeah that's that's not the way it was for you and um you know and you then you realize when you start getting older and you see other people's lives and how other people were brought up that you you know and of course you're a little smarter and better read um and you figure you know you figure it out oh yeah this was something special yeah but it still feels like you know it was our normal right yeah so crazy normal but i don't know anything else yeah so but it's it's like you

know it is as we've been saying this whole time it's like a piece of of american history for better or worse like in general and your family was at the ground floor of it hypothetically right and the name the name persists for whatever reason. Yeah, I don't know why. Yeah, I don't know why they never, you know, they've changed, like you said, they've changed the names of the other families, but the Bonanno family has always been one of the, it was one of the five original commissioned families,

and the name still sticks. And you've, I think you said this at some point early on when we were talking about it but you had mentioned your grandfather was against prostitution didn't get like get involved in that business and he was also as were some of the other bosses early on very against narcotics right because he didn't he didn't like anyone not having a clear head like in general so he didn't want to be a part of that business that led to people not having that but the problem is narcotics are a huge money maker so as the years go on you have younger soldiers coming up especially people who are not immigrants you know their first second generation they're looking at this and i'm like

how the are we not getting involved in this business and there's a lot of when when you look at some of the let's say like the people who over the years were investigating your grandfather or things like that and your father they would always say claim like oh no they were absolutely involved in narcotics but your father and grandfather maintained that they were nowhere near it and they they admit that right when they left the banana family and it was no longer theirs they went out to arizona the bananas had broke free and they were crazy into narcotics and everything but is that do you believe them on that that they they legitimately kind of like don corleone in the movie were like no we want no part of this and you're going to get killed if you get involved with it yeah well i don't know if there was any you're gonna get killed and begin bottom

but it wasn't yeah it wasn't something that he tolerated yeah if he knew about it there would be um repercussions now you know dealing in you know dealing some drugs is not you know may not be a capital offense i don't know if they would you know kill them there was there's only certain things you do that you know got you whacked and i don't think you know but less you know the grandpa told you specifically don't do this and you did it anyway um you know but if they just say well we're frowning upon this and then you do it well maybe that's not a capital offense but that's that's not the point the point point was that, yeah, Grandpa maintained the whole time that he was against narcotics and the whole narcotics trade. And I think he saw what would happen with all the money. Because it kind of happened exactly what he always said, that if all this money comes in and it's easy money and narcotics is big money and it's easy money for them that why would they need to follow this code or you know listen to your to your boss and and

you know pay deference to the you know to the family to the uh uh to the father of the family why would you put up with all that stuff when you can go make your own you know quick million um you know selling some heroin and that's exactly what happened all these guys you know started doing their own thing and um it kind of kind of fell apart it's amazing that he was able to be in control for so long and and have the ability to recruit and have a big family for a long time because even from day one a guy like lucky luciana was always involved in that business right so you look at a bunch of these other families there was always elements of it even if there were some bosses who were like oh no we're not really into that they weren't as strong

about as your grandfather was on it but like you know the competitive disadvantage you know recruiting family members when you don't offer that you better be able to make money like crazy hand over fist and gambling and stuff like that i gotta think no well yeah i mean and they were more the the legitimate businesses were just as important right what were their legitimate businesses uh cheese um of course the you know they were they were big into the end of the garment business um you know they had trucking companies, you know, warehousing. So they, you know, he would always, you know, find partners that, you know, knew their business real well that needed, you know, and a lot of people came to him,

right. They knew he was a, you know, well-to-do guy. He had influence, you know, they would have a good idea for a company and they would approach him and you know he definitely wanted to you know be in legitimate businesses because the dream was always to you know to get out and fall back on those so for your grandfather my grandfather yeah he wanted yeah he definitely you know at what you saw that he was going to get out at one point and you wanted to have land holdings and you know i think his real love was his cheese business. I mean, he just had his whole personality changed when he started talking about cheese. And there's a great, the state of Pennsylvania had this whole investigation.

They call it the mozzarella. They cornered the market with the mozzarella. So pretty much anybody who was making a pizza in america in the 70s you know the mafia was getting some of that action for a couple reasons there but yeah right but uh but that the uh if you ever looked that up the state of pennsylvania i think it was like 1983 or so they did a whole uh investigation and you know my grandfather yeah that talks about the whole cheese business and how they you know made people use their cheese and right and it's it's uh yeah that's that's that's a good story it's another tangent so he but

it's interesting to me that he always wanted that as a fallback i wouldn't have expected that from your grandpa because it always it seemed like the way you were explaining that he always wanted that as a fallback i wouldn't have expected that from your grandpa because it always it seemed like the way you were explaining it was he viewed that as the next generation and this is just the life he had to have but either way he's it's interesting that he's still he obviously made a fuck ton of money for those 30 years when things were good and when shit hit the fan he didn't give it up right away he still came back he still fought for it it's kind of like I'm looking at it psychologically and I'm thinking to myself it's like once you're in you do like the action like you you even if he had

always said to himself like oh I want to just be able to go to the legitimate businesses it's like you enjoy a level of power and operating outside the law when you do something like being the boss of a family that it's like once it comes time to give it up it's like oh i'll stay a couple more years oh i can i can do another five and then eventually it turns into a spot where it's like no he literally had to be like all right i need to get out of here it took that to get there is my point right you know and that that is one of the criticisms that people have you know of his book that he doesn't uh you know doesn't ever speak to that side of it right um he's always talking about the structure of the family and how that was all

important to him but yeah you must you know there had to be motivations you know like you said just the way humans are that uh you know you know, you like to be boss. It's good. It's good to be King type of thing. Right. You know? Um, so yeah, I'm sure there was, I, you know, I'm not privy to that. I don't know what was in his mind, but I do know that, uh, he wanted to, you know, he wanted to have legitimate businesses and he wanted to be a legitimate businessman. Um, and he was, there was a lot of, he was. There was a lot of guys that were part of the mafia or whatever you want to call it, part of the family, that were shoemakers and pipe fitters.

But they were guys that understood the tradition. And yeah, they may have needed a favor or something. It was all about connections, really, right? If you know somebody that could help me out and I know somebody that you need something and that could help me out and i know somebody that you need something and he provides that service they'll put them together and that was really the structure that you know that grandfather you know grandpa liked um having you know sometimes yeah they had to go outside the law to do the things but i think he would

have preferred you know if he didn't have to if he could do everything legitimate he probably would have been you know happier with that i think is that what he like he didn't have to. If he could do everything legitimate, he probably would have been happier with that, I think. Is that what he – like when he went out to Arizona because he ended up living another 30-some years, did he – he still had his legitimate businesses, some of them at least, right? Right. But at that time, they were going after my grandfather and my uncle – I mean my dad and my Uncle Joe. They were getting indicted, it seemed like, every week. And then there was that whole commission thing. What whole commission?

The commission trials, right? Where they brought my grandpa. Oh, in the 80s. And that was in the 80s. Right. But when he first goes out there in the 70s, does he still have the cheese business and everything? Yeah. But they were all under indictment all through the 70s

right they were fighting the government and all the money they sold everything to pay the lawyers to fight the government because he did not want to lose that you know and he felt he was in the right that they were coming you know they they were coming after him um well my dad and and my my uncle only because they were his sons right and they were you know he was going to pay any amount of money to you know to defend them and he did i mean they they sold all the land they sold the businesses basically to to fight the government because that's that became his mission fighting the government right he felt that they were the gestapo he would refer to the government as the gestapo and he couldn't believe that they would do the things you know

can't even imagine how we would feel now that the you know the justice department is basically weaponized um and that's what he was afraid of and he would speak to that all the time and and it's weird because i remember hearing that a long, long time ago, and then here we are. Yeah, I think over history, like if you look at it, we didn't have the benefit or they didn't have the benefit, I should say, of 50 years ago having social media and things like that, the internet with ubiquitous information. But you can run through it even in a country like this, which is a great example to the world. There has always been politics is just a piece of it there is corruption built into the system they are going to weaponize some of these things depending on you know which of the two parties is in power you're 100 right

but it's interesting he looks at it that way because what i'm hearing here in that is he was so he was so set in his attitude from his own experience of like for example worst case scenario like mussolini of then viewing everything in the future is like yeah there's pieces of that there's pieces of that here so they must be the bad guys it's like the cops and robbers who are the cops and criminals like who's the cop and who's the criminal you have a different view on it depending on what seat you're sitting in well yeah i mean you know when you have a hammer most everything looks like a nail right so that's that's a saying because it's true yeah so absolutely i would say yeah he did he did uh have a prefixation on the whole fascist thing and any anything that the government did that was a little bit like that yeah he would he would consider that fascist interesting so we've been

talking about it throughout the conversation about the whole book that he wrote in 83 a man of honor and i think now we're like right at that point where we should really dig into that because it became something that it wasn't ever intended to be. And this is actually – this is something that still causes drama today with some guys on the internet, former mobsters, arguing about it, which we can get into. But your grandpa who at this point is – I guess when it came out, he's like 78 years old. He's the oldest school of the oldest school everyone he came up with is dead at this point right lucky luciano's dead al capone's dead all these guys and he decides to write this book called a man of honor in it he doesn't name names

he doesn't mention anyone who's alive now and what's going on he gives some generalized opinions and so he felt he had kept the code of silence omerita with the book but he does talk about some of the process and explains that you know confirms that the world exists did he envision that this would that like just mentioning the structure of everything would be used against the current mafia in court? Did he envision? I don't think so. I mean, he had a lot of foresight, but I don't think there's any way he could have predicted that that's what would happen. I mean, he wanted to tell his story he wanted to you know set the record straight from his point of view um because he felt that you know the whole it really comes back to this boss of bosses thing that he you know he didn't

want to be the boss of bosses and that's contrary you know to what he was all about and he wanted to to get the message out that that wasn't him that wasn't what he was about um so that was really the point of it he waited until he was that old because you know he didn't want to he didn't want to break the code and anybody that he talked about or you know implicated in that book was dead and gone so there was really no violation of any code and um you know he wasn't selling anybody out because that's violation of any code. And, you know, it wasn't selling anybody out because that's, you know, yeah, Omerita is, you know, is keeping quiet, but it's, you know, you don't, you don't narg out your brothers. You don't, you know, you just don't do that.

And he didn't feel like he was doing that because they were all gone. There was no way he could have predicted that, you know, a few years later, Giuliani would, you know, use that as the basis to say, hey, this was a racket. This was the commission. They were colluding, and here's how it worked. Yeah, in his book, he does outline how the structure of it and the function and how it functioned, how it was structured. So he definitely teed it up for him, but there was no intent to do that, and there was no way he could have known. Because the other thing, just for historical timeline perspective for people out there trying to follow it, it's like RICO wasn't used, I don't believe, until that commission trial you talked about in 85 or 86. Right. trial you talked about in 85 or 86 right so that this was invented throughout the 70s into the 80s

by g robert blakey that then allowed for the first time the government to make a case where they could take a lower level of a lower lower level soldier's offense and just use it as reasonable proof let's say that that none of that action could happen without the people all the way up here in essence like the bosses that your grandfather was writing about right so then giuliani sees his book doesn't like your grandpa obviously because he was in the mob and then decides like oh i'm gonna now compel this guy to testify at these trials about what he wrote here and your grandpa wouldn't do it correct yeah he went in front of the judge and he said no he you know i'm taking the fifth they said we're gonna hold you in contempt of court

i asked him again he said no i'm taking the fifth you know they put him in uh for six months six months later judge asked him the same question he gives the same answer happened again after 18 months the judge says this guy's not gonna talk he's costing us too much money to keep him here um you know because they had special details watching him and you know he had health health issues and they you know they basically sent him home and that was it that was that for him right um? You know, for the other guys who got busted on the commission trials. I mean, they were fixing contracts. I mean, and they got caught talking about it.

So, yeah, you can say, oh, well, it's because Joe Bonanno's book, right? Well, he didn't testify. He didn't testify, right? Yeah, the book was there, and it was the basis for the you know for the you know prosecution uh using you know showing that there was racketeering going on that like you said there's no lower level thing could go on because the bosses had to um you know had to approve it and that you know shows that there was a criminal organization there was racketeering going on and um he was successful in uh in that prosecution but those

guys didn't help themselves by uh yeah they were on wires yeah right being yeah being recorded talking you know exactly how they were fixing the uh you know the contracts for the cement uh contracts in new york city so um i don't know i i just uh you know, if somebody thinks he did it on purpose, and people do. I mean, people have been saying that, that he did this on purpose kind of to get back at people. It's not the case. It's absolutely not the case. He wanted to be, he wanted to say his piece from his perspective, and he wanted people to know what really happened. that's why he wrote the book yeah i mean one of the more shocking things that i think probably was part of the reason those claims fly around is because beyond the book he actually did like the 60 minutes interview where you put a face on it you hear the man talk i think it was like a full half hour 40 minute segment or whatever which is available on youtube but just for people right now i wanted to play i have it behind us right there i wanted to play a quick segment of this because he's he's talking about the the idea of it and just putting myself in that time period 1983 this

is where it's still a mystique like at this point at least the godfather's out there were those early like hearings or whatever but people are wondering like well how deep does this stuff go and then you literally have like a piece of history here like an 80 year old man saying i'll tell you all about it or whatever here's how it goes all right so let's see i think i have it on that one part we were talking about earlier let's see if it is maranzano you loved a man you, by the name of Salvatore Maranzano. Yes. Your first hero. That's right.

Was Salvatore Maranzano. Maranzano. Yes. But then you say he was said to be able to snap a man's neck with his fingers. And I say when I read this. That's a metaphorical. Well, it's quite a metaphor. It's quite a metaphor.

He also told you this. Wait, I got gotta pull that back one second this line you like that line but then you say he was said to be able to snap a man's neck with his fingers and i say when i read that that's a metaphorical that's a metaphorical it's quite a metaphor it's quite a metaphor he also told quite a metaphor. He also told you this. Man is the hardest animal to kill. When you aim at a man, your hands shake, your eyes twitch, your heart flutters. But you kill nonetheless. That's what I find a little difficult to understand you gotta make sure fighting for your life to protect your life and nobody has the right to destroy another human being

all you don't do but once you do make sure and make sure that you protect yourself with anything. So that I can fully understand what your dad's saying. Oh, your dad's in this, right? Yeah. There comes a point in the affairs of men where you try to control by force. And if that does not succeed, then you have to control by being a brute.

By? Being a brute. And if possible, Maranzano told you, if possible, always touch the body with your gun to make sure the man is dead. Once you fight to survive and to protect your life, make sure that you succeed. But Marilyn Monroe himself.

That's an incredible line. So, yeah, I would recommend people watch that. The reason I like playing that one is not just because it's kind of funny, like when he is saying the full words with the great accent and everything, but it's also like, you know, someone's sitting at home on a Sunday night listening to this guy be like, saying the full words with the great accent and everything but it's also like you know people are someone sitting at home on a sunday night like listening to this guy be like yeah you know sometimes it comes to that you know and you gotta like swallow that and then i can just imagine

these mobsters who are going on trial like oh this is this is going to sound great at trial this doesn't help our cause no sure no so there's there is a little bit of animosity there but again like he didn't do this isn't being recorded when Rico was a known thing yet. And then once it did come up, he wouldn't testify about it. So hypothetically, he was, I guess, like in their world, a stand-up guy in that way still. Absolutely. I mean that's – and that's the way he saw it. That's the way I see it.

That, yeah, he definitely wrote the book. But, you know, he did not testify. He did not help, you know, the government's case with his testimony at all. I mean, he went to jail for it for 18 months. Yeah. As an old man, too. As an old man, yeah. And he had never been, they had never got him for anything in his life.

Right. He had been arrested and he had been incarcerated after arrest, but was never convicted until that. And that wasn't even a conviction. Right, that was contempt of court. That's pretty wild that he lived to like 97, invented the commission, and never did a day in convicted jail. Right, prison, right.

That's nuts. Different world, I guess. But when that trial went down in New York, wasn't it that like Giuliani, he also like refused to meet with him because Giuliani was like coming out to sit with him as well? He had a heart attack. Your grandfather did. My grandfather. And they didn't feel like it was safe for him to travel. So they did the hearings in the federal courthouse in Tucson.

And that's where he officially said I plead the fifth. Right. So it was all in court. Got it. It's just crazy to me how fast that happened. Because they went all these years, 50, 60 years, unabated, and then suddenly government has this one law and they can tie it all together and they literally did i mean they decapitated the the crazy power of the mafia

and effectively like 15 years or so it was a crippling crippling blow absolutely the rico the rico laws worked yeah and before that though in 70s, after you guys were gone, that was when Operation Donnie Brasco happened. Right. Which was, again, it's not your grandfather's family anymore, but it was in the Bonanno family. Bonanno family, right, with the capital F, right? Exactly. Did he ever comment on that, like have an opinion on that? Or did your dad have any opinion on like what went down there well you know i think it was a you know somewhat of a source of embarrassment right because uh it was so widely known and you know the movie and everybody knows donnie brasco and right and knows that the family that they that he quote fooled was

the banano family so um but not having you know not having involved their you know personal involvement either my grandfather or my dad um no they pretty much left that alone uh they weren't happy about it for sure but uh they also both you know didn't take responsibility for it because they were yeah yeah they were not involved at that point right so but they also when they made this deal to go out there did they ever like did your dad ever set foot in new york again oh yeah you know and it's not about none of not being able to go back there and and you know do you know family things or you know regular things it was just didn't get involved in you know and the activities of the of the mob anymore and they didn't right they did their own things you know in new york i mean in california and in

arizona but nothing involved with anything in arizona after the 60s interesting okay so because we think of it as so like these guys are so black and white about stuff it's like you go into retirement it's like no you literally like can't come in the neighborhood again because that'll threaten our territory but i guess it wasn't quite like that they were able to do it right just didn't get involved in you know but they knew they had you know legitimate business dealings and other things they had to do in new york so yeah you can go freely come and go freely as you want you just you know wasn't going to get involved in anything right i actually when I was doing I don't know if I said this on camera but you and I have been talking before about

how when I was in high school I had the right I was assigned to like a you know the term paper like the research paper junior year and I had to write it on the Sicilian mafia like over there which then you know the research ties in so like what happened here and i went down that whole rabbit hole and this is like somewhat earlier days of youtube so there were all these like re-uploaded documentaries at the time many of which are still there some of them are but a lot of them aren't and i would just sit there like in my free periods and watch them and they were all produced in like probably the late 90s kind of deal and your dad was he was in all of them like he was the one guy like formerly like they'd have some special ones

where there'd be like a former guy who ratted in court or something sometimes they'd hide his face and he'd be interviewed for one of these episodes and like these series on like a e or whatever but your dad was like the one guy who's like next to all the reporters where they're cutting back to him all the time giving opinions on this stuff did they did he ever get any like even though it's years later did he get any from them for like talking on these documentaries about this stuff no because um you know he wasn't naming names he wasn't uh he wasn't giving anything away and you know they all knew that you know that that was dad's kind of profession um was to make these movies and he was he was on discovery and 60 minutes he was doing

all those things because he was trying to get books and movies made which he did you know they had a you know he ended up getting a Showtime series made. It's kind of a blend between his story and Grandpa's story. They had a mini book. My mom's book had a book written and then a movie made about that. Oh, your mom wrote a book too? My mom wrote a book, yeah, Mafia Marriage. Really?

It became a movie. And, yeah, they had some success with those things. But over the years, yeah, he wrote a couple books. And, in fact, he went on to write a book with Joe Pistone, who was Donnie Brasco. Oh, yeah. Right. What was the name of that book? It's called The Good Guys.

It's an incredible story about when the Russian mob came into Brooklyn in the 70s. And each chapter alternates between the FBI telling the story and the mob. Basically, my dad telling from the mob's perspective and Joe Pistone telling the story from the fbi perspective but they're both looking at the same thing um i think it's a made for you know a six-part series and netflix or one of those movies the way the book reads it's just a great read it's a great story um and i've been working with you know we had a screenplay written from the book and we were trying to get it sold but yeah i'm in on that one that's so far yeah so far no you know nobody has uh you know has written a big check and said yeah we're gonna make this movie but it's not over yet i think um i think if if somebody who

was interested in this genre and there are a lot of people interested in this genre reads that book i mean i it's to me it's a no-brainer it's it's absolutely uh it's absolutely a fantastic story and just the way they did it and the fact they have the donnie brasco i mean joe pistone and bill bonanno who collaborated to write this to me is is fantastic in and of itself given the history that's full circle right right yeah so um so yeah we're still working on that and uh you know i think joe pistone and leo rossi um have their own webs uh podcast that they're you know they're working this and i don't think they talk about a lot of things but uh you know i'm trying to get the uh trying to do what i can to you know spark some interest in uh and taking that that other project further

yeah so i i had mentioned to you earlier quickly that one guy i've known for a lot of years is this dude jules bonavolanta who before people even start asking me i talk to him he does not do podcasts like he's of that like he will not great guy the best guy but like he literally doesn't do them he turns down all these other people inside i respect that but he was the guy who was a part of that squad that took down the mafia over those 20 years and joe pastone was his buddy and jules was the handler of joe pastone at the fbi so he's talked about like when i would ask him about the modern day mafia mafia, he's like, I mean, you know, it's the same shit, gambling, prostitution, drugs, whatever. He said the real – he's like, we have a handle on the Italian-American mafia at this point.

We kind of know what we're dealing with there in the modern day. The Russians, on the other hand, he said, those motherfuckers are crazy. Like they chop bodies up and stick it in an in an ice box and in like a in like a collage for people one of the scenes in this book is they you know they crush a guy with a hydraulic jack in a you know in a auto mechanic shop nice yeah and i can just envision that and uh talk about crazy yeah then the mob wouldn't have ever done anything like that but the russians didn't uh didn't hold back what kind of dealings did your dad have with them like how well did he know where they were integrated what they were

doing and you know well i think you know they were they were they came into brooklyn right and it was you know there was some turf battles like what years this was in the 70s um so after your dad so after right after you know so he witnessed all this but he wasn't you know wasn't involved it wasn't you know personal impact you know on him but he he witnessed you know the transition you know the old neighborhoods that's what really bothered him was these old neighborhoods that were solidly sustained and italian you know had basically become you know russian and that's it's interesting too, like geopolitically, because this is a time when the Soviet Union is still going strong and everything.

There's a lot of people think about the Russian mafia just going off the charts right after the Soviet Union fell. But they were already, it's not like they weren't, they didn't exist before, and they were already funneling some power in New York City, America in the in the 70s that's pretty wild i don't i don't know much about that at all so i think that's a story people would love to see i agree yeah like have you ever seen eastern promises that movie with vigo mortensen where it's in london and it's the russian mob no but i'm gonna check it out yeah you got it's wild shit like these guys are crazy what they do.

It's like there's always going to be something worse. Like when you think you see the criminal element that it's like, oh, we got to get a handle on this. Someone comes in and they're always like, oh. You know, even like you look at Al Qaeda. They saw ISIS and they're like, yo, listen, listen. We're not like that. Exactly. I mean, yeah, you're not like that. Exactly. I mean, yeah, you can see the parallels.

I won't say exactly the same, but yeah. No, no. But yeah, I could see the parallels. Absolutely. Yeah. So I guess, like, when did that book with Pistone happen? In the 90s? Yeah.

I can't believe that's never been sold. Yeah. That blows my mind. Yeah, the book did all right. But it's just been us trying to make something happen, and it hasn't happened yet. It's not over. So you might still see that on a big screen or on a miniseries somewhere before it's over. Well, you guys are also all busy people.

None of you grew up in the mafia. Like, you know, your brother's a pediatrician. Right. He's a doctor. You're into logistics. I don't know how to describe it, right? How would you describe your business? Telecom project management is what I do.

So, yeah, it's what we call now a side hustle for sure. Yeah, and these are the kinds of things you've got to be pounding the table all the time about to get it through so it's tough and you know and i met you know a few years about um seven or eight years ago i was you know really put an effort together we created an llc and we're pitching it to people and there's just a lot of uh not so upstanding characters involved in the whole you know ho whole Hollywood scene and getting a movie made. Just all these people that, hey, you just give me $10,000 and I'll turn this into $100,000 for you. It's like, no, why don't you make the $100,000 and then we'll see. I'll pay you $10,000 out of the $100,000 that you made.

How about that? You can never get that deal. There was always, well, just give me this, give me that. Well, no, we have the story. That's what we have the story that's what we have right uh we have the rights of the story and and we need you to you know produce it and make it into a movie and get the financing and was never able to find uh you know that benefactor to do that well now that the business is also it's still the same in those elements for sure but there is somewhat more of an ability from what i hear now to if you

can get your hands on like a great documentary team or something like that to that effect i'm not even talking about a feature film right now i'm talking about like if you just did the documentary to start you can make that project which is a risk right putting money into that and then if it's good netflix hulu these different places will start being like oh fuck yeah like let's bid for that so that we got to figure that out right because that that could easily i could see it starting as like a great you know six-part miniseries documentary well that's someone making the movie with all this happening in the the podcast sphere whatever you want to call this um you know it seems like the this genre is blowing up for lack of a better term

and you know that's what made me think you know maybe this is something we could crowdsource right and fund it that way because there seemed to there seems to be a lot of people interested in that story um and it might you know it's just something that I had toyed with in my mind. I've never actually started a Kickstarter or anything like that, but definitely have thought about, I wonder if there'd be enough people that would... But then again, I don't know how that world works, so I need to educate myself a lot more.

Yeah, I also think like your family story, like the Bonanno story is one that isn't, you know, like if you look at the Lucky Lucianos and stuff like that, there's a lot of content in different verticals that involve him or even Al Capone, who was kind of like his own kind of thing. But, you know, the Bonanno story is so unique

and it also has so many ties to the Godfather and it's got a full arc from immigrant all the way through, you know, retiring out west and the book and Rico and everything. It's that outside like the Russian angle we were just talking about. That, too, I think kind of needs its own content for people to really see it because, you know it's it's a great it's it's a very very compelling story right well you know it has been told though i mean in the 70s there was the honor thy father movie which was you know pretty successful you know that told the story about you know the wars in the 60s and everything and then and then my dad had this showtime miniseries um that you that told the story as well. So it's not that it hasn't been done before, and it's not that it can't be updated and

monetized. I'm all for that. That's what I'm saying. Because it wasn't done during any of the golden eras of premium long-form content like we have now. It's all different now. And this kind of platform is made for that, to me. It's like everything's coming together. I you know to put some of those pieces together

yeah i mean you remember they did like a movie i think it was literally called goddy in like 96 or whatever it was excuse me oh you good yeah it was it was terrible you know they did like a regular kind of lower budget movie with c and d list actors but like today they did try to do it through his son again and that got all fucked up but like how do you not make a feature series on that you know what i mean like a 12 part series or something hey everybody listen to this guy he's on to something i'm absolutely i'm on board with that for sure i agree with with you wholeheartedly. And I'm hoping that's where all this leads. Yeah, yeah. So the other thing that I referred to at one point and said we'd come back to that I'm less familiar with,

but maybe you can educate me on exactly what's going on, is the guy, Michael Francis, who's an ex-member of the mafia. He was a Kappa regime for... Was he? He wasn't Bonanno, was he? No. No, he was... I think he was Gambino family, but I can't tell you for sure. I want to say...

I'll look it up in a minute. But he was a Kappa regime. His father was in it. And he ended up getting caught, turned turned government witness did 10 years in prison found god and it's a content creator now like for a while now and he has talked about how your grandfather like he says oh the guy was a legend and all this stuff helped build this whole thing runs through the history of it but he said like he's one of the guys who's spoken out like why the fuck did he write this book and it was a huge mistake and he ruined his legacy and all that

is that about what it is yeah i mean that's that's that's a pretty good encapsulation of what has happened recently um and yeah he does have um know, he speaks about my grandfather in high regard up until the point, uh, where he wrote, you know, where he wrote the book and he feels like he, you know, he violated the code of Omerta by writing that book. And like I mentioned before, my grandfather doesn't see it that way. I don't see it that way. I don't, you know, I know my dad didn't see it that way either. Uh, he felt like he was telling his story.

He was clarifying some things that historically were attached to him that were inaccurate. And to me, looking at the book in 2022 or 2021, whatever, in modern times, it's not fair to judge it from where the life was in the 80s, right? But we're doing it anyway, and here we are, because it did happen. That's a fact, right? It did happen. Giuliana used that book, and that book outlined the structure, and it gave Giuliana the idea to put it all together under RICO,

and it definitely worked i mean for the government so you i can't deny that that is what happened it's it's when you talk about the intent or you say well you know he wrote this book to get back at people no he didn't write this book to get back at anybody he wasn't trying to throw anybody under the bus he wanted to be say his piece and be clarified you know where he stood on these you know things historically that uh were assigned to him or attributed to him that weren't true and that's why he wrote the book that was the motivation of the book but you can't deny what has happened i just don't understand i mean as an outsider looking in on this

i don't really get how you can make those types of bombastic claims about something that was later used against somebody because a new law was invented when in fact the guy saying that and perhaps like even when sammy the bull has made some similar comments or along the same lines about your grandfather it's like but you literally you know not even blaming you but you literally were a government witness you know what i mean like you you broke the ultimate right quote unquote code of it hello pot this is the kettle calling type of thing yeah uh for sure um and you know maybe that's you know that's just some way that they can you know defer from what you know from their background and say hey well like this guy is you know but what about this guy he was worse he wrote a book we never wrote a book well i i don't know i would love the opportunity to sit down and and and go over it with them and see uh because they they sounds like you know and

i say they i'm talking about sammy the Bull and French Hazy and some of these other guys, seem to be pretty adamant that Grandpa's book was the tell-all book that brought them down. Well, that's not exactly the case. It was Rico. Right. It was Rico. It helped them make the case, but it was Rico's the law that broke the camels back here. Right. But yeah, it was the rico's the law that the law that broke the camels back here right but yeah it was the intent right the intent what you know what happened happened we can't deny what happened

but the intent of writing that book wasn't to throw anybody under the bus or you know it was to you know clarify his his his view of it yeah and i and like, there was at least knowledge of it in pop culture through, even if it was, like, off and romanticized in some ways. But, you know, you had The Godfather. And you had Godfather 2. I mean, this was 72 and 74 most famous movies ever made. And it at least, even if it was different, it showed the ideas. It showed the structure like people were aware of this you know what i mean and to say nothing of the government had been spying on

this for a long time so they really knew what it was it's like to me it seems like rico was just kind of inevitable you know it was gonna happen at some point or another so yeah and then you know the writing of the book definitely you know helped in that right can't deny can't deny like i said what what actually transpired it's it's the motivations for those that that's where i have the problem with what they're saying they make it sound like he did it you know as vengeance type of thing where that was not what that was all about did your grandfather i assume he watched the godfather at some point did he yeah i mean it was it was a huge movie in in the 70s and um you know and i'm

sure i'm sure he did i never you know never got his take on it or what he thought about it um you know i thought my my dad definitely um liked parts of it and you know used parts of it as as i don't know as a model for you know the movies that he made because that you know that became the standard uh and i know growing up and on our bookshelf we had the the script of the god the the script of the movie um that was given to my dad and and they wanted him to make notes, and it sat on our shelf. I wish I still had it today. Wait, wait, wait.

They gave, the producers of the movie gave the script to your dad? To my dad, right, to have him basically look it over for legitimacy. And he had his notes in the margins, and I remember it sat on the shelf there for years. Because we had a big bookshelf in our house, and I know Dad would show people, oh, this is the manuscript from the screenplay. Did he tell you who brought that to him? Was it like Bob Evans? I don't know who, no.

I don't know. But I do know that Mario Puzo grew up in the neighborhood. And I know my dad had relation with him of some sort, right? Knew him, maybe not friends, but acquaintances anyway. Wow. Yeah, and that series, The Offer, which I still haven't watched, which I have to watch. You saw that, you said, right?

It's pretty good? It's really good it's really good yeah yeah i mean the the backstory behind it i want to see like how much they got into because whenever i would bring that up to people they'd be like what are you talking about i'm like none of this happened without the mob like given the okay to do a lot of it right and they do talk they do a good job in that in that offer series uh talking about that and i like the series it's just that um the only thing i didn't like about it was that in every situation everybody took the absolutely high road you know and what do you mean um you know there's situations like you know one situation

where you know one of the one of the actors you know inappropriately said something or touched one of the one of the female actors and then the next scene, they were supposed to stage a fight, but they did it for real. They beat him up. And so, in those kind of things, you know, I thought it was real good. And, you know, they did the right thing, right? The guy inappropriately touched the woman, and, you know, he got his comeuppance

in the very next scene. Or when, you know, at his comeuppance in the very you know the very next scene um or when you know at the end i don't want to give away the ending but uh the guy um you know he's got this secretary that's been loyal to him you know the whole time uh through everything and he sets her up in a business at the end and maybe those things really did happen it just seems like but in every situation always, everybody did the right thing. And it just seems like, I don't know, is Hollywood really worked that way? I don't know. I don't think so.

Right. But it made for a good story and it was told, it was done well. Well, they got to make themselves look okay. Right. And they all looked great. Like I said, they all took the high road in every situation. I don't know if this was in there because I haven't seen it, but this is a firsthand story of someone that I knew through someone way older than me.

They were friends with him, but a guy who is very high up in, let's say, the production of Hollywood over the years and he's retired now but he was intimately involved with that whole build up and producing the movie and all that he wasn't a producer on the movie but he was involved with some of the behind the scenes business of getting it done he said that there were a couple gentlemen

who would show up once a week on the set and a designated person would go hand them a little manila envelope and nod their head and that was it and they do show that in the okay they do they do represent that well glad they put that in there absolutely very historically accurate absolutely because there was another story that I don't know if they have this in there but Carlo they were filming the scene in on the streets in New York of Vito Corleone the attempted murder on him and this was in Little Italy where they're filming it and at the same

time this was I believe right after Joe Gallo did the hit on Colombo in I think that was in columbus square and around the corner of from the from the film shoot they were doing of vito corleone carlo gambino was sitting there at the at the coffee shop just sipping his coffee and there was like the understanding that he had okayed it that this scene would happen i don't know they that one is like that's been reported that's not like urban legend like a guy said it or something but that's like the whole art imitating life with that is very it's very very unique to me like how that movie got made and how it almost never happened but then it became what it became you know yeah i mean it's and it's it's the, you know, whatever you call it, it's the one, right? Everybody refers to and loves and, you know, people can quote almost seems like every line in that movie. Yeah.

So. Yeah. And did your dad, like, have an opinion on Goodfellas or something like that that was, like, a little more just, like, telling a historical story, so to speak? Yeah, you know, any of those other movies, he you know he wasn't he wasn't a big fan um you know because he would he knew you know i think because he knew the true stories and he knew where they were uh you know what they were trying to say and what they were based on so he just watched those things differently than the rest of us i think um i don't think he found much entertainment in them but as far as you know you know he was definitely he was into making movies and he wanted to get the story and he

wanted to do that so i think he appreciated that they were you know moving the genre along right and became like the biggest thing i mean when you think of all-time movies some of them right in that wheelhouse pop in your mind but people are just so fascinated by it you know so it's like i wouldn't want to be in it but it's interesting to look at it like there's some sort of element there that people can't wrap their minds around but did your you know because your grandfather was was from castellamare del gofo and everything and obviously when you mentioned he was there in 57 for example when the appalachian medium went down in america but like did your dad and your family go back at all to to sicily

well my dad and mom you know they went also on their their wedding their honeymoon oh cool you know they went they went around sicily and italy and um and you know i think he went back you know a couple times but not any you know anything significant or any long periods of time now. And then, you know, I think we've all, my brothers and sisters and cousins, you know, a lot of us have gone, you know, on vacations. Like I went on my honeymoon, you know, I did a bike tour of Sicily. It was absolutely incredible. We had a great time. Actually, my daughter's name is Alia, and that was named after a city that we rode to the top of and got to the top of this mountain, and it was this beautiful city. And I said to my new wife at that time, if we ever have a daughter, we should name her Alia. Oh, wow, that's cool.

And she found out she was pregnant she was uh it was alia that's awesome it's i always tell people i spent i was there a couple different times and spent the second time some extended time there sicily is it's one of the most beautiful places on earth because it has every across the island you have every single like type of terrain represented you have the coastal beautiful beach towns you have the rolling mountainous hill towns you have the coal towns you have the the ancient ruin towns you have even the the volcano on the island is it mount is that mount atna mount atna yeah right so you even have like snow right there you have everything it's amazing it's it's an unbelievable place but it's just it's also like a tragic place just

because they've never had stability there it's always been conquered which is what leads to things like the mafia right and all that for sure i you know i loved it and i thought it was tremendous uh the people uh but then again they you know they treated they treated us with deference um oh you when you went there due to my grandfather right yeah they you know the whole town came out when i when i went there and really welcomed us absolutely they you know they knew we were coming and when we got there we had a nice reception and it was definitely you know felt like you know i think mentioned to you, it felt like a rock star when we were there. Now, how does that work?

Does your dad make a phone call before you go? Absolutely. Well, I mean, they had to make reservations at the hotel because I wanted to stay at the, you know, there was an inn right there at the port. And, you know, they wanted me and my new wife to stay at the same place that they had you know back in 56 so um yeah definitely they made a call and um they rolled out the red carpet and i loved it that's pretty sick i could get used to living like that right yeah that's amazing like two generations later and everything too they're doing that what an experience but the the only other thing that i have not brought up today that i gotta get your thoughts on is the

other main like most respected mafia art ever created in the sopranos which just changed tv how because that's that's more that's the modern mafia that's a take on what it's like today after rico after all this stuff like in your dad's opinion or i guess your grandfather kind of died like right after it came out but like in your dad's opinion how how accurate was that show it was pretty accurate i mean they came to dad and got him you know he consulted on a couple of the episodes. Oh, really? And the wardrobes, absolutely. I think they nailed it. I mean, all those guys dressed just like the guys dressed.

I was really impressed with the wardrobe. And then some of the stories, like there's one episode where a kid's wearing a baseball hat in a restaurant and they make him take the baseball baseball hat i've been in many restaurant with my dad and you know they didn't not only did that they not wear hats in a restaurant nobody else did and they didn't they didn't let it happen or there's another uh episode where i think um the daughter's boyfriend wants to pick up a tab and oh yeah yeah and that happened too you didn't you know when my dad was at a table they had a he's picking up the tab and even though people try to be nice it was an insult to a man you know to one of those guys to pick up a tab right whether you you know you

can have great intentions but just not something you did and you know i saw people get reprimanded for trying to you know reach for a get rep reprimanded for trying to you know reach for a check when no it's not your place it's funny so those things were absolutely accurate the first time with like a really serious girlfriend in college when i went out to dinner with her parents that you know they weren't they were doctors they weren't even in the mob or anything but like her dad was italian and i was always a guy like i you know i like to do respectful things for people when i can or whatever but that was one thing like when we would go somewhere even if it was like a tab i could totally afford i'm like oh yeah i can't do

that i'm gonna get the kicked out right they took it as an insult right yeah and you're right that's not mafia that's that's the sicilian italian yeah that's the way those guys are for sure 100 yeah so i think um you know i never watched the the sopranos until maybe five or six years ago really it was yeah i just really never was interested just thought i was another you know mob thing and then but everybody kept talking about it and then uh you know when netflix came and whatever network is HBO, whatever, you could just watch, stream it. And I got into it and I loved it. Yeah, it's incredible.

The son, the kid, I forget his name, but a lot of those... AJ? AJ, yeah. A lot of those situations he was in, I could relate because that was kind of my early teenage years, teenage years when dad was around and some of these things.

So I think they did a real good job with that. Like figuring out, you're saying, what your family business is. Right, right, right. The discovery and realization of what was going on. And then the way he treated his daughter as the princess. My dad definitely, there was no equal there she he had a favorite and it was clear it was my my sister right yeah that's funny nobody ever doubted that and you could see that in the soprano i there were some parallels and i think they did a good job with it so yeah and

without going into names though like obviously you were never around this life or in it but do you because you're literally a banana like in the face as well do you are there is there any way that there's some guys who are in it today that you like know or that know you or like when you're in town go to dinner with you and want a good story or vice versa that kind of thing well uh yes i mean recently you know a lot of them are you know in their night you know i've been passed away but there are still um some made guys that are still around that uh you know treat us great they're you know they might as well be blood relatives that's how close you know they are and you know they they they treat me great they treat my brothers and sisters great um they're you know their family

for sure um so yes to answer that question there are still there are still some guys around that you know that are made guys i feel like you know the best restaurant in every city in this country i wish i just say that i get i get a feeling you might probably yeah there's a few questions you know a few calls i could probably find it right but yeah there are you know some some benefits for sure i remember one time not too long ago i had a business trip with a buddy and we were in brooklyn and um he wanted to go to peter luger's and you know uh we went there it was just packed you know long wait and you know called one of my dad's buddies and you know he showed up and

they got us right in got us a table i mean it's like the seas parted as soon as they saw as soon as they saw realized who it was right he said who i was and boom we got a table and apparently that's a big thing in brooklyn to have a you know walk in and get a table at peter luger's but we enjoyed it to this day well listen i really appreciate you changing around your schedule and stopping through town because you live out in arizona we happened to catch you while you were somewhere else on the east coast so this was great and it was also like actually we were moving through history and i haven't done this in a while on the mob so i was nerding out and i really really appreciate getting the chance to do it with you thanks for having me and i hope we can uh continue

this and in a mutual beneficial way. Absolutely. And where you're going to be doing a site for the family, right? Is that going to be like its own website? Yeah. Well, right now it's just, you know, to sell some merchandise because, you know, I've seen some other, the other guys are making, it's like, why are they doing this? And they're all, well, they're making that much selling merchandise so um yeah i mean i want to over time make this a you know a site that you know we'll have some information for people and you know we could go over different you know different

topics but for now it's basically a you know an e-commerce site um it's called banano banano family.org easy enough yeah when when the internet first you know well not when it first came up but when it started getting popular my dad you know always wanted to get that url banana family.org but you know back then.org was only for you know non-profit organizations well now you can use it you know for for anything so so that's why i picked that um you know that url because you know dad used to always joke oh the organization you know banana family.org it was he always got a chuckle out of that so we're gonna make a go of it all right cool well when you start putting some stuff on there i think i think that would also help with

awareness for getting people interested in doing like feature documentaries and stuff if they're buying a t-shirt with the esquire picture your grandfather on it that that definitely has some pop culture. Yeah, it's a start, and we'll see where it goes from there. Cool. Well, thank you again so much, and I hope everyone else enjoyed this as much as I did. It was great.

Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace.