Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - NYC COP Takes Down Satanic Cult | Mike Codella

Episode Date: July 2, 2023

NYC COP Takes Down Satanic Cult | Mike Codella

When his drugs, there's money, and when cops are involved, it's very high, very likely that it's going to entice cops into being corrupt. So they basically put, like Mike Dowd. Mike, Mike Dowd. Yeah, I've had him on, I had him on my show a couple times. Yeah, he was, yeah, terrible. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and we're going to do an interview with Mike Cadella. he was a i'm going to say new york police officer but i'm going to let him correct me and tell me exactly you know uh who he worked for um he runs a he's retired now he runs a youtube channel

the name of the channel is up against the wall with uh i don't know if it's with uh mike kadella but i'll put the link in the description and he's uh he's a fascinating guy and i've actually watched a i watched a video on him and about the son of sam and i want to So we're going to do this, do the interview. So check this out. And nice to see, by the way, Matt. Oh, yeah. We talked before.

So, and I was on your, you know, I did your channel like two weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for that. Yeah. So, so you were, you were, you were born in Brooklyn. And the neighborhood was kind of a mixture of, yeah, I've heard, I've heard parts of the story.

but yeah yeah so i was born in brooklyn um the neighborhood was a mixture of civil service guys and um construction guys and a lot of uh mob guys basically i mean like a lot of brooklyn um social clubs on the corner and and wise guys driving their beautiful cars and and you know some guys got enticed by that and other guys you know some kids get enticed by that and some don't and um you know you go one way to the other basically yeah it makes me It makes me, I mean, when you had described it or describing now, it just makes me think of, you know, Goodfellas and, and, you know, a Bronx tale. And, you know, they're driving around on Cadillacs. And you've got guys who are, you know, driving buses, guys who are police officers, guys that, you know, mixed in with these, you know, with wise guys. And that's, that's, and so at what point did you decide that you wanted to be a police officer? Or did you always want to be a police officer? No, I actually didn't always want to be. I mean, I didn't have, my own man was a cop.

So I didn't have anything against cops, you know, by any means. But it wasn't something that really enticed me or something I aspired to do, you know. I was just knocking around, to be honest. Just thinking, you know, thinking things were going to figure themselves out. I hung out with some wild guys, guys whose fathers were connected and that kind of stuff. And I got involved with some shit that could have got me really jammed up, with the mob and with the police. And I actually was able to, you know, I guess escape by the skin of my teeth and not get jammed up, not getting trouble, not get shot.

And I decided I just happened to take the cop test somewhere along the line. And when they called me, it was nothing really going on. And I just grabbed the job, you know. Your father wasn't, he didn't push you to do that or? No, I mean, he wanted me to take a lot of the civil service exams, firemen, cops. you know, whatever, a court officer or, you know, some of my neighbors were construction guys. I worked with them while a lot of the summers. He just wanted me to stay on a straight and narrow path.

He wasn't looking for me to become a cop, you know, but like I said, when I took the test, and they did call, I wasn't doing anything special. And then once I got called, I really wanted to, like, put my head down and try to be like a, you know, like a good cop. So, I mean, once you started with, once you. you'd been doing it for a year or two, I mean, were you thinking you wanted to just stay like a regular kind of beat cop? Or did you aspire like, hey, I want to be a detective, I want to be a homicide, like. Well, what happened? I went to Coney Island first and in uniform

like most guys. And when I say like most guys, like most guys, going to uniform first. And and it wasn't as active as I wanted it as I was looking for. Although Coney Island could get crazy because, of course, I didn't work in a nice area of Coney Island. I didn't work. on the boardwalk. I didn't work where the rides were. You know, that's not what Coney Island is to most cops. So Coney Island is a gritty, tough neighborhood filled with projects. And I was a housing cop initially and worked the projects. And, you know, it's a low-income neighborhood, tough neighborhood. So that's what Coney Island is to most people, not, like I said, not the amusement park area. But it wasn't busy enough. And then I ended up going down to Alphabet City, lower Manhattan,

lower east side. Okay. I mean, is there, did they're coming, I mean, what, eventually after a few years, you decided you wanted, you wanted to be a detective or? So the way it worked out was, I had a guy I knew from the police academy. We both grew up in pretty much the same neighborhood, not far from each other. And we became friends in the police academy. And then he went to Alphabet City right out of the academy, and I went to Coney Allen. after just a short time he ended up in Coney Island and we worked a little bit together and then the job just arbitrarily transferred him back to Alphabet City

and we'd keep in touch over the front and he was like Mike you gotta come out here you got to see this neighborhood it's out of control we'll get to work together we'll make a million callers and he was right it was out of control man

you see I remember driving to the getting a ride to the police academy and sometimes my friend's father was actually driving us to the police academy. He was a cop and he would drop us off. And he would take the shortcut through Alphabet City. And you see lines of people, dozens of people, 20, 30 people on lines waiting to cop their heroin in the morning. It was like something you cannot imagine standing in line.

Some people would be nodding out. Other people would be looking like businessman wearing a suit and tie. And I learned that that's what they were. actually doing was they were wanting to cut their heroin so they can function for the day and it was nuts i wanted to let you guys know that i have a patreon account if you're interested in joining the patreon account it's got three tiers the top tier you actually get a different con man painting every single month if you're already joined and you're already supporting me i really appreciate that if you haven't joined yet and you're interested in joining i'm going to leave the contact information for

Patreon in the description. Thank you very much for watching the video. Well, and but you were still a, like a beat cop at that point, right? Like you were in uniform? When I first seen it, I was actually, I was going to the police academy. I wasn't even a cop, but it stuck in my head. And eventually that's where my partner, who will later be my partner, gets a sign first. And he calls me up and he says, you got to come down here. And then I went down there as a uniform cop.

I transferred down as uniform cop. We worked together. We made a lot of arrest, drug arrest, robbery. You know, Alphabet City was nuts. Guns, you know, it was a crazy area. And we made a lot of arrest. And then the commander of our precinct put us both, him and I, put both. My partner and I in a special unit called, the unit was actually called Operation 8.

And it was a government-funded unit that focused on the end. eight worst housing projects in Alphabet City, or in the Lower East Side, actually, which were all in Alphabet City. And they paid overtime. They paid for our gas in the car. Obviously, they paid for the radios. It was kind of a prestigious unit in plain clothes.

It was like a glorified anti-crime unit, so to speak. And that's where we worked for a number of years. And you want to be in that unit? Like you want to be, like your buddy makes it sound like you want to in this neighborhood like it's like it's an exciting i really did bro because it stuck in my head it was so uh imprinted in my mind when we went to the like i said when my father's when my friend's father were driver's city county that neighborhood left such an impression that there could be 20 people online waiting to cup heroin and there wasn't anything going on nobody was locking these people up

and um and that's just one line like you drive down house street there'd be one line of 20 people You make a right on Avenue D, and there'd be three separate lines of 25 people waiting to Cobdope. And I was like, how could this, why is this happening in New York City like this? And my friend's father, who was in the SWAT team for NYPD, he said basically the city knows about this. They know how bad this area is with the drugs, with the heroin. but it's contained like to Avenue D to these one projects, Waldhousers, Rees houses, Baruch houses,

and the city, as long as it's contained here, isn't looking to break it up, isn't looking to upset it. All the drug addicts come here, that's where they score their dope. People from other countries when they came to the U.S. when they came to New York and they needed dope, that's where they went.

So, and again, such an imprint in my head, I want to go down and make a difference, to be honest. And so what, there's just, there's just not enough cops to, to go in there and clean it up. Is that it? Well, what happened was back in the 70s, the Knapp Commission was investigating dirty cops. And they found that where, and because of the Knapp Commission, what they learned was with, where there were drugs and, and with his drugs, there's money. And when cops are involved, it's very high, very likely that it's going to entice cops into being corrupt.

so they basically put Mike Dowd Mike Dowd yeah I've had him on my show a couple times yeah he was yeah terrible

so they kind of said cops they didn't want cops to make low level street narcotic buys so basically they said if you see this kind of action they didn't want you getting involved

but that was for the regular NYPD at the time I was a housing cop which meant we had the same police commissioner and we applied by the same rules but for some reason this rule didn't apply to housing cops. So when I got down there me and my partner just started

locking everybody up and you know like I said it didn't apply to us. They didn't think we were going to get corrupt and then you know the mission for the housing cops was basically keep the people in the housing projects safe and try to keep it clean and that's what we did

so we went down there and we locked all these people up the dealers and even the buyers and users And eventually, like I said, the captain put us in this special unit. So now we're doing the same kind of work. But of course, it's a lot easier being in civilian clothes, soft clothes, driving in a more car. And we did that for several years.

So we had so long, we got to know the whole neighborhood, basically. The whole, all those, you know, all the people in all those projects knew us from locking everybody up. And then at some point, we hook up with the DEA and we make a really, huge case where we took down 40 of the biggest heroin dealers in the city. And most of them were based on Alphabet City, Lower Eastland. So are you married at this point? No. No, at this point, I was a kid, to be honest, I was young. I got on a job when I was just barely turning 21. I worked in Coney Island for like a little less than a year. So I was, when I was low east side i was like 22 23 and i worked there up until i was probably almost 10 years um

okay so all right so and the dea comes in you guys bust a bunch of heroin dealers um like at what point do you start do you become start doing undercover work or start investigating i i know i saw the thing on the uh you going It was like a secondary case to the son of Sam. Like, it wasn't the son of Sam because you were just a kid. Right. When that took place. And, you know, anybody that doesn't know, like, the son of Sam was a guy who was, it was David Berkowitz?

Right. David Berkowitz. Yeah. And he killed six or seven was like seven women. Right. He was just shooting, right? Yeah. He was, so David Berkowitz was or David Berkowitz and or.

his accomplices were shooting and killing people back in 1976. And they shot, I believe they killed seven people and shot eight. Or he shot seven and killed eight. Now it depends on what you believe. If you believe David Berkowitz's work alone, then that's, you know, it was him. If you believe what I kind of uncovered or what I, and again, you know, I say this very, when I talk about him, I don't think they're even Berkowitz's work alone. However, I'm not sure that the whole scenario that I was told and that I investigated was 100% correct either.

Right. This is the guy you, this is when you went to Attica and you were talking what was. The bike Valentini. Yeah. And they called them tiny, right? Right, tiny. Yeah, so first I was in DEA, like you said, like you asked, and then we took her down a bunch of cases. some on the cover work.

And then eventually I went into what was called the Special Investigations Division. As a sergeant, I left the DEA, and I went into Special Investigations Division. And for a short time, I was in the missing person, NYPD missing persons squad. And it was there that I got involved with the after case or the cold case of the David Berkowitz, son of Sam. case. What happened was an inmate from Attica called up. I spoke to him and he said he had information on a very infamous New York City case, a kick by the name of Eton Pates.

Eton Pates was the first kid put on a milk on him. He was, he also President Ronald Reagan made May 25th National Missing Missing missing child day, all because Eton pays. And what happened with Eton was he was, he lived in Soho, he was a little boy, six years old, he was going to school for the first time on his own, going to take the school bus

literally for the first time on his own. And his mother was watching out the window, you know, watching him go, walk to the school bus and, of course, going to wait for the school bus. And she literally turned her head for what she said was like 30 seconds or a minute

to, to, uh, pay attention to one of the other children in the house. And when she turned the head back, he was gone. So his name was Eton Pates. Now, when I get this call from the inmate in Attica, he says he has information on a name similar to Eton Pates. He butches the name Eton Pates. And this is going back.

I get this call back in 1995. I'm sorry, maybe like 96. Ninety-six, about, 96, 97. I get this call like in 96-97. while I was in this special investigations division and the fact that he screwed up

the kid's name and remember there was no internet or at least, absolutely there was no internet in out of prison that was, I don't even know if it existed at this point, maybe a year, a couple years later two, three years later, but in any event he butchers this kid's name

and I said I thought to myself if you're going to call a cop and try to give him bullshit information, you would at least have the kid's name correct. Right. Right? You wouldn't screw it up where I would have to try to figure out who you were talking

about. You wouldn't know, you wouldn't want to entice me into thinking you have all this information. But anyway, I kind of believed that this guy had something. He was going to tell me something. And we went up to Attica and, sure as hell,

he was a 350-pound, former 1% biker. vice president of a biker gang and he was so big and so intimidating that the correction officers didn't even want to let me interview this guy without a CEO in the room with us because he was such a bad guy, you know? But in any event, we interview him

and he tells us that he has information on the kid, he's on page. And what it proceeds to tell us is that he, him and his biker gang did security for Eton, for a cult up in Westchester, New York. And Westchester is a nice area, a rich area,

a lot of money up there. And him and the biker gang did security for this cult up in Westchester. And what him and his gang did was they secured the area making sure no cops came in and busted what was going on in these mansions. They wore their colors and they kept

cops away if cops were going to come up and they kept any civilians away that weren't a buyer and at some point he becomes friendly with these people that he's working for and they let him in and out of these mansions while there's these rituals going on satanic rituals and they have sex party going on drugs going on and these satanic rituals occasionally going on also and at one of these parties he walks in and he hears them call out the little boy's name

and they perform some kind of like ceremony ritual on the kid and he leaves he says at the time but he later learns that they sacrificed the kid and the kid is

according to him or what he believes is Eton Pates the missing kid now very recent recently an arrest was made regarding Eton Page and had nothing to do with this. It was a

guy who worked in a bodega and he said he took Eton back in 1979 when the kid was missing. He said he took him and he killed him. Now he, that guy the first trial was a mistrial and the second trial they convicted him.

But that guy has a history of mental issues or admitted admittedly a mental mental problems. He's on medication. And so who knows

how true his story was. But in any case, in any case, they did convict him for the Eton Pace. So I'm assuming he didn't provide a body. He didn't, it was just his word saying I was, okay.

Right. There was never a body recovered. Gosh. Listen. So who knows if he did it or the satanic cult that I investigated did it? and the way the satanic

ties into Berkowitz because this was supposedly the the same cult that Berkowitz now when Berkowitz first got arrested he said that his neighbor's dog told him to do these killings right

yeah there's a great movie is it the son of Sam is it the summer of Sam or something like that there's a great movie it was the movie summer of Sam I haven't seen it though Spike Lee did it I believe yeah it was it was

It was great. It was great because I've seen a couple of documentaries on the son of Sam, the whole thing and, you know, how they, you know, how they tracked him down, how they caught him the whole thing. So it's a great movie. Anybody wants to check it out. But I'm sorry, but go ahead. I was just, sorry. Every time I, look, when I, when I listen to your other interview and you were talking about the guy Tiny. Right.

And he was, he was locked up for sodomy, right? So, sodomizing a child. Tiny was locked up for sodomizing his own infant daughter. What's wrong with what is wrong with people? I mean, every time I hear stuff like that, I just think like that Lake Mead, they're draining Lake Mead, right? They keep finding these bodies. And all I can think is, like, we're horrible species.

And I don't even, I'm just seeing what's on the media. And I think what does a police officer see on a daily basis? Like, I would just be disgusted by people. And I've been in prison with guys who were there for killing five, six people. I used to, listen, actually had a really nice guy who probably killed six or seven people. I was in the medium with him. Very nice guy. Of course, he doesn't kill me.

But, you know, it was like you were saying, like, some people are just, just totally evil. Totally evil, man. And I have to sit down and deal with him. Yeah. Well, I can imagine what you've seen. like first hand too like watching it on the watching it on uh youtube or on tv is vastly different than walking into a room and seeing just bodies and but anyway i'm sorry go ahead you were saying the tiny you were you were investigating tiny and so he had told you all of those things

he had also you said told you several things that made you think he was credible yeah he gave us you know um so he what he wanted he wanted to be let out he wanted to be um help us to get per get in parole that's what he was you know he wasn't doing it out of goodness of his heart obviously no of course yeah he had already been locked up since 1980 i want to say 83 or 84 so he had been in all this time i'm sure he had been in front of parole board more than once um or maybe not maybe maybe this was his first time and he wanted to be us to help him get parole and that's why he was giving us this information um the information

some of it just on the story alone and he was very articulate and he had a lot of information off the top of his top of his head but it needed to be verified you know like

you know people he gave us names of individuals they were all dead gave us locations they were since different locations since 1983 since he was out or pride because he was doing this in the 70s.

His holy time thing happened in 79. So it's been years since he's been out on the street. So a lot of the stuff he gave us wasn't something we could confirm. But he did give us information that we did confirm. That was really

pretty amazing stuff. He gave us a homicide in Forest Hill Park of a girl that he says him and is the president of the biker gang and some of the other associates. She wanted to be initiated into the cult

and what they did was they told her they were going to just do like a bleeding sacrifice where they took some of her blood and they put her on a table in Forest Hill Park like a checker, you know, like where people play checkers and chest or cement tables. They put her on that and they thought they were going to

she thought they were going to bless her with this big old-fashioned sword and what they actually do was the biker president actually kills her with it. And the way he described the girl, she had a tattoo of a boy's name on her shoulder. And this was in this, you know, late 70s, early 80s.

Most girls didn't have tattoos. Even if they were into bikes, that's different. But in the general population, females didn't have tattoos. So he couldn't give us the exact date, the time, you know, the exact date, the month, or even the year. But he gave us an approximation of when it happened. And he said it was, there was snow on the ground. It was either this year or this year, and it happened in Forest Hills Park.

Now, all the precincts changed their, their borders and things changed and, you know, their areas. So we couldn't even figure out what precinct had actually happened in. But I was lucky enough to know somebody in one police plaza, whatever. records were kept and everything's on paper there's no computer you know nothing was in computers and um basically i gave him the same information this guy gave me it was a female who died who was killed in in uh the body was supposedly left in forest hills park they were snow on the ground and sure's health somebody came up one of my the guy came up with the report of a female d oa with a tattoo on her on her back uh they had the name i forgot what

name or a male's name and she died from a heavy object of blunt drama going through her her chest cavity um so and the first person or actually the only person interviewed in the case was the president of bike gang who the police just happened to grab him and he said oh i know this girl i've seen it around but i don't i don't really know it um sunk to that effect so tiny gave us information that was verified you know he did give us information that was verified right so um and he gave us other stuff that that made sense and and we were able to check out and um i mean he was a dirt bag and he was looking to get out but he did have information that that seemed okay so how does that connect to Berkowitz like yeah well the way it connects to Berkowitz was um again it's the same

it was the same cult and tiny had said that he had ran into Berkowitz on at least one occasion now he also said that um there's a member another member of his bike again did a did a son of sam killing or shooting. I don't remember if the victims died or they just shot. And he said that the guy who actually did the shootings, first of all

it wasn't investigated as a son of the same killing because the victims were black. And all of Berkowitz's victims were white. And just let me backtrack a little bit. After Berkowitz initially got arrested and said that the dog told him to do it, he recants that story a few years later.

And he says that, you know, that was a story that we planned out. What really, Berkwood said himself that he was part of a satanic cult, and these killings were part of the, what part of the cults, what they were looking to do was kill people and start like a havoc in New York City. And Berkwood said that himself. After he said that, shortly after he was grabbed in jail and slashed, and they just nearly missed his jugular. And since then, he won't talk about the killings at all.

He says he's in fear of not only his life, but the life of his family. He's got some relatives to the life. So he won't talk about it. But Berkowitz actually admitted to being part of his organization or cult or whatever you want to call him. Getting back to Tiny, he said that one of the members of his biker gang actually did a son-of-same-style killing. And the guy was actually in jail for a whole different case. Had nothing to do with Berkowitz.

He was in jail. And he gave us the guy's name. So we went up and we interviewed this guy. Now, before going up, I told Tiny, what would make this guy want to talk to us? He has no reason to talk to us. He's in jail. He's getting out soon, actually. What would be this guy's motive for talking to us about the past shootings that he did?

The Berkowitz-style shootings? and what he said was this guy did another homicide had nothing to do with Berkowitz nothing to do with this cult he said he did a homicide at a basketball

on a basketball court he said in front of a whole bunch of people he said if you have witnesses to that homicide this guy would be afraid he'd go to jail for that homicide

maybe you could get him to talk about the Berkowitz shooting or the Sun and Samson style shootings. So what I did was I put a couple of phone books in a manila, an envelope folder and made this guy think we had information on that basketball shooting. Right. And I went up there and I threw it on the desk and I told him, you did a shooting and it was in New York, I think, or Brownsville. I don't remember where. I said, you killed a guy in Brownsville playing basketball in front of 50 people. This folder is full of 50 people I want to

to testify against you for that shooting you did in the basketball court because apparently he was playing basketball something went wrong he went to his car he pulled out a gun and shot this guy in front everybody he didn't he didn't care i said this this folder's full of people that are going to testify against you and uh once i said that he was stunned because he was on his way getting to go home and now he's going to get hit with this old homicide right so i said the only way you can help yourself as if you give us a statement I'll make this thing go away give us a statement on

the shooting you did that was like the son of stamp shooting and he did he gave us a written statement that he shot two people in like a lover's lane in Cypress Hills which is in Brooklyn

and the victims were black he said and it was never investigated and he gave us a whole written statement on it not only did he give us a written statement on that he gave us a written statement on that he gave us a written statement on the shooting he did in the basketball courts

he admitted to that on paper did that catch up with him well what happens eventually is the NYPD the supervisors whatever they made the cases go away they didn't want they didn't want us to deal with this

Berkowitz case anymore and we were told to drop drop everything basically you have no you just they didn't want the publicity they didn't want it being brought back up they just you know why or what do you think what what i think is that um well first of all it was never going to be an open and showcase you know there was a lot more work to do on on if the if these other people did exist and um um if this cult was involved or how many more people were involved

that's number one. So it was never an open and shut case for sure. But also, I think that the NYPD or the supervisors at the time or whatever all the way up to the mayor's office, Berkowitz was in jail. He admitted to the killings. He's not talking. He's not talking. Like I said, some people got promoted.

you know it was fine the way it was basically okay don't need to open it up and stop more you know what if after 20 years they find out you find out that you what if after 20 years you find out that you were living next to one of these guys that was doing these killings and he's been out all these years not 20 years since 1976 right I mean

and more than one more than one more I don't want people doing these skills and living a free life now. So I think it would have been bad for the police upon it. Okay. All right. So what, so what about you were, you were also, you worked undercover, right? Yeah. Yeah.

How does that work? Like, so, you know, I worked on the cover when I, mostly when I was with, DEA. I bought, you know, narcotics. In fact, I bought drugs from a kind of a well-known guy. Well, so there were certain areas in Brooklyn all over, obviously everywhere, but back in the, this was in the early 90s, there was, the crack epidemic was out of control, right? And the chief asked me, you know, what we could do about it. So these gangs and these clicks and these drug drug organizations are hard to infiltrate um and very few of them if they did flip they were you know if the people in the organizations flipped their lives were in danger and so it was

hard to get in if you guys didn't know i also do i do paintings and uh if you're interested in a painting i'm going to leave my contact information in the description but beneath the video back to the video so what i do is i would just take the DEA car i had a car assigned to me um And it was a, it was a, it was a, a, uh, a seized car. So it was a regular vehicle. There was no lights on it, no sirens, none of that shit. There's a regular seized vehicle. And I drive through and had, try to hang out in these neighborhoods where, where we were targeting, basically, where, you know, where these main guys lived and where they hung out. On this one particular case that I'll talk about, it was the Red Hook Projects, um, which at the time was,

had like some of the most, one of the areas in New York had the most shootings and the most killings. And I meet this, I meet this guy. And I don't bring, I don't take the DEA with me because I can't have a surveillance team following me. First of all, I'm the only Italian guy in this whole area, only white guy, only Italian guy in this area. And then if they would see other guys in cars, just happened to see other guys in cars on the same day, they would have to. know right away that I was, you know, so I didn't tell anyone. I would just go out on my own. I'd weigh like a shirt where they could see. I had no wire, no gun. I'd wear, you know, very casual clothes. So they would know I was unarmed. And I would just drive around the area

and I'd just try to meet people. And I eventually met people. I eventually meet this guy who's a pretty big crack dealer. And he introduces me to a guy. by the name of Calvin Klein Bacote. Now, Calvin Klein is, he's the guy that Jay-Z sings about it in a couple of songs. And according to Calvin Klein and other people, he's the persona that Jay-Z kind of takes when he talks about all these drug activity and the shootings.

In fact, Calvin Klein and Jay-Z both together got arrested out of state. I'm not sure what state for a shooting. and they were both going to go to jail or go to trial but Calvin Klein said that he took all the weight so Jay-Z wouldn't have to deal with the trial because he knew Jay-Z was going to make it big at some point because he was already rapping and he was like on his way up so according to Calvin

he took the weight he went away for a few years on the shooting expecting Jay-Z to hook him up when he got out which I don't think ever happened I've heard on YouTube and other places that Calvin was kind of upset out. J. Z never hooked him up. But it's obviously it was him that he was singing about in these songs. I think he even mentions him a few times.

He talks about a particular spot where Jay Z supposedly did these drug deals, and that's the spot where me and this guy, Calvin, did the deals. So I get Calvin, I get him pretty for heavy, heavy, felony crack weight. And he goes away. He does a lot of time. I'm not sure how much. I forgot.

I used to know, but he did at least 10 years, maybe more for the crack. And that was actually a really good case because he, you know, he was known to be a shooter. He was a bad guy. Let's just say that.

Okay. So what else? So I mean, at this point, at this point, are you married? or I'm only asking because I'm wondering, like, what is your, what would your wife think about you going into these areas and, you know what I mean? Like, it's like super dangerous and so I didn't know. Um, at that point, I wasn't married.

No, I, I'm, I'm married during the Berkowitz stuff where, you know, we're investigating that and the cult and, um, yeah, during that I was married. But all that, the undercover was kind of, it was kind of good because I was on my own. You know, I only had to worry about myself, basically. Right. Right. And then the Berkowitz thing, I mean, you're going into a prison. Like, it's not like it's super dangerous or anything.

There's so many, you know, there's such controlled measurement. Yeah. Yeah. So how long? So you were, what, 20 years, 25 years? I did 20, 20 years just about on the button. And then I retired. so i mean can you continue to be a police officer or do you basically have to retire at that point

no no i was still young i was uh no no i i i the the the retirement is you could do 20 years and get out you can do up to or you could do up until you're 62 years old but i took 20 years i retired quite a few years ago actually i was really young when i retired because i got on you know i got on when i was barely 21 right what you were just you're just done yeah Kind of a just done, you know. It's, I love the work. I like, you know, to be honest, I like, lock, I liked locking, you know, to be honest, I like locking bad guys up when they would,

when they deserved it. So I didn't enjoy the work, but it was, it's a, like any of the big organization, very political, you know, police apartment. And sometimes you get tired of dealing with, uh, supervisors and bosses and, you know, um, so, so I, so I just, I did 20 years. I was, I got out without, uh, without getting shot and i was kind of happy everything worked out okay and i just got out did you ever

have you ever pulled your weapon or yeah yeah of course yeah new york uh yeah you have to pull your weapon uh in new york on on certain occasions but the thing about pulling your weapon is you can't shoot unless life or limb is in danger or somebody's in danger you know so you can pull your weapon and somebody can tell you well now now what what are you going to do you're going to shoot me So you can't pull you up unless you really show you going to, you may have to show someone. So, okay. So once you retired, what are you doing now?

Just, I mean, did you do, did you go on to another career or a lot of guys, you know, they'll go, they'll let's say be a police officer or they'll go in the military. They get out after 20 years, then they become a correctional officer or maybe they become law enforcement or a lot of guys go from civil servant kind of jobs to one to another. Yeah. For a little while I did some P.I. work. And then I wasn't happy with it.

I just wasn't my thing. And then I wrote a book, as you know. I got it here, just to name it. And it was optioned for film a few times, Alphaville, 1988. Welcome to Heroin City. I wrote that book. And like I said, it was option for film.

Actually, Spike Lee was kind of involved with it the first time it was option. Spike Lee, Robert De Niro. And currently I own and run a Brazilian Jiujitsu Academy in here in Staten Island, New York. Okay. And how long ago did you start the YouTube channel? And I saw the channel probably, I want to say seven, eight months ago. Okay.

And you've got like, what, 12, 1,300 subscribers, like the subscribers are going. Like, that's good. Like, I talked to, there's a guy here, Chris Kay, who runs. podfest. It's like one of the largest YouTube organizations here. And he was telling me that like if you can, you can get over 10,000 subscribers, you're doing better than basically 90% of YouTube, you know? So any, and he was also saying, you know, Danny with concrete? No, I'm familiar with concrete, but I don't know Danny, no. Yeah, Danny was saying, what did he say? Because I was complaining about my subscribers when I first started. It's like,

God, it's just not growing. And he's like, man, he said after like, I think he said three or four years, he had like, like 7,000 subscribers. He said, it took me almost like two years to get a thousand subscribers. Stop bitching. Wow. So, but that's what. Yeah.

Well, that's what Chris was saying. He was like, look, it takes a long time to even get like a thousand subscribers. Yeah, I think I've read that it takes normally way over a year to get a thousand. yeah right and i did it pretty quick but you know it's it's you know you got to get on you got to get out and and do your thing when you when you got that channel i mean look at you up you got a lot of subscribers and and you put out great content yeah but i've been i i'm also i'm also lucky like i've been lucky because i have a good story so i keep getting myself on these different programs and they reached out to me i can't even say it's me like people reached out to me because i don't know

what i'm doing i'm fumbling my way through it but it but it's It's starting to work. Yeah, absolutely. You're doing great, bro. Good for you. Well, I have a question about the book. Like, what? So it was optioned a few times.

I mean, what's happening now? Is it just kind of where you would? So it was optioned a couple of times for film or the first time I believe was for TV. And Robert De Niro was involved. Showtime was involved. Spike Lee was signed on to direct. And it didn't get picked up. And I actually saw the script, believe it or not.

And I had nothing to do with the script. Obviously, they own, once they, you know what goes, once they optioned, they own it. But the script, I didn't like it at all. Really, so I hate to say I'm glad it didn't get made because I would have probably made money, more money. But I wasn't upset when it didn't get picked up. And then it got picked up again by Brad Furman, who did Lincoln Lawyer. And, yeah, he did a couple of pretty good movies.

actually. And it sat on the shelf. They didn't hustle with it. They, you know, I was really disappointed the way they treated the, you know, treated the book. And then, uh, I finally got the rights back. And now, uh, they're looking at actually at making a, uh, a documentary, like a couple, like a spy or a four part documentary out of the book. So that's what I've kind of in, in talks with right now. So the book, so are you like, are you, like, are you're the main character or did you write it as a it's a it's a it's like a biography actually it's about my life you know growing up in brooklyn with the mob guys and then becoming a cop um and it really focuses on one out the big case in alphabet city when we took down you know because the idea was it was one

the way it worked in alphabet city was there was one particular drug dealer that ran even though there was a lot of younger i don't want to say younger smaller guy level guys who at the time were making the one main guy was making, he admitted to making $101,000 per day and killing 18 people himself and having put a hand in killing over 100 people. So that's the main guy. So that particular main guy had a lot of other guys involved with his organization. And even the guys that weren't making $101,000 per day, they were still driving brand new Lamborghinis and Ferraris.

And what I always say is they weren't leased because you couldn't lease a car back in 1986. You had to buy it. These guys, young guys, like they were my age. Again, I was young. I was 21, 22. These guys were my age, and they were driving Lamborghinis and Ferraris,

and they had houses all over. And, um, but the problem with that life is, you know, they end up dead or in jail, you know? And the main guy eventually, um, I'll just say how the main guy got arrested. So we went up on a wiretap, on several wiretaps in the course of that investigation.

And that's how we were able to take down 40 different dealers. Because, you know, you talk on the phone. Then that guy talks on the phone. And so it was helpful, obviously, in helping us take down these 40 guys. The main guy that we wanted, he never gets on the phone with these guys. Right before we go up in the phone, and apparently he had a falling out with some of them. So he don't talk. We don't get him.

And that's the real good. That's the guy I really wanted to get. And that's why we really went up on, you know, this whole operation was kind of geared towards him. We don't get him. But what happens is one day I'm reading, shortly after this big arrest, I'm reading the newspaper. And I see a guy in Brooklyn. It's an article about a big heroin dealer in Brooklyn who's cooperating. And his name was Hernandez.

I'll never forget. His name was Hernandez. And he used to put out a dope name, Anonymous. known. And I never really dealt with unknown. I didn't know Hernandez, but it just stuck in my head all of these years. Anyway, I'm reading the paper. And I said, well, if this guy Hernandez is such a big heroin guy, he's got to know the guy that I really want. Because it's the way it is, right? Right. So I bring it to the attention to the U.S. attorney. And I say, this Hernandez was cooperating. Was he no mind this guy? They're going to find out. They find out. Yeah, he does. And he has to cooperate. You know what it is. When you cooperate, you have to cooperate. Oh, yeah. You got to be all in. You got to be all in. So yeah, he knew the, he knew, he knew my guy. And yeah, he's going to be all in and he's going to cooperate. And eventually, uh, the DEA went and got this guy and put him away. Okay. So I didn't directly catch him. It was actually kind of a coincidence. I happened to read the paper and, uh, it was brought to light, you know, that this guy would go against my guy all right well um okay i'm gonna you know we're we're coming up on it so i'm gonna uh

yeah look if if um can you hold the book up again yeah yeah if anybody's interested uh i'll put the the link in the description and check out the book and um yeah uh hopefully you can come on You know, hopefully something happens with it. You can come on again. And I want to talk to you once I, in the broadcast real quick, about something. Cool. Other than, yeah, other than that, everything, we're good. Everything's good.

Yeah, man, thank you. Thanks again for having me, bro. I really appreciate it. And I'll just shout out my channel. If you don't mind, Mike Cadella up against the wall. And just if people don't mind checking it out, if they, you know, maybe they'll enjoy. I talk about my arrest, going on the cover, some of the Berkowitz, stuff, you know, kind of cool stuff.

Hopefully some of your people dig it. Yeah, that's the one I watch. I was actually telling my girlfriend. I was like, you know, I watched this thing. I watched this part one. I said, then it ended. I said, now I don't know what happened. Like, I don't understand what the connection was.

And I was like, so because she is, what are you going to talk about? I said, I don't know. I'll tell you one thing I want to know is what the connection with Berkowitz was on this guy tiny. So, okay, well, so let me go ahead and say that, you know, Hey, if you like the video, do me a favor and hit subscribe, hit the bell so you get notified, share the video to your friends and family. Leave me a comment. I try and respond to almost all the comments if they're worth responding to. And that's it. And all of all Mike's links will be in the description box. And I appreciate you guys following me and watching the video and see you.