The Jordan Harbinger Show - 425: Anthony S. Luciano Raimondi | The Mob Enforcer Part One

Episode Date: November 3, 2020

Anthony S. Luciano Raimondi was born into the world of organized crime, spent much of his life as a mob enforcer, has played part in heists and assassinations, and is the author of When the Bullet Hits the Bone. What We Discuss with Anthony S. Luciano Raimondi: What was the Black Hand, and how did it differ from what we think of today as the Mafia? The many creative ways mobsters have gotten rid of bodies over the years. How Anthony's father taught him to deal with a bully in Catholic school without getting smacked around by the nuns -- or going to jail. What it was like for Anthony to have an Uncle Lucky Luciano to hang out with as a kid. Why sometimes you've just got to kill a Pope when your grandfather tells you to. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/425 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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That's gofundme.com. Gofundme.com. Coming up. on the Jordan Harbinger show. He comes in, Vincent, and he says, the guy has no head. He just went to him, he goes, he shot him in the head, he pulls his whole fucking head off.

He goes, the body's on the floor. He goes, if you look at the body, whatever he goes, and you look for the head, you can't tell if it was a man or woman. He goes, he's got no head. He goes, he's gone. It's like mush. He said, you can't tell what the hell it is.

He really didn't faze me. Whether it didn't register, maybe he was, didn't register. Joe Conno, give him a drink. He gives me a seven and seven. He goes, look at this kid. He goes, he just killed somebody. He's sitting there to kill me the cucumber.

Oh, what happened? The guy went to hurt me. I killed him. I mean, what's the big, fucking deal? Oh, they were happy with me, man. I was like their golden child. Forget about it after that. Welcome to the show.

I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people. If you're new to the show, we have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game. Astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies, psychologists, even the occasional mafia enforcer, which is what we have for you, today. Each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker, or in this case,

just be kind of horrified about what's going on here. Today, it's story time with a former enforcer for the Italian mafia. I don't want to spoil anything here because there is a lot of interesting stuff, from securities fraud to the assassination of the Pope. And you heard me right, the assassination of the Pope. This one is a two-parter. It is just bananas. I wanted to keep on going. We're going to do more after this, I'm sure. There's just so much here. I'm just going to let it rip and get right into it.

And if you're wondering how I managed to book and find these people in the first place, celebrities, thinkers, authors, mafia enforcers, well, my network is massive. And I'm teaching you how to build your network for free. This is great for business, great for personal reasons. You want a promotion. This is what you need. You want to have a lot of interesting friends that maybe used to kill people for a living. This is what you need.

Go check out six-minute networking. It's over at Jordan Harvest. barbinger.com slash course. And by the way, many of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course, they help out with the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company.

Now, here's Anthony, Salvatore, Luciano, Raimondi, the enforcer. First thing's first, the mafia was the family business, right? Your grandfather and family were in the black hand. My grandfather's. Both my grandfathers. Both of them. Okay.

Can you take us through what that is? Because I don't think a lot of people have heard of the black hand. The black hand, it would be, that was what you would call the original mafia. These guys here were totally different than wise guys that you have nowadays. Totally different thing. These are the type of guys that, when they used to send a thing, they send an image of a black hand.

That's why they called it that. That was a death sentence. But they were the type of guys that if they had a problem, they went out, they took care of it. That was it. They didn't run to no captain, no lieutenant, even the boss of the family, the boss like whoever the heads were of the black hand. If they had a problem, they went out themselves and they took care of it.

Over here, you got to go. If you're a regular button, you got to go to your lieutenant, or your captain, then he's okay, but then he's got to go see the underboss or the boss make sure if it's all right, and then go ahead and go do it. It's totally different overhand the United States. So the black hand is like old school Sicilian mafia? The black hand is just for this way. If they don't get you, they'll kill your whole family.

So they're from the old country, not from the United States. You have very few of them that are here in the United States. And they particularly don't like the American Mafia or whatever. It's because they think they're a bunch of morons with the way they do. things. Why did they change the rules when they got here? As time goes by, they changed the rules to suit themselves. Like years ago, you were in the crew, okay? So you had a lieutenant or a captain that you reported to. You earned money, you gave an end to them. They took their end, they kicked the end upstairs. You know, you were in there for maybe two, three, four, five, six, up to ten years,

maybe even longer before they put you up for membership. They made sure, you know, you were the right guy. Now, in between that time, maybe they would tell you, listen, we've got a problem over here with this guy, go take care of it. So you go to see the guy, and hey, you put him in the hospital, and they see how you react. No two ways about you put him in the hospital. You broke a guy's legs. You broke his jaw, whatever it was.

Then if they seen you did good with that, you know, if they knew they could trust you, let me put it that way. Then sometimes a guy will put you up for membership. But the original deal to become a member is you had to go out and do a piece of work. And they took two other wise guys with you, like one of the wise guys were you, you got to do a piece of work, which meant you had to do a hit. If you did it, they came back and said he did it, he did the right thing, so on and so forth, it's fine.

If you froze up or you didn't do it, the guy who was with you will clip you, and the guy he had to get clipped. Now they're just making guys because I'm going out with your sister. Okay, so your uncle's a big shot. Or you're the big, I'm going with your sister. Well, you know, Anthony, I'm bringing him over here with me. I'm straightening them out. But what did I do to prove anything? Nothing.

Didn't do a damn thing. Or the cousin is hanging out with somebody. Somebody's going out with your aunt. Somebody's going out with your uncle and so on the same. That's what they're doing. Meanwhile, if you see all these guys that they were making, they all turned out to be stool pigeon, testified in court against everybody.

So it's not the same as it used to be back when you started. Obviously, it's completely different. Totally different ball game. By the way, I saw that the Italian mob or mafia is called the Kosher Nostra. Was the Jewish mafia really called the Kosher Nostra, or did you just make that up and put that in the book? That and I put it up with Mory, because me and Maya used to joke around and call it that.

Me and Maya Lanski used to joke around and call it the kosher Nostra. Because Maya used to joke around. around, he says, you know, we got to kill him in a kosher way. What the fuck you talk about? We got to kill him in a kosher way. Because we bless him first and then we'd kill him. Because I became a rabbi, so I could bless him and then kill him. I used to laugh when he used to tell me this. But Maya did a lot of work. Let me tell you, he was some piece of work, this guy.

It's funny to see him in movies because he's usually depicted as this like old Jewish guy who's watching TV in a recliner and then is like having your wife make a sandwich for you, like an accountant or something. But he wasn't that at all. That's Hollywood. Yeah. Maya was a genius. He was the master of the shaked on. I can shake it down in a thousand different ways with this. guy. He taught me how to shake a person down. They could scream, they could yell, but in the end,

they're going to come up with that envelope. Maya was a shakedown, master the shakedown, Maya in the rackets, he was a genius. He knew what to do with the money, how to make it, but what everybody doesn't realize, Maya did his own work. He didn't get somebody else to do his own work. He went out and did it himself. Maya buried a lot of men, and I mean, literally he buried them. The stereotype is throwing him in the river, but that wasn't his style? You don't throw him in a river. I mean, you're going to put a guy in the ocean. You're up, put chains and weights on them, you dump them over the side of a boat in the water. You got to punch a couple of holes with them, though, so that the gases in the body, they'll make

them flowing out. Either that, you bury him somewhere, you show them in concrete, this is what they all did. There's a lot of sites around the city, I guarantee you, if they have opened them up, they'll find a lot of skeletons inside. It ain't from the workers that work there. Like in the foundation of the building? Yeah, foundations, the flooring. Just like years ago, they had my cousin Leo had a funeral parlor, called Cobble Hill Funeral

Parlor. They used to bury two guys at a time in a coffin. just to save money? No. Your save is a member of your family died, right? Say, a member of your family died? Right, yeah. And they got a word that they just whack the guy.

They bring them over to Leo. They would take the guy out of the coffin, take out the spring, throw the guy in there, put the bedding down, put the guy on top of him, and it gets buried. Yeah, that makes sense. You can tell how my brain works. I'm like, oh, yeah, two guys in one coffin save money. And it's like, no, dummy.

They're putting a guy that's not supposed to be dead in the coffin. And the other guy, yeah. And the guy is really dead. Goes in the coffin. Yeah, no, that makes sense. What did your relatives do? They had kind of like real jobs, but they also had their fake jobs, right? No, they were all fake jobs.

All fake jobs. They had jobs where they were on the books, and whoever owned the company or whatever was with them. So they put him on the books. Yeah, this is what he's saying. He's taking home $1,000 a week, $500 a week. Meanwhile, you never have to show up another job because they tell you, oh, he's out on the field. You know, you're at the social club. I'm at the social club hanging out.

That was the easiest thing. They say, this guy works at the loading docks or something like that. He's moving some boxes, whatever, because the employer just keeps him on the books, and that's how he supposedly gets paid for tax reasons or whatever, but he's running around town doing stuff. But the employer is with, let's say like it was you. They're employees with you. So you're his guy. So if he has any problems, he has to come to you.

So he puts you on the record to cover yourself with the tax department. Ah, okay. That makes sense. And then, in meanwhile, if it's my company, then I have any issues, I can go, hey, man, you know, I got this issue with these guys coming down and robbing my, they're stealing the fish, whatever. Because you belong to him. You belong to him, so he handles whatever problems you may have. You mentioned different sort of lines of work. Lone sharking, I think a lot of people know what that is. Oh, yeah. What, shylocking, which is like a funny sort of racist, I guess. Same thing. It's the same thing.

Lone shark or shylocking is the same thing. Okay. What else? Gambling, right, was one of them, had to be? Gambling, card games, poker. You had horse races. You had numbers betting. You had sports betting. you had numbers, you had after-hour clubs, legitimate clubs that you had a piece of. Like I, in my book, too, I tell about all the clubs that I shook down in Manhattan. I shook down every big major club in Manhattan. And I had a Shilock business going there from Studio 54 to regimes to the electric circus to New York, New York, all of them. I had a Shilock business back then. I had about $250,000 on the street in these clubs alone.

And is that like a monthly collection? Is that what you mean? Oh, hell no. Every week I got my interest on that money. What are you kidding? four percent every week of 250,000 like clockwork like that. Oh, wow. That's great.

Yeah, I even shook down the tunnel, Peter Gation's joint. Although Peter might want to give me an argument about it, but, you know, I don't want to take his other eye out. And then he had his friend Bozo, who thought he was such a tough guy when I went there. And this is in book two, and I did what I had to do in the union, stopped all the work that he was doing there. And then one thing led to another, guess what? They saw the light.

I went up doing business over there and they should get an envelope. So is the money literally in an envelope? Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I'm not going to hand you cash like that. I don't know anything to hands you can't like that. As a matter of fact, that's the first time I seen Vin Diesel was over there. Really?

At the tunnel, yeah. He came over with Bozer. And I was with a guy, Willie Light, who was a cousin to Maya. And I was talking, he came over, and I looked at him. And I told him, I just looked at very nicely, and I turned around by sent it so he could hear me. I told Bozer, I told Willie Light. I said, this guy's got a lot of muscle. And he said, Willie says, yeah.

says, he goes to make a move. I put a fucking hole in him. Excuse me, my language. And he could put a bowling ball through. That was the end of it. It was backed right up. Just backed up right. I was talking to Boza.

That's funny. So was he trying, you think he was there to try to intimidate you? He's like friends with them? Or was he just hanging out? Boza told him to come with him. You understand? So he's seen,

but he knew something was up when he's seen me and he seen Willie Light. He knew that I wasn't just some guy coming up there to see him. But I guess he wanted to see how far it would go. I mean, but he never opened this mouth and said a word. I'll tell you, he never opened up his mountain instead of work. Every time I used to go up there, I seen him. He was always nice if.

He was always a gentleman. I got to tell you the truth. He was a bouncer up there. I used to walk in. They didn't bother checking me. That makes sense. I mean, it doesn't, he's got bigger fish to fry than trying to pick fights with organized crime.

Well, he didn't know. But, like, all this is it going in my book and book two that I'm doing now. Yeah, now I'm excited to read that. I read book one. We'll link it up in the show notes. Oh, forget about book one. I've got to add more stories into it. I took it away from the publisher that I was at.

and some publishers from LA want it, and they want me to put more stories, so we pulled it off the shelf. But I believe we can go to the printer or whoever and you can get copies of the book. I'm going to put seven more episodes in it, and they want to make the book bigger, and they want to do a book tour,

book signings and everything. The other company that I had, they do all gotch. They didn't do nothing. So they were a lot of nonsense. So I says, you know what, I went out of the contract. They were nice about it.

They saw my, you know, what I wanted. And they gave me out of the contract with no problem. Nice. I can see why there's a lot of the contract with, room for more. I think I read the whole book in like three hours. It's very short, so there's room for more. I want to go back to when you were a kid. You had your uncles. They had their, I guess, fake jobs that they were loan shark and working for the black hand of the mafia. I assume your parents didn't want the gangster life for you, right? I mean, they wanted something different

for you, but you were kind of getting in trouble. My father had three brothers, my uncle Joe, my uncle, Nino, my uncle Sal. They were all involved with something. Now, my father, as far as I knew, he was a longshore, and he went to work on the piers. He never wanted me to get involved with anything. But my uncles will come over the house, especially my Uncle Sal, because he was my godfather.

He was the youngest one. He was into everything. Shylock and Booker, you name it, he did it. There was no problem. My uncle, Nino, he handled all the swag that was on the pier. My Uncle Joe was a Shylock.

But you never knew what they did. They all got up every morning and went down to the peers. They went down to the peers. They actually went to work, and they came, but they had their business on the side. But they come to the house, and then Arneill comes Uncle Arneill used to come to the house

Frank Costello, Carmine Galentie and all them and you see them all with the rings, the money, wards of cash like this, $100, I want to do what you do. And that's how the thing you started coming around. I didn't want to go to school. I didn't want to work for a living. I wanted to do what they were doing. That's where the money would.

They would come on Baltic Street when my grandfather had the house. They double parked. The cops never bothered them. They never got, they leave it there for hours, double parked, four or five cars. You come into the house and see my father. my grandfather, but cops never gave him a ticket, not even the meaner made to give them a ticket.

The sanitation guys used to come up the block. They're going to pass with the truck. They'd back down to the block and go away. Oh, man. Yeah, so that appealed to you as a young guy, obviously, just to see the power that they had without even saying anything. Yeah.

Definitely. Definitely. Now, you got in trouble at school quite a bit. Were you doing that for fun, or was it like, if I piss off everyone enough, they'll just kick me out and I'll get my way and work with my uncles? No, I didn't like going to school. I didn't like being in school.

I always got into trouble. For one reason or another, I don't understand why, but I always got in trouble for somebody. Trouble always found me when I was in school. Tell me about the kid who kept pricking you with a little pin. Oh, Raymond. You still remember his name.

Raymond's just sure. Memon's Cirillo. Oh, man. Him and his brother Anthony were in St. August's in school. They used to call his brother Nini. It was a good-looking kid. Mamie was tall, my-looking kid. But the two brothers always thought who the frig they were.

So he's sitting behind me in class, and he was sticking me with a pin. And that sister and Michelle was my nun. And she did, like, we used to call Swing and Sam because she used to hit you in an open hand like this, knocking right out of the seat, yeah, she was nuts. Every time I turn around to say something, Raymond, Ramundi, the back of the room with the books.

I had to stand up all day, carrying 40 pounds of frigging books, all day long, go home for lunch, come back, and the same thing. So in St. Augustine, you had to wear a white shirt. So I come home one day, my mother says, what's that on the back of your shirt? I don't know, what's on the back of my shirt? She just looks like blood. I take the shirt off, and they looked at the T-shirt underneath,

and there was blood. I don't know what happened. I don't know how it happened. So my father goes like this and comes, come here. I know. I look at it and he goes, what's going on? I said, Pop, listen. This freaking kid, Raymond's Sr.

He keeps sticking me with a pin or something. And every time I turn around, I want to turn around, I want to hit him, she turns around. Raymondi, in the back of the classroom, carry all the books. My father says, gives me a pocket knife about this big. He goes, next time he sticks you with a pin, and I'll tell you my father's exact words.

He goes, stab him in the fucking eye with this knife. I looked at my father. Just don't worry about getting in trouble. Don't worry about Sister Danielle. He goes, you stab him in his eye. He goes, I don't care what they did. That's okay. That's the knife of me.

Sure enough, Negg's day. Raymond with the pin, Raymond, stop. Stop. I opened up the knife. He put his arm across. I stuck him right here, and I ripped open his whole arm.

Since then, Michelle, almost took about 10 heart attacks. The blood shot all over the, the blood all over the place. To have wrap his arm to stop him from bleeding. This guy had about 70, 80, 90 stitches he had going down his arm. Oh, my God. P.S.

Cops come. They grabbed me. Okay. My father and my uncles go up to the precinct. I walk out. Next day I'm back in school. Sister Dan Michelle looked at me, but I'll tell you one thing. I never stood in the back of the class, no more with books.

She never bothered me after that. And I knew, that's when you knew they had something. Now, what happened, they were going to press charges on me because at that time you could press charges. So somebody went to talk to them, they said no. We're pressing charges. Sure you know what you do? Yeah.

Okay. My cousin Mac, my uncle Sal, my father was there. and Maya was around at the time. They went to their house. Knocking on the door, and no one's another, they kicked the door in. They were sitting down every then. They walked in.

My uncle put the gun down the father's throat. Turner, I told him, you press charges, we come back to kill your whole family. Drop the charges, don't press no charges, go about living your life. This kid gets picked up,

gets one thing that, he goes, get the rest of your sons and your wife, I kill everybody in the family here. End the story, and they walked out. Next day, they get a call, go back to the precinct, charges are dropped.

Okay. I went back to school. Raymond, I saw the brother Anthony. He kept away from me. He seriously kept away from me. Then when Raymond came out of the hospital, he was able to go back to school. They had him. I was in the front and they had him sitting on the other side all the way in the back.

But I told him, I said, next time you do it, I said, I'll stab you in the eye with a pencil, I told him. I says, you know, a guy sticking you in the same spot all the time with a pin. Yeah. Not for nothing. I don't care how big, how small you will. Do that all day long. You see what happens. He says lucky.

Let's put it that way. That's all he got. I mean, I think even today that's like a cheap lesson. I mean, it sounds like he had a nasty gash on his arm and obviously his parents got really scared. Oh, no, this is no gash. His arm was ripped open. Yeah. This was no gash.

This is ripped open. 70 stitches is ripped open. I mean, if I'm stabbing somebody, I feel like you deserve to get your ass kicked. Look, I'm sure it's a, legally it's an overreaction. But, I mean, nowadays, you're lucky you don't get killed for doing something horrible like that. Stabbing somebody with a pen. I don't know what that kid was thinking. Well, he thought who the hell he was, him and his brother.

They thought they were two tough guys, because they were two brothers in the school together. Got it. So they were tough guys. Did you end up graduating from high school, or did you leave school early? I graduated grammar school. No, high school I didn't graduate from. Do you ever see those guys around him? And they probably grew up in the same area as you, no?

They moved out. The Cicillarillo's moved away. Oh, okay. Yeah. Like for stories like this, some of the kids that probably were the, that I was the worst to, and that were the worst to me in elementary school, are some of my closest friends now because kids do stupid shit all the time. Oh, no, I didn't want to be close with these kids,

even if they want to be friends of mine. I want that nothing to do with them. Yikes. That's a mess. Your uncle said something really interesting. Like, your parents said stay away from, you know, look, your uncles are into some bad stuff. You can hang out with them, but don't become like them. But it sounds like your uncle's eventually convinced your dad. Like, look, he's going to get in worse trouble if we're not around because you're trying to force him into the good guy track.

He's obviously not in that track. Let him go with us so that he doesn't just go off the rails entirely. Am I kind of right? Yeah. Yeah. My uncle Frank had a house on Dean Street in Brooklyn. He was in the cigarette business. He was what they called the cigarette bootlegger.

A 40-foot trailer would come up to the block, loaded with cigarettes, and they used to load him into this house that he had. I kept getting into trouble. So my father and my uncle Sal, and my uncle Frank, they took me to the house on Dean Street, and they says, you're going to see Cousin Mac.

It's okay, so I walk in, I see Mac. Hey, cousin Mac, wait a minute, he cracked me across the side of my face. I thought my head was spinning like a friggin top. Pulled out a gun, and he goes to me, where did you think he could do this? He put the gun, he went to put it in my mouth. halfway down.

He could blow somebody and so on. He went on the tirade with this. I don't. I can't be like you guys. He might as well pull the trigger. This is what I want to do. He hit me again after that. He went outside the room.

He spoke with my father and my uncles. And he says, put him with him. He said, if I would have went with another family or another crew of guys or whatever you want to call it, they said something could have happened to me. At least over here, I'm being watched. It's all family here. My cousin and uncles, everybody were all family over here.

We watch out for each other. And that's how it started. Yeah, that makes sense, right? Because if you just got involved with some dumb-ass, like drug dealer punks, you could have ended up on the chopping block, and they would have not been around to keep an eye on you. Exactly. They would have walked away.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Your uncle was no ordinary, I mean, he's one of the most famous... Oh, Uncle Lucky, yeah. So he took you everywhere from what it sounds like. When he was in the United States, every time he went someplace, I was the only a baby. He would come in a jabby.

See, here's a catch where everybody doesn't... I'm going to explain somebody. Uncle Lucky was my grandmother's, my father's mother. That was his half-brother. Antonio, who was my great-grandfather, who was Lucky's father, he had an affair with a woman, and they had Nancy, which was my grandmother. He had Mary. They had Auntie Cumberina and you had Auntie Lucy.

All right? There were three sisters. My grandmother, Nancy, she was Lucky's half-sister. Lucky introduced her and my grandfather to each other, and they got married. But lucky was my grandfather's cousin, my father's father's father's father's five, was his cousin. So now it became like his brother-in-law. Then great-uncle Ralph, who was my father's uncle, he married Aunt Lucy and so on and so forth. Now, everybody talks about, oh, they deported him.

He never came back to the United States. A lot of bullshit. They deported him. When he knew my mother was giving birth to me, he came into the United States, and he was in the hospital there when my mother gave birth to me. And he always came in four times a year he came in, either on plane or boat or whatever. They never stopped him from coming back in here.

Every time he came in, where did he come? Right to the house on Baltic Street. Who do he take with him? I'm halfway sleeping. I'm just getting up in the money. He's dragging me out of the house. Get dressed, dragging me out of the house, throwing me in the car with him,

to sustain the car with him. He took me everywhere with him every time he came into the United States. Like I had one guy say, I met this with Barbara. Barbara Magione or Maggiore or something like that. Nice woman. She's out in L.A.

She does books. She wrote a book on her father, I think the odd man out is called or something like that because he was in the ring as a referee. She goes, I got this guy. He's Lucky's illegitimate son. Tell him to get in touch with me. I'm his cousin.

Oh, no, he don't want to get in touch with you. It's my cousin. Why wouldn't you want to get in touch me? Well, you know, he says that Lucky die, your uncle Lucky, he was 100 years old when he died. Look, I said, what? She was, yeah, he's saying that he was 100 years old, that Lucky never died.

They moved him upstate New York. He got plastic surgery. I said, who's this guy? I said, this guy's a bullshit. I said, who's this guy? I said, first of all, let me explain two things here. One, my uncle Lucky hated the cold. When he was in the hotel and he would come out, he had a car,

he had to be heated. He had a guy standing outside the door. There was a guy's the door. When he came out, he just went right out quick and into the car. That's number one. He hated the cold. Number two, me and my father and everybody were with him in Naples when he took a heart attack and died.

So unless my uncle faked and held his bread for three or four days in that coffin and in the tomb, he's the greatest magician ever. Yeah. This guy's full of nonsense. Yeah, I'm your cousin. Why wouldn't you want to get in touch with me? This is Lucky Luciano for those of you who haven't figured it out, and he's one of the most famous gangsters.

A real last name is Lucana. Not Luciano, it's Lucana. I had an argument with some moron on, I think it was called the Scapa Crew or one of them clubs that they put on the internet, like organized crime clubs and all this. The guy's name was New Morgan, telling me about Uncle Lucky.

He goes, oh, he used to use that name. Luciano has a disguise name. He made it up. But no, you're moron, he didn't make it up. When they came here from in Italy, they came to Ellis Island, instead of the guy's writing the name Lucana, they wrote Luciano. So he used it. That happened to a lot of names.

Just like they called him Charlie. Charlie was his nickname. But it wasn't his real name. His real name is Salvatore Lucana. You almost died as a kid. Tell me about that. It led to kind of, I don't want to say epiphany, but a special moment in your life. What, you mean with the plane crash?

Yeah. In 1960, it was December 16th, 19th. 1960, there was a plane. What happened was there were two jet planes. They collided over Staten Island. One of them crashed in Staten Island in Millersfield. Everybody died. The other jet made it into Brooklyn. What happened? We heard the explosion. Now, I was sitting by the window. I was the only one sitting by the window because I was the bad kid. So Mrs. Picccarelli said, By the window. Ramundi, by the window. What else was frigging new? I've been sitting by the window all year, so what's another day going to do? Anyway, I'm over there and we heard the explosion. But then

we heard something that sounded like a rocket coming through the air. And she's over here. Now everybody under the desk, get out. Me, I'm over by the window. I want to see what's going on. This jet plane came through the block. Now, they interviewed me on the 50th anniversary, three different majors. Rosanne Scotto interviewed me, Channel 11 interviewed me, 10-10 wins interviewed me, because everybody they interviewed had these weird stories. And they seen that I was in school, and I told what happened, the plane didn't come shooting through the block, it didn't crash, it didn't do nothing like that. It glided like this through the block. Now, what happened, I was by the window. What was left of the wing hit the window. All the glass went in my face.

Nothing went in my eye. Had glass all up in here, around here, under here, over here, all glass. Nothing went in my eye. The doctor said, that alone was a miracle. But the plane came like this. It glided. When the plane went down, it hit like that. the ground. The 7th Avenue and Flapplech Avenue, it hit. Boom, it dropped. Okay. A couple of seconds after that, it exploded from the gasoline that was leaking out of it, the jet fuel. When they took me out of the school van, they were taking me to the hospital. The jet fuel was running down Sterling Place on fire. It was melting the snow. Now, they put me in the ambulance with the kid, I don't know if it's baltered or Spitzer was his name. He lived for one day. One day, this kid was the only

survivor. He actually fell out of the plane onto a pile of snow. When they put me in a little, he lived, and him in the same ambulance, you couldn't tell if this kid was white, black, Puerto Rican. He was, how this kid lived is beyond me, but he died the next day. And I told everybody, and everybody said I was crazy. I told him, I seen, first of all, I thought it was like a monk or a priest I saw her on the plane. Then I seen a picture. I said, that's what I seen. I said, that's that they told me.

I seen him on the plane. Now, everybody, oh, how could you see him on the plane? They look inside the plane. I never said I seen him inside the plane. I seen him on top of the plane. I don't care what anybody tells me. My mother and father took me to psychiatrists for two years. Psychiatrist, psychologists, and they said one or two things.

A, either from the shock or whatever, I'm really in my head. I believe this is what I saw. Or he says, he really saw it. Because when they put me in the ambulance, I seen him walking down the block. And he just turned around and he waved at me like this. And I just went and I kept telling everybody, there he is, there he is. They all thought that was nuts. And it just disappeared.

Wow. And I'll never forget it to this day. This is clear as I see you, I see him in my face, in my mind. Everybody thought I was nothing. I seen this. I'm not kidding. I know what I saw. They could say whatever they want.

I know what I saw. So you saw the angel of death and he waved at you? I mean, that... Just wave goodbye to me when he was going down the block. He waved goodbye to me. That must have scared the shit out of you, right? No, I kept telling everybody, there he is. He's over there.

There he is. And it wasn't that he wasn't a skeleton face. No. Oh, okay. What it looked like was that his face. I give it like a very tight facelift. Everything was pulled tight that you can see, you know, the outline of the bones and everything,

but he had skin over it. So you obviously remember that for your entire life. I'll never forget that. I would never forget that or the plane crash around. Seeing those people literally on fire hanging out, some of them out of the windows and stuff. That is deeply traumatizing for anyone, let alone a kid. They will find them body parts for about five, six years after.

They were finding like skeleton hands or whatever, all on the roofs and all over the place. And there was a guy on the corner of 7th Avenue. He used to sell Christmas trees. And part of the plane crashed over there. They never found his body. They didn't think he was completely incinerated, this guy. Did you ever see death after that?

I mean, you went to Vietnam and everything. Yeah? When the scout was stabbing me, I've seen him behind the scout. In Vietnam, we'll get to that in a little bit. I just wondered about the death connection there. Yeah, because somebody tried to kill you in Vietnam as well. I mean, you've come close a few times. Yeah.

And the reason I brought this up is because after that, the doctor is your family, everyone says, hey, you're a lucky kid just like your uncle, and it seems like that kind of sealed it. Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely it did. No glass went into my eye at all. I mean, here, it went up around here, in here,

even under here, some over here. Nothing in the eye or under lid or anything. Nothing, nothing at all. How did you end up getting into the family business after that? I mean, it seems like a jump from, okay, you're hanging out with your uncles to, you know, now you're in the business doing stuff. You're not just walking around after them.

They took me down to the diplomat on Carolyn 3rd, where I met Joe Colombo, and everybody said, what's this kid doing here? So they turned around, my cousin Max says, he goes, this is Frankie's kid. So Tom DeBella and all of them said, this Frankie's kid, they said, no problem, let him stay. I was cleaning up the diplomat, you know, mopping the floor sweep and stuff like that. Then Joe would give me some envelopes. They would tell him, you know, go up to Fifth Avenue where Scappy's club is, bring these envelopes up there. I'd walk up to the block.

I'd bring the envelopes. Scappy'd give me an envelope, but I'd walk it back down to Fifth Avenue. And they started getting older, then they says go over to Fifth Street and Fifth Avenue. And I'm walking. I don't have a car. So I'm walking. I walk up to Cavill Street, Walk across Fifth Street and Fifth Avenue, seven street and Fifth Avenue.

I'm dropping off envelopes and picking up envelopes. And I'm going back down to Cald Street. So one day I'm going to make a pickup on third, I think it was Third Street or Fifth Street, detectives grabbed me. Two detectives come out. They grabbed me. They had the money on me. I had the number sheets.

I had everything on me. Right at the Bergen Street Station House. And they drew me in a locker. never told me to call a lawyer, never said nothing. All they're telling me is, you're never going to see your family again. We're going to send you away for 100 years. And I'm looking at them.

I didn't say a word, but they always told me, don't open your mouth, no saying that, I'm sitting there. They threw me in the cage with all adults. I was about, I was 15 going on 16.

They threw me in the cage, we're all adults, which they weren't supposed to. In the cage, everybody's looking at me, and I'm looking at me, and I'm saying, here's what I'm going to,

I figure something was going to happen. But there were two guys, On the other side of the cage, and I looked at them, and I recognized them from the neighborhood. They just went like this to me. He nodded to me, and I went like that to them. When everybody's seen that, they all backed up. These two guys were somebody. They were made guys.

But they had gotten picked up for some bullshit, whatever it was. But they were going out. When these guys see, these guys knew me, and everybody, they said, uh-oh, no problem, they just backed up. Now, from the story I got, down to the diplomat, everybody's saying, where am I? I didn't go for the other drops. I didn't bake the pickups and this, that. So everybody's saying maybe something happened to him, maybe he got shot, killed, maybe somebody mugged him, whatever.

And they had this one guy fat Andy who meeting him never got along. Because, oh, maybe Anthony took off with the money. My cousin Mac turned around and told me, said, you ever say that again? He said, I'll blow your fucking head off. He goes, this kid ain't going to run away with the money. So what they've done, they got in touch with Abraham Gritz,

who, Abraham Gritz had a bail bond's business, and he was a lawyer. So see if you can find out what happened. Sure enough, he comes back. He goes, he got him in Bergen Street, station lock them. They go down. I'm sitting there. And I hear, who the fuck is in charge here? And I was, oh, I know their voice. And I tell me, I said, Joe Columbo. You get him out right now the captain. He's jealous. He goes, what the fuck is locking up? My man, that's my fucking, get

him the fuck out here now. Captain went open up the game, took me out. He goes, where's the detective? He goes, you keep this shit, because I'll have you on the fucking breadline, he tells him. The detectives come out. He reamed them and forget about what he's done with them. He said, I want to know. Where's the money? Where's the slips and everything? So the detective goes to give the Joe, you hand it to him. You took him from him like this man. You'll fucking hand it to him. Otherwise, you'll be up in Holland tonight. This detective was busting. He didn't want to hear. He handed me that ever by just put a smirk on. I was waiting for him to say something. The Joe would have cut his head off. We leave. The two detectives, he had something done with

them that they had a beat that they didn't really want to go on. Came back. He says, yeah, I said, yeah, I'm fine. He said, I'd finish her route. I went I finished my route and they came back down to the diplomat with it. And I got my first drink. They gave me a scotch and soda. I find it a little ironic that the club full of like gangster guys that are using force to get everything done is called the diplomat. It just occurred to me. It's like a little tongue-in-cheek joke almost.

I'll tell you why. Because there was a hotel in Miami called the Diplomat Hotel where all the guys used to stay. So the bar that was on Carol and Third, they called it the Diplomat Lounge. We had a charter for it at one time. They used to be a charter. It's like the aristocrats, right? Yeah. So by 18, you're managing this spot, which also is...

No, no, no, no, no, no. 18, I was already in the service at 18. No, no, no, no. This is 16, though, right? You're managing the cadaver club, which also sounds like the most mafia thing ever. Cadabra, not cadaver, cadaver. Oh, Cadabra. I thought it was cadaver club, like a dead body.

Oh, okay. That makes a little bit more sense. Okay. I must heard that one. I thought there's no way they name it the cadaver club. That's also a good name, though. It's just not his own. too, yeah.

Yeah. So this guy comes in there looking for you or looking for something, and this is like the first time you get attacked by, I guess, a full-grown man, huh? Yeah. Joe gave me the spot down there. He says, you come here. They're going to give you the numbers money every night in the receipt. The numbers, you'll get the Sherlock money, the pickups, the numbers money, the sports money.

Just bring it downtown. You're done. If you want to go back to the club or wherever you want to go hang out, he says, you know, but be here tomorrow and more because every morning I have to be back at the diplomat. Okay. So I'm in the club, and I'm putting some of the envelopes together. This guy walks in to the bartender, he says, so who's taking all the action here?

He was in charge. So I got up, I said, excuse me, can I help you to? I said, well, you know, anything that goes to here says, you know, I got the proud over here. Because, yeah, I want to talk to you, pull that the gun. I still got the first scar right over here where he hit me with the gun. That's the first scar. Above your eye.

Right above my eye. This guy beat me so bad. I don't even know how I made it back downtown. All I remember him, I was crawling out of the place. Literally, I was crawling out of the place. And I remember him saying, you come back here, your mother's going to have to have a close coffin for you. I'm going to blow your fucking head off.

I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. I made it out of the air, and my cousins had given me an electric, 225 Limited, big viewer. I didn't even got a license yet, but I knew how to drive.

I went from, yeah, from 3rd Avenue between 85th and 86th Street and Bay Ridge, all the way back downtown to Carroll Street. I made like the turn to like make a U-turn, I crashed into the wall of the diplomat. Everybody comes running out.

Now they see it's the car. They look at me, they think I got shot because I'm bleeding all over the place. They get me to met to this hospital, and Dr. Leo was there. He examines me and he goes, no, he goes, he caught a bad beating. So my cousin said, he goes, what happened? I said, look, this is what happened. I said, I don't know who this guy is.

Tell him what happened. He goes, okay. He says, take care of him. So they were taking care of me in the hospital. My cousin was coming up. Everybody was coming up to see me. My father was looking for blood. My father wanted the guy dead.

Joe Colombo told me, said Frankie, I'd take care of it. P.S., my cousin takes me off from the hospital about five, six days later, he says, rest up for a couple more days, and I bring you down to third avenue. About three, four days later, he goes, come on, Joe wants to see you. They told me who this guy was, this Sally Burns.

He was a cousin to the Grunellos. They were all named either Frankie Burns, Sally Burns, or Jimmy Burns. The last name was Grinnell, but then they had cousins who didn't even have the same last name as them, but being there were cousins, they adopted the name Frankie Burns and Grinello. But they were a bunch of perverts, is what they were. Seriously, they all were.

They all went after young girls. And you couldn't, let's put it this way. When you killed one of them, you did the world of favor. They were all fucking low lives, but they were big earners. They were big earners. See, that's the catch. If you're a big earner, you could be the biggest low life in the world. Nothing's going to happen to you.

But when the push comes to shove and the commission says, the guy's got to go. I don't care how much he earns. Guy's going. He's got to go. Joe Columbo tells me, he says, listen, I'm going to take care of this thing with this, Sally Burns. He says, don't worry about it.

So I appreciate it. He goes, relax. We were down in Monte's restaurant. I'm sorry, we were Monty's restaurant at the time. My cousin calls me over to the table. There's my cousin, Scappy, Jerry Lang, Junior Persico was there, Ali Boy, Little Vincent, they were all sitting there. And he says, listen, if Joe Colombo handles this for you,

that means you belong to Joe Colombo. You can't do nothing without his say-so. And if he don't want your mate, you ain't getting made. That's okay. So what do I do? They said, if you handle it, then that means you belong here with us. You ain't his man. You belong here with us.

when it's your time to get straightened out, you'll get straightened out. So I said, all right, so now I'm saying. I got to handle this myself. I said, all right. So I'm thinking, I said, let me go see Joey D and Sally D. They had a bar on Union Street and Third Avenue. And when they seen Joey D, I said, Joey, he's how you been? I said, well, he goes, I heard what happened?

I said, yeah, I know. So I said, I'm doing better. He goes, what do you want, cousin? Now, me and him at the same age. I said, I want to get a gun. He goes, for what? I said, I'm going to take it with me when I go down to third avenue. He was, I said, I got, I'll scare this guy with him.

It was all right, come on. Went into the bar and his family, and we went to the basement, then he had a sub-basement, all weapons. His family were gun runners. They had Shylock, the bookmaking, and everything else, but their main source of income was from weapons. I mean, if you wanted to be 52 bomb, he'll tell you, I'll get it for you in three days,

and he'll have her at your doorstep. I mean, they have bazookas, they had hangar. I mean, they had stuff like you never saw. He goes to me, pick out something. They said, that gun, what is it? It goes to 380 Barretta from Italy. Petro Model 84 from Italy. 13 shots in the clip and one in the pipe.

I said, how do you shoot this? He goes, come on, they had the reins down there. Loaded it, showed me the safety and everything on it, showed me to talk, and I'm starting. I'm shooting, and he's looking at me, and I'm shooting and everything, or loading it, putting more bolts in the clip, shooting. I hit, I think, was about 48 bullseyes out of 50 shots.

Never fired a gun. It was the first time I ever fired a gun in my life. Joey goes to me, goes, you never fired a gun. I said, Joey, no. We know each other since we're babies. We always hanged out together. You didn't know if I shot a gun. You'd know I shot a gun.

never fucking fired a gun. It's my first time. Because let me tell you something. He goes, somebody who never shot a gun, he says, sure, not, Julie. He says, you know, he goes, my uncle Sal's coming over. So Sal comes over, and they show him what happened. He says, you did that? Yeah, I mean, I never shot a gun. Gun's a gift. Taken, they give me a box of ammunition. It's a gift. I got him ready to pay for it. No, all right.

What you tell me, be careful when you go down there, they told me. I got in a brown paper bag. I worked from Union Street, back over to Calisbee. I get in the car with my cousin. because what's in the bag. I hope I applaud the gun. Bang, you get me a whack right in the frigate. What are you fucking nuts? He goes, you ain't got no permit for this.

What's the, put it back in the bag. He's, what are you doing with this? I said, well, when I go down to the club Friday, I'm taking it with me. I go for what? Maybe I can scare the guy. My cousin put a smirk on his face. I think he knew what was going to happen.

I think my cousin knew because he put a smirk on his face, and now when I think back about it, you know, years later, it's like, yeah, you're going to scare him. You're going to have to pop this guy. P.S. like, oh, home. I get, you know, I'm at the house, and I'm practicing, I'm loading it, I'm unloading it, I'm, you know, pulling the action back, safety's all and off.

I had this gun in my sleep. I could do this gun blindfolded. Friday comes, I'm at the diplomat, I go back home, get changed, put my clothes on, everything, I get the gun, I load the gun up, sticking in my waistband. I go down to Monty's restaurant, and I leave the gun in the car. Excuse me, everybody goes, what are you doing here? I must have got there. It was about 8 o'clock.

He says, what are you doing? I said, not nothing. He said, I thought you were going down to 30. I said, yeah, I'm going to go down to the club in a little while, but I just wanted to come there and see, you know, let you know I'm going down. So I said, Cousin and everybody, okay, go ahead, you know, I'll see you when you get back. It's all right.

So they said, if you don't get, you know, if you get back late, then we'll see you in the morning. It's okay, fine. I take them a cousin's car, and I drive the 3rd Avenue, and I park right in front of the place, there's parking space. I go to go in, I got the gun on my waistband. I go to go in and dokie the bartender's evening. He goes, what are you doing here?

I want to see this kid, Sally Burns. I went straight and said, he goes, He's drinking down everybody in the club. He's robbing the registers and we can't control me. But this guy will kill you. I just, don't worry about it. I said, don't worry about it. I said, I want to talk to him.

I figured I would really talk to him. Now, with this club, when you walked in, you walked in this way. The bar was on the left-hand side. On the right, you had like a ledge that you could put your drinks on. But the bar went straight about maybe 40 feet. Then it turned to the left, like an L-shaped.

And there was a dance floor. Like to your right, when you made the turn like this, there was a dance floor to your right. Then there was all tables and chairs. And then it turned down again. to the other door. When I walked through and I turned around, I seen him. He had his back to me. And he was talking to this girl, Cabin's schools. I never forget Cameron. The girl could stop an atomic bomb in mid-blash. Believe me what I tell you. She's talking to him. The music goes down

and I hear her tell him. She says, Anthony's behind you. For whatever the reason, before she even said, I don't know what I had the gun in my hand. This guy gets up. What did I tell you, you dirty motherfucker? Your mother's going to have a close coffee. I'm going to blow your fucking head. He opens his jacket and I seen the gun in his waistband. He puts his hand on it. I just picked him my hand like this and empty the whole clip into him. Wow. Didn't think about it. I didn't think about it.

The only thing I'd done, people ran out of the finger place, that's for sure. They were running all over. I got in the car. I drove. I remember something telling me, remember what your cousin said? Get rid of the gun. I stopped on Hamilton Avenue. I went up to this Gowanus Canal.

Took the gun apart, threw the whole thing into the canal. Right back in the car, took off. I go down to Carol and Third. I go into the diplomatically. Joe Blubbed the bartender. I said, where's everybody? Because they're down to Monty's. I go down.

What are you doing here? And so I went down to Bay Ridge. I saw that's Charlie Burns. So my cousin says, what happened? And I told him what happened. He pulled out, you know, he got up. He was going to kill him. But what happened?

He said, what happened? He said, I shot him. I said, I shot him. I said, I emptied the whole clip into him. I said, I got rid of the gun that's in the canal. So Joe tells a little of him, he goes, go down to the place there, see what you can find out. By the time Vincent and he came back was within an hour.

He comes in Vincent and he says, the guy has no head. So just went to me. He goes, he shot him in the head. He blew his whole fucking head off. He goes, the body's on the floor. He goes, if you look at the body, whatever, he goes, and you look for the head,

you can't tell if it was a man or woman. He goes, he's got no head. He goes, he's gone. It's like mush. He said, you can't tell what the hell it is. It really didn't phase me. Whether it didn't register, maybe he wasn't register.

Joe Colonel, give him a drink. He gives me a seven and seven. He goes, look at this kid. He goes, he just killed somebody. He goes, he just killed him. What happened? The guy went to hurt me? I killed them.

I mean, what's a big fucking deal? Oh, they were happy with me, man. I was like their golden child. Forget about it after that. They sent me up to the farm, though, that night. Came back, December, I started doing my business. January, two detectives come in. They pick me up, and they grabbed me for the murder of Salvatore Burns.

So I'm looking at everybody and saying, who the fuck is Salvador Burns? They said, that's that guy, Sally Burns. Boom, they take me away. He gets Abraham Gritz. Abraham Gritz. Now, here's your gun, glad for this one, makes it. deal with the DA, I'm going to get charged with possession of an unlicensed gun and firing a gun in the city limits. Total of a year and a half you got to do. Now, everybody says,

how did you get that? I'm going to tell you why. There is a stipulation. The state, the city and the feds have, is called the Youth Defenders Act. Up to the age of 24, anything you do, you'll consider a youth defender. You can only get a minimal amount of time. They can't prosecute you won't give you big time. Can't. As long as you're 24. Once you hit 25, that's it. You're an adult.

Then they can charge with everything. So the guy made it. He says, listen, Anthony, yeah, you're in half. What the hell? I said, you know, yeah, okay. So I was going in, and then my cousin was going to go away for a case that he had. I'd be back ahead of him. So I said, no, just keep on running the business.

P.S. a couple months later, we're going down to take the plea. Figure of start, why not? Year and a half, you can't go wrong. We drive down the Landerg Avenue and we turned out to Boren Place. The Boring Place goes like to the courthouses and it goes to the probation department to the bridge.

Four cars came down on us like this. We were in Jimmy Lange's Lincoln. We had this big-ass Lincoln that came down on this like this, four cars. Guys coming out, two, three, four guys each car pulling us all out of the car. Joe Columbo screaming at them. I'm on the floor. We got them.

We got them. You got who? We got you. What fuck you're talking about? FBI. Ah. They got me four. Now, here's a kicker.

Not murder. Hmm. Nothing like that. The civil rights violation of Salvatore Grenello. Now, the civil rights violation, I thought, if it was like a white on black crime, black on white, a civil rights violation means I caused his debt. So being I caused his debt, one, he can never grow old. He can't go to work. He can't retire.

He can't live with his wife. He can't see his children grow up. He can't see his grandchildren. He can't go on vacation. He can't get late and playing. English on and on and on and on it goes. And then look, and I say, Are you kidding me or what?

Sentence goes 99 years. Oh, wow. Yeah, the Youth Defenders Act doesn't face that because it's a civil rights violation. Right. Okay, so I make the bail, and Abraham Brits calls, listen, he goes, I got to bring a guy in on this.

William Cuncelor he brings in. I see this nut walking into the diplomat, and I never forget the way he did with the glasses on the top of the eyebrow, but this guy was a genius. Comes in, he goes, what's the plan? But, well,

he goes, we're going to go to trial. He goes, you're going to get convicted. So what are we going to trial for? He said, let's take a plea. He says, listen to me, if you take a plea, he says, there's nothing I could do for you. He goes, you've got to do 33 years before you eligible for parole,

and it doesn't mean they're going to give it to you. Yikes. He says, but if we go to trial and you get a conviction, because I got a rabbit in the hat I can pull out. He goes, I could take care of this. Sure enough, like he said, we went to trial, boom, got convicted.

Day and waste no frigging time. Judge sentences me to now. 99 years. That night, they didn't wait for the next day. That night they sent me to Atlanta. I was on the bus, going to Atlanta, Pennsylvania, from the bus to the plane, Atlanta penitentiary. They just didn't like a directed, red organized crime. So I'm looking at the day says, we'll see you tomorrow. Next day comes, I mean, they got me in the hole. That's solitary confinement because I'm a new fish in there. Who comes walking in, Gritz, Abraham Gritz, William Kuntz. Guy goes to me, because how'd you like to get out of here?

I'll kill the whole fucking place if I got to get out of here. What are you kidding me? He goes, you have to join the service and you're going to go to the Southeast Asian conference. Yeah, sure, why not? Where do I care? Mm-hmm. Go sign the papers. Sign the papers.

He goes, the MPs will be here tomorrow to pick you up. Next day, MPs came. Very nice. These guys were huge. I'm talking like 6'6. I'm talking about pure muscle these guys. I mean, really, these guys make Gruferino and then look small. Nicest guys should ever want to meet.

Guys should come from you? Okay. Put the cuffs on me. when you please come this way they get me in the wagon you had a driver and then you had an escort and then these two guys there was one guy in here me and the other guy and it was a funny thing

they're arguing about eating and they're shaking me back a fork in the car and like really what the fuck so I tell guys look they said we found a place to go and eat I said can you guys got to do me one favor? That's what he wants I said if you decide to go here and you decide to go there one of these please unhandcuff me

says why it's because you're going to split me in two they started laughing the guy says listen I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to take the cuffs off you, and I'm going to take the chains. They're going to come in there and eat with us like regular people so nobody looks at you. But I'm going to tell you now,

you run, because I will shoot you in the back and kill you. He goes, and I will find you. Hey, I want a good meal. I got no problem with that. Went into the diner, had a meal with them. I told him, I said, I got to go back to him. I said, you're serious? He says, I trust you.

Remember what I said, hey, I went in, did my business in the bathroom, came back out. We went to go back to the car. I went like this outside the way. so don't worry about it. We got back in. We got down to Fort Bending, Georgia at first. It's where they brought me in Fort Bending in Georgia first

before they transferred me to Camp LaJune. They put me in there, and next day I go to Camp LaJune. That's where I met Captain Amiel Bass. This is the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Anthony Ramonde. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our sponsors, that's what keeps us going. That's what keeps the lights on around here.

That's why I don't have to be a lawyer anymore. So please, if you love the show, go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals and consider supporting somebody who supports us. And don't forget, we've got worksheets for these episodes. Those are always in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Now for the

conclusion of part one with Anthony Riemondi. Now, in the interest of time, and because I want to entice people to listen to the podcast, which will link in the show notes, The Enforcer, I will skip over some of the Vietnam stories, but suffice it to say that you got a lot of, is it safe to say you got special operations and marksman sniper training in Vietnam. Is that kind of the...

Marksman, sniper, and sharpshooter, yeah. And the second time you saw The Angel of Death we hinted at earlier in the show was when a North Vietnamese scout came up and... Stead me over here. Stead me twice over here. Wow, on the opposite side of your chest from where your heart is. I guess he... Yeah. I mean, you're lucky to be here, I think, with two knife wounds in that. So after that, you kind of go straight back into the family business and you've got some pretty serious, it's not just securities fraud. I mean, at his next level type of stuff. What were you doing

at the Vatican? Well, what happened? I came home and I started doing my rackets as usual. And then what happened? My cousin Luigi Ramundi calls us up and he was a cardinal out there and he flies in. He says, listen, he says, we got a deal going. I said, what is it? He goes, the stocks. I said, what mean stocks? He goes, we got a guy who counterfeited all the stocks we've been selling them all over. He says, you're coming in with us. Now, they started doing this back in 1971. This is 75 of It's still going on. So I said, wait to me. He goes, we'll send you the stocks.

They won't counterfeit if you've got somebody that could move. I says, yeah, I could get somebody. I got in touch with this guy, Joey P. It was in commodities, but his nephew was into the regular stocks, like AT&T, Coca-Cola, AT&T, and IBM. So I spoke with him. I went to Jersey, spoke to the old man Rayo out in Jersey. He was the big boss in Jersey with all the rackets.

They have a little stock market deal out there. Got his nephew in it, Pete Martel. Then I went to Chicago mercantile in Chicago. I saw a cousin of mine that was out there. I had it set up. I come back, I tell Luigi says, we got it set. He goes, I'm flying back tonight. He goes, I'll respect the package in a couple of days.

They had their own jet that they came in with from the Vatican. He takes off about three days later. I get a package about this long, this high, and this wide. That's pretty big. Pretty big package. Yeah, it was all loaded with stocks. $1,000 denomination, $100,000 denominations, $1,000. I got it and I brought it to everybody.

And they started moving to stock. And I kept getting the shipment every week. Every week I was getting a shipment of stocks every week. So just to clarify, they're printing off these stock certificates somewhere in the Vatican. No, not in the Vatican. They had a forger that did it to them. Okay. He made a copy of the stocks that the Vatican owned.

Okay. He made a perfect forging copy. And they would sell them. Now, you got a member, which was Antonio Rubino, who was my cousin, Sanvatore Papalano, who was another cousin. And my favorite at that time in the stock there was Paul. Jacob Marcincus. He was the head of the Vatican Bank. He was our cousin. They were all in on it. There's a stock fraud. The stocks were going good. And then in October of 75, we got a call that

Pete Martel, or P.D. Rayo, as he was called, got arrested, and he gave up everybody. So I grew up a bunch of guys that were close with me, that were involved me. And we went right to the airport. I called up my cousins in Italy. He says, get down here, got on the plane and went to Italy. Now, see, everybody says, oh, you couldn't go to Italy back then. I said, yes, you could. because back then you didn't have the security like you have now. You're talking about in the 70s. You could go to the airport and say, give me five tickets to Rome.

Yeah, here you go. You pay cash. You got on the plane. There was no security or anything I bothered you. When I used to go to Florida, I used to go to Florida like 10 times a year, I just get the bug in my head, three o'clock in the morning. I'm going to go to the airport. Hey, give me a ticket to Florida.

There's a ticket I should go. So I got there. I told my cousin what happened. He put me at the Vatican Hotel and he put the rest of my guys somewhere else. So we were all separated. He found out what happened, that Pete Martel, He goes by the name of Pete Rayo and P.D. Motser, they call him. He got pinched and he rattled on everybody.

I'm down into Vatican and I'm there about maybe a week and a half, two weeks. The FBI comes in. They came in, we're in the arrest warrant for us, all of us. So my cousin tells him, you can't take him. He goes, this is Vatican City. We are considered a country within a country. We have no extradition. You can't touch them.

The FBI went to the Italian government. The Italian government says, we have no jurisdiction in there. They're their own country. Now the FBI comes back. You'll never go to come home. You never dish. You never. Hey, listen, out.

I got women out here. I got bars. I got clubs. I got some radios. I don't have to go back home. I go to live here. I mean, Vatican City is huge. So my cousin told me, he goes,

you want to go back home? It would be nice because I got to fail safe. Don't worry about it. He goes, where's the counterfeit stocks you got? So he brings her up. He goes, you know, the XBRA. He says, yeah. He goes, now the FBI stock had the FBI stamp on it,

the counterfeit ones. He turns right, says, they're at the same one out of the Vatican Vault. They get it and they come back. He goes, now, I want you to look at both of them. Tell me what you see. The guy looks at both stocks. He goes, perfect copies. From our current goes, you're the expert. He goes, look at them again. Perfect. Nothing wrong with them. He turns right tells the FBI agent, you better fire him and get somebody else. He says, why. He goes, look at the serial number. Both stocks got the same serial number. They both got the same batch number. They both got the same routing number. So now the FBI's looking at this guy, you moron, you couldn't see this? So my cousin says, how would this play out?

Let's say, this got released into the United States that all this stock is phony. He goes, you'll probably go into recession, but then he goes, you'll hit a depression that you never come out of. He goes, do you understand what I'm saying? My cousin, Morsinkis, he was a bad. I mean, this guy, seriously, seriously, but this guy was not a guy you made him, you played with. Cardinal law, he'll kill you and take your life. There's no joke. with this guy. He says, so let's make the deal. We've got a list of everybody that we gave stuff to. We'll give you a list and we'll give you 500 million they were going to give them. In the United States, they made like close to $10 billion. $10 billion. Billion, yeah, billion. Listen to me, you have

no idea. The Vatican's worth at least a rough estimate figure a billion times a billion. Let's put it that way. Take $700 billion and add that, say, three times over. That's what the Vatican's right. They got more money than you don't know what to do it, but we can get into that whenever you want them. He says, call New Yorker. The guy calls New Yorkers, tell them what I said. So now, then, they had the old rotary phones where you used to put your finger and turn it. They were about maybe 12 feet away. Because he goes, worry about it. Over the phone, you hear the guy yelling, you stupid son of a bitch, make the deal, make the fucking deal. And I went, wow, well, that's his boss in New York. Guy comes back, he makes the deal. Here's the list. Here's the

money. There's no charge on there. Free year. Everything was written out. The FBI agent goes to take the documents. My cousin Graves are like this. He goes, they stay over here in the Vatican Vault. He goes, I'm giving you a copy. So he says, why? He goes, in case you guys try to do something, because I got the originals over here. They're not to be touched. And that's all the papers. They went back, and we got back home just before Thanksgiving and 75. Those documents must still be somewhere in the Vatican where they're like just a bunch of fake stocks. Definitely. Yeah. Definitely. they're still over there. They were in the Vatican vault. They didn't touch that. That's probably part of their archives now.

It's interesting to me that, I mean, if your cousin was the head of the Vatican Bank and he was in on it, that just means that corruption runs through the Vatican from the top to the bottom. Of course. Yeah. Pope Paul VI was in on it. Wow. Pope Paul Lunitism. My cousins that were there, they're supposed to be cardinals and everything, right? They all had girlfriends. They all had kids. The Pope. Everybody talks about, I mean, the Pope was a great guy, Pope Paul VI. But he had three kids. Let's talk freaking serious. Come on, how do you expect a guy to stay like this all his life and not go over the woman?

Come on, let's be serious. That's stupid. But there's a lot involved, and especially when Pope John Paul de Freight came in. That poor son of a bitch, he signed his own debt warrant. Well, tell me about that, because that story is, that's crazy. That one, when I was reading the book, listening to you talk on the Enforcer podcast, which again will link in the show notes, that one even kind of shook you up because you were like, wait a minute, we're going to do what now? Yeah.

Pope Paul to six, he dies. So Pope John Paul I first gets elected. One, two, three. Okay. After he's in about 16, 17 days, he turns around and says, anybody who was involved in the stock fraud with the Vatican, I'm going to excommunicate them and defrock them from the church. Which means now you're falling under Italian law.

You're falling under all the United States. We're all screwed. All right, let's put it that way. Marsinkas calls me up. He goes, we're coming into New York. All right, good. They fly in. They say, we've got to see great.

Grandpa. It's all right. They had their own jet. Vatican has its own jet. They come in, come to the house. They said, what's going on? And says, we'll talk. So they go see my grandfather, my father's father, Antonio. They told him what happened. So he said, all right. He says, we got to get rid of him. I'm looking at him. He's got to get rid of the Pope. Are you fucking kidding me? No, he's then you're coming with us. I'm coming with you. Here, you're coming with us. So my grandfather says, let's talk. What happened? So I'm here? My grandfather says, I give you the okay, I give you my blessing, because they came in to get my grandfather's okay to take this guy out. Now, I have to go with him for two reasons. One is to tell them how to put him away nicely without using violence. So he said, what me? He goes, yeah, but not him. I killed him with guns and stuff.

He goes, nobody's like, okay, I've got to tell you how to do it very peacefully. Okay. And second, here's he going to get to laugh. I got to be their witness before God. He looked at him. Sweat. He says, when we die, so we're going to go before God,

and God's going to say, you killed one of my popes. And we can say, no, we did it. Humanely, he didn't suffer, he didn't have any pain. And God's going to say to them, well, who's your witness?

You're going to say, our cousin Anthony's our witness. So I'm supposed to go before God, tell them this. God says, he's going to look at me and he's going to go, uh-uh, he's going to pull the lever, I'm going to go to hell.

The devil's going to say, now I don't want you to pull that. And I don't know where the fuck I'm going to wind up. I said, you got to kill a Pope. He says, yeah. I said, you're crazy. He says, you know how many years we've been killing popes in the Vatican? How many centuries we've been doing it for centuries?

If they didn't like the guy that was in, they got rid of him and put their own guy in. I go back with him, and I'm saying, you guys are fine. Nope. I saw the whole route of the Pope. I says, here's what you do. He did get ketamine or Valium, put it in this tea because he likes his tea real sweet. Once he goes to sleep, you get potassium cyanide in a glass bottle. Well, why not?

plastic. I said, well, if you get plastic, when it eats through it, that's a wall going to be dead. You get glass with a glass eyedropper. Fill the eyedropper up, put in between his lips, the squeeze, and they walk out of the room. Pope turns around, falls asleep. We're watching everything, all the Cardinals, everybody's there, goes in, poop, puts it in, walks out,

close the door. The guy who brings the tea and everything goes to check on the Pope, half hour later, ringing the bell, there's something wrong with the Pope, something wrong with the Pope. Doctor comes in, Pope, Pope is dead. The guy who brings in. Pope is dead. Now they're crying. You hypocritical bastards. You just whack the guy and you're crying. My cousin goes, we've got to make it look good. Now, here's the catch. The only one who can touch a Pope, you've got to be a doctor, embalmer, or whatever. You have to be with the Vatican living in Vatican City. You can't be like a cardinal and you're a doctor. You live outside in Rome.

You've got to be living in Vatican. Otherwise, you can't touch it. No, everything is in house. Everybody knew what was going to go on. They laid them out. After that, right in the wall. Goodbye. Oh, right, because they put him in the... Yeah, in the wall, in the mausoleum. Yeah, mausoleum. But there's a lot more to that story, but I got that in book two,

which you'll all be surprised on the rest of seeing, find out who he was related to this guy, Pope Paul. I'm very curious. I'm very curious. That's in book two. All right. One thing I will tell you,

it was always written in stone that when the pope died, he would get in and he got in like that. It was already written in stone that he would become the next pope. Oh, interesting. So that isn't some sort of like deliberative process that was already decided beforehand.

Because of who he was related to him. Like I said, it's in book two, but when book two comes out, if you want an interview on it, I'll give you an interview on that, and I'll let you know. You bet, of course. You'll be very surprised. You'll be in shock when you see that. Especially about Luftanzza. I even got more about Luftanzer in book two, not everything that was in book one. Stay tuned for part two of this interview coming up in just a couple days here. I've got some thoughts on this episode, as usual, but before I get into that, here's a preview of my conversation with Austin Meyer. He's a software developer who exposes patent trolls and how they shake down innocent victims using legal loopholes and abuse of this system. I was working at a trade show

in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where I was sitting there in a sweltering hot aircraft hangar, showing X-plane, my flight simulator, to a steady parade of sweaty pilots wandering through the hangar to look at my various wares, and all of us in the phone rings. Hello, I notice you've been sued for patent infringement, I'd be happy to represent you for a price. And I said, no, I'm not going to settle with somebody I've never even heard of before for infringing on a supposed patent I've never heard of before. And he said, okay, just remember your defense cost is going to run around $3 million. Wow.

The patent claims to own the idea of one computer, checking another computer, to see if a computer program is allowed to run. The patent we were sued on had, as I recall, 113 claims. and every claim was almost the same. In other words, one claim would say a computer accessing another computer to unlock software. And the next thing would be software unlocked by one computer accessing another computer. Now, it was just the same thing over and over 113 times phrased a little bit differently each time. Because since it took us four years and two million dollars to overturn one of those sentences,

they had the same thing written down 112 more times. So they could put us through this for the rest of our lives. For more with Austin Meyer, including the details of his own investigation into patent trolls and why none of us are safe, check out episode 326 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Big thank you to Anthony Ramondi, The Enforcer. The podcast is called The Enforcer. We'll link to his book and that podcast in the show notes. A lot of stories in there.

Stay tuned for part two of this interview coming up in just a couple days here. By the way, if you buy any of the books from our guests, any guest on the show, please do use the links we have in the show notes. It helps support the show. Worksheets for this episode are in the show notes. The transcript for this episode is in the show notes. And there's a video of this interview going up to our YouTube at jordanharbinger.com slash YouTube. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram or just hit me on LinkedIn. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems, using tiny habits.

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