The Underworld Podcast - America's Nightmare Mafia Boss: Gaspipe Casso

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso was the Lucchese family’s brutal underboss, the brains behind boss Vic Amuso's reign, and architect of one of the Mafia’s bloodiest purges. Together they ruled the Luccheses with paranoia and brute force, wiping out rivals and even dozens of their own men if they sniffed disloyalty or simply didn't like them. Casso personally ordered or committed dozens of murders, turning the family into a machine of fear. But when the law finally closed in, the man who scared even the most toughest enforcers and hitmen shocked the underworld by flipping, becoming one of the highest-ranking mobsters ever to turn informant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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See full terms at Mintmobile.com. August 10th, 1989, East Northport, Long Island. A request has come in to the new boss of the third biggest mafia family in New York, the Lucases. There's a Long Island captain, and he's having issues with two civilians in the garbage carting industry, or waste management. They've been causing problems to the family's operation for years. One has even acted as an undercover informant for the feds and made sure that they bugged this captain's car. The captain tells Lou Casey family boss on their boss, this guy, he's got to go.

The bugging had in fact happened more than half a decade earlier, but in the mid-80s, all of New York's five families are hit with massive indictments leading to the major mob commission trials led by then prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani. The bosses had then called a moratorium on hits like this that could potentially sway the judges and the jury to hand down harsher sentences.

Now, with the trial, Trials out of the way and a new boss in charge, it seems like it's finally time for some good old-fashioned mob payback. In the summer of 1989, the new underboss of the Lucchese mob is Anthony Gaspipe Casso. His closest mob buddy, Vicamuso, has also taken over as the boss of the family, though most people assume it's GasPipe that calls the shots. And GasPipe calls a lot of shots. Which is unfortunate for a lot of people, because GasPipe, is a psycho. Like, he's the guy other mafia enforcers refer to as a, quote, homicidal maniac,

someone that just enjoys killing. Since taking over in the late 80s, GasPipe and Vic have gone on something of a murder spree. But it hasn't been against a rival family or anything like that or even a rival gang. Instead, they're purging their own guys. It's something you might see in a tin-pot country when the new dictator takes over. Not the kind of thing you're going to be. Not the kind of thing you typically see in a mafia family. Anyone they think might be disloyal or angling for more power, they're killing or having killed. Lukasei family associates, soldiers, even powerful capos made guys. Sure, when there's new bosses, some people might get demoted or sidelined, some rivals for

the top spite might even get taken out. But not like this. It's never been like this. At the end of the purge, 40 members of associates are dead, with gas pipe, and the as the driving force. You see, since the creation of the Lucchese family in the 1930s, with the other four New York Mafia families, it had proved to be the most stable and least divisive of all of the five families. There was only a handful of bosses over the next 50 or so years, and each transfer power was done peacefully. Unlike the other four families, there

was never an assassination attempt on the boss, nor had the family ever had a civil war. In fact, In the 80s alone, the Gambinos killed their own boss, the Colombo's had their third civil war, and the Bonanos almost tore each other apart because of Donnie Brasco. So when the previous Lucchese Don and his top leadership are staring down life sentences due to the aforementioned trials, he had hoped to continue that tradition of peace and unity among the family by naming Gaspipe and Vic the new powers. But boy, is he wrong, because when it's all said and done, Anthony Gaspipe Kossel will go down as one of the most brutal, ruthless, murderous mafia head honchos in the history of the American mom.

As two civilians in Long Island are about to find out that summer night, Robert Kubasak and his brother-in-law, Donald Barstow, head to their tiny Long Island office that August morning. Sure they'd cooperated with the feds, even testified openly in front of grand juries and state trials. But it had been years ago. Still, both should have been under some sort of protection. and both are gunned down by two Lucchese family hitmen that morning. Predictably, a media firestorm follows.

How the hell could the feds let two guys testifying against the mob get gunned down so easily? The heat is now on gas bite, but he doesn't care. He's playing by his own set of rules and always has, especially when it comes to dishing out violence and taking lives. This is the Underworld podcast. To the best international organized crime podcast in the entire world, the Underworld podcast, hosted by two journalists who have reported on this sort of stuff all over the globe. And now we bring you new stories every single week, even in the middle of August, while all those fat cats who don't care about entertaining their listeners are on vacation. I'm one of your host, Danny Gold.

Yes, I'm wearing sunglasses indoors. It's bright in here. There's lights. I like it. And I'm joined by my friend, colleague, and co. Sean Williams, who is wearing Harry Potter glasses because he's British, and together, we are here to make podcast magic for you. Isn't that right, Sean?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, magic hands, magic tongue. I mean, you know, for speaking, podcasting, that's what I mean. Anyway, carry on. Yeah, I mean, look, you throw me off the device. It's like August 20th. We can do whatever you want. No one's listening.

Nobody cares. But as always, bonus episodes are available on patreon.com. Sessioner World Podcast. You can also sign up on Spotify right here in the app or even on iTunes. for the low, low price of $5 a month. We aim to do at least two a month. It's a solid deal. It helps support us,

tips and advertising inquiries at the Underworldpodcast at gmail.com, and merch at underworldpod.com and click that merch title. All right, folks, let's get this going. Now, a lot of the sourcing for this episode came from Selwyn Rob's Five Families, which is like a classic book about the American Mafia, Rise and Decline. It's like a monstrous 700 pages, but it's like the Bible for this sort of stuff. I also use the book, Mob Boss, which is about Little Al Daarko, the man who brought down the mob. That's the sort of subtitle.

It's co-authored by two New York City reported legends, Tom Robbins and Jerry Capishi. Yeah, 700-page book nowadays. I have a better chance of crime in every. So I've got a big one about the fall of the Berlin Wall just sitting on my side table for like two, three years now. It looks good, though. It really impresses people. I'm never going to read it. Yeah, just keep your books down to 200, 300, 300.

pages, man. It's about all I can do. Just do it for me, is what I'm saying. Anyway, Anthony Salvatore Casso is born in Brooklyn in 1942 and grows up in the then gritty area of Parks, Elk and Coward Gardens. Let me emphasize the then part, though every now and then somebody will shoot out the windows of the Marco Polo Restaurant, but we'd have to sell a lot more ads for me to be able to move there at this current moment in time. That was my New York life, living in a shoebox and living in the street, pretending to afford beer. Ah, great. times, man, walking around, pretending like I wasn't completely broke and going insane. So, Kassel grows up in these Italian enclays of Brooklyn and his dad, Michael, he had been in the

mob in the 1920s and 1930s, working as an enforcer for the infamous Vito Genovese, doing things like beating up anyone in the unions who cause trouble for them. He's your usual sort of labor racket thug and would often carry a metal pipe to go on, you know, to beat people with or scare them off with, which earned him the nickname Gas Pipe, which was eventually given to his son. Michael eventually transitions just being like a regular longshorement, but keeps up his mob connects, and let's just say, you know, he knew a guy or two. When Anthony is born, his godfather is a coppo in the Genovese family who ran the docks.

So GasPipe, he grows up already with a foot in that world, and when he's a kid, his father starts taking him on hunting trips where he becomes a pretty good shot with a pistol. He's so good that he develops a little side hustle when he's in grade school, which is killing hawks for people with pigeon coops on their roof, to protect the birds. there were a lot more hawks in Nurk City now. Though there's a couple now, but if you shot one of them now,

the fury that would be unleashed on you. I mean, it would be, it would definitely be more than if you shot people. Koso drops out of high school at 16 and joins his father down at the docks, starting out as a longshoreman. But he's got violent tendencies. And in one incident,

a dock worker's boasting about his new metal-reinforced boots, probably like steel-toe boots, were new then. So gas pipe drops a 500-pound cargo load on the guy's feet using a forklift, breaking most of his toes. And afterwards, he kind of laughs about it and says that he wanted to see how good the new boots were. Yeah, this is definitely the moment where we need an ad for what gear still tow cap boots.

You've got any stories about regional dentistry and Suffolk, England in this episode? Because then I may be able to use my extensive range of contacts to get us ads. Fray not, bud. In the late 50s, while still a teenager, Kaso joins the South Broken Boys, which is a teenage street game with just a very uncreative name. They mostly fight other teenage street gangs down by the docks and pretty violent showdowns that sometimes involve knives, clubs, and even Molotov cocktails.

And this is like a fairly common thing in Brooklyn neighborhoods then. Every few blocks has a gang like this. After one extremely violent rumble with an Irish gang, Kassel's father tries to kind of scare him straight and warn him off going down the same path he had previously kind of gone down. But this is the 1950s on the docks. He's surrounded by wise guys living large and doing what they want. And I wouldn't hesitate to guess that as far back as he could remember,

Gas Pipe wanted to be a gangster. So, of course, like a young Sean Williams dismissing his father's warnings about not going into journalism, Gas Pipe does not listen to his dad and soon catches the attention of a captain in Lucchese family named Christopher Chrissy Tick Frenare, which is kind of a trash nickname, I get there. Gas Pipe starts to work for the family as a low-level bookie enforcer. And at age 20, he earns his first arrest and conviction for bookmaking. He spends five days in jail, pays a $50 fine.

Throughout the next decade, gas pipe continues to do this low-level work for the Lucchasey family, putting in his time as he tries to climb the corporate mob ladder. He's an enforcer, right? He handles, like, arguments and disputes over hijackings, over gambling, over drugs. And when I say handled disputes, I mostly mean he just beats the crap out of people who differ from the mob and from his bosses. His big break, though, comes in the mid-1970s, when on the orders of Frunari, Chrissy Ticks, the captain who recruited him,

he takes out a drug dealer working for the Lucchasey family that they suspected of working with the government. Now, it should be said that, like, you know, Gaspike claims he killed a bunch of people before this murder, but also, like, he was a known liar and a psychopath, who, as I mentioned, even other mobsters and killers described as being a nut job. Not someone who should be taken out their word.

It's kind of like all these, like, you know, you see these, like, YouTube shows where they have, like, gangsters or criminals on who, uh, they say all these outrageous. just things, there's these clickbait sort of reels where they say something that's clearly not true, but the host kind of acts like it is. I mean, these people lie for a living, like Gaspipe. You have to vet some of the information they're coming from and not take them at their word always. Anyways, the age of 32, with his mentor's blessing, Gaspipe becomes a maid man in the Lucchasey family.

He becomes fast friends and partners with another rising Mafioso, Vitorio Little Vicamuso. Gaspipe and Little Vic immediately get to work by smuggling drugs, even though there's was technically a ban on dealing narcotics back then, but they just don't seem to care. And the boss of the family, a guy by the name of Tony Ducks Corolla, he didn't seem to really care either once the money started rolling in. By the way, Tony Ducks' nickname was because he was always ducking convictions, and it's kind of a great nickname, you know? Is that not because he kept up racking massive bills? Or maybe he's just doing little green turds in public parks. Bills.

Duc Bills. Come on. This is some of your worst stuff. Oh, man. You got to. I mean, you got it. I've been insulted twice, three times, four times already. I might turn off the Zoom.

Little Vic and Gas Pipe, they duck some as well, like when they get arrested in a large heroin deal, which involved importing the drugs from Thailand with the actual Sicilian mafia. But they managed to somehow get the charges dismissed due to a lack of evidence. This was like during the time where the mob could get away with anything where they were, you know, paying off prosecutors, paying off judges, intimidating jurors, stuff like that. So it was pretty easy to get out of stuff like this. It's just like where you normally do, you normally do these mafia shows and you're like, and he was arrested for murder in 1952. In 1953, he got out and he was in Thailand.

It's like, what the hell's going on here? Yeah. Just they had the run of the place. You know, they were super powerful. The 80s trials hadn't brought them down yet, which we'll get to in a little bit. The family is impressed with these two at this point, so not only is Amuso promoted to a maidman, but Gas Pipe and Amuso are then transferred to Fernari's crew,

which is a more prominent crew in the family. They're called the 19th whole crew, which is named after the bar where the crew is headquartered. Gas Pipe and Amuso also joined with the cops dubbed the bypass crew, which is a sophisticated burglary ring. It's a coalition of like 15 highly skilled thieves who are electronic experts, locksmiths, and safe crakers. These are top-notchurched men.

And as you might have guessed from the nickname, they always bypass the alarms. And the crew is really good at what they do. You might even call them the not fucking around crew, and they managed to bring in an estimated $100 million over a decade period in the 70s and 80s in New York City and Long Island, which is just, like that's in a crazy amount of money to steal. They target banks, jewelry stores mostly, they're robbing safe deposit boxes, and just cracking open vaults. The two of them are also at this point starting to carry out hits for the family, taking

on at least four murder contracts. They're successful in two of them, but in two of the guys get away. And that just doesn't seem like a good average for a hitman. You know, like, is 50% like it's not Aaron Judge number. Is that good for Hitman, do you think? No, well, it almost is Aaron Judge numbers, right? Point, like 500s. But yeah, not good, no.

No, I feel like if you fail twice in four times as a Hey, man, I would hire a different guy. Yeah, you know? It's not like throwing paper balls into a bucket. Like, you've got to do it pretty well, I think. Yeah, you got to be, you gotta hit like a 90%. Yeah, 90% rate. In 1980, Frenari is promoted to Lucchese Consiglieri, and he wants GasPipe to take over as captain of his crew.

But Gas Pipe is trying to portray this image of like a humble soldier just doing his work. So he turns down the promotion and urges Frenari to appoint his literal partner in crime, Amuso as captain, which he does. Which is kind of like a weird move because promotion of captain obviously comes with a lot more money and a guarantee of some like a lot more responsibility and profits. But maybe maybe he just didn't want the extra responsibility. I mean, I get it. Like working, working sucks and more work.

It sucks more. Picasso actually has a different job in mind. He wants to work directly for Forneri, because in mafia world, the consigniari is allowed to keep one soldier to report to him directly, sort of like an aid, right? And Fernari agrees. And also, gas pipe kind of wants to keep a low profile

as he's escaped in narcotic sting just recently. and he wants to stay off the Fed's radar, so being appointed a captain, it's going to put him on that radar. But one group he's definitely on the radar of is the Gambino crime family, particularly a rebel faction, led by the infamous John Gotti

and famous podcaster Sammy the Bolgrivano. And they're planning to take out Gambino boss Pauly Castellano, and they sent someone to feel out gas pipe on it to see how Lou Casey family would feel. Gaspipe doesn't even bother consulting anyone else. He just says that, like, he does not care what happens to Pauley.

Castellano is, of course, then gunned down in December of 1985 in front of Spark Steakhouse where I actually took Sean to eat with our butter racks when Sean was visiting New York. You know, it wasn't my favorite steakhouse. Definitely had some solid old school lives, but the food was good, not great. I mean, steakloid rugby balls, so huge recommend from me. But, I mean, Pete asked me recently if we could go back there, but I'm guessing you've got some others in mind when we meet up.

Yeah, I got some. I'm a big fan of Strip House on 13th, which is fantastic. And I mean, Lou Gehrs is always good, but yeah, we'll go somewhere. We'll get some Martinez. Sweet. It turns out, though, that the upper echelons of the Lo Casey family, unlike Gaspipe, they did care about Polly Castano getting whacked. You don't just kill a boss like that.

Godi and his underboss need to go. That's been decided. And assigned to it, our gas pipe and his partner, Vicamuso, they're the ones who are going to have to do it. And not only that, but they have to do the hit in a specific way, a way that was outlawed by the five families. I actually did not know this. They want a Muso and Gas Pipe to use.

of bomb, which have been banned because they thought they drew too much attention to mafia hits, and they also had the potential to kill too many innocent bystanders. And I think they also figured that if they do it with a bomb, they might blame the police or even the Gambinos

might look elsewhere, maybe they'll blame the actual Sicilian mob or some other sort of crime family. The hit is going to be done in conjunction with the Genovese family, and GasPipe has loaned one of their veteran hitman, who's also an ammunition expert who was trained by the U.S. military.

Gaspipe gets his hands on some C4, but Gotti proves a hard man to kill. He's always in congested places and surrounded by bodyguards, obviously figuring somebody is going to want revenge. However, after a tip-off from a Campino captain who was kind of pissed off about the murder, gas pipe zeroes in on the perfect location to take him out,

him and his underboss in like one swoop. Gotti's been going around to all the different cruise headquarters who weren't in on the hit, trying to kind of rally support and people to his side to prevent a civil war. Gaspipe pips up that he's going to be at one of these spots in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. So on the afternoon of April 13, 1986, Gaspipe and Amuso and a couple others scouted the location and the Genovese hitman plants the C4 under what they think is Gotti's car.

When they see the underboss heading outside and getting in the car with another guy, they assume it's Gotti, they blow it up. They get the underboss, he's dead, the other guy's severely wounded, but it's not Gotti. Godi had decided at the last moment not to show up and if he had, you know, a lot of rap lyrics to this day would be very, very different. Gotti ends up actually never suspecting Gas Piper or Mousseau of the hit because he maintains good relations with both of them.

But here's a quick story. Around that time, Gotti was in court because he actually beat somebody up over like a parking space, something ridiculous like that. But when the dude who Gotti beat up went on the witness stand, he refused to testify, producing the classic New York Post headline, I For Gotti.

Oh, man. It's just better back then, wasn't it? Yeah, I mean, Gaddi had the best headlines, too. Like, there was a lot to work with there. Meanwhile, at the same time that all this is going on, business is still booming for the mafia families. And not just for them. Out in Brighton Beach, a Russian mobster by the name of Marat Balagula is also getting paid.

We've talked about him before in a bunch of Brighton Beach episodes and Russian mafia episodes, if you guys want to go through them. I think the last one was Boris Nefield, but we talked about him. He's devised this genius plan to cheat federal and state tax authorities out of their gas taxes by running a scam through a bunch of phony shell companies, pocketing something that sounds absolutely ridiculous, like $30 to $40 million a month.

But it actually was like close to that level, right? When the IRS would come to collect, all they could do is see the money move from kind of one made-up company to another made-up company that was supposed to pay the taxes before it kind of disappears into fit air. And I've gone, I think I've gone into detail in a couple episodes in those. Brighton Beach episodes about what the plan was like. But it was basically just that. But yeah, the scam is so good.

Everyone wants in on it when they hear about it, including Colombo family Coppo and famed mafia YouTuber Michael Franzisi, who sends one of his goons out to demand protection payment. But Balagula knows how to play the game. He arranges a sit-down with the rival Lucchese crime family, the 19th whole crew, of which gas pipe is a part. And Lucchasees know a good thing when they see one. They strike up a deal with Balagula that puts him under their

protection and allows them to share in his profits, which they then kind of share in with the other five families, because the profits are so big that it's their second biggest moneymaker right after drug trafficking. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere of the crowd, but too often, life gets busy, or the price holds you back. Price line is here to help you make it happen. With millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars, you can go see the game live. Don't just dream about the trip.

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end of the 18th hole at some golf course. And like, it's already pretty nerve-wracking to be playing your shot down the final hole in front of all the members, like, getting hammered. And imagine if you just, like, were about to take your final shot and you saw, like, New York's most notorious gangsters, like, laughing and taking the piss out of you at the end. I think it would be slightly up. I don't think they hug out of a golf course bar, dude. I think it was just the name of a bar, you know?

Like, just, like, just chilling. bars called the library or not actually libraries. Oh, damn. You just broken my whole world apart. For Balagula and Gas Pipe, it is the beginning of a beautiful mafia friendship. They go into some other business ventures, including a gold mine in Sierra Leone, as one does. But for the Russian underworld in Brighton Beach, it's a different beginning. They now see Balagula as weak for having cut a deal with the Italians.

They're not intimidated by Lucchese family. To prove their point and send a message to Balagula, A rival named Vladimir Reznikov stops by his office and just shoots it up with an AK-47, killing a close associate of his and wounding several secretaries. His next move is more brazen. He goes to Balagula's headquarters at a nightclub and puts a nine to his forehead, demanding $600,000 and a percentage of all his rackets. Telling him if he doesn't pay up, he's going to kill his entire family.

It's the art of the deal, Brighton Beach style. Balagula, he agrees. Then he promptly suffers a heart attack. Yeah, makes sense. I've Reznikov played a pretty big role in your Neyfeld episode, right? It was like quite a big major trigger man for the Russian mob. I mean, people should check out that episode as well. It's one of your best ones.

Yeah, and I hung out with Nefeld, which was great. Yeah, he was like a boss out. I mean, it's weird because the Russians didn't have like boss bosses. You know, it wasn't like a five-family type deal, but he was a major player out there along with Neifeld, Balagula, Evsea, Grone, and a couple of others. I actually was hanging out with this kid in Jersey who, probably shouldn't say too much about, but he, he's in his 30s who grew up in Brighton Beach,

and he, you know, he knew all the names. And he also, he had some things going on, really. Not the other guy that you know about. This is a new guy, but a lot of fun. You should really, you should be really recording these visits, man. I got to learn to speak Russian, dude. He's so worried about being killed at that point. He refuses to leave his house.

That's how much of a G. Reznikov was. Gas pipe comes by, listens to the, the story and he tells Balagula to tell Reznikov, he has the money and to come by his club. He also gets Balagula to give him a description of his car and a photo of Reznikov. The next day, Resnikov stops by the club to collect his payment, but instead, the Lukasei soldier sent by Gaspipe, walks up behind him and shoots him dead. Gaspipe later says, quote, after that, Marat didn't have any problems with other Russians. Yeah, really lot of Rio de VO there. Yeah, a lot of Realee Ode-V-O stuff here, too, you know?

Yeah. Um, gas pipe, though, does have his own problems. Later that year in September, he's on his way to meet a Gambino associate to discuss stolen bear bonds, just like at heat. Uh, I just started watching Thief last night for the first time, by the way. Oh, it? Yeah. Have you seen it? It's Michael Mann's, I think, first big movie.

Oh, I'm going to watch that this way. James Kahn. Yeah, it's pretty great. I mean, it's very similar vibes to heat, but, I mean, if any money, any movie, you want similar vibes to, right? Yeah. Um, anyway, he's on his way to meet this Gambino associate. but a car carrying three gummen pulls up next to his car and unloads on him.

He's hit in the back and the arm. He staggers into a restaurant to hide in the freezer. Eventually, Vicamuso picks him up and takes him to the hospital. When detectives meet him there, he tells them, quote, there's nobody who doesn't like me. I don't know nothing about organized crime, which is, I mean, that's what you say, right?

The thing with psychopaths are, they're sometimes really funny. That's a great, great bit. In his abandoned car, NYPD finds a confidential political, Police Department list of the license plate numbers of unmarked cars used by investigators for surveillance purposes. It turns out, GasPipe has two dirty cops on the take, and they're both in units that investigate

organized crime cases with access to sensitive documents and informants and all that type of stuff. I think there's actually a movie that just came out about these guys called mob cops, which might make for an episode, but we'll have to look more into that. These cops, they tip gas pipe off to guys who tried to kill them. They've got surveillance photos and everything. But gas pipe already knows it was the Gambino family because the Gambino associate is the one who had set up the meat. He's been beefing with them over some profits from a heroin deal. It does not have to do with the Gotti bombing thing.

I think they still don't know about that. Now, normally, this would be settled between the two family bosses. But when all this is going on, Rudy Giuliani, who's then the U.S. attorney for the Southern District in New York, he's in the midst of putting all five bosses and families and top-ranking members of the mob on trial in the big mafia commission trials. So no sit downs. And disputes like this are allowed to fester, and these guys are not the patient type. Did anybody try and whack Giuliani during this time? It seems like a pretty bold move to go after these guys, given it's like the height of the mob plus warrior's ear in New York City.

I don't, I think there might have been talk of it. I don't know if anyone actually physically tried. You know who they did try to whack? I think they shot him and he survived. Is Curtis Slewa, you know who he is? God, he's come up in some of our shows, isn't he? He's the guardian angel's head. He's also like constant Republican candidate for, yeah, John Gotti tried to have him whacked.

I think there's something like they, like a guy waited in a cab, like a hit man who waited in a cab outside his apartment. And Slewa got in and shot him. I don't remember the exact story. I think it's something like that. Slewa was also married to the woman who hosts street soldiers on Lisa, what's her name? On Hot 97 every Sunday morning. Just great New York stuff right there for anyone who's interested. Yeah, incredible.

incredible stuff. But yeah, so Gotti tried to have him killed and he survived. Anyway, before Gas Pipe can go after these guys for vengeance, there's a bigger issue, and that's Tony Ducks, who was the boss of Lucchese family, knows his days at the top are finished because of the trial. And not just Tony Ducks, but his underboss, and Frenari, Gas Pipe's mentor, the Consolieri. So in November of 1986, a Muso and Gas Pipe are called to Renari's house to meet with Tony Ducks. Tony says he wants Gas Pipe and a Muso to take over the family in a smooth transition.

no violent war of success or anything like that. Remember, we talked about this in the cold open. Yeah, you've got to get your ducks in a row, guys. All right, there you go. That's not bad. You're redeeming yourself. There'll be more duck puns later on, maybe. I hope so.

So at the start of 1987, when the Lucchese family top dogs are heading to prison for life, a Muso and Gaspike become the power at the head of the Lucchese family. Gaspipes's like 45 years old at this time. It's pretty young to be a top dog of one of the five families. Early on, one federal official tracking this concludes that, quote, Amuso has the title of boss, but the brains and driving force behind the family is gas pipe. FBI agents also pick up street gossip that it seems that Amuso was more interested in playing handball, which he did every morning than sort of the nuts and bolts tasks of running a family,

which, again, you know, working sucks, and I kind of see where Amuso's coming from with this, you know? Yeah. Sean, you have no idea what it's like to be the boss. No, definitely not, but I know it's like to play a story instead of doing it. Every little thing you do, every facet of every little thing you do affects every other, every other little thing. I'm missing up the speech, but you guys know. At that point, the Lucchese family is the third biggest family in New York with 120 main man and a thousand associates. They've got a big Manhattan and Bronx contingency with two smaller crews in Jersey in Brooklyn.

The three previous bosses since becoming the modern Lucchese family, starting with Tommy Lucchese in 1951, they'd come for them in a Manhattan Bronx faction. They had the bigger cruise. It was the power-based faction. of the family. Gas Pipe and Amuso are the first leaders from the Brooklyn faction. And the Manhattan and Bronx guys, they don't know them well. Those guys are older. They're more experienced mafiosos. They're kind of pissed these younger, less experienced guys are now in charge. And there's some grumbling. So yeah, you can kind of tell where this is headed. The whole situation

makes gas pipe and amuso paranoid and kicks off the purge, which is a brutal, legendary purge that cements gas pipe as one of New York Mafia's most notorious killers. It starts off with a top captain from the Bronx vanishes, a guy that had briefly been considered for the top job before gas pipe and a musso. The next to go is Tony Duck's top deputy in the garment district where the family had a lot of valuable business interests. A second Bronx captain of the big crew of a big crew was found in the trunk of his car, shot in the head, throat slashed. He was seen as a threat and he also had $7 million with a loans on the street, which gas pipe and amuso, of course, take over. And just to be clear, this is gas pipe and amuso just basically going to war and

murdering the guys in their own family. A coppo-turned-witness would later say about gaspipe, quote, all he wanted to do is kill, kill, get what you can, even if you didn't earn it. One guy gets killed because gas pipe was pissed, the guy didn't visit him in the hospital after his car was shot up. And I'm not going to list all the different people and ways that gas pipe and emuso kill and half people killed. But within a few years of them having taken over, something like 40 main men and associates are dead,

which is an insane amount of people to kill in your own family. It's basically unheard of in American mafia history to have this type of purge when a new boss tapes over. Like sometimes, you know, there's been wars within families, like the Colombo Wars, where there's two factions engaged in a civil war, but not just a purge done like this. Yeah, this is insane. I mean, just think about that next time you're complaining to your line manager about the match of being out and the broken room. I mean, I make a joke like that, but I actually had an office job since 2012 and I couldn't work in one if my family's life depending on it. So, yeah, that's where I'm.

It soon might. By the time it's over, gaspip and Muso are fully in control of the family. Now, it's time for him to focus on settling other scores, like with the Gambino squad that tried to take him out. He goes on a mission to hunt down to various shooters who had all scattered to various safe houses. One of them, he has his two dirty cop friends arrest them, and they literally hand him over to gas pipe, who takes him to a basement in Brooklyn and tortures him for hours before he eventually gives up the names of the other guys who are with him. One of them police to Florida and turns itself in on another charge, and the other goes into witness protection.

That's how scared people are of GasPipe at this point. Meanwhile, he's basically the boss of the family, and the money is rolling in. He spends $1.2 million building a house in Mill Basin in 1991, and the guy who builds the house, he's the construction boss. He's a Lucchasey associate who had supervised the construction of other houses for Mafiosos. Gaspipes doesn't like him knowing all this stuff about his house and his finances, so soon after the house is finished, the associate ends up not just dead

but with signs of severe torture on his body. Ostensibly, he's killed because Gas Pipe accused him of being a rat, but in reality, he's killed because Gas Pipe just didn't like that he had all this information about him. And that's kind of his M.O. When he wants to kill somebody, he just starts telling everyone the guy's a rat,

which foreshadowing is ironic, even with no evidence and no reasoning before he just kind of kills them, gets away with them. Psycho. He's just the guy who has, like, an insatiable bloodlust. He also kills a, young man because his neighbor complained

to Gas Pipe that he was pestering his daughter for dates which I don't think the neighbor wanted him to handle it that way but you know hammer, nail and whatnot. Around 1990, Gaspipe wants new blood. He brings in 17 new members to the family, which like, if you're aspiring mafioso and like this guy's the boss, wouldn't you aim for like a different, a different family? You know what I'm saying?

Like, once you see the whole purge thing and be like, I want to, I probably don't want to work here. This guy doesn't have a good track record with his employees. Yeah, you don't see that on glass door. Just as things are calming down, though, gaspipe gets word that there's a pending RICO indictment against him that's going to be unsealed in a matter of days. Him and Amuso decided to go on the lamb,

but first, Gaspipe appoints a loyalist as the acting boss, and that's Al Diarco. Little Al Diarco, though, he needs to basically follow Gaspite's orders to a T. During one meeting, Gaspipe tells him that after he wins the trial, he's going to invite 10 other Lucchese members listing the names to a victory party,

and then adds, quote, I'm going to kill them all because they took advantage of me while I was on the lamp. In the spring of 1991, gaspipe orders the killing of Capo Peter Fat Pete Chiodo, who had been his right-hand man for years. Gaspipes pissed because Fat Pete had pled guilty to a bunch of charges without consulting him. But Fat Pete, being his right-hand man,

knows his gas pipe really well and knows this is going to piss him off. So he stays close to his home in Staten Island only moves around when he's surrounded by guys that are basically relatives. That's how loyal they are. That doesn't stop gas pipe, though, who sends shooters to the guy's house like the front of his house. He's hit 12 times, but somehow survives after surgeons perform eight hours of surgery,

citing his fatness as the reason his vital organs aren't penetrated. Gaspites, True, actually tries to kill him again at the hospital with a mob guy dressed up like a doctor, but a swarm of FBI agents and cops at the hospital don't allow anyone to get too close. Now, Fat Pete had refused to cooperate before when he pled guilty, but now he switches it up. The police are only too happy to help. They sit beside him in the hospital room and he just gives up a whole lot on the Lucchasey family,

especially Vicamuso and Gaspipe. They, of course, get word of this, they start threatening his family. They send word to his parents that if Fat Pete talks, they're going to kill him. Well, I guess he continues to talk or talks on the stand, which again is something that was not done to the American Mafia. Families were typically supposed to be left out. But these two just do not care. Fat Pete takes the threat seriously enough to have his wife, kids, and other family members

enter the witness protection program, but the Lucchasees are still able to kill his uncle and shoot his sister who survives. This guy is full psycho. I mean, I also think one of the main reasons I work out is so I never ever get a nickname like Fat Pete. I think actually a good AI slot video

would be this guy like hanging out with his fellow monsters and just crying in front of the mirror. Because like, why, I mean, fat Pete is so sad. I don't know. I mean, yeah. I think they didn't mind. You know, it wasn't a source of shame for those guys. I guess if you're eating at Spots every day, then, yeah, you're going to be pretty fat.

But, yeah, Fat Pete is one of the first big names, and we'll see a couple more to really turn on gas pipe, and you'll see why, usually because it's his own fault. The whole Fat Pete disaster, you know, the messed up hit, it's blamed on Diarko. He's demoted down a peg. Within a few days, though, Amuso was arrested at a shopping mall near Scranton after an anonymous caller tips off the FBI. The arrest leaves Gas Pipe as the sole top dog in the Lucchese family, with Di Arcoe kind of feeling he's, about to be killed. And according to the book Mob Boss about Diarko, shortly before the Fat Pete hit was ordered,

Fat Pete told them, quote, these guys, meaning gas pipe and a mousseau, have a pattern of calling people rats, and they are marking guys rats and killing them. I got information that you and I are going to be killed and hurt. I don't know why I killed and hurt. Maybe just killed. That sounds like the way to describe that.

The whole Lukasee family now is in a state of just rabid paranoia, not the least of all, gas pipe, who at this point has taken over so many, taken out so many of his own guys that I pretty much lost count. At a meeting in September, Diarko gets paranoid enough that

one of the guys there is going to take him out, that he just flees out the door, grabs his family, and decides he's going to go straight to the FBI. But he's so scared of gas pipe, he refuses to go to the FBI headquarters in the city and instead goes to one in the suburbs. They take him to an upstate hotel where he's protected by

the FBI and met by federal prosecutors, says one of them, quote, even though he was in a room with agents, He was so paranoid of gas pipe that he was hiding in the bathroom when we came in. He told us, you have to understand how dangerous this guy is. He has sources, agents, he knows what's going on. The feds hadn't really been clued into what was happening with the Lucchese kind of purge, but all of a sudden they have all these high-ranking mobsters

pretty much almost literally falling into the laps when they could talk. They're getting dirt on murderers, corrupt union officials, really just getting everything. And Gaspipes' insane bloodletting of his own crew has basically driven these guys right into wind. protection. Darko himself wasn't even facing charges. The jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board. They weren't guessing. They were asking the victim who killed them.

Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. Ministurfer. And every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that exact day in history, from Killer Cannibal Brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult, and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that make you stop and think, how have I never heard this before? With over 2,500 episodes and a brand new story each and every single day, morning cup of murder becomes part of your routine fast.

If you like your coffee hot but your bones chilled, then sit back and start your day with a morning cup of murder. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. Now, just for rewind like a little bit, this is going to sound familiar to hopefully everyone who listens to this podcast, right? I mentioned earlier there's Lucchese crew out in Jersey, right? Small crew, pigmy thing out in Jersey.

The head of it is a guy by the name of Anthony. Anthony Asaturro. They call him Tumac for short. He's a good thing going on over there. He's making a ton of money, both legal and otherwise, smart guy. And he's close with the previous boss, Lou Casey's, our friend Tony Ducks. When Tony originally became boss, Anthony was kicking up like hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to New York.

But him and Tony got along so well, Tony was making so much money. By the end, when Tony Ducks get sentenced, Anthony and the Jersey crew are paying like maximum 50K. For Gas Pipe and Vicamuso, this is unacceptable. They want 50% of his cruise earnings. But Anthony does not back down. He's not going to play that. He refuses to even go into the city to meet with Gas Pipe to discuss the number.

So Gas Pipe tells everyone he's a rat, of course, and puts a contract out on him and his son, who's also a mobster. Then in the fall of 1988, the New Jersey crew was summoned to a Brooklyn house to discuss restructuring it, but only half the crew around 10 guys kind of shows up and they linger outside,

and they just basically refuse to enter the house and just straight up leave. They also refused to go to the Christmas party, which I feel like is a thing we've had before in a story with mobsters clashing, right? Like refusing to go to the Christmas party is an unforgivable sin. They also turned down another meaning in 1989.

Gas pipe is infuriated and orders them all killed, like the entire Jersey crew, something like 20 people. Yeah, I went to one single office Christmas party and I got stopped by the police from my way home and then slipped in my boss. One for one, never going to do that again. I'm out. We had some,

Vice had some Christmas parties that guy. kind of hectic, as you can actually a really good time. Yeah, they got fun. Word of this whole killing thing spreads that he's going to kill everyone. Most of them fall in line except for Anthony, his son, and about seven loyalists. Gaspipes since hit squads out for them in Jersey and Florida, where they had a lot of business interests. Over the next couple years, he tries to take them out, but only successfully takes out one

of them. Anthony, though, soon gets dinged on racketeering charges in 1992. He's facing 30 years with no parole, so he turns in full. and that's yet another high-level informant giving a ton of info on Lou KZ's and gaspipe. By January of 1993, little Vicamuso has been convicted of RICO charges and is sentenced to life in prison. Catching gas pipe is priority number one for the feds in New York. The U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn declares, quote, he is the most dangerous, cunning, and ruthless mafia leader left on the streets.

He is number one on our hit parade of wanted criminals. Gas pipes at this point been on the run for 22 months. And the government is turning on the heat. They're finding and shutting down bank accounts. I think like $700,000 of his gets confiscated. Another 200k is located in a hidden safe deposit box. Yeah, I mean, just go for the cash at the start. That's always going to hit them the worst.

I mean, I think they have to find it. You know, these guys do a good enough job of hiding that sort of stuff. They know the feds are after them. They're closing it on him. You know, they're surveying his alleged girlfriends and tracing calls. Finally, they locate him in Mount Olive, New Jersey. and on January 19, 1993, Anthony gas pipe Casso was finally arrested.

He's facing multiple Rico charges and a whole slew of others, including 25 murderers and attempted murders and numerous extortional laborerateering charges, most of it provided by the three higher-ups-turned-informance that we just talked about, and it's not looking good. Sitting in jail, Casso tries to come up with an escape plan, offering a corrupt guard tens of thousands to let him out, and another 400K if he makes a clean getaway.

He actually gets pretty close when the guard lets him out of his cell. He heads to an unguarded elevator. He's a few feet from freedom, which is like an exit on the side street, but he's stopped by another guard and brought back. He's a few other ideas. I think one of them includes even taking out a judge, but before he can even give them a shot, Vic Amuso publicly turns on him.

Technically still the boss of the family. Amuso declares gas pipe a traitor to be stripped of all rank. He now thinks that gas pipe was the one who announced to be called the feds and dined him out and scrant him when he was picked up. Things are not looking good for gas pipe. Even if he can get out, he's got nothing but enemies and no friends left. So in February of 1994, with his trial about to start in two weeks, Casso plays his final card.

He offers to become a government witness. And it's accepted, which is crazy considering how high up he was. He was the boss and how many people he had killed. He ends up pleading guilty of 14 murders and a host of other charges. he also tells the feds he had a hand in 23 other murders, bringing the grand total of 37. He gets whisked away to a much better prison accommodations in Texas, sort of like one of those snitches suites that you can get.

He gives up a ton of info on the mob, through a Casey family, everything. Because remember, he still has to get sentenced, and he's only getting his time reduced if he can help the government make cases. But the Justice Department never actually calls him as a witness in a trial besides one Senate subcommittee on the gas tax scam, and they never call him for obvious reasons,

but just like, who was going to consider him credible? While in custody, too, he keeps getting into other trouble. He starts to fight with a Colombo soldier. He's bribing guards. He's smuggling contraband. Whatever he can do. In August 1997, in an almost unprecedented move, he's actually kicked out of the witness protection program,

and he tries to write a bunch of letters to prosecutors offering dirt on people like Sammy the Bull, but the fans just don't find him to be credible at all. In the summer of 1998, he sentenced to 400,000, 55 years or 13 consecutive light sentences. Somehow he's allowed to do an interview with 60 minutes in 1999, where he talks about the government screwing him and that

it was great being in the mob because people know who you were and it was better than being a Hollywood star. You could just go to a restaurant and you don't wait online and you get, quote, the best of foods, the best of wines. Sounds like podcasting, yeah. Yeah, it's exactly the same. He does the rest of his time at 80s Florence, the Supermax, all the top psychos in the country,

and he dies in December of 2020, due to COVID. Anyway, so it's a good lesson here on how, despite all the loyalty talk with mafia guys and gangsters and criminals

in general, they end up murdering their friends a whole lot and allies just as often as they do anyone else. There you go. As you're moral. Yeah.

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