History's Dumbest Criminals, Part 1

Mobsters are often romanticized in film and fiction -- but that doesn't mean they're always geniuses. In the first part of this series, Ben and Noel are joined by Matt Lieb and Vince Mancini, the hosts of Pod Yourself A Gun, to explore some of history's dumbest mobsters.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome

(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Who's that on the other end
of the zoom rocking to sick Hawaiian Shirt? Why that's
our super producer, the one end only, Max Williams. Uh.
They called me ben Uh. Gotta work on a mafia
nickname here, Noel, what what do you think? Oh well,

(00:47):
one of our guests Today's specialty is giving mafia nicknames,
so maybe we can hold that for at the end
of the episode. Fantastic and let's even let's do let's
revisit it in part two. We have just not you
a bit of a spoiler, folks. This week series, we
are diving into the stories of bone heads, of goons,

(01:08):
ne'er dwells. We are talking about some strange, dumb dare
I say, ridiculous stories from the world of organized crime.
And we're not going into this alone, are we know?
We're not? That is my name. My name is Noel.
We are joined today by Matt Lee and Vince man
Sini from the Incredible Sopranos podcast, The only Sopranos podcast

(01:32):
that matters in my opinion Pod Yourself a gun. Um,
I thought I'll let you guys to introduce yourselves a
little bit further. But Matt and Vince, welcome to Ridiculous History. Max,
can we get an applause? Quean that you did deserve that? Um,

(01:57):
So you guys have been doing Pod Yourself Ago, which
is a Sopranos rewatch podcast. I guess for what you're
on season five? Now, how many episodes in? Is that?
That's a lot of apps. It's like sixty something. I
don't know. Uh, at at this point, I've I've stopped
counting podcast so, yeah, exactly it is. This is a

(02:21):
podcast for people who you know, they didn't like math
in school. You know what they like to do in
school was listening to Slipknot and watch Mafia movies. And
uh that's uh, that's who it's for people, you know what,
you know what's in again now in a big way,
Slipknot in Mafia movies goes back. They're timeless. They're timeless.
People have been listening to Slipknot since the dawn of time.

(02:45):
R I p their drummer though, I forget Yeah, yeah,
great drummer to the universe. Now exactly, which is what
Slipknots set out to do. I believe if you if
you've watched their doctmentary that came out in the Senazoa era. Yeah. So,

(03:05):
uh so with this, we were trying to think of
some of the best people to explore the stories of
let's say it, kind of dumb criminals, kind of thick
headed mobsters here. And uh we had we had one
of those moments like in Ghostbusters where they're trying to
figure out how to like fight back against Vigo and

(03:28):
they all look at the license plate where the statue
of Liberty is and they looked at each other. That
was Max Noll and me, except the statue of liberty
here was you guys. So we thought who better to
explore these stories with us and for our ridiculous historians
listening along at home. Uh what we did is, uh,

(03:48):
the four of us, Matt, Vince, Noel, and myself each
each found a story or a person that perfectly illustrates
just how dumb, how dumb the mobster game can be,
or the criminal game in general. And you know, Matt,
you and Vince had come up with with a couple

(04:10):
that I had never heard before. And I can't wait
to learn about him with you. Yeah, you were, you
were pretty into the story of a what's this guy's name, Well,
his name is Vincent Gigante. Uh, yeah, who was someone
who I had never heard of up until we were

(04:34):
doing Vince and I were doing an episode of The
Sopranos in which, uh, it's you can't really tell if
Junior Soprano is actually suffering from dementia or if he's
faking it for the cops. And you know, it's clear
that he's definitely faking it in some capacity uh early on,
but then it kind of turns into dementia because irony

(04:57):
poising for for dementia exactly. Yeah, he was doing he
got irony poisoning from uh, dementia poisoning anyways, uh he Uh.
Vince at one point mentioned that the storyline was kind
of loosely based on this guy, Vincent the Chinante. Yeah,

(05:18):
the chin they called him, who was the he was
the head of the Genoese crime family for twenty four years.
This could put on Pellow cases in like two seconds flat.
It's incredible. I mean, you know, they called him the
chin h for mostly because his mother, uh, who was
an Italian immigrant affectionately called him en Zen uh, which

(05:44):
is it's kind of like Vincent Vincenzo. Ch know, it goes.
This is how mafia names are created, you know, exactly exactly. Yeah,
and uh so they yeah, he was called the Chin,
but he actually uh in later years, Uh, he started
you know, being giving a different moniker. Uh. He went

(06:06):
by another name, the odd Father. And that's because from
nineteen sixty four to two thousand and three he pretended
in public to be completely uh ship house rat insane.
Uh Uh. In order to avoid prosecution, I'm gonna try
to swear less on this. More of it, more of

(06:32):
it that we tagged. We tagged this with a little
E for explicit Alright, good good, pretty sure, pretty sure
shouses in the Bible too, So come on, that's what
That's the first thing they said about Kane. You were like,
Kane was shifouse rat, insane and he's slew able. Um.
But yeah, so he started Uh he basically acted insane

(06:54):
for like almost forty years. Uh. He was in public,
he was pissing on stuff, he was walking with a limp,
he was dressed like a homeless guy. Was he the
bathrobe guy? He's the bathrobe guy. He was basically known
for being out in Greenwich Village in a bathrobe, slippers,
floppy hat. Uh, you know, just kind of like muttering

(07:16):
to himself like I'm walking and uh you know, uh
and you know, doing all sorts of crazy nonsense um
to try to throw off the cops. He was known
by the odd Father, the Crazy Don Dummy Brasco, the
gob a fool google fella, Don Coralie Sloaney. I was

(07:37):
hoping there was one of those analyzed piss can I
says you're making. You're making is also in the Bible. Okay,
good Uh if that doesn't work, if that gets bleeped,
analyzed scat um. So he was known by all those names,
or at least the first two. Uh. And uh, yeah,
he pretended to be crazy. So just a little bit

(07:59):
of background and on this guy. So he's the son
of Italian immigrants who came to America in the twenties,
along with a lot of Italian American immigrants at the time. Uh.
And he you know, he grew up in Greenwich Village
kind of you know, a mafia neighborhood, right, So he
started his life as kind of a professional boxer. He
dropped out of school and started boxing. He had a

(08:20):
record at twenty one and four. He's pretty good, a
really good chin, you know when you know, that's the thing.
If you got that strong chin, you get into boxing.
Although as opposed to a glass jaw, that's the opposite exactly.
You don't you don't want to have a glass job.
But you know, his true passion was not for boxing.
It was for uh, doing murder for the mafia. Uh.

(08:44):
Also I guess method acting a little bit, but uh
mostly doing murder. So uh at the time that you
know he was coming up, it was kind of the
beginning of like the modern mafia. Right. So you know,
if you don't know the story, it's like Lucky Luciano
basically created today's modern mafia, the Five families. Right, so

(09:05):
Vito Genovese was part of the Genovese crime family, but
he wasn't the head of it, right, so Vito Genovise
became like basically Gigante's mentor. Uh, you know, they were
like inseparable, they were homies, you know, they he did
murder for him, all that fun stuff. Uh and uh,

(09:27):
Lucky Luciano actually when he got deported in the forties. Uh,
he named Frank Costello to be the head of the
Genevese crime family. Meanwhile, Vito Genovese, it's like, budd it's
in my name, why can I not be at the
head of the family. And they got into kind of
like a little war, and basically it ended up that

(09:48):
Frank Costello like one for a while until Vito Genovese
basically ordered the chin you know, Vincent Gigante to uh
to murder or Frank Costello. So he tries to murder him,
uh fails it kind of just like grazes his skull.
But Frank Costello is like, all right, I get the point,

(10:09):
and he decides to basically quit and then uh, you know,
Genevise actually becomes the head of the Genevese crime family. So, uh,
nineteen fifty nine, Gigante and Genevese are both convicted in
federal court on charges of like heroin trafficking, and Gigante
at that point was sentenced to seven years, which is

(10:31):
only half of Genovese's sentence, But that's because the judge
read a slew of letters saying that like Jagante was
like had really good character and was a very nice guy,
and he worked on behalf of New York City youth. Like,
so this is this is the type of guy. He was,
like many fine pastries and cured meats for his mom
every mornings. Otherwise they could grow up with glass jaws.

(10:57):
You know, when nobody wants that. Nobody wants that. So's
he's this like good dude, but he still gets time.
So he has to serve seven years and that's when
it starts. After his release from prison in nine four,
Jagante started toying with the idea of like what if

(11:17):
I pretend to be mentally ill? So he started walking
the streets of Greenwich Village pretending to be like disoriented
and like mentally unstable and muttering and stuff. That was
kind of like the beginnings of it. He was like,
you know, let's try this out. I'm sorry, I have
a quick question. It seems like the kind of thing
you would do during a trial to keep from going

(11:38):
to prison. But he had already been to prison. Now
he was doing this to continue to do murders and
crimes and maybe avoid prosecution for further crimes. You know,
this is my game, long time got it? Yeah, so
my theory is that like he was able to get
a reduced sentence by having people say that he's a
really nice guy, but he still had to go to prison.

(12:01):
And he was like, all right, so that didn't really work,
you know, because I'm sure he actually wasn't really a
nice guy. I'm sure all those letters were like a
gun to your head, say I'm a good person. He's
no Bobby bucal Law. No, No, he's no Bobby Bacalaw.
This is uh, this is more of a richier, preal
type guy, you know, total loose cannon murder everything like that.
So I think he realized, like, it's not a good

(12:22):
angle trying to convince the judge I'm nice. It's a
better angle to convince the judge I'm crazy. So when
he gets out, he starts the beginnings of the ruse.
He starts walking around. You know, he's got the robe
and Slippy's on the weird hat, you know, uh, and
you know he's like he's peeing on stuff. He's talking
to parking meters, he's having a grand old time um bathtub.

(12:47):
I hope he's talking to a parking meter while he's
peeing on it. For sure, for sure, the way you're
looking at it sort of reminds me of the episode
Where's Johnny, where Junior actually is having it's the first
sign of his true dementia kind of setting in where
he's wandering around in a bathrobe and hanging out with

(13:09):
like sex an older sex worker on a bench who
offers him a half and half in the back seat.
But this definitely seems like they used some of this
stuff as an influence for that. It was is like,
you know, he is he is doing an impression of
Junior Soprano, who actually was suffering from dementia at that
point in the series, Like he is. This is for

(13:31):
sure what it was based off of. UM. But yeah,
I mean that was that was his thing. But it
was kind of like early on in his ruse, right,
so like he was pretending to do it, but he
was still doing stupid stuff like, uh, trying to bribe policemen.
So that's when in nineteen sixty nine, Uh, he got

(13:52):
indicted on a conspiracy to bribe the police in exchange
for information. And UH, as soon as he was indicted,
he is actually um he was able to make bail
and he checked himself into a mental hospital and that's
when his family started to revise his medical history. This
is when they started trying to create a paper trail
for it. When he first went to prison, right like,

(14:15):
they was, you know, I have to get a medical history,
and his mom would say stuff like, oh, he's perfectly healthy.
You know, he's a great kid, blah blah blah, wonderful, smart, whatever.
And then as soon as he checked into the mental
hospital in sixty nine, all of a sudden, they started
remembering all this like a host of other mental problems.
And it's kind of interesting because from what I was reading,

(14:37):
at first, they didn't really know what would constitute mental illness.
So a lot of the things that were listing were
things like he has a severe temper, he's afraid of
the dark, he he has been truant from school, uh,
and my favorite one, he was at one time obese.
None of these things are mental illness, so U at

(15:00):
some point I assume they consulted with like an actual doctor,
and that's when they started uh settling on the idea
of him being a paranoid schizophrenic. So in ninety nine,
his lawyers presented the reports from psychiatrists at his trial,
saying that he was a paranoid schizophrenic, and he was
actually he was declared unfit to stand for trial and

(15:20):
the charges against him were dropped. So the incompetence at
actually worked, and it continued to work for another thirty years.
What ended up happening is, Uh, from this point on,
he just never dropped the I'm crazy act. He just
was always outside in a robe, slippy floppy hat, pissing

(15:40):
on stuff, you know, eating his own dude, do whatever
they do, right so Uh. And in one instance, like
agents were serving him a subpoena and they found Gigante
standing naked in the shower holding an umbrella. Uh, that's
what I mean. No, you know, I come on, this
feels like such a Looney Tunes of insanity. It's like,

(16:05):
you know, one would look really crazy, but I had
an umbrella. You're in the shower to get wet on purpose,
I don't know, on the inside of the house, foolproof
shoes on my hands, and the pants on the top
of my body. It's pretty much me and Marcavelli at

(16:28):
this point. I have a question. I do have a question,
and maybe this is something we we answered towards the
towards the end. But Uh, one of the things that
occurs to me when we're getting really into his day,
lewis level acting on the on the method front um
boxing has tremendous potential to damage someone's co functions over time.

(16:54):
Do you think that this could have played some sort
of role. I don't. The science was really there people
to investigate that. I also want I also want to know,
like how, aside from the doctoring of the records and
maybe them playing into that, maybe this is an example
of like with Junior, where he was sort of faking
and at first and then gradually did succumb to too

(17:15):
serious mental decline. Is it sort of a combination of
those two things, or where's the proof that we're like, oh,
he definitely was playing up until the bitter end. I
mean even just the quarantine I feel like has ruined
my ability to like hold in bourbs and farts in public.
Like I've sort of total like I almost lost the
ability because I haven't had to do it for so long.
I can only imagine what it would be like if

(17:36):
you're trying to pretend to be crazy for an excited
period of time. Yeah, if you're once you're comfortable like
doing a little peep in the middle of the street
in front of strangers, like you end up being a
guy who's like, I'm sorry, I just pissed my pants.
I I usually do that on purpose, And at this point,
I trained my bladder to p every time I sense danger.

(17:59):
So I imagine that. Uh. And and I also think
like a little bit of it is like I don't
think it's ct E. I don't think he had like
some sort of brain damage from his fights or anything
like that. Um, I you know, or at least his
family doesn't think that. And the FBI, But I mean,
who would trust the FBI. I do think though, that
there's an argument to be made that if you pretend

(18:23):
to be totally insane, you know, for however long, for
forty years, Like that's a form of insanity just to
just to pretend, you know what I mean, Like you
have to be kind of crazy to think that this
is a life worth living. It kind of like defeats
the purpose of being in the mafia. It's like, don't
you want to be a tough guy walking down the
street and just being like, hey, I'm walking you know,

(18:46):
surely this didn't sit well with his like peers they
probably was like a laughing stock, or do you think
they thought he was a genius. I'm I'm interested, so
as far as I can tell, uh, they were early
on they were like, hey, this is actually a pretty
good idea. But there were some tapes of you know,
like people doing wire taps and whatnot, in which they

(19:07):
started to complain about, like him basically doing the crazy
act and like how it's it's difficult to like to
talk to him, you know, uh for extended periods of time.
It's like doing a movie with Jared Leto you know,
where he's just like shitting in boxes and like handing
it to you. I'm crazy, I'm gonna say it, no disprespect,

(19:30):
but umbrellusive or outside. Well, it reminds me like I
have a twelve year old daughter and like her whole
peer group and like gen Z or whatever, like they're
all about like ironic humor and liking things ironically. But
after a time, right, I mean we all are. But
after a time, if you love something ironically, don't you
just love the thing? Like isn't that really you just
kind of become that thing? Irony poisoning. Yeah, it's reminds

(19:52):
me when I first started watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,
like I don't know, a decade ago, you know, And
I started iron actually saying bro because I just loved
the timing of the way that they said bro. And
then after maybe two months, I was just genuinely, earnestly
saying bro at the end of every other sentence. And

(20:14):
I'm cursed with BRO. I can't stop. I can't stop
bro either. At this point, I've I've come to accept
myself as someone who says bro. Yeah. I legitimately like
the song All Star by smash Mouth now, just because
I've played it in so many situations as a joke
that like, the song legitimately brings me joy now and
uh yeah, it comes on and I get excited about it.

(20:35):
You programmed yourself by Yeah, It's just you know. And
I think there's a level of that um with Vincent
the Chin Gigante where he was, Um, I think you
know he I think he was driving himself a little
kind of funny because the lead singer of smash Mouth
was actually named Vincent the Chin Strap. Uh yeah, that's true,

(21:01):
that's true. Everyone knows that. Um he changed it to
Steve Harwell for some reason, and that dude also is
known for driving himself insane for responding to every troll
of All Star on Twitter like legitimately with like absolute indignation,
like no, we had other hits too, were not just
famous because of he was also he was like the

(21:23):
version of Trump reply guy where he was convinced that
Trent Balki, who was like the worst GM of the
forty niners ever he was. He was always like he
was like the number one Trent Balki defender, where he's like, no, no,
he's playing ten dimensional chess. You guys just can't understand it.
That's weird because that's a that's a different sport. That's right.

(21:49):
But but but I think you're you're making a fantastic
point because that there is something inherently off about deciding
this is not just a short term strategy but a
long term strategy. And and Vincent's kind of rewarded because
getting off on an insanity plea is so fucking rare,

(22:13):
what I mean, Like, I can't blame him for doubling
down at that point, But I think you're right. It
does have consequences cognitively and has consequences, but it keeps
you out of the can. And and it really did
keep him out of the can for for decades. I mean,
this guy was and I guess it was. What was
so funny about it is that this simultaneously uh kept

(22:35):
him out of lock up for years while actually being
the most obvious fake ploy in the world. Like cops
would talk about the fact that like because they were
monitoring him right like the FBI, they wouldn't just see
him in public. The FBI, their whole thing is also
monitoring you in private. So just uh, here's like a

(22:57):
little slice of like the day in the life of
instant the Chini Gante. So in the early evening, Mr
Gigante would emerge from his mother's walk up apartment, uh
and uh he would be dressed in a bathrobe and
pajamas and windbreaker sometimes chabby trousers always you know, looking
like dogshit and accompanied by some some bodyguards. And he would,

(23:18):
you know, cross the street over to the Triangle Civic
Improvement Association, this dingy storefront and he would, you know,
do the whole walk where he's just like, I'm crazy
everything you know, math is backwards or whatever. And then
as soon as he would get in there, um, he

(23:38):
started playing pinuckle, He had conversations, you know, he was
talking to his confederates, and he was planning stuff. You know.
It was like, uh, it was clear that as soon
as he entered inside he would be normal, and then
after midnight he uh would get outside again. Oh I'm
just a crazy guy. He would go over to his

(23:59):
Gumar's house us and uh, then he would immediately dress
in very nice clothing, have nice dinners, hang out with
his kids and uh, you know, like carry on conversations
and watch them TV be totally normal. And they were
seeing this. They were just like this is fake and
uh and then you know, and then of course he

(24:20):
would go to sleep and the next morning he would
do it all over again. Walk outside, I gotta peanut,
and then you know, and then do some you know,
plan some crimes. So not nearly as clever as like
verbal can't losing the limp and becoming kaiser so'se you
know what I mean. No, But also he was basically
just doing a such down the street and the dude

(24:41):
who goes back in his pants the front gets the
parking meter really could talk. He was just reading from
the bulletin board the whole time. You know from stuff. Yeah,
there's this great quote from the former director of the
New York State Organized Crime Task Force, Ronald Goldstock, where

(25:03):
he because he would monitor him, and he said, quote,
it was hard to understand what enjoyment he got out
of being a mob boss, which I think is is
absolutely true because it just seems like absolute torture to
be like, God, damn it, I forgot to go get
milk at the store, O cock on my own dog

(25:25):
like as he was walking like that sucks. So yeah,
he continued to do this public uh you know, ruse
for the rest of his mafia career pretty much, um,
until eventually he was uh, you know, the jury of
his peers were like, quit playing with us. We know
you're you're freaking lying over here. So under Gigante's leadership,

(25:54):
basically in nineteen eighty, he became the head of the
Genoese crime family. UM. And uh, his like criminal enterprise
brought in a hundred million dollars a year at a
in the in the seventies and eighties. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah,

(26:14):
the most lucrative mafia enterprise in American history. So this
crazy guy was actually the most successful mob boss. But
of course, in the eighties we have like the beginnings
of the whole John Gotti era, right, and uh, you know,
John Gotti ended up basically I think he himself ordered
they hit on Big Paul Castellano. Um, and they didn't

(26:38):
ask the commission and whatnot. And uh, the chin was
outraged at Gotti. He tried to kill him a few times,
you know. And and Gotti took over the Gambino crime family.
So he fucking he hated John Gotti. UM, so he
tried to have him killed. Uh he got close um
in an effort to kill John Gotti. He uh, he

(26:58):
did a bombing that killed underbuss Frank di Chico and
badly injured a John Gotti look alike who was mistakenly targeted. UM.
That was Frank was Frank di Chico, Frankie the Cheek
di Chico, because that would be good. I mean, I
would assume that was what they would call him. It
would be crazy if he was like Frantunity. If it's
better than Frankie Cheeks, that's just in a different direction.

(27:22):
Frankie Cheeks is the name of I think a gay
porn star that I really really like. Follow their Instagram.
It's follow a lot of political commentary. Oh he's fantastic. Um. So, yeah,
he tried to kill John Gotti. Didn't work out. So finally, uh,
Gigante was indicted on some federal charges in Brooklyn, you know,

(27:46):
for a bunch of stuff, like all of the normal
mafia crap, which is just like, you know, he was
skimming off the top of this labor union and like
you know, he had like a windows scam, like every
window that was built in New York and New Instruction
he would get like or something. It was just like
this ridiculous tiki tech stuff that earned lots of money.

(28:07):
So he got indicted and uh, you know, of course
at his arraignment, uh, he appeared in court in pajama
bathrob you know, a peaked cap, you know, just really
going for like really Looney Tunes level craziness. Um. And
he actually was tried separately because for the next seven years, uh,

(28:29):
they basically you know, uh try they put his competence
on trial. There are seven years of legal battles to
be like this guy's not crazy. Um. And then finally,
in a bunch of turncoat Mafio So's X Mafio So's
led by Excotty under boss Salvatore, Sammy the Bull Gravano. Uh.

(28:49):
They basically snitched and said, you know this is this
is all fake. This is uh Gigantes, you know, the
head of the Genevese crime family. He's on the commission,
you know all that stuff. And the trial in Ninete
was like a crazy spectacle. Like he was in a wheelchair,
he was mumbling, Uh, he was pretending he didn't know
what was going on, you know, just like it was

(29:09):
eating the Gobbel gul in the Gobbel. Didn't you know,
He's doing his whole thing, and his lawyers were like
killed yeah, of course, yeah, he was doing the Robert
Durst thing. Snack bar at the right quoting slipnot lyrics,
I'm sure, uh and then um yeah. So at one

(29:33):
point during this trial there was the quote battle of
the wheelchairs, in which uh, you know, another wheelchaired old
man Peter at Shiodo, Uh, a three pound mobster, testified
against him. Now, this guy had survived the Gangland execution
because quote his fat stopped a dozen bullets. So uh,

(29:55):
it's good to know that if you gain enough weight
you become bulletproof. That's the superpower that's incredible. It's pretty sick. Um.
So the jury ended up in ninety seven going, uh,
we're convicting you. You're not crazy. Even after this conviction,
he spent six more years pretending he was crazy. It

(30:15):
took him. See see case in point, my friend, I
swear to god he was Actually he had drunk his
own kool aid and was now like the ruse had
failed clearly in a huge way, but he couldn't break
the habit he had, like he's got a he's got
a niche for this. Now he can't not do it.
I mean, I think, you know, he's he's just you know,

(30:36):
he's a method guy, and he's just like, I'm not
losing this, and you know, but he actually did finally
admit it, after you know, six years of prison in
April two thousand three him. Someone should just make a
movie where Jared Leto plays like a hermit and just
keep telling him that it keeps getting postponed, you know,

(30:57):
and you gotta you gotta stay in character. Man. It's
like we got postponed again. You just gotta stay in
your house for a little longer. Don't come out. It's
gonna be amazing. It's gonna it's gonna be so you're
gonna get a double Oscar somehow for acting. It's gonna
be first ever in history. Just stay inside, bye, We'll
tell you when you're finally gonna get the Oscar for

(31:19):
playing someone with the mental illness. It's so it's hard.
Everyone shoots for it always fall flat on their face,
you know, I am Sam and all that. The only
what was the only one that it really worked for?
It was I guess Rainman, maybe Forrest Cup you could
argue was the savant kind of does I mean we're

(31:40):
gonna We're gonna turn into Robert Downey Jr. In Tropic
Thunder real quick, I'm saying. That's why that's such a
brilliant satire, right, None of those uh, none of those folks,
though we're also real life mob bosses. That's true. Yeah,
you have to. You have to really give credit where
credit is due here because he was doing this not

(32:01):
to prepare for a role. He was doing this because
he was, like, I really really enjoy messing with the FBI.
And Tom is a mom boss. I think chet is
Chet Hayes is definitely the A J like that Chet
is a J soprano all grown up and uh in

(32:23):
an age of TikTok. But uh yeah, so no, he
actually did admit the insanity ruse uh. In April two
thousand and three, he was you know, it was a
bit um and uh yeah, after forty years of public craziness,
said Gigante calmly pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for

(32:44):
this entire deception. Um and I just wanna end here
with um A quote from Jerry Capecchi. He was a
mafia expert and author of six books on organized crime.
The Looney Tunes Act served to Dante well. It kept
him out of prison for years, but in the end

(33:06):
he was the victim of his own crazy act. He
never had a chance to enjoy the fruits of his plunder,
and he told some people that if given the chance,
he wouldn't do it that way again. Hindsight, hindsight, especially
when you've been like doing this thing for forty years,
that is wild. He would know that. That's what I
was thinking the whole time, is like, how how is

(33:26):
he enjoying the fruits of his like criminal laborers or whatever.
He would buy fine alligator shoes only to have to
do do on them. It's very monkeys. You know, that's
that's an amazing Um, it's an amazing story, Matt. And maybe, uh,
maybe it is a bit of a cautionary tale some

(33:50):
of our ridiculous historians. You know, you can be more
than the bathroom and the do do There is such
a thing as over committing to the bit and I
think this is the case for that. Is this dramatized
in it? I know there's a lot of Gaudi movies.
There's like the Real Bad one that's apparently delightfully bad
with the Travolta and then there's the one with armand
of Sante. I guess that was an HBO thing from

(34:11):
the nineties. Is this character? Have we seen anybody play
this guy? Apparently? Yeah, apparently he was um also shown
in the movie The Godfather of Harlem, where Vincent din
Afrio plays him. Okay, oh, that's some prestige casting right there.
And there was like a Law and Order episode where

(34:33):
they had a basically someone inspired by Jagante. But yeah,
that's that, that is exactly right. And uh and then
of course the like you said, the bad Gaudi movie
made by who made that was an ear turn? Okay,

(34:54):
all five borrows the Bronx, Manhattan, stadn Island, Brook and Queens.
Together they make a fist. He names them all out
as the best. Actually, the best line from that movie
that will never leave my head is that in this life,
you either end up dead or in jail. Me I've
done both. It reminds me of a line from I

(35:17):
Think It's Carlito's Way. I've never even seen the movie,
and I think it's it's apparently pretty good, but there's
a line from the trailer where it site, and it's it.
I always wondered whether it was better to be loved
or to be feed I prefer to be feared. Something
along those lines. It's like the most obvious ship. It's like,
what is the sound of one hand clapping? Well, it

(35:37):
goes something like this. It's like, that's not the point
of the question. I mean, I love it. So we're
talking about a larger than life character, and the world
of organized crime has so many of these. I don't
know if all of them are going to be I'll
say it as amazing now as you god take. But uh,

(36:00):
we also have some larger than life events. Because when
we're talking about bone headed things, we're not just talking
about people being bone headed or going a little too
Daniel day Lewis, we're also talking about people doing things
that are clearly bad, bad ideas. I was cracking up

(36:26):
Peek behind the Curtain when Nolan I were looking into this. No,
I think we we had stumbled across a story that
we both loved that I don't know about you, man,
I had never heard about this until prepping for this episode,
as No, I had neither um. And we're gonna move
from New York mob territory to Chicago, where the Mob

(36:49):
was referred to as the outfit or at least the
particular and again the mob. To your point, Lucky Liciano,
that was wasn't that a Chicago guy? Because that was
he was budds with al Capone and they split. Al
Capone was definitely Chicago guy, but like Lucky, Lucky was
the New York guy. But he started they started under
al and then they like went their separate ways and
then became kind of adversaries. I'm literally thinking in Boardwalk Empire,

(37:14):
Boardwalk Empire. So I don't remember exactly, but it feels right.
So this guy, his name is uh Don Accardo or
he goes by Tony the big tuna. A Cardo, he's
the big tuna, and like, um, isn't that from the office.
Well yeah, he's like it was that where he's like
reeling him in really because he gets that one he

(37:35):
gets a tuna salad one day and now he becomes
big Tuna. That's true. Um, this is pre the office though,
this is like in the you know, in the sixties,
maybe even earlier, and definitely earlier because a Cardo was
early running crew mates with al Capone in Chicago, so
A Cardo actually kind of came up under him. He
even there was an attempt on a Capon's life that

(37:57):
I also believe was dramatized in Boardwalk Empire, and a
Cardo like dove on top of his his you know,
mentor and like you know, shielded him from the bullets
and he wasn't killed. But he stuck around and ended
up becoming like the biggest name in the outfit for
many years, even after he was older. He was not
necessarily like day to day running things, but he was known.

(38:20):
He was like the guy that you feared. And he
had this situation where he had this amazing home in
a bouge neighborhood, in Chicago, and you know, I don't
know if you guys been in Chicago, but it gets really,
really really cold in the winter, Like they have this
thing called the polar vortex. Um, it's bonkers. It's like
absolutely unlivably cold there. So it's a weird thing that

(38:43):
there's a whole city there because uh, I have my
my cousins and you know, aunt and uncle of out
there and they lived there and they describe it as unlivable. Yeah,
well they built a the whole city one summer. No
what was going to happen by that point. They got
the skyscrapers and everything fast, and then they're like, well,
what do we do? What do we do? Right here?

(39:03):
We built it during the spring when it was you know,
a moderate temperature, and then all of a sudden it
was the hottest and coldest place in the world. And
we said, well, we already built the series. Is this
a Game of Thrones type scenario where like summer lasts
for like fifty years and then there's one winter. Okay,
well it's let's to assume that that's the case. So
a cardo Um is vacationing in California. This is in

(39:27):
the seventies and in the late seventies, in fact, January
six of nineteen seventy eight, and a crew of you
know how the mafia has, like there's made guys, which
is a thing. You know, You've got like your top guys,
your earners, your your copos. There's a whole structure to it.
I believe you have the you know, there's the boss,

(39:48):
and there's underbosses, then there's copos, then there's soldiers. Is
that is that about? You got friends of ours and
you got friends of mine and then friends of Dorothy,
which are the game mobsters of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is that okay? Is that like a like a veto
reference or did you just make that that was good?
That was good? That was good in the day. Yeah,

(40:10):
I would not doubt it one one scrap. But um,
so he's vacation in California and this crew um that
they've used, you know, his his whole organization, the outfit
has used to do all of these heists and robberies,
rob his house. This guy, this very very dangerous guy.
He actually got the nickname Johnny Batters because he was

(40:31):
known for like cracking with the baseball. That's cute. That
was good, and it's certainly possible, but no, in fact,
it was because of a thing that we also often
see attached to al Capone. Al Capone was fun for
cracking skulls with the with the baseball bat um. He
probably learned that from his his, uh his mentor al Capone,
But Johnny batters um and he very much a scary

(40:54):
scary guy, even as an old man. Can you imagine
being menaced by a super old scary mob guy like that?
Like you look at him and you see, well, I'm
sorry for you on that front then, but for me,
Like you see him, you you think they're so innocuous,
and then they all I think of like Feach feach
Lamna for example. You look at him, he's this frail

(41:15):
man Robert Loggia, and then he just starts kicking you
in the dick. You know, you're just trying to cut
your lawns. You know he's saying this blogs in my
nephew now, and then he just kicks you in the
dick repeatedly and breaks your arm. That would be the
most uh PTSD inducing kind of trauma that I could
possibly imagine. So um, you underestimate these old timers and

(41:35):
then they absolutely are a total psychopaths. So this guy
at this point, he's longer in the tooth and he
uh is, you know, kind of in his twilight years.
And this crew knocks over his house. Why do they
do that? You might ask, Well, I'll tell you why
did they do that? You might ask that, and I
might have an answer for you. Why they do that?
Oh my god, I definitely have an answer. So, Um,

(41:57):
at this point, you know, a cardo, he's got friends,
he's not necessarily like actively involved in racketeering anymore. He
feels like he's dodged the you know, the long arm
of the law, and he's just like living out his
twilight years with his wife and vacation in California and
all that stuff. Um, he has a jeweler friend who

(42:17):
has had a heist, you know, done to his place
of business and all of these jewels and cash bundles
and gold and diamonds all knocked off from this dude's
establishment on Christmas of nineteen seventy seven. And the crew
that did it was was led by this guy named
John Mendel who was known as um John the bypass

(42:40):
Man Mendel, which kind of sounds like a cool like
hacker nickname. You know, this is in the seventies and
it was. It was referring to the fact that he
could disarm any uh alarm system. That was his whole deal.
That's shocking that he wasn't just some mobster who had
had bypass surgery from too much. That's all the night train. Yeah,

(43:01):
Twenny Man, Gina Jagante, sorry, Angina. They call him the Hernia,
but don't ask about it when you meet him. So,
the owner of this jewelry store is friends with Johnny Batts.
That's not his name. It was what I say, Johnny
batter Anyway, I caught cardo um and he asks him,

(43:23):
you know, he he entreats him, please, don you know,
intervene on my behalf, give me back my stolen goods.
Sort of like the episode where one of Tony's poker
buddies has his daughter's wedding hit my feets Lamna and
they steal all these like fine cars, and then that
guy comes to Tony and says, hey, they stole my
brothers whatever. It was some special car that it took

(43:45):
him ages to get on the list for his glasses
and his day planner we're in there, like, I love that.
That's like the thing that he bitches about, who's the
genius for keeping his regal? A similar because the the
worst car the American car um So this is very
so much situation. The jeweler h entreats Cardo to like

(44:08):
get him his stuff back, and he does. He makes
bypass man return all his stuff, so the bypass man
is understandably u a little sore about this. I don't
know if it was an off the books deal, because
you would think a guy like a Cardo would have been,
you know, aware of all of these. But in Sopranos
it was feat going rogue, so I wouldn't be surprised
if it was a similar situation where it was this

(44:30):
guy going out on his own and doing a thing
that ended up stepping on toes and then he gets
his wrists slapped. So they do return the stuff, but
he takes it very very very personally, and he decides
to get even in the stupidest way possible, which is
by breaking into this legacy Don's home while he's away

(44:51):
and stealing a whole bunch of ship. So, as you
can imagine, it leads to an absolute blood bath. Just
you know, the worst kind. You know, everybody from his
crew is targeted. Uh. First is the bypass man who
has found with his throat slashed ear to ear and
I believe shot in the head. They usually have like

(45:13):
a two part execution, just to be sure, just to
make sure that that's probably what they said exact they said,
bang bang, everybody knows what's happening. So on January, Um,

(45:33):
the bypass man is is he's disappeared. They find him
in the trunk of his car. He has been stabbed,
his throat has been slit and and he's also been
strangled to death. Excuse me, I got that wrong. Then
five days later, after he went missing and they didn't
find his body for a long time, his second in command,
this guy named Bernard Buddy Ryan, was found dead behind

(45:54):
the wheel of his own car, which is such a
classic mafia trope, you know, finding someone slumped over with
headshot brains on the passenger window. It's not a robbery exactly. Um.
Then that guy's right hand man, a dude named Stevia Garcia.
He made it a couple a little bit, I think

(46:15):
Stevie ste Yeah, they got out of the mafia eventually,
they I'm not gonna lost Johnny Sweet and Low Capone.
We we all, we all agree we were going to
have a beer with this one. I think I may
have misread Stevie as Stevia, but I love that so

(46:36):
so so very much. Wouldn't that be amazing if his
name was Stevie Stevia Garcia. This is pre Stevia. Though
I got a second may cause cancer. I don't know.
People still think that about only if you feed it.
And that's the really tense part of the moment, you know,
of the executions where he's like, you know, they say,

(46:58):
I give people kids, bad for your health if you're
a rat, bang bang indeed, And they find him in
the trunk of his own car. That's the thing too.
We see a trope where it's like dudes get stuffed
into the trunks of their own car. I guess, just
to like, you know, keep the authorities from finding them

(47:19):
right away. I mean eventually they find them, of course. Uh.
And this was in the parking lot of a Sheraton hotel,
which I don't think of as like a legacy thing,
but I guess there were Sheraton's in the in the seventies.
Maybe they go back farther than I realized. Well, this
is um, uh what do you call it? Uh, it's Chicago, right,
it's Chicago O'Hare Airport. So it's just Sheraton, a Chicago thing. Well,

(47:41):
I mean again, I'm basing everything I know off of
Boardwalk Empire, but I'm pretty sure that there's also a
like Irish mafioso uh named Sheridan. So uh, you know,
I'm just putting pieces together from old HBO shows that
I don't remember. We've got HBO Conspiracy Board. There's a

(48:02):
thread from a random person I remember to a Sheriton hotel. Yeah,
the Shattan hotel is spelled with a T, and I
would think the Irish version will be spelled with a D. Yeah.
But they're trying to throw off the police. So he's
he's found in the trunk on February second. Then on
February four, we've got Vince Moretti, who was the fence

(48:23):
for that burglary crew, um and a friend of his,
an associate named Don Reno. They get, uh, I get,
I'm not quite sure exactly how, but they're lured in
some sort of ruse to a bar in Cicero in
Illinois and they are beaten to death. Um, you know.
And uh, and the guy that was with him, this buddy,

(48:46):
his name is Don Reno, not Don like he's a boss.
His name is just actually Donald. He had absolutely nothing
to do with the robbery. He just happened to be
with this guy. And guy also herb stomped. No. I
was told there was a slipnot concert at this box. Indeed. Um,

(49:09):
and this one actually murdering Don Donald Duck because they're like, oh,
it's Don Duck over here. I wish I could do
a Donald Duck voice. That's a really hard voice. It's
a really hard voice. Um. So they actually there's a
really sexy name for this one. It's called the Strangers
in the Night Murders. And that's because, in a very
very cinematic turn, very Sopranos asked the Johnny Mathis song

(49:33):
Strangers in the Night was playing on the jukebox as
Moretti and Reno are curb stomped inside. I mean, I
guess there's no curbs inside a bar. But it reminds
me of the scene where Tony stomps Coco and the
Italian restaurant. That is a nasty piece of work right
there by the way, there's no way he would have
survived that. That always was a little suspect of that.

(49:55):
He literally makes him bite the edge of this like
you know, piece of furniture and stomps his head and
then you see teeth and blood flying everywhere, and they
imply that he was not killed. But I feel like
that would crush a person's skull if your mouth is
on it, like in uh, what's that movie American? Yeah, well,
you know Coco is a big strong man and uh

(50:15):
big strong jaw. He probably had a strong chin. Jaws
the most powerful muscle in the human body. I thought
that was I thought that was the heart man. Well,
the second thing I was gonna say is I thought
that was the dick. I was thinking that your mobster.
So I was like, oh I skipped jaw day, Max

(50:38):
right now is face bombing like I gotta cut so much. No, No,
we're gonna, We're gonna do a little like we're gonna.
I've been watching this show ted Lasso on. Uh it's fantastic.
I adore. But there's a thing that the soccer commentators
always there where they say we apologize for all the
fruity language we're gonna do a similar disclaimer before this one.

(50:59):
We were gonna say there's gonna be some fruity language
in this episode. I have a question, though, please all right, So, uh,
this is clearly a series of murders meant to send
a message, and it's happening over a number of days, right,
and the message is the message is pretty simple. You
don't mess with Tony A. Cardo or you don't mess
with Big Tuna. But why did none of these people

(51:23):
run away? I understand the first guys you got murdered
probably didn't see it coming. But at some point, wouldn't
You'd be like, huh, A lot of people are getting killed,
a lot of people that I kicked it with. Could
they not afford to get out of town? Could they?
Were they like, surely this won't affect me? Or what
what happened? It's a good question. I think it goes

(51:43):
back to the topic of this two part episode that
a lot of these dudes are kind of dumb and
kind of like up their own asses and like think
that they're like invincible. It's like, you know, they do.
They literally brag about this stuff. Probably honestly, I don't
think I'm even Tony Soprano, the relative of the smartest
dude in the show, is kind of dumb um, you know,

(52:03):
And that's sort of the point. You're sort of seeing
this culture of bravado and posturing and not actual smarts.
It's street smarts. But I don't mean, you know, even
Tony only goes to ground when literally all of the
people closest to him get whacked. I'm sorry, can spoilers
for The Sopranos, which is now twenty years old. Uh no,

(52:25):
it was gonna happen. It was gonna happen, but there's yeah,
go ahead, please, I mean maybe like, uh yeah, First
of all, I think that if you're in the mafia
um for an extended period of time, uh, then at
some point you do just look at yourself as bulletproof
because you have just survived so many near misses and

(52:45):
so many uh people you know who are like getting
shot and all that stuff that you kind of like, you, uh,
you convinced yourself that you're able, that you're invincible and
you're able to do what you want. But also, how
much of this crew was made? I assue none of them? Right, No, No,
it's funny. In fact, I wanted to just mention something
about a Cardo himself. He was made, but it was

(53:08):
sort of a note and a lot of the stuff
that I read about this where they didn't do the
ceremony where you burn the saint and prick your finger
and all that, it was done with more of a handshake.
So I'm sure there were some that maybe questions like
the second part of a weird science when they didn't
put the yeah, I mean obviously the guy. Maybe maybe

(53:32):
I guess what I'm getting at is maybe that gave
this guy a bigger act to grind in terms of, like,
you will respect me even though I didn't burn the saint.
If anyone's listening, I don't know, Matt. You want to
talk about what it means to get made and anything
you know about that term. I've always wondered where that
term even comes from. Yeah, So all all I know
about the term, or at least to the technical implications

(53:54):
of being made are that, uh, when you get made,
which is this obviously the ceremony that has like burning
of a saint and uh, you know, you prick your
finger and you take an oath saying like I promise
that I won't be a snitch. Once you're made, then uh,
someone hitting you or or trying to kill you is

(54:15):
like a lot harder because you can't hit a maid guy. Uh,
you can't kill a maid guy without getting permission. Um,
and uh, you're basically just a protected person. Now you
are like officially in the mafia. And there's a lot
of people in the mafia who are kind of associates
in the mafia, their soldiers and whatnot, who are not made,
people who are trying to It's basically, um, it's like

(54:39):
it's like tenure I was gonna say for a stand
up comic, it's like trying to get passed at a club. Uh.
It's like you know, yeah now or whatever. Right, Yeah,
you get to go up at like some shows, but
you're not a paid regular until you know the booker
sees you and goes like, all right, you are now
a part of the club. You can put your name
on the wall. So it's like, uh, yeah, it's a

(55:01):
place of And then they make you hold your hands
out while they burn a whoopie cushion in your hands.
So and uh yeah, and I think that ceremony is
probably pretty aristocrats heavy, but with no sure, Yeah, with
a made man. I from what I remember, everything you
just said, Matt is spot on. But for a while,

(55:24):
at least in the earlier days, one also had to
be either fully Sicilian, fully Italian, fully the Irish or
Jewish mob traced your ancestry back to the old country
and like, and that's why what's his name's character, ray
Leota's character and Good Fellas could never be a made man.

(55:46):
He was always just beneath that. But he like was
so valuable that he was treated that way. But he
knew he could never be made because I think he
had Irish because he's Irish. And it was the same
thing I think with um. Uh, Robert de Niro's character,
he also couldn't be made because he was like half
Irish or something. Henry Hill and Jimmy Conway, but Joe

(56:06):
Pesci he could be made. Uh And he almost was.
Uh and then uh, you know, bullet to the back
of the skull. Uh. He kind of had a coming. Man.
That guy's a real piece of work work man. But
but really were really quickly just to wrap this up.
What ended up happening was like often happens, And I'm
really glad we had this made conversation because no, none

(56:29):
of these dudes were made. Therefore, they were absolutely expendable,
and that extended to his inner circle. Uh. He started
then bumping off people that did the hits to cover
his tracks to the FBI. So he started bumping off
his own people, Anthony little Tony Barcelino and Gerald Jerry
Jerry the Dinger. Yeah, I guess, I guess it could

(56:52):
be pronounced dinger. It's possible. I'm pretty sure it's Jerry
the Dinger. Hold On, Vince just came back. I gotta
give this to him again when he gets his phones
back on. Hang on, we gotta wait for this. Then's
real time. We we we we are now extending this
um blood bath to uh this this guy's inner circle
to cover his own tracks. And one of the dudes

(57:13):
that gets hit, his name is the best nick only
waited for you because you're the nickname guy. The best
nickname of today's episode is Gerald Jerry the Dinger, Crusie Elo,
Crusie Ello. Because of all the dingy v he was
always getting a little fender benders, you know, he was
just always hitting parking meters and stuff. Just real poor driver,

(57:34):
really got a baseball too. He was hitting fingers all
down n always righting around in a little boat. It
was pretty well which the dingy. But they got they
got a pretty permanent attitude adjustment in the formulable bullet
to the back of the head executions to discovering his tracks.

(57:55):
Nor did anybody get arrested? Was no just ever done? No, sir,
isn't um. In fact, this is interesting. One of the
slain individuals who were part of the crew, their eyeglasses
were actually found in a safe inside the very home
with a Cardo's home Um years later during a raid,

(58:18):
but his body. His body was never found. Big Tuna
Um died in Um. He never was convicted, never went
to prison. He served almost fifty years as the head
of the mafia, the outfit in Chicago, and never did

(58:40):
anything more than a little stint hory poisoning exactly. No,
all I've got, all I love God here is is
peacefully so um presumably not a think mercury poisoning is
pretty gnarly. Yeah, well I figured because he was. You know,
there's a lot of leaps that made. But we also
talked about some other kind of poison in earlier irony

(59:00):
poisoning that's yeah, this is so Uh A Cardo died
in ninety two from respiratory heart conditions. Thank you, Ben,
Ben with Ben always chiming in with the deeds, I
look you Wikipedia stuff, I know, right, yeah, no, it's
it's definitely it's all of Wikipedia. But I checked the

(59:22):
sources and and they're they're legit. Chicago Tribune has um
an interesting article where they just said Loki send off
for a Cardo and uh they they're kind of painting
it as though it's the end of a mafio So era.
It was like the funerals of old. He died. He

(59:44):
died of a cardiac arrest. Yeah, so he did get arrested. YEA,
definitely my time, it's my time and our time. Um,
this is a I can't wait for episode two, you guys,
I can't. We've got two more incredible stories of bone

(01:00:06):
headed mafio So's and also just bone headed criminals. I
think Vince Hears is a little bit more of just
like a general crime story. Um, but guys, thank you
so much for joining us, and I can't wait to
have you back and literally in real time in just
a few minutes, but in podcast time. A couple of days.
I'm so excited. Please Matt, hold that excitement because we

(01:00:27):
gotta come in like Barnes Storey the next episode. So
before we sign off, of course, we always like to
thank our super producer, Max Williams. We'd like to thank
his brother Alex Williams, who composed this Slap and Bob
that's playing right now. As Vince and Matt tell us
where you can learn more about their work and their

(01:00:49):
own podcast, the Only Sopranos rewatch podcast that matters Hood
Yourself a Gun. Yeah you can, uh, you can check
us out, um, you know on the on that podcast
store whatever your favorite story is. Just search pod Yourself
a Gun. Uh. And it is the world's only Soprantos podcast.
And you know you might see some familiar guests there.

(01:01:12):
Uh for example, uh, Noel Brown was on the first
episode of season five this season, so uh so check
that out. And you can follow me on Instagram at
matt Leeb Jokes or Twitter at matt Leeb. I am
at up Rocks where I am the senior film and
culture writer and of course Pod Yourself a Gun. And

(01:01:33):
we have our other podcast, the Fradcast, and find us
at Patreon dot com slash Fradcast and uh yeah, that's
pretty much it. I'm at Vince Mancini on Twitter and yeah,
I think that covers it. And everybody will have to
tune into part two where we do explore these mafia
nicknames that we are hyping up so much, you guys

(01:01:53):
were we're making to work for ourselves. Usually you have
to contribute to the Patreon to get one of those,
but hopefully because we had you on his guest, you'll
just give it to us for free. And I have
a list too, so I can hand you guys some
some that you might appreciate. I'll work on it. I
got home. I want to make you proud. I want
to make you guys proud. But stay tuned for our
next episode where we will be diving into uh some

(01:02:17):
more very very bone headed stories of crime. Can't wait
to see it. We'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.