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You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications bell so you are notified for when my next podcast goes live. My father was made in 1953. He was made by Albert Anastasia and he was the boss of the Mangano family which later on became the Gambino family. Yeah, he was a hot man for the Gambino family. You ended up getting involved in murders and robberies and all the mad stuff as the mafia do. But before we get into it, I would like to go back to the start with my guests. Get a better understanding about you, where you grew up and how it all began. So I was born in Brooklyn. My father had just got out of prison. He was 25 years old. Matter of fact, this year my father became a made member of the mafia. I was born the same year, 1953. So I was born into that lifestyle. So his partner was a made member, Tony Lee. They were always together. They were always in my house. So I was always around mob guys since birth. So and I always knew things were like a little different than other people's houses, you know. But I really didn't know what it was at the time until I got a little older. When I got a little older and I branched off, because in New York back then, in my neighborhood, the kids stayed on their block and we played stick ball and all that. But when we got a little older, we drifted off into the neighborhood. And when I drifted off into the neighborhood, when I was like 12 or 13, I would go to this corner where this pizzeria was and the older kids would see me and they would point out and they would, I would hit them whispering and go, it's Fanny and the son and that's when I started to figure out and find out about who my father was. Did you go to school? Yeah, I went to school. I wasn't really a good student. I had an issue with my spelling. I went to Catholic school for four years and then I was left back. Back then they held me back in the fourth grade and then after that my mother put me in. It's funny because my mother put me into public school and I started getting bullied. I started getting bullied. And every day my mother would wait for me outside the school and I would come out to school door and I would run to my mother. And then one day when I came out of the school door, my mother wasn't there. So I had to make a decision whether to keep getting bullied or fight and I made a decision to start fighting and a little later on, I found out the reason why my mother wasn't there was that day my father came home and told my mother, where you going? And she said, I'm going to go get Anthony and he said, no, you're not going to get Anthony anymore and he stopped my mother from coming to get me. So it was either keep getting bullied or fight. So I had a fight. So it was my childhood. But I wasn't a good student. When I got into junior high school, I started playing hooky. I started smoking weed. It was the 1960s, you know, listening to rock and I got thrown out of high school at 16 and that's when I went to work for my father. Was that a life lesson from your dad to trying to toughen you up? Yeah, without a doubt.  And I didn't know that at the time. I just knew she wasn't there. And I started to, and then so I fought. You know, I didn't want to keep getting beat up.  Thank God. But the bully that bullied me became my friend. Actually, he's still my friend here. So yeah, that was definitely a life lesson and that was one of the many life lessons I got. But you know, that was, I guess, maybe you could say, right, life lesson, but later on, the life lessons were, now I know what were detrimental to me because I did a lot of time. When did you know your dad was a gangster? What age? When I was about 15, I knew for sure. I knew, like I said, I say this all the time, I knew something was different. Like even when I went to school, I talk about this all the time. So you know, when you go to school the teacher would ask you what your father does for a living and you would say my father's a cop and then my father was an electrician. So I would go home and I would ask my father, you know, I have to tell this class tomorrow what you do for a living. And he would tell me, tell them I work in a dry cleaners and I knew that wasn't true. Like I knew he didn't work in a dry cleaners but I didn't know what he did but I would go to school the next day and I would repeat that lie. And I would say, oh, my father works in a dry cleaners but I knew that wasn't true but when I became a teenager this then what happened was he started taking me to social clubs because in New York there was a lot of social clubs and all the mob guys had social clubs. So when I started hanging out in the neighborhood he didn't want me to get hurt or he didn't want me to get in trouble and he wanted the people to look after me so he started taking me to all these clubs. That's the first time I met John Gotti. He took me to the Bergen fish club. He took me to other clubs and he would bring me in and say this is my son Anthony, you know, he's going to be in the neighborhood and that's when I started figuring out what was going on. What was that like? Because we know now that life back then it was glamorous, you watched the movies, it was sexy, men had power, they dressed nice, they had money, they had all the women. Obviously we'll touch on it later in the interview, how destructive that life is but was that glamorous for you as a young kid seeing these powerful men and having all the attention? Oh, I loved it because when I did travel with my father and we walked into any place we walked and he always got treated special. Like we went to a restaurant, he never waited for a table, the owner of the restaurant would sit with us when we walked into a bar everybody would like sort of like the atmosphere would change. So yeah, you know, I definitely felt special being around being around my father and then later on being around otherwise guys. So yeah, I definitely was attracted to it big time.  He didn't want me involved in it. I mean, when I got thrown out of school at 16 he wouldn't talk to me. He didn't know how to really reprimand me. He never had a father. My grandfather died when he was six years old. So he was actually raised by mob guys too. So even though he was this big gangster he was like a teddy bear at home with us and he didn't talk to me. So I called up my uncle, his older brother, my uncle Frank and he came over to the house and we sort of had to sit down at the kitchen table. My father, my uncle and myself and my uncle told my father, listen, you got to get this kid a job. He's not going to go back to school. He doesn't want to go back to school and my father goes, all right, I'll get you a job on construction. And I said, I don't want to work on construction. And he says, well, what do you want to do? I said, I want to work for you. And he just sat back and he looked at me and he goes, you want to work for me? And he said, okay, remember one thing working for me? Going to jail is all part of the job. And I was, and I was okay. You know, that's how messed up I was. Or I said, fine. And the next day, he put me to work in a blackjack game. What did you have to do? I just had to just hang out there really, you know, and just watch the game.   It was before the casino. So the mob had big dice games and all the burrows and I would work. I worked in a dice game in the Bronx. And there I cashed the chips. I watched the table. I walked winners out to their car.  And that was the beginning. And then I started writing numbers and selling, you know, and then I just got involved. And then just one thing to another. Violence came into the picture and it was just a progressive thing. What was the first time you'd given somebody any sort of violence or hurt anyone? What age were you? The first time I got arrested for any kind of act of violence, I was 20, 21. I was in a bar and I was having a drink and I was drinking in this bar and this big Irish guy was elbowing me and he was with his friends. So I asked him, you know, to stop and he cursed me. So being that he was with all his friends, I left the bar and I waited outside and I got a bat and I waited to come out of the bar. When he walked out of the bar, I hit him on the head with a bat and I busted open his head and I got arrested actually. He actually pressed charges on me and then he later on dropped the charges but I actually got arrested for that. That was the first time I got, I got, I actually, that was the worst violent thing I did at that point. You know, I had fights, fist fights and all that but that was the first time I actually tried to really hurt somebody was this Irish fellow that was in this bar drinking. It was in my neighborhood and then he had me arrested and you know, my father reached out to him and he didn't come to coordinate. They dismissed the charges. Because obviously people watch the movies and that's the way it happens. If someone's got witnesses, they're going to intimidate the witnesses, maybe kill the witnesses. Is that all legit then? Does that actually happen?  I mean, people didn't come to court. You know, once they found out who you were or what was going on or they were paid, yeah, it happened to me. I mean, he didn't come to court. They dismissed the charges. It happened. Yeah, that was, and then there was, you got to remember, back at that time, it was a lot of corruption. The police force was corrupt. There was corrupt judges. It's not like today back then. So there was ways to get around things back then that aren't existing anymore. So yeah, that definitely is for real. When did you get involved with the serious stuff? Well, I mean, as like, as I got older, then, you know, I was involved, you know, like, I knew like, like there was a guy, if I knew like, so I knew they were going to clip somebody. And my father told me like, this guy's going to go and we would, I would go out to dinner with people and I would know like that week they were going to die, you know, like there was this Irish guy that hung out. There was this kid Danny that hung out with my father. They thought he was an informant and he got killed. And you know, I remember the week before he got killed, we took him out for dinner and I knew he was going to die. Another murder conspiracy I was involved in, this guy Franky Geesh. He owed us money. He committed like a really homicide in my neighborhood and they had a big sit down, my father, John Gotti and all of them and they called me over and they said, listen, Franky Geesh got to go.  And we, so there was this diner called the Lindu and Dinah in my neighborhood and I was supposed to meet me there, the setup was he was going to come and meet me in front of this diner because he owed us money, Shylock money. We were Shylock of money with him.  But he didn't show up. His uncle showed up and I'm standing in front of the diner and the car pulls up and it's his uncle. And I look in the car and his uncle says, get in the car. And I said, where's your nephew? And he looked at me. The uncle goes, do you think we're going to let you kill my nephew? And I says, come on, do that. He's my friend. But realistically, we were going to kill him. So I was involved in a lot of stuff like that. And actually I was involved in one murder myself, my brother-in-law. We murdered him. He did something that he shouldn't have done. And that was, unfortunately, we murdered him. So I was involved in a lot of violence and I knew of a lot of things that were jumping off. And so yeah. How was that feeling knowing a friend of yours then has to get killed and you have to set it up? What goes through your mind?  Yeah, you know, that's a good question. It's like, you have no conscience. You know, it's like, you're so ingrained in that lifestyle and you know, like that's part of it. And yeah, you know, it didn't even phase me back then. Like, like, when I'm staying, like, it didn't fade, I was talking about it like how you and I are talking about it. Like, we would discuss a murder like you and I are doing this interview and it wouldn't faze me at that point. Right before it happened. I would get a little nervous, but after it was done, it was just like, not, it's gone. Like, just for a moment I would feel like, I guess because of the adrenaline, I would get nervous, but after that, it would be gone. But to discuss it. So it was just like a discussion like you and I are having. It's just part of what we did. It's like getting arrested. You know, I was talking about this just last night. You know, like people ask me, why weren't you afraid of getting arrested? It wasn't even a thought in my mind. It was just part of, you know, I knew eventually I may get arrested. And unfortunately I did get arrested because I spent almost 14 years in prison. But it's not, it's like smoking cigarettes. Do you think you're going to get lung cancer? No, you know, it's the same mentality.  It's a psychotic behavior. Everybody is crazy to like to have in that discussion, killing friends and turning on each other. And was there any moments in your 20s when you looked around and thought, this is crazy?  Where this was your life? At that point, no, it didn't faze me. When I started seeing it in a different light is when I got older, when I got into my 40s, when I started getting, when the life started wearing me out a little bit, like when I started doing a lot of time, in the beginning, no, it was just what we did. Later on, like, I guess I started to develop a conscience, you know, and that's when it started to, the lifestyle started rubbing me along the wrong way. The last time I did time, when I was in prison, the last time my father had passed away, John Gotti had passed away, my father's partner had passed away, and the mob, they took a lot of stuff from my family, a lot of illegal monies disappeared, and it started to turn me off, and I started to think about that, and my son got older, my son now is 17, 18, 19, and I would look, and my son would come and visit me, and I would look at my son, and I would think of the conversations of me and my father, like planning a murder, like me and my father sat down and planned the murder, you know, and I could never do that. And I would look at my son, and at that point I knew that it's not normal for a father and son to plan a murder.  My sister had gotten in trouble, my sister was messing around with this kid from the neighborhood. This was after we killed her husband. We already killed my sister's husband, and now she's dating this kid in the neighborhood and they were using drugs, but the kid wasn't mobbed up, he was just a kid from the neighborhood that was using drugs, he was dating, going out with my sister, they got arrested in a stolen car.  So we bailed my sister out, I went to visit my father, and my father, I told him what happened, and he says to me, does this kid know who I am?  He says, well, you know what you gotta do here with this kid, right? So I looked at him, I go, what? I said, I'm not doing that. He goes, what do you mean? He goes, yeah, you know what you gotta do here?  And he got mad, like he goes, do you know what? I'll take care of myself, don't worry about it, I'll handle it on my own.  And he stood away, and he didn't get killed or anything, but I gave him a pass because he wasn't involved. You know, if he was involved, he was mobbed up, and he was wise guys, then maybe I wouldn't have gave him a pass, but that's when, with my son, that's when I realized that's not a normal conversation for a father and son to have, or a normal argument to have with your father that you don't wanna kill somebody. Cause your dad was 100% about that life though. What was, some people say he killed seven people, 10 people. He was, he killed a lot of people. He did, he started doing, he did a lot of work early. Like he, and he told me, you know, he told me about some of the stuff he did like, so when he got out of prison in the early fifties and he hooked up with this wise guy, Charlie Wagons, who was without but out of Stasia, and he told me the first conversation, yeah, so he was driving Charlie around, and Charlie took him out of the club one day and asked him a question, he goes, listen, would you be willing to kill somebody without asking any questions? If we asked you to do something like that, would you do it without asking questions? And he said yes. He was only in his early 20s at the time. And then he said the first time he actually did a mob, he said he was actually still living with my grandmother. Like he was a kid, he was only in his early 20s. He was living with my grandmother and they picked them up, actually picked them up at my grandmother's house with the victim in the car. And he said he got in the back of the car and they drove away and he's telling me the story. And then he said, he went like this with his finger, he went and then the cop pulled out a boy from grandma's house and we drove a couple of miles.   And that was the first piece of work he did and then he did some other work with them. And then what happened was the books were closed. So when the books are closed, normally people don't get made except if they're special cases. And the books were closed in 1953 in Albert Anastasia whose nickname was the high executioner opened up the books just to make my father and one other person because there were special cases because of the work they did which work in mob lingo is homicides. When was the first time you went to prison? The first time I went to prison was 1978. I went to prison when I was 23 for, we robbed the liquor warehouse. I robbed the liquor warehouse, I got convicted, I went to trial, I got convicted, I got five years, I did 20 years. I got out in 1980 and then I went back to prison. I got arrested a bunch of times in the 80s and then I got arrested again in 1989 for policy which now is the Lotto. But back then it was, everything today in America, everything that I went to jail for is legal now. You wanna bet sports, I got an app. I went to jail for that. Now the government does it, it's legal, everything. It's comical. So I went to jail and I got arrested in 89 and then I got re-arrested by the Organized Crime Task Force in 90. I went to prison in 91. I did 16 months for policy. I got out in 90, numbers, Lotto, the Lotto, it was legal numbers. And then I got out in 92 and then I had a good run after that. From 92 to 95, I was doing really, really well. All illegal, my whole life was every waking moment I committed, I mean I had shops, shops, credit card, fraud, I mean I took over a vending company, I extorted a vending company. I mean I was just nothing legal, never had a legal job. And then I got arrested for bookmaking in 95, a big bookmaking, Brooklyn Queens Organized Crime Task Force bookmaking case. Then I took a plea, I got two to four. I took a plea, I got two to four. While I was in state prison doing that sentence, I got indicted by the feds in Miami and Florida on a big federal RICO case with some major, what Nikki Carrasa who was at that time was one of the acting bosses for John Gotti. He was on the committee that ran the Gambino family because I was very close with him. My father actually proposed him to be made. So we had a great relationship and I got indicted while I was in prison on another case in Florida. So the marshals came, they took me to Florida. I took, I copped out, I got another 10 years. I went back to Florida and then I was in Attica and that's when I sorta said like, what am I doing, man? You know, when I'm in my 40s, I'm back in jail. I just got 10 years. Now I'm gonna have to do like nine years. I had two kids at the time now. And that's when I started hitting the bottom. Like, that's when I started like saying, what am I doing here? You know, I'm back in jail again. My kids are getting bigger. And I wind up doing eight years in three months. When did your attacks start? Because you had an attack. Excuse me? Yeah, well, I got addicted to cocaine in the 80s. You know, in the 70s, we started blowing coke, you know, the discos and everything. And it was all fun and games. And in the 80s, I had an issue with it. And in 88, I went to treatment and I stopped. I'll be clean now in January, 35 years. So long time. Yeah, I'll be clean 35. And then I got out in 04. I did eight years in three months. I got out in 2004 and then a couple of months later, I got locked up for a murder that we committed 30 years before that, you know. How we use treated in prison? Mafia guys. It's great. We had to run, you know, we had the best jobs, the best sales. No, we did good bids. Yeah, you know, we had food. People looked out for us. No, everywhere, no matter, every jail I went to, people were already there waiting for me. Like with, you know, shower slippers and food. And you know, it was, you know, it was, we had a good in there. Italian guys have a good in there. Did you and your dad do a murder together? No, we know we were in prison together, but we were never in the same prison together. What's that like when you're in prison with your dad? That's when you know it's deranged, isn't it? I was not in the same prison. We were in prison at the same time, but in different facilities. We were never together in the same facility. Yeah.  Yeah, the one.    And I was actually in treatment when that happened. And I found out about it when I got out of treatment in 1988. And yeah, and then my father okayed it and John Gotti okayed it. And I'm sorry for it today, because my niece, my sister, it was a tragedy. But back then it wasn't even like, yeah, he's got to go.   They had a misunderstanding. He was probably drunk. He was drinking all night. They were at a party. It was over a bill and he just was a violent guy. He was a criminal himself. He was an armored truck robber. He was no angel. He was a dangerous kid. I mean, him and his friend, Peter Sikari, they had killed a couple of kids in the neighborhood. I mean, he was no joke, this kid. So he just started choking her. And my ex-wife broke it up. And then when I told my father, I went up to visit my father and that was it. And that was the end of it. The one where Fiasas told you, you know, and that was the end of it. The one with your sister and her boyfriend from then in the car crash. I understand him not getting killed.  There's always a chance that you're gonna go and kill the guy.   And to make matters worse, he knew the deal. He knew who her father was. And his own friends, when he started dating my sister, his own friends told him, listen, don't date her. That's Fat Andy's daughter.  Don't date her, and he didn't listen. And then he did what he did, you know? So, and to make matters worse, he was dangerous. He was dangerous himself. He was capable of killing one of us, you know? So that compounded the problem. So who killed him? Well, we made up a scenario and I picked him up at his house that morning and I drove him to a club and we walked him in the club, in the back of the club and this guy, Skinny Dom, shot him. I walked him in and we took him in the back room and he was executed in the back room. And he had kids with your sister? He had a daughter with my sister, yeah. What did your sister say? Well, she didn't know what happened. She don't, you know, he disappeared and we get made a whole big scenario up. And when I decided to cooperate with the government, I went to my sister to give us some closure and I told her and my mother what happened. And it's funny, because I was sitting at, not funny, but I was sitting at a table with my mother. My sister, she was screaming at me, you know, how could you do that? They always surmised it was us, but they didn't know for sure. So when I went, when I left to go, when I decided to cooperate with the government, I told the FBI agents before I leave, I wanna go speak to my mother and my sister would tell them what happened. So they have closure, because my mother felt guilty, you know. So I went to see them and I told my sister and she just started screaming at me, how could you do that? You know, and she just flipped out. And my mother was just sitting at the table and my sister ran out of the house and my mother, like this expression came over her face. It just looked at me and she said to me, I can't believe he made you do stuff like that. Like my father made me kill people. He goes, I can't believe he made you do stuff like that. You know, so she felt bad about that, you know, like she just couldn't believe that he allowed. And that goes back to how abnormal that lifestyle is that a father and son could do something like that and think it's okay. And it didn't only happen to me, I know other sons and I know friends of mine that were their fathers were wise guys and killers. You know, John Gotti was a killer, his son, Michael Franciso, we both know his father's sonny was a killer.  And we think it's okay back then. And now today, Michael and I, and we know that it was an abnormal, you know, it's not okay and it wasn't okay. And we were not good guys. Yeah. I don't even let my kids have sleepovers. Yeah. Imagine that. You used to go kill somebody, right? Yeah. It's crazy.  But it's deranged now. But to them, to us, it was, it wasn't deranged. It was like, it was a whole new society. They hate the government. It was a whole different way of thinking. Like we thought that the public were fools. Like the publics were, like my father told, used to tell me, don't ever feel sorry for the public, no matter what we do to the public, don't ever feel sorry for them. He goes, cause they vote for them people. And he used to tell me the government, that's the real, those are the real gangsters. Cause that's the real mafia, the government. He goes in these. And so none of them feel sorry for the public. That was their mentality. Even when 9-11 happened, they wanted more cops to run into the building. Well, who was the maddest person? Who was the scariest person you'd ever salooned yourself with? I mean, I wasn't really scared of anybody, but the most dangerous person outside of my father, probably John Guidey, Roy DeMeo, Arneal Dullacroach, he had like, Arneal Dullacroach was a very stern man. He was good to me, you know?  But I wasn't never really personally scared of anybody, but I knew the most dangerous people, I would say more dangerous like was Roy DeMeo. Who's he? The Gemini club, he was just, was chopping people up. Him and the Gemini twins, he got killed, Paul Castellano had him killed. They wrote a couple of books about him. He was a mad door killer. John Guidey was dangerous.  Next week I'm gonna make him a blinker on a Cadillac and the next week the guy was gone.  Anybody that could take you out for dinner today, like right now we're having a conversation and then let, come on, James, take a walk with me and let's go next door and we go next door and you get shot in the head. Was there a lot of that back then? It wasn't a lot, but I mean, it was when it was, when it was, when it was, you know, I'm not gonna say it happened every day, but it happened quite often, you know? Yeah, what was Gotti Lake? What was John Gotti Lake? What was it like, did you know him before the Castellano? Oh, I knew him before when I was a little kid. I knew him before he even got straightened out. He was always, he was always a gangster. You know, he was, he grew up in my father's neighborhood. My father comes from East New York. It's a neighborhood in Brooklyn in Brownsville, Brooklyn. And they all come from that neighborhood. Murders Incorporated started out in that neighborhood. That's the neighborhood they started out in. And John was a teenager in that neighborhood. They have to move from the Bronx. So he knew my father for when he was a teenager, but he winded up with just, actually my father and John Gotti were proposed into the mafia by the same made member, Charlie Wagons, proposed my father and straightened out my father and straightened out John Gotti. So they sort of like, they had the same sponsor, more or less, into the mob, John and my father. So I knew him for years. I knew him since I was 13 years old, John. So when he became the boss, does that then benefit your dad because they were so close? It benefited my father, unfortunately, when he became the boss, my father was in prison, but his partner, Tony Lee was out. So they definitely benefited from it. I benefited from it too. Once I stopped, once I got clean in 88 and I started making a ton of money around him, you know, we all benefited from it and we all got hurt by it because of the heat. You know, like the FBI were all over us. The organized crime, task forces were all over us. I mean, every time we got arrested, you know, we were John Gotti's crew. Like I got arrested and when I got arrested in 89, the headline in the paper was John Gotti's crew arrested in a $15 million bookmaker ring. He had nothing to do with it. And I would go see him and he would go, hey, we made 15 million last year. Where's my money? Like he would tease me, you know, like where's his end? So it was a crazy time. How much percentage would Gotti get for everyone who earned? Usually the boss gets 10%. Everything gets, everything goes up. Everything, like an associate gives an envelope to the soldier. The soldier gives an envelope to the captain and then the captain gives an envelope to the boss, the under boss and the, and the counsel area. I know my father, when my father had dice game, whatever my father did, he gave the Bugata. They call it, he gave them 10%. He gave them 10% of everything he kicked up. So, you know. And Goodfellas, they had the JFK heist. How legit was that? The five million, is it five million plus? I knew all them good. They all come from my neighborhood. I mean, I know them good. Actually in the movie, in the beginning of the movie, they mentioned my father's name. When they panned the restaurant at the beginning and he's naming all the names, Michael Francis. They say Fat Andy and it's so funny because when I first went to see the movie, I didn't know they mentioned my father. We knew them. I mean, I knew Paulie Vario since I'm a little kid. I knew Jimmy Burke. I dated his daughter, Kathy. Like I knew all them. Tommy DeSimone, Departio Peschi played. He used to take me out with him. Like he would come to my father's bar to meet this guy Paulie G, who was his friend. And he would tell, I was like 19, he would tell my father, I'm gonna take your son with me tonight and my father's thumb, don't get my son in any trouble. No, don't worry about it. I used to go out with him. So I knew all of them intimately. So now I'm in the movie theater with all my friends to see Goodfellas, right? For the first time. And they're panning the restaurant and they say my father's now I'm in a packed movie theater and they say my father's name and all of a sudden all my friends, that's your father.  It was, it was cool, you know, I was, it was cool. So, yeah, that five million, but you know, a lot of people started getting killed. You know, Jimmy Burke, he was, that's a day, another, you want to talk about dangerous guys. Jimmy Burke, the part that DeNiro played, he was a dangerous guy. I mean, he was a dangerous, dangerous guy. And so was Tommy DeSimone. That's why Tommy disappeared because he was killing people that he shouldn't have killed, you know? But, yeah, five million.  And then he went to prison. He got life for a murder. And we used to tease his daughter, like, where's all the cash, Cathy, you know? And she said, I don't have it. So that's what they done then. They got the money, but they wanted to keep it from themselves. So they started killing everyone involved. And the jewelry, actually, the jewelry, so they got five million of cash and they also got over a million dollars in jewelry. Actually, the jewelry was fenced by my father and his partner because at the time of the robber, after they did Lutanza, my father had a club called Cafe Liberty. I was in prison when that robbery took place in 79, I think it was. And what happened was after the prison, after the robbery, and they brought all the money in the jewelry back to the sky of any Asara's cousin's house, they dropped off all the money in the jewelry. They actually went to my father's cafe and celebrated. My father was actually waiting for them and they celebrated the robbery in my father's cafe with my own man. And then about a year later, Jimmy Burke and Vinny Asara, my father had a gold and silver exchange because gold and silver was, Jimmy Carter was the president.  So they opened up this golden silver exchange. So Jimmy Burke and Vinny Asara brought all the Lutanza jewelry to my father and his partner and they fenced it all and they sold it and my father actually made like about a quarter of a million dollars for himself with the jewelry. So the one Joe Pesci played, he was a proper nutcase. Oh yeah, he was dangerous. Tommy was, and it's so mischievous because Tommy was tall and handsome. Tommy looked more like a movie star than Joe Pesci. So why did they cast Joe then? Because he was just a great actor.  But as far as casting looks like he did not look anything, Tommy was tall and handsome. When Tommy walked in the room, he had charisma. He was a sharp dresser. You know, he was a movie star, Tom. Like Joe Pesci's short, funny looking, great actor, but totally doesn't look like him whatsoever. Did he ever get made because the day he was getting made to kill them? Is that correct? That's a true story. He was dangerous. I mean, to clip him would have been a really hard thing to do. They actually believed, he actually believed they were bringing him to the ceremony. I've heard, I don't know how true it is, but this is what I heard from other people that his poor mother actually bought him a new suit for the ceremony.  And he actually believed he was going to his ceremony and they lured him into this place and he was executed. He was murdered. And what happened to Jimmy after that? Well, then Henry Hill became a co-operator as like in the movie and Jimmy got arrested for fixing college basketball games in Boston, which they were doing and he got convicted for that. And when he was in prison for that, Henry gave up a murder. What happened was he murdered somebody, Jimmy and Henry helped him put the body in his trunk.  And then he got 25 to life with New York State.  Actually went to his funeral and he died a lung cancer when he was in New York State prison and that was the end of Jimmy Burke. I actually, that might be the last time I saw his daughter at his funeral. I went to his funeral. What about Henry? Did you ever come across him? Henry, my father didn't like Henry. Do you think you felt some sort of vibe from him? My father never liked him. And he used to just say hello to me and goodbye. Like I would go to like Robert's lounge, the bar they hung out in where, so underneath the bar was an after hour club and I would go there and Henry would be in there. And he sort of stood away from me because he knew my father didn't like him and he sort of was not, he was a little afraid of my father. And it's funny because years later, Paulie Vario, who was a major player in the Goodfellows, Paul Savino played Paulie Vario. My father was in federal prison with him in Springfield in the prison hospital and we would go out there and visit them all together. My father, me, Tony Lee, my father's partner, this guy, Danny Catello, who was a captain in the Lucchese family, Pete Tequila, who was actually the person that allegedly shot Tommy in the house. We would go and we would all drive, fly out to Missouri to visit them and we would be in the visiting room and my father would tell Paulie Vario, I told you I never liked that Henry Hill and Paulie would tell my father, please Andy, don't break my balls, you know. So Henry sort of stood away from me but I was very, very friendly with the rest of them. When did your dad get convicted? What did he get convicted for? Yeah, my father, so what happened was when I got out of prison in 1980, my father kept on getting, there was this DA in Suffolk County, Long Island that kept on giving my father subpoenas over this bookmaking ring and so my father to duck him went to Florida, had friends in Florida in Miami and they opened up an Italian restaurant down in North Bay Village and he was sort of bouncing back and forth from Miami to New York, back and forth and what happened was back then the mob had control of a lot of bingo halls in Florida, I was before the casinos, before the Seminole Indians opened up casinos because now in America the American Indians own all the casinos. Yeah, I don't know how it is in Europe but that's how it is here. So they had all these bingo halls and Paul Castellano, who was the boss at the time sent from my father to come to New York, he needed to see him and my father flew up to New York and he went to see Paul Castellano and Joe Gallo, who was the councillary and this guy Joe Piney, who was the captain and this guy Tommy A. Agro, he was a soldier. They sent, and my father went to meet up with them and Paul Castellano asked my father if he knew the Traficantes, the Traficantes was the mob family out of Tampa, Florida. They sort of ran South, South Florida and my father said, yes. They said, okay, we need you to represent us with Tommy. There's a beef, we have a beef with them over this big bingo hall. So my father went, said, of course, you know, no problem. So my father went down there as an acting captain and he went to meet with the Traficantes with this guy Tommy A and they straightened it out and they went partners and whatever, everything worked out fine. And Tommy A had a crew down there. Actually, and one of Tommy A's crew members was Bobby DeSimone, who was Tommy DeSimone's brother from Goodfellows. So my father knew Bobby. So he said, when I'm not here, could you service my guys? And my father goes, yeah, no problem. One of them was an informant. One of Tommy A's is this guy Joe Dawgs and my father started servicing them and this guy Joe Dawgs started bringing my father Shylock customers, you know, and one of them was an undercover FBI agent and my father started Shylock into money and my father started committing crimes with them and my father got indicted with Tommy A on a big Rico in Florida and he got 40 years. How was that feeling? What was that? Obviously you knew your dad's life but if you start waking up to it, were you still in that life? Or was that a relief your dad was awake because maybe you wanted to change your life? No, at that point, no, it was not good. You know, I was very unhappy that he was away and plus I think my own addiction at that point started to escalate a little bit. So when he got arrested in 84 and between 84 and 88, I think those were like the hardest years for me because he was away and then I was going back and forth. I had a wife now, I had a son and I had to deal with his lawyers so I was going back and forth from John Gotti had become the boss and I was going back and forth, back and forth from Florida, I was living in hotels. He went on trial three times. My father, he got two, we actually fixed, he went on trial the first time with Tommy A, they got a hung jury. Then Tommy got lung cancer and died. The second trial he went on trial with only one other co-defendant. We actually got to one of his jurors. We gave the guy 25,000 and he hung the jury. So we fixed that jury, he got another hung jury. Then he went to trial the third time and he got convicted and then he got 40 years. So I was living in hotel, I was just a lot of back and forth it was a couple of rough years. Then once he got the 40 years in the 87 and things settled down, then I got like control of my life and then it's when I went to treatment and I got clean. What was it like going to treatment? Because you know yourself, if you've setting up murders, doing murders, blocking out the pain, no emotion, the drugs numbs the pain because you don't really think straight, it just blocks everything out.  So when you start to get in treatment, did that then hit you?  Yeah, well, the reason why I went into treatment was because I got to a point where I knew that I was killing myself. I was in a lot of physical pain. I was in a lot of emotional pain and I knew I had a stop. Otherwise I was going to die like and things would and I knew I needed to stop. So I addressed that issue. And just like you said, now I'm clean. Now I'm clean, but I'm living this life. I'm clean, I'm hanging out with John Gotti. John Gotti actually bought me a car when I got out of treatment, like he gave me a car.  Excuse me, you know? And in spite of, so now I'm clean, I'm making 12 step meetings, I'm hanging out with people that are clean but I'm still committing crimes. I'm still running around. I actually got arrested clean in 1990. I was clean already two years. I got arrested, I went to prison clean. I stood clean in prison. I came out of prison in 92, I stood clean again.  And now I'm going to myself, in spite of myself, I'm feeling uncomfortable now in this lifestyle. I'm saying to myself, why did I get clean?  I got arrested more, I did more time clean than when I was using drugs. I mean, that's how. You should have got yourself back on that. That's how crazy it was. I actually, you know, and we laugh about it but I actually did more time clean than when I was using. That's how ironic it was. And just in spite of myself, I started to develop a conscious and I was in Attica and I was in this cell that was full of cockroaches. I mean, it was loaded with cockroaches. I'm trying to clean it up, you know, and I got this 10-year sentence and I was done. Like I just said to myself, what's going on? Man, what am I doing?    I mean, the people's lives that I made miserable. But when I was doing it, it didn't faze me. Now, you know, it started just, I started, I developed a conscience to make a long story short but when I got out on O4, I still wasn't ready to, I still couldn't give it up totally. It was like, I knew I was gonna get made like I was proposed and I got permission to go on sit-downs and I just did eight years and three months and I actually got my first legitimate job driving a truck that I really liked.  And know if I'm going, now I'm indicted for murder. Now I'm facing life. Now I get out on home confinement and my father's dead, John Gotti's dead, Tony Lee's dead and the people that were, and now I'm struggling with am I gonna, is this life, is this mafia? Is this life worth spending the rest of my life in prison? Am I willing to give up my kids for the rest of my life? And I struggled with that for a year on the home confinement. Like I would pick up the phone to call the government and I would hang it up. I couldn't make the call to cooperate. I couldn't do it because I saw my father's face and he hated cooperators and I was guilt-ridden and this went on for a whole year. And then finally, a lawyer, a mob lawyer called me and said, listen, I've been looking into your case and you need to call the government because these people are gonna throw you under the bust.  You need to call the government and the next day, the next day, I still couldn't do it. The next day I woke up and I had the card to the FBI agent and I gave the card to my wife, Valerie. And I said to Valerie, listen, take this card and when you go to work, call that number and tell that guy to come see me. I couldn't call, I couldn't do it. And she went to work and she made the call and the agents came to see me and that's when I actually threw the towel and it said that I have to change, I have to get out of this life, it's crazy, it's abnormal, it's not a way to live and I ended it. What evidence did you have against you? And how did they get that? What happened was they had a co-operator, they had a couple of co-operators, my brother-in-law, my other brother-in-law from my wife's brother, so what happened was the case I got locked up in Florida on the RICO, my first wife, Alice, her brother, Louis, was in informant, we didn't know, he was working with us, he wore a body wire for a year, he taped every conversation we ever had. I mean, in my house, I mean, he taped, so they had a lot of tapes. Then this guy, Peter Sikara, so my brother-in-law had a partner named Peter Sikara and after my brother-in-law disappeared, this guy kept coming around our club. So finally, Tony Lee, my old man's partner, chased him, said, don't come around him and he came back and I'm outside the club with him one day and I said, Peter, listen, let me ask you a question. I said, you keep coming here looking for Frankie, you're not gonna find him here. I said, let me ask you a question. I said, because this guy was a killer, Peter.  And he just looked at me and he left. He cooperated. They used that one of the statements like that to indict me. So they had a lot of evidence but they had a lot of evidence circumstance but the strongest piece of evidence they had was I picked them up. I was, I picked them up at his house. I gave them the story to come. I picked them up, I brought them to the club and he disappeared. So they had a lot of bits and pieces and I didn't know everything they had because I never went on trial but they had enough to convict me according to lawyers I spoke to. So did you see anything on tape or was it just hearsay? No, I never got, I heard some of the tapes. I heard some of the tapes. I had some of the tapes and I saw some of the 302s I saw but then when I cooperated, I didn't see the rest of it because I didn't go on trial. I didn't have access to it. So what are you expecting then? If he doesn't cooperate, what would you have got? I wouldn't have got arrested. I mean, I tried to, what happened was when I first got indicted for the murder, I tried to take a plea. So now when I got indicted, I was wanting to get out on bail. So I got a visit from one of the lawyers on the case, one of my co-defendants, a time attorney. So I knew I was guilty and I wanted out of that life. So I was willing to take a plea. I was willing to take 10, 15 year plea. I was still young. I was still in my fifties. I just turned, I think 51. So I mean, I was willing to go back to prison, not for life, but I was willing to go back and I got this visit while I was waiting to get out on bail and this lawyer, Joseph Karaza, came to visit me. And he was a friend of mine and one of my attorneys and we were in the visiting room, in the lawyer room. And I told him, listen, I'm willing to take a plea right now, 10, 15 year plea. And he tells me, oh, would you like jail? I go, no.  This is forever. This is a murder.  I said, if I could get a plea 10 or 15 years, I'll take it. He told me, we're not taking pleas. So I couldn't plead out without my co-defendants. It was I had to be, which they call a global plea. So I was trapped. It was either go to trial. And then what happened was my co-defendant, actually the guy that shot, that pulled the trigger were in a attorney meeting and he's telling me the day of the murder, he was in Florida that he had paperwork from a travel agent stating that he was in Florida. So he already was fabricating an alibi. So I told him, well, what about me? Like I'm on, and he just looked at me and went like that. Like, so like that's when- The penny dropped. That's right. And that's when this other lawyer stepped in and told me, listen, they're looking to throw you under the bus. How long would you have got in prison? If I got convicted in life, it was a murder. In fact, for all- Life, life, yeah. No, I was under the old guidelines. So I would have been eligible for parole after 30 years. But you'd have been dead then. I would have been in my 80s. So what was that feeling like being in that life?  What was that moment when you decided? Because the police must rub their hands with guys in the mafia. They've got a guy to wear a wire, can get everybody. They've got you to turn. They just get everybody to turn. They just play everybody to then turn on. They must just sit back and go, well, we'll get them eventually.  They're trying to get me, I'm going to get them. It was the hardest decision I ever made. To this day, I still wake up sometimes in the middle of the night and I feel terrible. It was just a hard decision, but it was something that I was done. It was like drugs. I woke up one day and I was done using. It was just like I woke up one day and I was done living that way.  Like I knew it was over. I knew that it wasn't worth it anymore.  And I say this all the time, because it's the God's honest truth. If my father was alive or Tony Lee was alive, his partner, I would have never cooperated because I would have to give them up. And I would never ever do that. I would have never done that. So I think like all the stars are lined up for me to get out of that life and survive it. If that makes sense, you know what I mean? And I made the decision, but it was a hard, tough, really hard decision. I mean, I still have to live with it. I mean, all these years later, it's still sometimes I have bad days over it.  I would have never done that, but I think my father would have killed himself. That's what I think would have happened because once I don't wanna mention their names because they're still out there. My father was doing time with this other wise guy and one of his relatives allegedly started cooperating and he came out in the visiting room and my father looked at him and looked at me and goes, I can't believe this guy's walking around. If that was me, I'd kill myself. You know, and I have to live with that. You know, first of all, I know if my father was alive, I would have never cooperated, but if I ever did cooperate and he was alive, he wouldn't kill me, but he would have died. He would have died of a broken heart. He would have died. What sort of deal then do you get from getting him potentially in prison the rest of your life to then cooperate with the coppers? What sort of deal do they put on the table? And how do you trust them as well? That's a good question. So what you do is you sign a cooperation agreement and they give you coverage for all. And you have to basically tell them about every crime you know of, every crime you committed, and they give you what they call coverage for everything you want to charge to it. So they gave me coverage for all. Like I extorted a water company. I extorted a vending company. So I got coverage for all that. I was involved in a murder conspiracy to kill the sky Franky Geesh. I got coverage. So you get, you sign a cooperation agreement and you get coverage. And the only promise that you make, they gonna, when you get sentenced, they're gonna, they write this paper up about your cooperation agreement and they give it to the judge and they recommend a sentence. And in my case, they were gonna recommend supervised release. And then it's up to the judge basically, but normally the judge is either gonna give you like a couple of years or time served. In my case, thank God, he gave me time served. But you really don't know what you're gonna get, but it's very strict. It's very, it's very, it's very strict. Like if you get caught on one lie, you're out. You get life. Any deviation from the cooperation agreement, any making stories up or any lies you get caught in, you violate the cooperation agreement, you're finished. They kick you to the curb, you get life. But if you cooperate and you testify when they need you, when you get sentenced, they give this, they recommend a sentence and usually 99% of the time the judge files it, like Sammy DeBull committed 19 murders. He got five years. I got time served. When I got sentenced, I got five years supervised release and time served because I testified at six trials. So I got time served. So it's all up to the US attorney and how they presented to the judge.  A man who's done murders, set up murders, robberies. You've done prison time. You've done nearly 20 years prison time anyway. What happens when you eventually start cooperating? What's that feeling?  No, for me it was sort of a relief because I knew I was done. I knew I was out of it. There's no going back.   I was just relieved that it was done. It was over. I was out of it and I have to live with the decision and it was a new chapter, really. I mean, basically that's what it was. And it was a struggle for a lot of years. It was a struggle. I lived in states that I lived in Idaho.  Imagine you and I in Idaho, you know what I mean? Like imagine me and you living in Idaho. You know, here I am. I'm living in Idaho as soon as I open up my mouth, like everybody's staring at me. You know, to have me living in Washington state, you know, then eventually I went back to Michigan, you know, and then I wound up going back to, but then, you know, then I started making changes. You know, I was in recovery. You know, I went back to school. You know, then it's like now, all right, now I'm free of the mob. Now I'm free of, I don't have to worry about going to prison. Now what?  You know, not everybody that cooperates changes.  If you're going to cooperate and continue doing what you're doing, what's the point? So now I have to make changes. Now, thank God my life experience, you know, I got an offer to work. I got an offer to move to Florida to go work in a treatment center as a counselor and they put me back in school and went back to school.  Now, so when I started cooperating, I was in my early fifties, but I couldn't do anything. Cause I was testifying and I trusted the government and the witness protection program gave me money, you know, paid my way basically. And cause I was still cooperating, still testifying, but once that ended, now it's sink or swim. Now I'm on my own. And I went back to school at 60. I became a counselor. I worked as a counselor in the treatment center, which I'm still working in. Now today I work in a detox. So I went from being a taker to a giver. Now I help people instead of hurting people. So once I stopped cooperating, I had to make some changes. And thank God I made some changes for the good. Seem you had to testify six different cases. Did you have to take the stand six different times? Yeah, yeah, I had to testify. It was tough. The first one was tough. The first one I was on to stand for like three and a half days. That was a rough one. All of them were rough.  You know, I did a lot of scummy things.   I accepted the part I played in my life. You know what I mean? I accepted like, yeah, listen, I accepted the part I played. And once you accept the part you will play, you play in your life, it's okay. You know what I mean? Once I accepted and I know I did it and I forgive myself for doing it. You know, I could talk about it, you know, and they asked me questions and I, you know, like, and you know, and I say, yeah, like I was so honest, testifying that the lawyer would tell me really, like they were like surprised, like I even answered truthfully, like I stopped my honesty, stopped them from going any further because they were ready for me to lie and then they were going to like attack me, you know, and like, so there was a scenario when we fixed the jury in Miami, I was using at the time. So the jury went to 25,000. So I came to New York and I got to 25,000 from my old man's partner, Tony Lee, and I went back to Florida with the 25,000. And when I met with the guy that was fixing the jury, this guy, Billy Victor, I only gave him 20,000. And I said, here, I'm telling him, we're only giving him 20, and I kept 5,000 for myself and I blew it. I, you know, I partied with it. And the lawyers, they knew that.  And I looked at him and I said, yeah, and if I could have figured out a way how to rob the whole 25,000, I would have done that too, because that was the truth. And he just stopped dead in his tracks because he was going to wait for me to say, I didn't take no money, would he? And then they probably had a witness to say that, you know, so I just was an open book when I testified, but it was tough to testify, because they, you know, but... Six different trials? Yeah, six trials. Who did you testify against? I testified against this guy, Skinny Dom. He was a captain. I testified against this guy, Billy Bobby Glasses. He was an old murder trial, Charlie Koenig. He was, he was, melting bodies in barrels of acid. And he was really a crazy serial killer. He was crazy. Just the guy that ran over John Gotti's son, the guy that killed John, this was the guy that dissolved his body in a barrel of acid. He killed a friend of mine named Michael. He stabbed him, he killed him. I testified, so I testified at Skinny Dom's trial. I testified at Bobby Glasses' trial. I testified at Charlie's trial. I testified at this guy's Sarah Perron's trial. I testified at another murder trial of this guy, Jimmy, Johnny Burke. And then the last trial I testified at was the Lutonza trial with Vinny Asara, the sixth trial. Did they all get convicted? Five got convicted, one didn't. One got found not guilty. See, because you done testified so many trials, is that because the amount of information you gave? What happens if you just gave one or two? Plus it was historic. They called me what they call a historic witness because I knew the structure of the mob. And I knew, you gotta understand, I was in the streets since I'm 16 years old. Now I'm in my 50s, so I was out and I was Fat Andy's son. So I knew a lot of people. I knew a lot of things. I did a lot of things with a lot of people. So what they called me, what they called me was a historical witness. So they would call me, like I knew you were a captain. I met you as a captain and I would testify here. I met so-and-so, he was a captain in a banana family. But like, well, I committed, no, I didn't, because I didn't commit crimes with all of them. I committed crimes with Dominic. I committed crimes with Johnny Burke. And I committed crimes with Vinny Asara. So out of the three trials, I committed crimes with. The other trials I knew of, I was involved in the aftermath of their crimes, their murders, like with Charlie Conig. He killed my friend Michael. We had to sit down with them. Like I, so that was what I testified. Like he killed my friend Michael. We had to sit down at, you know, and so I had some historical information. Bobby Glasses, he killed with Frankie Geesh. They committed a double homicide with Frankie Geesh who was with us. So I had intimate knowledge of the murders. So I testified at those kind of trials, trials like that. Could people, could people sort, tell lies though? Could people make up lies that they were here? Is it just your statements that convicts them? You could lie, but believe it or not, the government knows the truth.   They told me stuff I did. And I went, like, how did you know that? Like they know everything that they know. We shot a guy years ago. We shot a guy named Louis Baja. Like I forgot about it. Like, and he didn't die. When he got shot, he didn't die, but he got messed up and he went back. He was a Puerto Rican kid. He went back to Puerto Rico. I forgot about it. And I didn't think anybody even knew about it. And I'm proffering. And one of the agents tell us, okay, now tell us about Louis Baja. I must fell out of the Louis Baja.  They know everything. They know everything. So for you to lie, it's dangerous.  So if you're going to lie, you're playing a dangerous game. The government don't play. When you sign that cooperation agreement, any little deviation, you're gone. They kick you to the curb. They have no use for you. Once they have no use for you, you're finished. See, when you had to sit in the dock where you, what was the eye contact like? We just looking down. When I signed the cooperation agreement. No, when you were, had to take the stand. What was that like? It must have been tiring. When I had to take the stand, that made sure I stared at everybody's face. I don't want, I wouldn't give anybody because not that I was proud of what I was doing because I was far from it, but I wasn't a punk and I wasn't going to cower. So when I walked into the courtroom, before I sat down, I looked right at the person I was testifying against. I looked right in their face and then I sat down and then once the questioning starts, you get its tunnel vision, then it's just you and whoever's questioning you and you sort of block everything else out. But I made sure every time I sat down, I looked at the person that I was testifying against and only one of them ever like, it was funny because we had like this moment in court like Vinny Asara. He just had passed away the poor guy, but he was a captain in the Lutonza case. That was the, he got found not guilty, which was amazing. So we had this moment like they brought me out into the courtroom and for some reason, he was the only one there with the agents and his lawyer. The jury wasn't there or the judge wasn't even there. And they usually they brought me out after the jury came in, but they brought me out, the agents and as I was sitting down, I looked at him and he was sitting there and he called me righty-goody, like that. And I went like this to him. And I looked at him and I just went like this and I gave him the finger like that. He was so mad, he was so mad, you know, but I just looked at him and I went like this. Something like that. He was so mad. Oh my God, he was jumping around, but yeah, no.  And it's like, it's like tunnel vision. You just zoned in on what's happening and you don't see nobody else. Because obviously people will call you're at this and that, but they've never lived that life. They don't know the life.   Yeah, well, yeah, it was just, you know, well, not when I was testifying, when I profited, when I met with the agents and the US attorneys, after I was done, like they were all day sessions, I was just like relieved. It was just, you know, it was just coming to an end and you know, and it was over, you know. I was just ready to move on at that point, you know. The only, I was just ready to move on. I knew that I didn't want to live that way anymore. It's like I just didn't want to do it anymore. I didn't want to live that way. I wanted to do something else. I didn't want to go to prison anymore. I didn't want to commit crimes anymore. I mean, my whole life was a crime. I had no skills. I don't, to this day, my life experience saved me. My life experience in recovery, my life experience with crime, how to change it. That's my, my education was the street. I use my street education now to work in treatment because I was like people, all these kids did time. Once I tell them I did time, they're locked in them. You know, I have something to offer now. This is, you know, yeah, I lived that way and you think it's glamorous, but it's not. Look at me and so my life experience now was my education. I don't know how to fix anything. I was talking about this last night. I don't know how to use a tool.  My father taught me how to be a criminal, how to be a mob guy.  Like when I started cooperating, I had no skills whatsoever. I couldn't do nothing. I don't know how to do it. I had no education.  So see when you testify against everyone, how long did that take to go over the six court cases? Was that a few years? Oh, it took years. It took years. I started cooperating in 05. I didn't finish cooperating until 2014. 2014, I got sentenced to the last trial I testified at was in 2014 or 2015. I'm not sure, but that was the last case. I got sentenced in October of 2014, and then I testified at one more trial after that. And that was the end. I testified at the Lutonza trial. That was the last trial I testified at. So see when you start testifying, they give you money every month and put you in a witness protection program? In the beginning, I went into the witness protection program. They changed my name. They gave me a driver's license, a social security card, a passport. They bought me a car. And then I lived in Idaho. I lived in Washington state. Then I signed myself out of the witness protection program. I drove back to Michigan and then the FBI were giving me money every month, like a stipend every month to pay my bills. And then when I stopped testifying after the last trial, they gave me like a lump sum of money and that was it. It was over. But I was working, by then I was a counselor. I was already in 2014. I went back to school and I got a job as a counselor in training and a treatment center. Do you have a fear for your life now? I don't have a fear for my life.  I mean, I'm not going to disrespect them. I'm not going to put it in their face, but it's not what it was. I mean, there's nobody out there now.   Definitely. But are they going to come and look for me? I don't think so. Is anybody going to give them the orders to come and kill me? What the way that it is today with all the confidential informants and the technology and I don't think anybody is going to come for us no more. I think if they were going to do that, they would have done it already. How strong were they going to be no family? How strong were they? Oh, they were powerful. They were the strongest at one time. I mean, when I first kind of vowed, they were, they ran the show. I mean, them and the Genevieve family were always the two strongest families.  That I kind of vowed to it.  I didn't get an education. The biggest regret is that I hurt my family. I hurt my sister and my niece.  You know, it's terrible. You know, I still deal with it today. You know, my relationship with them is not good, you know, because of what I did. That's probably my biggest regret. If I had it, even though he was dangerous, if I had it to do over again, I might have tried to not do what I did, you know, not make that happen. That's probably my biggest regret. Even though he did beat my mother, even though he did hurt my mother, but I regret the fact that I hurt my sister and my niece. What's the worst thing you've seen in that life? The worst thing I've seen is the damage we do to our families. That's what I see. The damage we do to our wives. You know, we all had girlfriends and we were womanizers and the damage that it does, like our kids crying in prison visiting rooms. Daddy, when are you coming home? I think that's the most damage I saw outside of the violence. I mean, because the violence, when the violence has happened and like I said earlier, that's just part of the game. And the violence that's perpetrated are against people that know the deal. You know, Sammy the Bull talks about it all the time.  Not that that makes it right. Don't get me wrong. Killing is killing. I mean, there's no, it's wrong. But the people that die know the deal.  That's horrible. But I think the worst thing I saw was my daughter crying in the visiting room that she had to leave me and go home. I mean, that's terrible. I got arrested in my house. In 1995, my daughter was in her diapers. I'm sitting on my couch handcuffed. They're in my house, wrecking my house because they have a search warrant. And my daughter's in her diapers, going, Daddy, are these your friends? You know, that's terrible. Yeah. Do you feel as if, do you believe in heaven and hell? Do you believe in? I do. I believe in forgiveness. You know, I'm not born again. You know, some of my friends are, and it's great. You know what I mean? I do go to church on Sunday. I go to Catholic mass. I'm still trying to be a good little Catholic boy. I do go to Catholic church. And I believe in forgiveness. And I believe that hopefully I'll be forgiven. You know, yeah. And I believe in that, definitely, without a doubt. And sometimes I, you know, I talked to a friend of mine. He was, he's a pastor. He was a real street guy and he was dangerous. He did a lot of bad things. But now he's, he's, he's a pastor. And I ask him all the time, do you really think that? Cause we and him and I did a lot of things together. I go, you really think we could be forgiven? I mean, we were bad. And he goes, yeah, we can be forgiven. Do you have nightmares? I do. I don't have, I don't have night. I have, I have, yeah, it's funny because I have guilt dreams. Like I have a dream that I'll be with my father and I'm talking to him and in my head I'm going, does he know I cooperated? You know, like I'll have a dream I'm in jail and I'm walking through the jail and I'm going, you know, someone's going to find out I, it's always about cooperating. My dreams are always about cooperating and I'll wake up in the middle of the night.  No, my father died when he got out of prison. Or did he die, where age did your dad go? 72, he got out, he did 13 years and he got out and then he passed away 18 months ago. No, it was hard, it was hard on everybody. I mean, it was, my mother, you know, like I said, at the end of the day, when I finally told her what happened and she just looked at me and she just says, I can't believe he made you do stuff like that. Like my mother, I think mothers and wives even are in some sort of denial of what we do. You know, like if that makes sense, I think there's some sort of denial in our lifestyles as far as they're concerned, until like the reality hits them in the face, you know? So yeah, it was hard on her, it was hard on her. It's hard on my grandmother, my poor grandmother, I was the oldest grandchild. She used to look at me and go, what happened? You were such a nice little boy, what happened to you? You know, my little Sasinian grandmother, she used to tell me that all the time, she used to go, what happened to you? She was such a good boy.  But how hard does that to see a father doing that to his own son? No, you're a father now. And like I said, Ella, I don't let my sons have a sleepover or nothing like that. So, but how is that? Do you feel sorry for your dad or kind of, because he never had anybody to guide him? How do you feel about him? I feel, that's what he know. He was a good father, don't get me wrong. When I was a kid, he was great. He loved us to death. He did everything with us, he's provided. He took me to Yankee Stadium. He took me to the, he loved boxing. He loved baseball. So he turned me on to all that. He taught me how to play little, came to every one of our little league games. I mean, you know, he was a good father. He just, that's all he knew. And he just thought that was right. He believed in that, he believed in that life. Like that was in his blood and that's all he knew. And he thought that was the right thing to do. And he just did the best he could with what he had. Cause everything's changed now. Like you say, the mafia's kind of fizzled out. It was not really, it's not the same as it was. But how do you feel when you see everybody speaking out now and trying to teach people not to make the same mistakes? Whether people believe, whether people like to see people snitching or not, it doesn't matter. They never loved that life. But how is it when you see everybody, I don't mind the guy who's been in that life, tries to change it and then tries to help other people for the better because they're the ones who can teach. Not someone who understands it from books or TV.   Back in Scotland, Glasgow, it's high crime. It was a murder cab to the Europe, I think, for a period. But when I seen men, fancy cars, the beautiful girlfriends, money in their pocket, the convertibles, I used to think, wow. But then 10 years later, 15 years later, you see the destruction, they're in prison, the girlfriends are damaged, they come out of prison, they try and get back what they've lost, they never ever do. There's no one I know gets out that life ever. Yeah, you know, I use my father and John Gotti as examples all the time. I tell everybody, listen, all that glitters is in gold. Yeah, it looks great, it looks flashy. I loved it when I got involved in it, when I was 16. That's, I wanted it bad. I thought it was, I was enticed in it. But at the end of the day, none of those, there's no success stories in the mob. John Gotti was the biggest gangster since Al Capone. Look at Gotti, Gotti that I just did is a smash hit around the world, smash hit. Meanwhile, John Gotti got life in prison, died like a dog, chained to a bed. That's not a success story. My father, Fat Andy, made tons of money, helped everybody, did a lot, bad and good, did 13 years in prison, came out of prison, all his friends were dead. I was in prison, he had a list of 200 people on his list that he couldn't talk to, he couldn't go nowhere, he couldn't do nothing, he was broke, he died alone and miserable. That's not a success story. There are no success stories in the mob. That's the bottom line. And I do that all the time. I put stuff on my Instagram, I talk about that on my podcast, that I put pictures of from federal prison of me and my family that I took when I was a federal prisoner of me, my wife and my two kids. I put pictures on my Instagram, my Facebook and on my show and I say, oh you Italian kids out there that think the mob's all that, this is your future Christmas card picture. And it's a federal prison picture, like this is your future. So I try to discourage people in that way because there's no success. Now listen, I changed. I became a counselor, people say I'm a success story. No, I'm not. I did a lot of damage. You know, I missed my kids growing. I went to prison, my daughter was three. I came out, she was 11. My son was 13, I came out, he was 21. I missed, I gave up everything for that lifestyle. That's not a success story. Look at it, did I make some changes? Yes, I did. Do I help people now? Do I try to make amends for my life? Yeah, I do, because that brings me peace.  But my life isn't a success story, I did a lot of damage. How did get got to come about? That's a good question. So what happened was, so I started in this doing these things, right? So I did a, I wrote, I did an article for this guy, Costa Nostra News. It's like a newspaper. This guy writes articles about mob guys, mobs. So I did, I did a story with this guy and this company Raw Production, who did Fear City, reaches out to him and asked him to recommend somebody for the show. So he recommended me. So they contact me and we have a conversation and they liked what I had to say and they hired me for the show. But originally it was supposed to be Fear City too. So Netflix did a show a few years back called Fear City, Michael Francis was in it. Johnny A. Light was in it. Couple of guys in it was his hit. It was, it was, it was in the top 10 in Netflix. It was a big hit. So now Netflix wanted to do Fear City too, but they didn't want the same people in it. They wanted new people. So they brought me in. I didn't know they brought Andrew in and I didn't know they brought Sal and I, they wouldn't tell me who else was involved. So they bring me in to do Fear City too. I do my bid. I come up to New York. We film all day and bop, bop, bop. So I do my skit. About two months later, they call me and they go, listen, we showed it to the executives at Netflix and they said it's really good. It's so good. They're going to rename it and give it its own show, which is really good for me because now I'm away from Fear City too and I'm on, it's on its own. But they didn't have a title yet for it. And then a little later on they called me and they said they renamed it Get Gotti and it's going to come out on October 24th and so on. But I never in my wildest dreams thought it was going to be the hit that it is. So what happened was we would just hope of me and my team, my manager, Pascal, we would just hoping that in the first month it would hit like in the top 10, like, you know, because, you know, there's a lot of stuff out there about John Gotti, you know what I mean? So, you know, it's not like it's something new. So we would just hoping in the first month it would hit number, you know, in the top 10. So it comes out on the 24th. I watched it, it was, they did a phenomenal job. I mean, it was really good. They put some stuff in it that nobody ever knew of and, you know, we all did a good job and it was good. The next morning I get up like five o'clock in the morning and I'm drinking my coffee and I put on Netflix to see and I put on Netflix and I go to like the top 10 shows in the country and I click it and I go, what? Get Gotti number one. I jumped up off my couch. I got my phone, I started text five into one. I'm texting everybody. The show's number one. The show, I'm taking pictures of the TV. They're like, blew me away. And ever since then, like, things have been going really well. You know, that's just goes to show you, listen, we did good in it, but you're not just goes to show you of the mystique and of John Gotti. Like, people are just fascinated with the mob. But people got to know, like, and I wrote about it. I said, Get Gotti is a great show, but listen, it's not a love story. It's a tragedy. It's a story about a tragedy because we hurt a lot of people along the way and that man died handcuffed in bed with cancer and chained to a bed. You know, he was chained to a bed when he died, literally. Why? Because he was in federal hospital when he died. He was in a prison hospital. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, so it's, you know, I said people got to understand Get Gotti was a great show and I love the fact that it's a huge hit and I love the fact that's bringing me a lot of attention. But at the end of the day, it's a tragedy. It's about a tragedy. How has Gotti's family, did you ever see them or speak to them? What did they say? I don't speak to them anymore. I mean, they, then, they're, I don't know.  They're not saying nice things. I mean, they're- But you can understand that. Yeah, I get it. I get it. I get it. You know, I get it. But it's their father, you know, it's their father. So they're not, just not, no, just one of his daughters, she has a little, she has a podcast and she's been on there. She's not happy with it. But overall, they haven't really said much outside of one of his daughters. What about Andrea? Love Andrea had her on the podcast yesterday, but I know Francaise and Sam and the Bill kind of fired George.  How, because I think she's legit. I think the way she talks, the way she presents herself, she's solid. She did a great job on the show. The show's a smash hit. You can't, you know, you can't really knock anybody that was on the show because the show was such a huge hit. If people didn't like what was going on, the show wouldn't have been a huge hit. You know, everybody's entitled to their opinion.  I got, we had a great time yesterday. Did her podcast yesterday. I didn't know she was on the show till I saw the show. They wouldn't tell us who was on the show. I didn't know, Sal was on the show till I saw the show. I didn't know the agents were on the show till I saw the show. But you know, she was, you know, I know the people she dated. I know Frankie Lino. I know Mark Ryder very well. I knew his son, Greg, very well. She said she hung out in a club bay. I hung out in a club bay. So she was definitely around, you know, and she's, she's, I like her. Yeah, that Mark Ryder was proper. He, it was Andrea was saying about the heroin and stuff. Oh, he was the major heroin. He was a millionaire. He was a major. He was Nikki Bonds. Nikki Bonds was one of the biggest heroin deals in Harlem. He was Nikki Bonds' connection. Who was the American gangster one when Washington played the part? That was, that was, yeah, he, well, in, in that movie, Nikki Bonds, the character Nikki Bonds is in that movie. He's the flashy guy, the young guy that he's always trying to school like. Kills him.  Nikki Bonds, when he gets arrested, Nikki Bonds sort of took over Harlem. But Mark was selling heroin to them guys. I mean, Mark was, Mark, and he was a very sharp guy. Mark, I like Mark. We got along good. He was very sharp, always well dressed.  John, very close to John, very tight with John Gotti. Good guy, knew his son well. I did business with his son. Unfortunately, his son was murdered by Tommy Karate, another crazy mob killer. But his son, we did business together. Actually, his son had a vending company and he was putting, he put his machines in our number spots. I knew his son, Greg, good up until he got murdered. So Greg was definitely, and Mark was legit. Do you have any friendships now from people from the past and that life? I still, I do talk to people. I can't, I won't say who they are, but yeah, I still talk to people. I still have my finger on the pulse a little, but I get, you know, I talk to people.  But yeah, I still talk to people. Tell me that's Anthony, do you miss that life? Sometimes I do, you know, I tell my kids that I miss, I miss the money, I miss the money, a lot of money, I made a lot of money and I missed, I missed, I missed, you know what I miss? I missed the, the, the perks. I missed like not waiting online. I missed, you know, sitting, being able to afford a, sit in the first row at a concert.  Yeah, definitely. How's life now?  Even when I was, you know, in the mob and I was in the street, I always wanted more. I always wanted more of everything, more money, more woman, more, always more, more drugs, more, more, more, more. That was my middle, you know, that's my model, more.  I have a nice condo, I have a job, I don't have to worry about getting arrested. I'm not gonna hurt nobody today. And finally, I'm content. Do I struggle? Yeah, I have normal struggles. They have financial struggles, you know, health. I have, you know, my normal health issues for my age, but I'm content today. What's the biggest life lesson that you have learned?   Where do you go forward for the future? Going forward, well, I'm working, I still working, I have my show, I say I got the shirt made, special for you. Reform Gangsters, I got my podcast. I'm doing, on December 2nd, I'm filming a documentary with the History Channel about the mob in Miami. I'm working on a book deal.  And I did, I did, I did a, I did a table in the back with Sammy the Bull. That sort of gave me, that sort of gave me a little boost also, but just get gotty thing, like really gave me a boost. And now things are starting to come my way. So I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be involved in a couple of good projects. Did you ever think with giving statements, again, people that you'd be able to sit and walk around and people want photos and people doing podcasts, did you ever think that was possible 20 years ago?   Are you the guy up from the show? Like one guy heard my voice and goes, oh my God, your voice is in my brain.  He went, yeah, go yeah.  And even now at the gym, I see people staring at me like the juice girl said, I saw you on TV, you know. But now people, yeah, so it's kind of cool.  You wouldn't have seen that 20 years ago, 30, 40 years ago.  The first time we spoke on Zoom, I did his show, first his sit down and we know each other from way back. And he goes, could you believe? Would you think 30 years ago that you and I would be talking on Zoom right now? I go, not at all. And even getting into this whole thing, this wasn't even a thought in my mind. I was working in a treatment center and my phone rang one day and it was a friend of mine selling me that Johnny A. Light wants to talk to me. And I said, all right, give him my phone number. So next thing Johnny A. Light calls me and says, listen, I'm doing a show for National Geographic and they keep hearing about you and your father. Would you be interested in doing it? I go, yeah. Like, I said, all right, you know, fine. And this guy, Max Stern from London, you know, I don't know if you know him. He works for, he's a producer, director. He calls me, we have a conversation and they put me in, Knoco was the mob, you know? And I did the show, Drugs, Bugs and the Dappadan, you know? And then I did that show, then I did Vlad TV and then I got a manager and then boom, one thing left, then the next thing I have a podcast and then, you know, and then just now it's getting like, you know, it's rolling, yeah. What's, what is your podcast? What's your clothing brand? What's your social media for people to get? Yeah, so my podcast is Reform Gangsters. It's on YouTube, subscribe. My Instagram is Son of a Gangster, Anthony Ruggiano Jr., my Facebook's Anthony Ruggiano Jr. And my website is antinruggianojr.com. So, but subscribe to Reform Gangsters Patreon. I got a Patreon page. I'm gonna start doing on one on, which I'm gonna start doing on Wednesday, the 22nd at seven o'clock Eastern Standard Time.  So, yeah. For anybody that is watching, that's struggling with addiction now, what advice would you have for them? My advice for them is to just get to a meeting the day at a time, talk to somebody, you know, reach out to somebody and you know, feelings are facts. Just because you feel like using doesn't mean you have to use this, you know, you gotta put some time in between you and the last one and try to get into treatment, try to get into treatment, try to get to a 12 step meeting. Me, I just don't use no matter what, you know, I have this motto, no matter what I'm going through, I know that you have to accept, once you cross over the imaginary line into addiction, there's consequences. And for me, listen, I would love to have a glass of wine. I would love to, you know, I would love even sometimes I'm gonna be asked to do a line of coke. Same. Yeah, you know, and if I said I didn't, and I'd be a liar, you know, but unfortunately for me, when I do those things, there's consequences and that's what I don't wanna live with. That's what I don't wanna accept is the consequences and for people that are struggling, you have to accept the consequences. Once you cross over the imaginary line into addiction, the party's over. That's it, no matter what you do, you're never gonna be, it's never gonna work them or it don't work. Accept the consequences and not use. And for me, listen, I thoroughly enjoyed your story. Thanks for coming on in today. Would you like to finish up on anything else? No, just subscribe, you know, perform gangsters and I had a great time here and maybe we could do it again. Yeah, definitely, God bless you, man. All the best. Thank you. Thanks. Yes, cheers, man.


Welcome to the Knuckleheads of Liberty. The topic of today is mainly about online free speech and misinformation and such and some of those issues. So we're going to dive into some of that. And of course, what's really been heating up is the discussion of Elon Musk buying 9% of Twitter. And of course, there's some huge free speech implications to this. It sort of took everybody by surprise, including I guess the SEC as well. It's apparently there's going to be a lawsuit since he didn't quite report it correctly when he was buying some of this stuff. But the key part of the story is 9%. And that makes him the majority stakeholder. Not the majority. What was the largest? Yeah, the largest. And so then the question is initially they thought maybe he's going to join the board of directors. And so there was some talk about that. And then he suddenly pulled the plug on joining the board of directors. And there's a lot of speculation now that he may be gearing up just to try and become the majority stakeholder and take a sizable enough stake in the company that he can call the shots. And some of the speculation is that if he had joined the board, they would have limited him to 15% of the company. And also, he would have been constrained from sharing their code, which is one of the things I guess he's talked about is going a little more open source with the company. And he has made a lot of noise about free speech in the past. And of course, Twitter and a lot of other social media companies have been stepping on free speech. And there's a lot of speculation that there's algorithms that these companies are using to suppress conservative speech. Certainly we've seen outright Twitter banned Donald Trump from their platform early on. And we've seen a lot of other activities where these different platforms have either restricted speech or maybe because of identity politics and concerns about hate speech or other things like that that they think they've identified. And of course, one of the biggest things aside from them banning Trump from Twitter was the whole Hunter Biden laptop that he talked about recently and the fact that that very well could have shifted the election one way or the other. And Twitter, I believe, and some of the other social media companies, they had either throttled or banned company or new sources that were trying to discuss the Hunter Biden laptop issue, which was the issue where Hunter Biden had apparently dropped off his laptop just to give a quick recap of that at a repair facility. And I forgot to come back and pick it up, I guess. It turned out there was all kinds of CD pictures and everything else of him on the laptop, gauging and prostitution drugs and a lot of communications that are popping out about him collecting money for himself and possibly his dad for connections to overseas companies like Ukraine and China and such. So essentially trading on the Biden name. But of course, the issue that we're focused on today is just the fact a lot of people didn't get to hear that. That was just called Russian misinformation by the mainstream media and was blocked. So anyway, this is some of the implications that Elon Musk buying this company has. And by the way, the issue I alluded to with Twitter, him buying the stock and not reporting correctly, apparently he had to report by I believe it was May 20 or March 25 that he had exceeded 5% of the company and he didn't. And he reported it apparently in April. And so there's a lawsuit going on with some investors saying that well then therefore they lost potential gains because the stock would have shot up. They believe if he had said that he was a 5% stakeholder in the company at that point. So anyways, let me throw it to you guys. And what do you guys think of this big issue in free speech? Currently, Twitter forgot to have an algorithm that would warn when someone bought more than a certain percentage of shares on the company. Maybe they should have had an algorithm for that. For that. Okay. And maybe but this is the government requirement. This is an SEC requirement. He literally has broken a law I guess in this in this move. Yeah. I'm kind of referring to they're probably not happy that an Elon Musk bought their company at all. Because it's somebody that's woke to the wokeness apparently. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, this, this whole thing about mass purchase of Twitter stock. First of all Jason that lawsuit. I mean I'm sure that's going to get thrown out of court seriously. I mean he may get fined for not I'm not filing any time in Manai. I think he was a few days later than he should have because I think he was supposed to make the disclosure within 10 days of exceeding 5% and he didn't do it. I think he did it within 14 days or 15 days or something like that. So it's he's probably going to end up getting fined for it but it's not going to he not going to face any any other any penalties for for that because this has happened in the past and it's of all is resulted in fines. Nobody have been paid punitive damages or anything like that because of a late filing.  But I do hope I do hope that all the thing about Mars and free speech. I hope the hype that we're hearing about this lives up to to to what we expect, because you must have really said some things about free speech that I really do like. And Twitter have been a very, very, if you could talk about guilty in this case, I know it's a private organization, all that kind of stuff, but they have been very much guilty of censorship, censorship of people on the right in particular. And you spoke you just mentioned the Donald Trump, the Donald Trump, it's you the Hunter Biden's laptop issue that could have sway in the election and Twitter and Twitter know it.  I think what they're all probably realizing too is the mistake that they put in the White House. This keeps getting worse and worse they would go on go on sorry. I like that that's true. That's true. There was a real some real serious biasing remorse is probably ongoing. But, but the thing is, though, the thing is, though, there is a free market solution. Free market solution to the problem of censorship, obviously there is and must is beginning to show that and I hope there are others. My big concern, and I've always been I've said it before in the show. When the government get involved with the censorship, where the government is in the background, and these platforms are doing the dirty work of the government, especially the Democratic Party. So, I hope, I hope mass Elon Musk could finally break this nastiness of censorship that we are seeing going on with the social media platform. I really hope it happens. And if I can tag onto the top of what Leon said. Yeah, that's the crux of the issue because all this nonsense of, oh, they're a private company they could do whatever they want. You know, see how good I am. And that is is only based on if Twitter and Facebook and all those YouTube and everybody, all just independently decided to censor all these conservative voices and all these, you know, alternative viewpoints and all this other stuff.  So, don't tell me that they're a private company. If they're being utilized by the federal government to do their dirty work, like Leon said, don't tell me it's not true that no longer the case. And just to highlight what you said, I mean, we've seen Jen Psaki and others from the White House, even the Surgeon General calling for these companies to to regulate who's speaking on their platforms. Exactly. Yeah, throw it right back to you though. Yeah, so, no, no, no, you're, you know, it's all it's all the same stuff. It's all it's, you know, so what is really free market responses when the free market like an Elon Musk takes over and changes the direction of it. That's free market. Yes. Or if somebody else starts a new. Thank you for listening to the Knuckleheads of Liberty podcast.