 Welcome to the Original Gangsters podcast. I'm your host Scott Bernstein. Today I'm coming from you, coming to you from an extra bedroom in my house. I apologize for the aesthetic behind me. But we had some scheduling issues in the Bernstein household here in Metro Detroit. But I'm very excited about this episode, like I am every episode. We're going to do a life in crimes, another life in another in our life and crime series. And today we're going to discuss the life and crimes of Genevieve mob capo, Springfield, Massachusetts, Don, slain Don, Adolfo, Big Al Bruno, and I am very, very happy and eager to bring on the preeminent expert on mob activity in Springfield, Massachusetts, and all western Massachusetts, Stephanie Berry of MassLive.com. Stephanie, thank you for joining us. My pleasure, Scott. Good to see you. I would just not to port on too thick, but I would say that Stephanie isn't just one of the best mob reporters in America, regardless of gender or region, but without question in my mind, and I'll do respect to all the great female crime reporters out there. There's no better mob reporter when it comes to women in this game, and it's a tough game to be in, believe me, I'm sure. It's Stephanie Berry, so she can teach a masterclass on reporting on the mafia. Again, no matter what age, race, gender, region. Thank you, Stephanie, for joining us. Thank you. When it comes to Big Al Bruno, I mean, you've kind of, a big part of your career has been reporting on the, all the machinations that led to Big Al Bruno's assassination 20 years ago this week. He was murdered outside of the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Social Club in the south end of Springfield on November 23rd, 2003. I think it was the eve of his 58th birthday. Yes, he was turned 58 the next day. I believe it was a Sunday night, and Thanksgiving was that Thursday. Right. It was probably, I mean, I've been doing this a long time as you've already noted for your viewers, but that night that I got a very quick phone call and hang up to tell me that Bruno had been murdered in the parking lot, and then the person on the other end hung up the phone was probably a defining moment in my career. And I don't even think I realized at the time how important that would be to just the trajectory of my career. Never mind the trajectory of organized crime in western Massachusetts and greater Smithfields. I mean, tell me if I'm accurate in saying this. I wrote about it this week on my gangsta report website. The murder of Al Bruno was for all intents and purposes the murder of the Springfield mob as it had been for, you know, 80 years. And not to say that the mob isn't around. It doesn't exist anymore in western mass. But the shadow of its former self, though, I think everyone would agree. And Al was the last of kind of the old school regime there from the Scabeli brothers and Big No Sam and, you know, dated back to those guys. It was really well connected around the country, not just in Massachusetts. He was a, you know, the consummate gangland politician. I want to like turn it over to you to kind of let's start just talking about what his legacy is. And then we can get into the murder and then get into the the rise and then fall that led to the murder. I've done some reporting in the last year about the months leading up to Al's demise and how the the winds were blowing in that direction for about a year. But what do you say with when it when it comes when it comes to Al Bruno's legacy and how people remember him, you know, the one thing that I want to get your comment on most of the things. But I've talked to some people in the last year or two and they said Al was incredibly popular in his political self, glad handing, both white collar and blue collar, both in Springfield and out of Springfield. And he was beloved in that caricature. But where he wasn't beloved was more within the organization and the rank and file felt constrained, taken advantage of, I guess, wasn't as beloved within the family as he was without outside of him. I would say that's by and large accurate. Yes, he definitely was a character quasi celebrity. Among so called regular people. I think the mob guys call them civilians, politicians. He'd go out in public and he was definitely treated like a celebrity wherever he went. He soaked it up, he aided up, you know, he responded, you know, really jovially to being adored, but people inside his circle. And I must admit, it took a lot of years for anyone to talk about who knows, less lesser qualities, more negative qualities, until a ways after he was gone, wait, you know, long after he was murdered that I've heard and obviously I have no personal knowledge of this, but he ruled with it. He was he was a happy fellow out in public, but he ruled with an iron fist. I've heard that he was greedy, you know, all the rackets that were intertwined between the various players. You know, he was always after the money grab perhaps wasn't as generous, you know, generous as maybe he could have been. And so I think this kind of wellspring of resentment started to build up in the year or two before his death. And would you say it's accurate to portray the narrative in, let's say, the end of the Schumeli brothers in the late 90s, early 2000s. And it are, well, I think within within Al's mind, it had it always it had always been a just like a known fate for him that he was going to end up in the Skipper's chair. After Frankie Skyball and Baba were, you know, Frankie Skyball died. Yep. And then Baba was kind of shelled. Shelled and he was also struggling with dementia. I think when he was shelled, when he pleaded guilty to this indictment, and he was indicted along with, I don't know, almost a dozen other gangsters and associates. I didn't even know at the time the FBI, when I was in the courtroom, made a big deal about the fact that Baba admitted his affiliation. Right. And that upset the Genevieve in New York. It did. And I see you. And that's what that's what it's called when you go in the court and you as part of your plea, you allocate. It's just it's a legal term. Yes. So and because I was still so new at the time, I didn't even really understand the significance of it. You know, I still I still don't honestly be honest. No. So a couple of the feds came up to me and said, Oh, my God, wait till you hear, you know, Babish abilities. And so I'm waiting for some bombshell and then the allocution ends and I say, Where was the bombshell? Well, he admitted his affiliation with the Genevieve's crime family. Oh, OK. So it was significant in an inside baseball and from a law enforcement standpoint. But I think there were there was a little bit of jockeying going on. I don't think it was necessarily a foregone conclusion. Did I think it was a foregone conclusion? You know, I probably, you know, I didn't have discussions with him about that, but he seemed to settle into the role. I mean, I felt like he played that role even when he wasn't the boss per se. Right. You know, he was always very colorful and jovial and a man out and about like a like a guy half his age, you know, always out in bars and restaurants, you know, glad handing and rubbing elbows with people. So it was almost hard to put like a date on, you know, the day that he became the boss, because I feel like he acted like he was to some extent when he was kind of a true when you say he was kind of a street boss for Mickey Skyball and those guys. So it was like he the way that Frankie Skyball had been a street boss for big nose thing. Right. And so he was known as being a tough guy among tough guys. He didn't seem to shy away from kind of any form of violence. As you noted in your blog, and I've noticed I've noted in my stories, nothing seemed to really stick to him for a long time. And I think that's because at the time you can surround yourself with more people and more associates. And, you know, that attempted murder of the in the barn in Aguam. You know, so there was a mistrial. Let's give some people, Stephanie, just for people that might not know all the backstory on that in the 90s. He was indicted for an attempted murder that happened, I believe, in 1981, where a guy that was an affiliate of Northeast Pennsylvania of mod faction was believed to have been cooperating. Yeah, they drew him up. To the Springfield area under the pretense of a score. And it lured him into a barn. And Big Al came up behind him with a gun, allegedly. And he shot him, but he didn't kill him. Right. Right. And it took him a dozen years to make a case to bring. Right. And there were two trials. And there were two trials and they were very high profile. They knew the venue actually to Hartford, Connecticut, I think, because there had been so much publicity surrounding it. This was before my time, but, you know, obviously read up on it quite a bit since. Right. But it was if he wasn't known before that trial outside of the people that paid attention to Machia, he definitely he was capturing headlines in 92, 93, 94, you know, quite a bit in the area over this this kind of soap opera, mob murder that went wrong. And right. And, you know, in the 80s, he was pretty active in terms of the classic rackets, like these junkets to Vegas and then, you know, the old fashioned numbers games that they, you know, the street numbers, brackets, loan sharking, obviously there were some violence happening. But it's still paled in comparison to two thousand three. Right. And I think maybe law enforcement at the time they may have been more tolerant of mob activity than they've ordered, you know, 10 or 20 years later. And it was a real soap opera that that that was occurring surrounding the big Al's rise and fall. And when I say rise, I mean, he had been rising for for 25, 30 years because my records and research, like you said, there's kind of a difficult to delineate when he was actually boss and when he was acting as a boss. But I think he had his inauguration party, if you will. I believe it was at zeroes on in January of oh, two. So he was he was only boss on at least officially for less than two years. Yes, I say rise and fall. I'm talking about from, you know, the beginning of oh, two to the end of oh, three, wasn't so smooth. His his trajectory had been pretty smooth. And like you said, he had been able to slide out of some some pretty major cases in addition to the the the thing up in Aguam in the early 80s. He had a 1979 murder of a guy named Antonio Fasente that he was allegedly bragged about, never got charged, but no one to talk about his his role in it. But it his his his reign in the mafia or his position in the mafia had always been pretty stable. And I know that because of that, Frankie Skiball felt comfortable, I think, starting in the 80s, sending him around the country as like a representario. I know he was he was dealing with the Billy guys, I know. Billy, Connecticut, New Hay, Hartford, New Haven, I know, Boston, yeah, in Boston. And so was it predictable? Like I said, there was a little bit of a gap there because Anthony D'Levo came in and was actually named boss for a short period of time. Right. Right. But then he went to prison and then and then outtakes over. And actually he D'Levo. So he pleaded guilty along with all those other guys. He was he was a Baba guy. Yes. And he was very much the antithesis of the Bruno gangster. He was trying to get everything low key. He had these, you know, warehousing and food businesses. He was not one to swagger around. He'd like to stay under the radar. So he was boss for a minute. I couldn't put a time clock on that. It was like what like two thousand one ish through to two. I think it was like a year because I think Baba got. Brought down or got a strike to pull the at some point, no, too. Yeah, they were all part of that same group of people who were indicted. But I believe that the day D'Levo was set to ship off to prison after his guilty plea was the day of Al Bruno's funeral. Not that that's like here or there. But, you know, it just shows you kind of all the interconnectedness and the tangled nature of that time. And I would say, so you said less than two years. I want to say I'm trying to dial back and do the math in my head. So he died November of all three. No, November, twenty three, oh, three. I want to say for a few months, leading up to that anyway, was when Artie Nigro had made Anthony Aralada back. So there were these like parallel tracks of old school gangsters and younger gangsters. Well, that was part of the soap opera that Anthony had come up under Big Al and Big Al had proposed him a couple of times. I think he proposed him once and took his name off, put his name back on and started sending him to New York. And at the same time, Anthony is going to New York and ingratiating himself with the New York guys. Al is alienated himself from the New York guys. And I want to ask your opinion on this, you Brett, you mentioned a little Artie. So again, some of my reporting and some of my researching tells me that when Al first started becoming a big, big deal outside of just a lieutenant or soldiers of the Schrobellies, but when he was actually had, you know, he was a shot caller at this point. A guy named Farby Serpico was the front boss of Genevase. And Farby and Big Al got along incredibly well. They were very close. At this time, little Artie Nigro was a lesser known commodity. And I guess there were a couple of social situations that I heard about where at least the people that were there and had spoken to little Artie, Artie felt that Al had big time. Yeah, and someone had said to Al, you know, you never know who's going to become, you know, the guy that's a waterboy now could be a shot caller in a couple of years. Right. Because even when I covered. So I would say that's correct. It was just this weird symbiotic relationship where, and, you know, you and I have had various bosses over the years. You get along better with some and not as well with others. But at the time, you know, I think it was key that Anthony and the Geuses were all out on the street, you know, kind of at once prior to the murder, because it's I feel like they built up this critical mass of people who were maybe deciding they weren't so scared of Bruno. You know, they wouldn't undermine him to his face. But there was a lot of that going on in the background. And then Nigro sends who we ultimately learn was an informant, John Bologna from New York, and he was kind of his emissary here. And he was getting along well with Anthony Arilada. And he would hang around with Al. But I think there was just a little bit of friction there. And there was some sentiment that Al just got, I guess, too big for his britches. I don't know how else to say it. It's like, yes, you're a boss, but you have no humility. I think New York thought that Bruno was not kicking up enough to New York. And he was, you know, hoarding all of his illicit proceeds for himself. So it was just this like simmering resentment that began to just bubble up and bubble up and bubble up. And he wasn't darling anymore. And then in comes this, you know, young, brass faction swash willing to take a shot, you know. Anthony, Anthony, Benji Arilada was the definition of swash buckling. Yeah, he was a pirate and he he loved being a pirate. He was a baby faced gangster, baby face killer who immediately was. The New York guys were smitten. They looked at him as, wow, this guy looks like he should be, you know, at a Dairy Queen, you know, making our milkshakes. But this is a guy we can really depend on, not just to kill, but he was a big earner. Anthony was, you know, he was that rare combination of a guy that knew how to earn and then would would murder you in the blink of an eye. And that is those are two things that can make you go very far in the mafia. And I think Al stopped. He was using Anthony as a as a as a way to communicate with New York. So he wasn't doing a lot of the communicating. And was after that cigarette deal, that things really cool because Al asked for the sit down, right, didn't decide in his favor. So he was disgruntled. So there are all these kind of pockets of, you know, strife and infighting and all reach this kind of apex. And there's something I also want to discuss with you. Sorry, I'm getting ahead of ourselves. But I think that there is some inside baseball or nuance to the narrative of Benji turning on Al and having Al murdered and taking his place. That all happened. But I do think there is some layers to it. And Anthony likes to pretend, not pretend, but Anthony. And I didn't want to run out today. Right. And there's a part of me that agrees with the notion and it's backed up by my reporting, not just with Anthony's saying, but backed up by my report that the wheels were in motion for Al to be murdered. Anthony definitely took advantage of the winds of discontent. Right. I was going to say that in Al's direction, there's no question that he leveraged that for his for his own his own his own mob brand in his own. I don't think he started it. But I do think it's somewhat of a misnomer to make it seem like Anthony was campaigning for them to hit big Al. So Anthony to take over. I think Anthony wanted to be out of the way like he wanted him shelved. But the person that was campaigning for my research was Felix Train. And I guess they had for a long time, they had not gotten along. Felix and Al, because in my reporting, and when I've spoken to Anthony Aeralada on a number of occasions, Al had them dig a ditch in Aguam in this wooded area that was intended for Felix. That's the ditch that mob associate and Aeralada's brother-in-law, Gary Westerman, ended up. That was his grave. But the original ditch they were asked to dig was for Felix. And I don't know if that's like a mob version of like just going to ADD or something, but somehow it just didn't end up there. And so they had this makeshift grave just, you know, there for the picking. And Felix had been proposed and sponsored by Bruno, according to court records and FBI file, I think the ceremony was in 82. So I was going to say that was a long time ago. Bins had been made for 20 years when this all started to go in a southward direction for for Big Al. But Anthony, as you mentioned, so Anthony spends that year and a half middling for Bruno with the guys in New York. Farby Serpico, I believe, died of cancer. Little Artie Nigro takes over. Artie doesn't really like Al Bruno. Their buddy has and then there's this. Issue with a a cigarette, a bootleg cigarette scam that was perpetrated allegedly by a Genovese Capo down in Florida, Ray, Ray Ruggiero. Yeah, not allegedly. He testified to that on the stand during 2012. And it was a $250,000 deal to buy bootleg cigarettes and then move them in China Al got ripped, you know, got scammed out of 250. Felt like, you know, traditional mob protocol would get him the money back via sit down, sit down held. I heard in a Boca Raton produce warehouse and Al is not a winner at the sit down. They tell Al you're not going to see any money. He went down swinging to it. I don't think he just walked away. He was livid and he was somewhat disrespectful on some of his verbiage. Like he's used to getting his way at that point, right? Because, you know, he had built up all these relationships. But and also one thing I wanted to add about Felix is after Bruno was killed, there was still a little bit of skirmishing going on between Anthony and the geosies and like their kind of core group and Felix, which was evidenced by now Jimmy Santanello, you know, every time there's a regime regime change, Jimmy Santanello who owned all of the strip clubs, you know, real estate around here. He was like just a perennial truck for whoever was in charge. They went with him, went to him and took him down. And I think following Bruno's death, there was this a little bit of a tug of war between Anthony and his core group. And then Felix also going to Jimmy Santanello and saying, no, pay me. And then there are a lot of the geosies saying, no, pay me. There was a little bit of friction going on there. Well, we know that Mr. Santanello has has had his pockets quite frequently, I don't want to say pick, but these these Springfield guys get their hands in his pockets and it seems to be an endless money train there. Whoever can get their hooks into him and his name has appeared in quite a few court filings and affidavits and the Mardi Gras strip club is no more. Right. The end of an era, but for a long time it was kind of a big like their HQ, all the gangsters. Yeah, it was a big place where a lot of the gangsters would hang out and do business and a lot of them would date strippers. And so you have a situation where for about a year a year to two years, Anthony is middling for big Al. The relationship between Al and the New York guys is fraying. And then two two big things happen in the summer of three. You have Anthony called to New York and made in August of three without. It is May. I think it might have been May. I don't know why that sticks out in my head. At some point in three, Anthony is called to New York and made by Artie without Bruno's knowledge. The fact they keep Bruno in the dark about this, to me, speaks. I mean, it tells a doesn't just tell a chapter of the story. It tells the whole story. Now, that was the one that was sponsoring it. And Anthony at that time, so I wrote some stories in between Al's murder and then before they were all charged, like within, you know, six or seven years later. And Anthony, there were just some, you know, gaming and loan trucking investigations going on. And Anthony got he was obviously a prime target for the state police in the beds. And I think he got picked up on a wire talking to one of his bookies, lower level, saying, you know, I don't need Bruno, Bruno anymore. I have another in or I have another out. I forget if it was in or out, but he got picked up on a wire. And I think law enforcement started listening and they were puzzled thinking, what does he mean? So they were just starting to get a sense of the diverging tracks of Bruno and Anthony Aralata. And then, you know, Bruno gets whacked. So it became pretty clear then. There's one more thing I want to throw in to the mix here. That played what I think was the final straw in the in the green lighting of the murder, which is Felix getting his hands on an FBI 302, which I still have in my desk, by the way, where there was a conversation in early oh, three, I believe, or possibly the end of two. I think it was the end of two, actually, where Big Al Bruno was at the Red Rose Pizzeria, picking up a pie. So was an FBI agent. The FBI agent, you know, if anybody understands the Cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers aspect of organized crime or, you know, the mafia at the highest levels, you know, you know, who's following you around every day. And I actually think Bruno may have been at a political fundraiser and the FBI agent. Maybe they were both picking up pizzas, but I think Bruno was attending the political fundraiser going back to the theme of him being popular on the so-called legitimate people. And I think that FBI agent may have been surveilling it. Maybe they were both getting pizzas because the way it was portrayed in that 302 was oh, it's just kind of a happenstance. We just happened to run into each other. Right. They started with a conversation. What like lasted like a half hour. It wasn't something. It wasn't a two minute wasn't a two minute. Hey, how are you doing? I was the family. No, it was more substantive than that. And part of like Bruno's ease and, you know, comfort with, you know, people in law enforcement, even reporters used to be friendly to me when I used to write about him, you know, politicians. I think part of his ease with people got him into trouble in that conversation. Yeah. Because he talked about who had been made and how he didn't like, you know, the guy who had been made. And so it wasn't just, hi, how are you? Nice to see you enjoy your pizza. It was more than that. Well, it sounded subversive. It was Al talking about what had happened. He had to go serve a short period of time in jail and talking about when he was gone for a year or less than a year, what had happened without him in town. And he was bad mouthing. Superior, yeah. Amelia Fusco is the one who got his button. Baba sponsored him. He didn't think the New York guys should have OK'd that speaking on what Big Al Bruno was said to this FBI agent, which made it into the 302. I don't believe though Al was a confidential informant. No, I don't either. But that's the way it was twisted. I also I want to get your opinion on this. I I agree with the Bruno family in their contention that putting that 302 into a court filing without redactions is asking for the New York Mafia to come kill Al Bruno. It was quite stunning. I agree with you. I mean, I don't I'm I still I'm not convinced they did it deliberately. But the feds, meaning they I don't think it wasn't delivered. It's negligent, even if it wasn't. Yes. So that's that's kind of the word I was getting to. So I don't think it was a grand scheme for the government to get Bruno killed. But I do think it was very short sighted at a minimum to not understand the implications of that. And then those 302s, you know, once the defense attorneys get them, they get circulated around the whole city. And I think as we've been discussing, there are a lot of things went into the murder, Al Bruno, the dynamic of what led to his murder. But that's kind of the smoking gun that Felix brings down to New York and saying, hey, look, he's on record talking to this FBI agent. And, you know, if they're going by their historic code, there's no way they won't read like that. Like that's the ultimate sin, right? So I think it was negligent for sure. And and Felix, the irony here is that Felix saw his end game as bringing the 302 to New York, getting little Artie and his group. You know, his top advisor was Patty DeLuca, Scott DeLuca, getting all those guys all riled up and angry so that they can order Al's murder and Felix can slide in as a new boss. But what actually happens is he's not just doesn't get the nod to become boss. He's pushed out all together. Anthony and the Geass brothers within a month or two, the Geass brothers show up at a construction site and beat him up and say, you're done. We're we're we're putting you on the shelf, but not to become boss. You're no longer welcomed around here. And you know, I think they knocked him off a ladder or something and tuned him up pretty well. But he Felix never admitted that until he became, you know, a government witness. Right. So one more thing I want to bring up and then we're going to get to the actual assassination and the aftermath of it. Some more of my reporting that's come out in the last year is that and there was a little bit of reporting on this. Back in 2003, right after Al's murder, so I don't want to take credit like I'm the first one reporting on this. There was reporting on this out of Connecticut. But it looks like one of Al's goals in 2003 that ended in his murder, he was looking to push into Connecticut and get a bigger if not a if not a whole brand new hold, a bigger hold on on rackets that were going on in Connecticut. And I'm told that he was rounding up a group of Connecticut younger wise guys to try to create a crew, get them on record, get them made at one point. There's a mob associate that Al's connected to who ends up dead in the spring of three. I don't want to get too far down that rabbit hole because there's we could do a whole episode on that because there's a million theories on why that happened. But the one thing my big takeaway from that is regardless of who killed his name is Joe Mazzata. The regardless of who killed Joe Mazzata, it's pretty clear that Al was making a move in the Connecticut and that this was upsetting both New York and New England, the patriarch. Right. I think that's mostly accurate. I would just probably say that I don't think it was a new hold. I think he already had a foothold and say Hartford. He may have been trying to like move south. Yeah, because I know during the trial, there were these two brothers, the Grant Brothers. They own some really high end restaurants in Hartford, West Hartford. Really? Well, Billy Hot Dog Grant was. There are guys who ended up. Yeah, it ended up getting killed. Yeah, and they had a strip club down in New York City or the greater New York City area. You know, so I think he already had a presence there, but maybe he was trying to move, you know, farther down into New Haven. There was a bigger presence. Yeah, I would say. Mm hmm. So, but this didn't. From what I have heard and seen some records, law enforcement records. Saying was that the patriarch was upset and a little already in these guys were upset. Out in the Bronx because they weren't seeing any. They were hearing that there was an increased presence from Al and Connecticut, but they weren't seeing an increase in the money they were getting already added to the narrative that he was holding back on. Mm hmm. So we've all these things that are all. It was a perfect storm. Yeah. Our stars are aligning and it's November of three and the order comes from already to Felix to Anthony to hit Bruno. And as you mentioned earlier, a couple of weeks before they hit Bruno, they kill Anthony Errolotta's brother-in-law, Gary Westerman, him and the G.S. Brothers. Right. And that was kind of reminiscent of the man you were talking about, who was lured to the barn, you know, under the auspices of we have a score. They did the same. So it was Errolotta, the G.S. Brothers and Emilio Fusco. Emilio Fusco was there doing it. Yep. Who lured Westerman, who was, you know, like a thug, a long time thug and kind of always in the periphery of the organized crime, they lured him to this property with the promise of this is home invasion. We're going to get drugs. We're going to get money. So he went trotting over there with them thinking it was just going to be another score. And instead, they shot him in the head and they bludgeoned him with a shovel and they threw him in the ditch that was originally intended for Philly Strangystein and buried him. And this is literally, I think two weeks before they killed Bruno. I think it was like two and a half, three. It was really close in proximity. And, you know, in Springfield throughout that summer and fall of 03, Anthony and the G.S. is like you said, they're finally all out on the street together because there was a lot of like gaps of one of them would be in jail. Two of them would be on the street. Two of them would be in jail and one of them would be on the street. And it seems like, again, based on consuming your reporting at the time, talking to people, reading surveillance reports and whatnot, Anthony was really starting to feel himself in that spring and summer of 03. I'm sure that all the New York, the love best with New York was going to his head. And it seemed like every night out in the bars and in the clubs, there was a different altercation. Anthony was like fighting wars on multiple fronts. He's beefing with the manzies. He's- You know, bar fights lead to like his house getting shot up. Like his house getting shot up. And I think there was a suspicion that Westerman may have been involved with his house getting shot up. But I guess I never felt comfortable. Like I wasn't certain of that, but that was among the reasons I think Anthony thought he may have been involved with his house getting shot up. And then there was another incident I want to throw at you. I think I was the first one to report it. I apologize if you already reported this. I might have just missed it. I thought I was reporting it for the first time. There was some type of physical altercation in that summer between, I think it was Tai, G.S. and Big Al. No, I reported that before it was over the watch. Yeah. Over the watch. Yes, okay. I apologize if I ever told anyone that I was the- No problem. That's okay. No, they did get into a beef. I've heard a couple of different renditions, but the one I trust the most is that, because you know, the G.S.'s uncle ran a jeweler. Yeah. You know, a jewel shop, jewelry shop. And so there was some accusation of a Rolex being fake or something like that. So the two of them meet outside the Worthington Street bars where they all used to hang around. And the version I heard was that Bruno goes to slap Tai across the face, which etiquette dictates you're supposed to just sit there and take it. Take it, yeah. And he didn't. He stopped the slap. Well, he said he made some comment. What I heard was that, you know, your brother's a fucking asshole or your brother's a fucking prick. And- Probably, I mean- Right. That's kind of like the soundtrack of all they talked about. Right, and then Al was upset that Benji and Chicky and a couple of the other guys that were around weren't more, I guess, on his side in reprimanding Tai for putting his hands on Al. And it just, it created more division and more- They were certainly feeling their oats at that time. Yeah. For Anthony and the Jesus. And the Jesus had no fear. Right. You know, they hadn't since they were teenagers. Right. And these guys were, I mean, they were just brothers. Anthony has no inhibitions, as you've mentioned in terms of like, to run a scam, to commit violence, to, he was just the, they were all the ultimate opportunities. Yeah. They're pirates. Yes. Right. Sometimes for people that don't know the story of Springfield, it's not an exact perfect analogy, but I try to tell people that know about Joey Merlino in Philadelphia. I'm like, Anthony was Joey Merlino in Western Massachusetts to a degree in that, that he was a young guy that had a lot of respect from the OGs and people gravitated towards him and they were fearless. The differences that, you know, Anthony cooperated and was more pragmatic about one of your space and all that time. And Joey just continues to roll the dice at the craps table of life has yet to crap out. But I, you know, that's how Anthony was. He was a young guy, he was in his early 30s and he was a... He was like shot out of a cannon once he actually was given, I don't want to say permission, but when he was given kind of the green light, okay, spread your wings. He was, he and the Jesus were like shot out of a cannon. It's the only... He was a Genovese Capo at 33 years old. I mean, that's pretty heady territory for someone that young. Yeah, yeah, it was around. He was probably in his mid 30s. Yeah, no, he certainly and his, he rocketed to the top, you know, once he let that match. So he goes there. So they get the order, it goes from Felix is, I think it was in, they were in front of a garage in the Bronx, I think, on the street in a walk and talk, Artie gives it to Felix. Felix comes back to Springfield, relays it to Anthony. Anthony then taps the Geass Brothers, who in turn hire this local crazy... Crash dummy. They call him a crash dummy, local crazy, another guy that was just a brawler without the mob pedigree, Frankie Roche. Mind you, I had never heard of him when his name started kicking around. I thought, why have I have not heard of him? I've been asleep at the switch. And then when I started looking in our clips and talking to some law enforcement, I mean, he really just came out of nowhere. And I think that may have been part, like by design, because they didn't wanna get somebody too, too connected to their crew. You know, they wanted to get this random person but who would do their bidding. And was similar in temperament. And that was Frankie Roche. I think another thing that they, in their minds, thought that they were being smart. Tell me what you think about this one. So Frankie Roche had a beef without Bruno that had nothing to do with all this Bruno political... It didn't, but that was also indicative of people who were willing, starting to be willing to challenge him. Challenge him, right. Frankie Roche throughout the late summer, early fall of 03 had, he was a drug addict in just a wild and crazy time. Yeah, he tore up some bars and some restaurants. One in particular that Bruno had some kind of affiliation with was a little bar in the South end. And he got some kind of beef with one of the employees, Frankie Roche, got in a fight, he was kicked out, came back a couple hours later and just crashed the whole place. Like mirrors, bottles of booze. It was just like, looked like a nuclear war had happened there. And I don't think he did it in particular to challenge Bruno. Maybe he didn't even know that, you know, the place Bruno had some stake in it. But once he heard that Bruno was angry, he didn't seem to care. And I don't know, have you ever seen that surveillance report where Bruno was sitting with some other guys, one guy was wearing a wire and the one guy was saying, you know, he's got guns. And Bruno was like, we've got guns, we've got bigger guns. So he wasn't really taking it seriously. But, you know, all these bird numbers of people seem to be emboldened to challenge. And it seems like that the, I shouldn't say it seems, I was told that this was the mindset. The Gia's and Anthony figured because Frankie Roche already had this issue with Bruno that the police wouldn't look at Anthony and the Gia's or New York. They would just think it was some personal issue between Frankie Roche and Al Bruno and Roche was basically set up to be the Patsy. Yeah, I mean, I also heard and you probably heard that I think there was some talk about killing Roche. After he whacked him and that didn't happen. Right, which would have been, yeah, I'm not advocating and murder in any way. No, you need to. But you would think that the play there, if you were going by the traditional mafia thought process would be that you have Frankie Roche kill Big Al Bruno and then a day or two later, Frankie Roche ends up in the trunk of a car. Yeah, but that didn't happen. That didn't happen. And then eventually the chickens come home and Roche took a while to make that case. It did. So Frankie was the first domino to fall. He fled the area, spent some time in Connecticut, some spots in New York, ultimately ended up in Florida where local police and the feds tracked him. And then when they arrested him in the middle of the night, they accidentally shot him in the back and he was very seriously injured. Yeah, it was a lot of damage. He did, he did. But I mean, just this whole era was just filled with just craziness and that just added another layer to it. Like you rest the skies on the stomach on the ground handcuff, shoot him in the back and then you have to pay him a settlement. But so he was charged alone in state court on the eve of trial suddenly they call off the trial. So it's obvious what had happened that Frankie Roche had flipped. But nobody, even in these little mob circles, I don't think anyone believed it at first. So then there was a quiet period and then Freddie gets charged and he's charged alone in federal court with conspiring after Frankie Roche pleads guilty in federal court and then all the rest of the dominoes fell after that. Not because obviously we know what that Freddie didn't, you know, he never cooperated but the feds in the interim were able to convince a lot of other people to cooperate and that really started to me like that was the turning point, the demise of the Greater Springfield model. It didn't take Anthony a long time to make the decision. Nope, actually the prosecutor told me that Anthony made the calculus in his head like really swiftly because like I think he was arrested in March, pretty sure it was early March by St. Patrick's Day he had agreed to cooperate. Yeah, I'll tell you that in my observations here it seems like when you're being pragmatic and you're doing the math in your head if you have something that's considered incredibly valuable and I'm not saying that the Gia's brothers aren't valuable but the real value for the government what Anthony could give them was the city and administration of Genevieve's crime family. Right, he was the top guy in Greater Springfield he had all these connections in New York. He could put Artie in the next and their holy grail is to get a New York boss. So as long as you can provide them something of a tremendous value like that like a sitting cabinet of Mafia Don and up in one of the five families then it might not look like it but in reality you have quite a bit of leverage in making that deal. When I say leverage I mean in the sense of a lot of you need to add value, you need to add value. And not only so he had the New York connection he cleared up Westerman which I think local authorities thought they would never solve because I know they used to dig in other places trying to find Gary Westerman to no avail seven years went by before they found him with Anthony's help and they also gave him the near fatal shooting Frank Dodabo, that union boss who angered Niagara in New York and that wasn't even on anyone's radar. So Anthony went from being the darling of local criminal element to the darling of the feds. Yeah. You know he was equally as persuasive in both circles. There was that great exchange in court where Anthony they said to Anthony what did Artie tell you when you- Get better at head shots. Yeah, get better at your head shots because he didn't kill the union boss that he shot him in the body. They unloaded their clips into this guy. I think he was hit nine or 10 times but they didn't hit him in the head. And that was the advice that Artie gave him. So Anthony and Felix cut deals and they both do about six, seven years. Anthony did 99 months. Okay. And Felix did, I think he got eight years. I think he got eight years. Yeah, either seven or eight years. And I think Anthony thought just because, he was more valuable. I mean, Felix obviously brought to the table that he brought the 302 to New York but Anthony had I think a lot more information to give them. And I think Anthony hoped that he was gonna get maybe time to serve because he had been in prison for it's the 2010. He had already been in prison for probably four years by the time he was formally sentenced. Felix came home before Anthony. So he probably got a little bit, little less time than that. But he's just basically faded into the background as far as I know. Both Anthony and Felix, it's not, this isn't any breaking news. Stephanie was the first one to break this news that both of them are back in Springfield. They're not living in witness protection. They came back home after a prison and they're living, at least Anthony is living pretty openly. Very openly. It speaks to, I think the mafia in America in 2023. It's become a semi non-violent endeavor. It's survivable. It's survivable to cooperate. I mean, Felix, I will say it. Like Anthony has not lowered his profile, I would say that, as you're well aware of. Felix, I think just, as far as I know, went back to just living kind of a quiet life with his wife and children and may have, I don't even know what he's doing for work these days. I would say there are no gangster retirement plans. No, there are not. There was this big rumor when he came home that he was working at a Rockies hardware store. So I went to this Rockies hardware store, he's keeping around three or four times. But I think he may have gone back to some kind of contracting, which is what he did before he went to jail. But, the one part of the story that at least tangentially is still, in real time, it's still evolving is the fate of Freddie Geass. And he, according to the federal government in October of 2018, he murdered the infamous Boston crime lord, well-established confidential informant, Whitey Bulger. Bulger was in a protection unit down in Florida for whatever reason, was transferred, went into general population at Hazelton. Misery Mountain. In West Virginia, which was a place that has a lot of East Coast gangsters and tough guys, put a general population and he lasted about eight hours before he's murdered. It sounds like based on reading the core filings and the police reports that had leaked into the general population at least 48 hours before Bulger got there, that he was on his way and was going to be placed in the general population. There are three people, including Freddie, or two people other than Freddie Geass that are charged in it. Freddie is accused of being the ringleader. One of, so Freddie was just, is the type of guy that doesn't like rats, period. And he is someone that... No, and he lacks inhibitions. Right, and is someone that is predisposed to violence. And he likes to be a shock caller, as they refer to him in some of the stories about who he was in prison. And Freddie's got some charisma, despite the fact he's like a brutal scalar. But when Freddie actually was always very friendly to me, even when I was covering him, he still sends me Christmas cards. And so I was acutely aware of which prison he was in, because I would get cards from him every year. And so when I saw the news that Bulger was getting moved to West Virginia, I thought, huh, that's where Freddie is. And I didn't think much of it. And then a day later, when the news broke that Bulger had been murdered in the most violent fashion, I thought, no, could it be Freddie? There's a lot of guys in prison there. But allegedly, it was Freddie. And like you said, another Italian gangster. And then a third guy who allegedly acted as a lookout. They're going to trial literally in like a year from right about now, as it stands. And like you said, it was a brutal murder. They beat him with a lock tied to a belt. Or I think in a sock, I thought. But the indictment just said they hit him repeatedly in the head. But I think I was like, this is a lock in a sock. He gouged his eyes out and it was real. And his tongue or something. I don't know, it sounded like an ugly, an ugly, ugly end. But the good news for Freddie, at least, is that the government came out a couple of months ago and said they will not be seeking the death penalty. So in some ways, it's like he was already doing life in prison. He wasn't really, probably didn't have much of a chance to get out outside of his currency reduction. And I imagine that factored in because what do you have left except for your sock to raise inside of prison? Right. And that was the second time Freddie faced that same conversation with the government when he was tried in New York City. Are we going to seek the death penalty? So he dodged that bullet twice, Freddie did. But now he's in this super max prison where like the unabomber was and until he died and the Somali pirates, speaking of pirates. And I think he's on lockdown 23 hours a day from what I've heard. So I don't know. And he said, years in the hole, years and years. I think they waited discharging they were four years in the hole. Yeah, I, you know. He had a personal, besides just hating rats he had a personal vendetta against Bolger because one of Freddie's confidants in state prison in the nineties was an old school Irish gangster named Freddie Weichel. Weichel had been framed by Wetty Bolger for a murder that he didn't commit. Well, Weichel got a prison in 17 but had done 36 years I believe he got a $30 million settlement from the state but Freddie, if you believe that Freddie murdered this guy so the murder of Bolger, there was motivation on behalf of Weichel that he had cost Weichel, you know, 30, 36 years of time. I had talked to some people that know Freddie and said that Freddie Geas and that he was still communicating with Freddie Weichel and was thought very, like Freddie Weichel was like a father almost like a father figure. Well, also think about it in prison like your world gets very small. Yeah. And at that point, Freddie was in his 20s. This was in the 90s. Right. But I just, no, I just mean like when you're spending life in prison your world gets very small. So other issues, this is just my dime store analysis of other issues become consuming very big and, you know and so I imagine if he did do it, he's thinking, what do I really have to lose? So as we wrap up, there are still some semblance of the Genovese Springfield crew that exists today. Samblance, it's a generous- Yeah, it's a shadow of what it once was. They still, there's some part of it that's still at that traditional Ground Zero in South End at the Mount Carmel Club. Albert Calvinisi has been alleged to be- He runs the club, supposedly. Right, he runs the club. I don't know if you would officially call him a mob, mob topo or crew boss. I still haven't been able to get him out of there. I think he perversed to be just a rogue guy. Right. He was a guy that used to collect for Bruno, used to collect for Anthony Aralata, a convicted loan shark, was on tape, taking a guy's head. Yeah, he beat up a state police informant on a wire. Yeah, he took a debtor and put his head through. He took seven years for that, I think. Put his head in a car door and slammed it. Yeah, it was, and it was all, I listened to that recording and it's like- Like a broad daylight. Yeah. In the middle of an intersection. What stood out to me in the last couple of years, even though Mr. Calvinisi, to his credit, hasn't been in handcuffs since that he walked out of prison from that case. He's avoided arrest and indictment in a number of cases that have come down in Springfield related to organized crime, whether it be Italian or Latino. And that's the one thing I wanted to throw out there. As the last couple of years, we found out that the Latin Kings, which are an organized crime group made up of Hispanics, big on the East Coast. Big and great in Springfield, too. Right, we're using the Mount Carmel Club as some type of HQ, planning and assaults and murders. I just couldn't imagine in the days of the Frankie Skyball or Big Al, allowing a basically a spanked street gang. Yeah, we're more welcome to the Latin Kings, dad. Come on in and do your... I know that the Latin Kings ostensibly tried to purport that they're not a criminal group, but there's so much evidence that they're just purely a criminal group. So you couldn't even say, oh, I thought they were coming in here for some type of community outreach. Like you knew they were coming in there to do dirt. No, well, there was a connection. Well, from what I heard from folks who have affiliations with the club, not ownership, but who go there, I think that the club wasn't making any money. And so they would host card games for Latino groups and they would let them come in. There was revenue coming from it. And also the head of the Latin Kings on the whole East Coast, apparently, had a familial connection. We mentioned Chicky, David Cittelli. His nephew, Michael Cittelli. His nephew, who they called Merlin, was an Italian guy that workers way up the ranks of the Latin Kings from some connections. He had made him prison and then he's now a co-operator, so. Yeah, all the rage, I guess, right? The last thing I'll say is that Springfield has maybe the oldest, I'm gonna use the word active very loosely, but semi-active wise guy in America, Mario Fiora, he's 99 years old. One of the old freaky skyballs guys used to run a lot of junkets, travel junkets to Vegas. And, yeah, I'm not trying to impugn him. I don't think he's doing dirt anymore, doing rackets, but he's around the south end, or at least he was up until a little recently, around the south end, he's kind of this old school sage or a carol. Yeah, I heard somebody, I heard a young guy smack them around a little bit though and it created this brouhaha. Yeah, well, people were like, how dare you? Yes. Mario, who's been around since the fifties. Does it blow your mind that a guy like Mario, again, I don't think he's involved in mafia affairs, but he's around there, he obviously feels good enough at 99 to be walking around and hanging around, drinking his espresso, eating cannolis. Good for him. Some of these guys, it's like, that's the life they wanna, they don't have any desire to go live in the retirement home and play shuffleboard. They wanna be in the act. No, that's what they know, yeah. That's what they know. But hopefully we've been talking to Mario, hopefully some point soon we can have him on and talk to him, I told him. We don't have to talk about anything gangster related. I just wanna hear stories about running at the Copacabana and running around with Liza Minnelli and Frank Sinatra. Those are the stories I wanna hear because I know he was in that whenever Sinatra would come to Massachusetts, he'd spend a lot of time with the Springfield guys and the Boston guys. Well, definitely tune in, fingers crossed for that. Well, Stephanie, this was amazing. Al Bruno, 57 years old, was assassinated 20 years ago this week, November 23rd, 2003. We're now at the end of November 2023. Quite a bit has changed. We hope he brought you up to date on all of it and gave you some good insight and analysis. Stephanie, I tell everyone where they can find you and obviously if you Google anything related to the Springfield Mafia, you're gonna be reading her stuff and she has such a great archive. Well, thanks so much, Scott. Well, can you tell them, is there people that it can contact you or... You can find me at masslap.com. My email address is on every story that I write. I'm limited on Twitter and I don't have a YouTube channel like my fancy friend, Scott here, but you can find me at masslap.com. Well, we're gonna have her back on. We had her on the audio a couple of years ago just when we were just audio on iTunes and Spotify. Now we're multimedia now and coming to you on YouTube. So Stephanie's gonna hopefully be someone that we bring back on and whenever there's anything big happening in Springfield, we're gonna go right to the source, which we like to do here on the OG and get it from Stephanie. Thank you so much, Stephanie. Stephanie Berry. Thank you. And I've said multiple times, and I'll say it again, I wouldn't know anything about the Mafia in Springfield if it wasn't for Stephanie. Before I even met Stephanie, there was probably a decade of me learning about Springfield from her reporting. So I have the honor of piggybacking off people like her and Jerry Capaci in New York and George Anastasia in Philadelphia, Bulldog Drummond in Chicago, guys that are just men and women that are just great at their jobs that really laid the groundwork for me to be great at my time. Well done. Thank you, Stephanie. Have a happy Thanksgiving, happy holidays. Thank you, everybody. I hope you had a great week of Turkey and family and friends. We'll see you next week on the OG Pod. I'm Scott Bernstein, out.