 Welcome back to the original gangsters podcast I'm Jimmy Buccellato here in home studio and my co-conspirator and partner in crime Scott Bernstein is back with us. Hey now. He was missing in action last week he was at the Vegas Mob Museum he's on the board of advisors so but we're back teaming up again and before we get started just want to remind everyone to please subscribe to our YouTube channel please subscribe to our audio podcast and also please follow us on social media help spread the word we really appreciate it a new milestone I've been trying to text this to Scott and Benny but it's it's not going through I'm having some connectivity issues in my basement right now I got the text oh you did so we got we're getting close to 3 million audio downloads so and I know we're well over a million views on YouTube so we're we're making progress we appreciate everyone's support you say share I was gonna say share like subscribe you know everything you do in terms of amplifying us on social media you know pays dividends and and has you know effects hopefully in a positive way the amount of content we could give you going forward and I want to just before we bring on our guest to him I'm real excited to get his insight on our subject matter we're gonna we're gonna do a drill down the life and crimes of Joe Massino the iconic Queens mafia boss from the Bonanno crime family who was the most high profile notorious New York mafia don the late 20th century and then became the first full-fledged New York mafia down most powerful New York mafia down to ever cooperate with the government and I want to just tease it out for people that I think we're going to start doing some of these life and crimes deep dives into intriguing compelling historically significant members of organized crime whether they coincide with a death or anniversary or just it it uh it it's it me and Jimmy are inclined to talk about someone on that particular day or week like we did last a couple weeks ago with with Nikki Scarfo so you know with no further ado Jimmy want to introduce our guest who's going to give us some some extra uh unique insider um analysis of this yeah we're fortunate to have our friend Frank Fiordolino back with us he's our returning champ he's been on our podcast before and uh I've been friends with Frank for a while so um and he has direct uh knowledge about this uh Frank welcome thanks for joining me what's up guys how's it how's it going uh Scott James how are you good good we're doing well thanks for having me again um was uh was had a good time last time so uh see if I could uh duplicate it this time around yeah Frank I'm gonna throw a softball oh sorry uh Jimmy yeah go ahead I was gonna throw a softball yeah just uh you know the news broke about two weeks ago uh that that he had died had come back to New York and and passed away Joe Massino um went how did you hear about it and what was your first reaction oh um I heard about it through uh I think it was Joe Molino's uh I I didn't hear it from him himself not obviously not but I I heard it from uh someone who was listening to Joe Molino and he reported it I was actually at a Mexican restaurant and I got the news and and for for all purposes I I figured that would be legit uh you know he has uh good lawyers around him and and and that and I got in like four or five telephone calls after that one being to do I don't know I don't know who else who else had called me at the time I anyways it was five to six phone calls I got and then that was like was there smoke there's fire probably happened then that was that was uh that was it uh he was old it was not unbelievable you know what I mean were you sad I mean was this something I what kind of emotions were going through you when you heard that he finally kicked at 80 sad no no not sad um not happy but nothing just nothing I mean um if nothing it was it was just as if another just uh old gangster died because I want to throw it over to Jimmy in a sec but let me just throw this out there and then get both of your guys uh reactions to it because I think I think no matter how you slice it and you can talk about someone like that making his own bed and having to sleep in it and talk about someone that's uh you know a known killer of multiple people for whatever reason I don't necessarily think that we should feel quote unquote bad for them or sad but I do think where Joe Massino was at the end of his life is significant to his story he he didn't go and have this great second chapter he wasn't someone that was living uh this amazing uh alternative alternative life uh from his days as a as a my it was it was in I use the term loosely but it was tragic in the sense that this man had been at the apex of power in the underworld in this country in that the end from what I could from my research and reporting at the very very end he came home and and reconciled with some people but it was uh it was it was very lonely uh final years for him where he was isolated from everybody um and and was as far away you could get from from his former life and it wasn't a pleasant yeah um yeah nothing was like his former life when he before he had cooperated and that was evident in and when he eventually went into these units these um but if you will his witness units his rat units whatever whatever and he had a really rough time coping with that people didn't give a fuck who he was anymore so that was excuse the language but um that was that was as realistic as people would not didn't care you know so his rude awakening started from the moment he became a cooperated um back back to myself at this point when he became a cooper I known him maybe a year and a half I mean our relationship on the outside was almost non-existent I do meet him one time and then when I would see him now and then it'd be a nod here and there I was going whatever but um but you got to remember too I come from a total different faction of the family you know what I mean and not that uh you know not that he he didn't um it was he didn't grow up around me the people that grew up around me they were no longer around do you understand the difference between Brooklyn and Queens right no no no no no we it was the same neighborhood it was more the difference between American and Sicilian okay you know that that's where it was by the time he goes to jail in 85 or 86 my family as far as the people I know my family my family's friends even here in Italy they're almost non-existent they're uh they're they get murdered back home um and what I mean home in Sicily here they're they're all getting arrested but not only my people I knew but my friends my friends their fathers their their their relatives so this whole new resurfacing of uh of the mob that I was used to to noticing around was all it wasn't there anymore you know we were getting the uh americanized version and as far as the banana family it was pretty much demolished at that time around 85 86 you had was tell you got uh picked up on that that the boss's case and then you had joe went away and then sal who salvatally that is who started uh trying to regroup whatever was left so jimmy up benny you want to throw up that picture of sal and just for people that aren't new yorkers let's let's try to paint a picture of how the Sicilian wing of the bananas interacts or well work in conjunction but I just just I know you I know you're from queens and I apologize for the laps but the there's a big portion of the of the Sicilian wings that come from you know Brooklyn right in manhattan uh not at that time at that time most whatever's left of the Sicilian faction of the uh is either in jail and even the ones that were in jail a lot of them came from the bushwick area some of them bats and herds that actually lived there but they there as far as their operations that was done in ridgewood you know in bushwick and uh middle village um mass fit but that that was the areas as far as like their main operations was not like benson or his brooklyn you know like with the Sicilian zips of the gambino family operated all right okay yeah and and then let's just give uh let's just try to do a quick um I want to say bio uh but but yeah let's just just do a quick bio on on well I'm just I'm saying for the audience that probably already knows this but Joe Massino was was mentored by Rusty Rastelli who yes he was not that my rastelli not as young as people think that that he was it was a little bit later in life he gets um meant he he he starts going around rastelli about 73 74 he gets made around 77 he got made in the summer summer of 77 exactly the summer of sand we call it back in new york and um around that time he becomes a captain around 79 80 so or an acting captain at that I don't know for sure so he's right but frank just I just want people to understand that that Massino is or is he I want to put uh pose it as a question he's on the opposite side uh of the zips right not not at that point not at that point uh when he starts that that turnabout comes they they're on the same side on the uh on the on the glante yet now the glante is a 79 summer 79 so at that point they're all on the same side the the the tug of war begins the early tug of war begins when the Sicilians right after that that uh glante had seemed like they wanted to be the power on top and rastelli had a different kind of idea for that so a little little um little incidents were starting to occur they all on the same page on by 81 still on that um three captain uh hit are you familiar with that one jay yeah yeah yeah if you want to talk about that if you want go ahead so that three captain hit there's a little bit discord in the family apparently the three captain uh three captains and that's andocado um trinchera and who's the other freaking guy that's so it was the three captain jay yeah feel lucky trinconi you had big trinny dominant trinchera and uh sonny indelicat or sorry uh you had alphons sonny red sonny red indelicato yeah and yeah but and and like you pointed out in 79 you had all these guys all these factions coalesce they're all on the same side they even have the commission back in them up on the even galante's own subunit turns on galante but then in the two years between 79 and 81 the the groups that have come together to eliminate galante are the relationships between those groups have frayed which leads to the messino rastelli group uh backing the the sonny black group and getting rid of sonny red and and and it's too uh right sonny red filly and trinchera uh trinchera they want to they want to do their own thing they want to run their family on a three panel committee apparently that's how they they took it and they were gonna have a meeting and discuss what was gonna happen so they had one in brooklyn and that's where you get the three captain hey that and messino quarterback this thing i mean even though messino wasn't not really okay so you not really as far as that meeting was put together by um the the the zip faction matter of fact santo giordano was the one that greeted everybody that day um who else did they have there they had santo they had they had george from canada to my uncle frank was also none of our was also there so there was a whole bunch of people there but i'm talking about the people that were the shot calls were them and sonny blacks crew along with joe just going for the ride at the time joe was was uh the guy looking on the side would have had the same time with with a big ambition obviously that we know now but at the same time it wasn't looking that way he didn't he didn't make it look like his goal was to become the boss that one day or even have uh philly uh rostelli be the guy you understand because he was seeing all these egos and these egos were all about after galante hit there's no way in the there's a certain faction is putting it in the ad that they're gonna be the boss there guys are gonna be up there is that make sense yeah yeah yeah and the philly uh philly rostelli goes no i'm gonna get this family one time he's got the uh commission he's got other tain american um gangsters around them like the goddy crew uh helping them out just in case if they need backup so everybody has these different intentions where this family wants to go and then the three captain hits happens but it is isn't the fact that mesino was able to keep all of his intentions and ambitions close to the vest doesn't that speak to his savvy i mean the fact that he learned from rostelli who was the opposite of the opposite of galante and the fact that mesino although he was uh somebody if if you were in the know would have known that he was a rising star he wasn't someone that really surfaced in the media uh until later on in his career so doesn't that kind of speak to that with the how rostelli taught mesino how to operate kind of more in the shadows than the the chaseray's in the and the uh cigar okay now now as far as i looking back you would think maybe that that was still you had more hands to do i think that mesino was in rostelli's head at a very very early stage um like decisions that mesino couldn't do on his own he just helped provoke it by initiating um rostelli in him you know by putting him like uh you know this guy's going to go do this and that how much of it was true and how much of it was fiction you know how how much of truth was joe mesino actually going through uh rostelli and telling he was a master manipulator we know that later on he blames other scenarios and other people like and we'll get to that and um you know here here comes 1984 and there's a there's a situation with which ceasar pavantria and uh rostelli okay the situation and and ceasar was a bigger up-and-comer than uh mesino was at that stage yeah all right so they get into it ceasar gets into it where rostelli which not many people would do back then i don't want to i don't want to go through the particulars there because it's as you know it's part of a book where this cousin and they get into this and if i'm a little bit well held back and what i'm you know my my uh delivery today it's because a lot of this stuff is going to uh be put on paper you know what i mean well i mean i i mean in terms of one thing i've reported it before that the impetus to kill uh ceasar abon venturi came from him telling rostelli to fuck off and leaving leaving a sit down uh walking away from a sit down that he had been called to right but who know who who knew who initiated the actual murder after that could have been like uh you know we're gonna go to sit down about this and disgusted we know the person who was involved in that in that in that beef was uh another zip that that ceasar was supposedly put his foot on his neck you know it colors up what you're saying about him though that a guy like that at that age he was only 32 years old and he's got a old school don that he doesn't have enough respect for to speak properly too and he felt like he was to show the frame of mind that the uh the Sicilian faction of the banana at the time after the deluxe they it they felt that this was going to be their thing and it wasn't going to be if common galactic was doing want to do what he was doing what they seen the money he was making a kind of you know you didn't show everything but they must have been like this is what i want this is what they you know and uh rostelli kind of either one or the other either joe knew that these guys are not going to give up uh that easy well eventually we're going to have a beef with these people and that was that was the i i consider it one of the last beefs they had among each other and uh until georgio but that's that's really you know i'll get to that but they he gets offended they call for a meeting um and they and they ambush them they have they they ambush Caesar they get them in a cot and salvatally shoots them they put them in the in the trunk and ha ha stabs them and there you go Caesar's gone Frank let me ask you and by the way if people wondering what Frank was um alluding to a minute ago Frank and I are are working on a project hopefully to get published a book about um the Sicilian mafia from mafiosi from castellamare which is which is where Frank is born where my family is from um so we're gonna we're gonna expand on this and get into this more hopefully with that book project but um what was um do you remember you were quite young at the time but do you have any sense what what Frank uh what your uncle Frank Navarra and guys like that what they what they thought about rostelli and misino and like the Italian Americans um what was what was their sense that they respect them were they friendly yeah my uncle my uncle chiech had a very good relationship with him that I knew and that I you know and even rostelli rostelli um there was a lot of succeeding Americans around them that used to come to uh to ridgewood in the in the coffee shop that looked close to him so he was respected it wasn't nothing out of the ordinary I just felt that they thought um and I'm not putting words in involved in this but they felt that rostelli was old school and they were gonna move on there was a lot of gangsters in the 16th early 70s were no longer around and they and he felt that he filled that mold at that time you understand rostelli did yeah um was was your uncle chiech was he still he was still alive in 84 right he was still around right oh yeah now he died in 2000 yeah that's what I thought so did you have any sense of again you were quite young but well like Joe Bucciolato Frank Navarra some of those guys from Castel Amare what was their sense when they found out that Bonventre was um was was murdered well it was a number of a lot of things it was like I said before things that were going on in Italy things that were going on in the United States like the pizza connection case it was it felt that they were they were losing men and quickly they were becoming the thing of the past you know people say well you know they resurfaced the the Sicilian faction resurfaced in 2000 and never did it never got back to anywhere near it was after 85 86 and and after that and as far as my uncle he went with the game they you know he was a but he was a messino guy and uh and if you weren't you didn't last long you got separated too if you were uh let's say when when Baldo came out of jail in 89 he was put with other crews that could kind of more or less monitor monitor him and he was never rose above soldier you know that was done purposely you know when when uh eventually Giorgio speaks he talks um subordinate or doesn't really really feels that he could always go to Canada and do whatever the fuck he wants you know and the tg incident and other incidents involved he pays with it for his life you understand so messino always had that impact of his act it and uh yeah frank so talk about messino goes to prison in 87 ish right 87 and uh you have his brother-in-law uh south vitally who um is uh Joe messino's married to south sister and you have anthony spiro who is a couple conciliary who right steps up to a kind of an acting boss type role uh so those is it basically those two that are keeping things in order between the uh mid 80s to the early 90s when um messino comes out of prison no i mean spiro was a it was a it was a very respected uh gangster and his own right but it was more at the helm of taking care of things and i guess that was just joe being joe was his brother-in-law he wanted to know everything and he wanted to know who was uh fraternizing with who and it and it caused a problem when joe came out a lot of people don't know that after he came because he was very very always um he always he was always was worried about who was going to take a position or always talking about who wanted to do you know who who backstab him he was too much he was very he was he had to the ground they said that's very true um his his brother-in-law we after he came out of jail they would say after joe came out of jail his brother-in-law they would tell him that he was spending a lot of time in a hundred and first ammu with the gaudi crew yeah and they told him that resteeble was always up there too and they were starting to uh that that'd be louis resteeble louis resteeble yeah yeah who was a family friend as well see when we talk about factions i known him as a kid and even as a grown-up forever and um they were they were always at the over there basically kissing the gaudi's ass so when joe got winded out he started although his brother did the right thing by him his brother-in-law rather you know when he was out he started um nitpicking that shit and he went so far at one point that he demoted louis resteeble from a captain down to uh to um to a soldier and a lot of people thought that was the reason behind that was because they were kissing a lot of ass you understand frank wasn't there rumors that might have came out after joe flipped or not even rumors maybe joe himself what i think i thought is well won't want to kill him yeah that the brother-in-law and the god he didn't have the balls do you well do you think that you think john goddy though and the goddy faction i don't think they wouldn't entertain that okay but why they had you know they had they had that third seat in the commission i mean they grew up to what what was the reason behind that you know yeah i know i don't you know they you gotta remember something when um salvatally flips joe sees fuck in red he hates his fuck yeah just can't stand and the days i was around him it was like his wrath you'd hear it every fucking you know he went so far that calling him um straight up right but but yeah didn't he say understand that one of his biggest regret is that he didn't kill him that he didn't kill sal before he had a chance to the flip i don't know he could probably fit at all because uh yeah he was he was pretty annoyed with him you know what i mean so let's let's go back to 91 uh phil rostelli rusty rostelli uh finally so he had been sick for a while uh finally succumbs um to his health ailments and in the summer of 91 messino is officially elected boss of the bananos and me and jimmy talk about this i think on a previous episode uh maybe we didn't maybe we talked about it off air and i'm conflating yeah but there was a there was an actual contingent of bananos that had to go in july of that year to montreal to tell the montreal faction that messino had become the new boss right i remember that i think franklin always wanted him at the time yeah he went to a montreal expose metz games that john frankl yes set the the famous relief pitcher who was friends with these guys gave him uh box seats yeah um no yeah that that seemed to be accurate as well was was joe buchelado part of that contingent that went to montreal because i know he used to go to montreal to meet with me i think your uncle was dead by then yeah i don't think he went i have i have a list i don't believe he was on that list when did your uncle die um i thought it was uh yeah um i'd have to go i'd have to i'd have to look at him i think he was still alive then but he was he was in bad i had a loop for sure right right yeah i think so yeah so frank talk about what messino starts to do in 91 when he finally he's out of prison he has the family all of the the rivalries at least for temporarily have been stumped by this slow motion at the time he um he wants to do away with the with the uh social clubs you know the social clubs came about like like i told you as far as the banana family itself when he goes to jail let's go back to that when he goes to jail the banana is a it's starting to look like a uh family a family that lived in a ghost town you know there was no uh not many clubs that were left there was the key food and mass but there was joe sander's club and green point on meek or avenue you know they started resurfacing again and they became like little by little there was so much other stuff going around that they they felt they slipped through the cracks do you understand what i mean and it was the tying american side of the family that was coming up because the Sicilian side like i told you was not existent at that time there were Sicilian guys but they weren't they weren't at the top they weren't calling no shots right as a matter of fact they were going with the flow um they would do money things if they were getting uh they were in the gambling aspect of it it wasn't like back in the day it was a lot of drugs the loan shock and you know it was it was just little by little um it was starting to go away these Sicilians were tell us who were the guys that massino had around him who who was his inner circle in the 90s if you can well in the beginning shit he starts taking a liking of money guys real quick so guys that he was around that that would be coke but cannella um little by little earners the guys that can earn earners earners and their kids believe it or not um even though he demotes louie louie runs the restaurant and cost a block of remastered so he puts them in the restaurant to run you know yeah and he has them around them so it's more like people that can't really he doesn't worry about as much you understand but he can make money from and even even just by making these people's kids he was like uh he wasn't he wanted the money but he didn't want the backlash one day or the uh you know he's seen all the treachery he didn't want that to happen to him yeah that makes sense of course it it comes to to bite him in the ass because those guys fold under under questioning right yeah a lot of money right yeah but in the 90s it's the roman empire yeah it's on the aside so much things happen to the other families at the time they look like they're not being touched articles are coming out about not never had a made member rat in the family or whatever so uh it was building up this fucking i don't know what if you call mystique that that wasn't really there you know but you but you in a 10-year period let's say from 85 to 95 you had the the family that was like dead to rights if you really want to get if you really want to get technical i mean the government fucked up if they wanted to put the fucking the lid on it at that point they could have they just they they probably felt they did and they just resurfaced again because of the other families and what was going on you know so it was like okay well well um they're done who cares shouldn't messino get credit for that though that in a matter of a decade even some of that decade with him being in prison he's able to resurrect the family to where it becomes the standard yeah 100 100 skyd of course he should i mean um that's what he did that's why i call him wanted to um if he doesn't if he doesn't roll he's one of the best ever yeah you think about it you know come back player of the year yeah uh yeah i get it it's just that that's that's just the way it happened for him so what was his talk a little bit more about uh baldo you're that's who you were under and i was not i was not okay i apologize no no no i was more i was uh under my uncle at one time and then vido gromaldi after that okay but and then my cousin after that my cousin my uncle teaches kids who had been made you were hanging at the g&e cafe though weren't you oh yeah of course yeah i grew up with all those kids all those kids uh a lot of them were their family members were the ones the sicilians that either went to jail for a very long time or weren't around who got killed so um we're at who had family back in sicily so uh that's the kids that's who you're talking about people my age okay okay in gromaldi and uh joe saunders right those guys are are close to mesino as well yeah yeah they definitely were uh they were close to them and um like everybody else there was nobody that wasn't close to him at that point the 90s he held it together if he didn't he uh he sent you to Siberia if he if he didn't like you or he got killed a lot of people got killed in the 90s as well yeah yeah i want to bring something up scott mentioned baldo amado so baldo amado is chesrey bon ventre's right hand man he's part of the galante hit and if frank if you could talk us about talk to us about the machinations because you actually had some interactions with mesino on this that it came out later that the guys when they were plotting the the murder of bon ventre as you know what what do we do if baldo shows up and according to i think according to vitale he says mesino said kill him too and yeah yeah what do you tell us about that after what role mesino really had in this he's a bon ventre murder he acts as if he was just one taken orders but he was more he was more a co conspirator conspirator at that he claims that that was not his decision that was rusty decision and that he had saved baldo's life by saying no why you know because they wanted to kill him after for not showing up and he said no we called him he showed up let's let's spare him that that's that that was rusty decision he said but he was also saying it in front of me which probably wanted me to fucking he figured i go back to baldo one day and just let him know that that's what he that's what he had in his mind this is after south flips and all the paperwork is out so what do you think about that do you do you do you believe him that no no no no not at all no he in his mind he at the minute the minute that murder that was the dual and all do all for him okay that sees him eventually murder because um he killed he killed the guy who would have given him a problem at the end of that and he he knew that but if he fucked up that hit they were in trouble they were in trouble he had too many connections um canada would have been an uproar you know it would it would have just Italy it would have been bad for so it ended up good for him he got what he wanted it's he and that's and that's what happened that's really intriguing scott that like we don't think about scott and i sometimes talk about the what ifs and we've never covered like what if it doesn't go right chesray had the juice probably to hit to hit back well luya i was like you guys better make me a captain now because if anybody finds out i had anything to do with this it and they underestimated the power of the Sicilian faction at that point because like i said a lot of them were in a lot of them were in jail okay a lot of them were being sorted out and not only that the faction that that season was around like our families and everything was around they were having their own war and they were getting killed back home anyway so you know it was perfect timing on mozino's side he got lucky didn't louis didn't louis ha ha who you're referencing as being a part of the chesray bond venture hit didn't he be eventually become a underboss i don't remember him being an underboss i remember him always word on the screen being a captain yeah all right i think at one point he might have been acting underboss but yeah it could have been i don't know maybe when everybody was in jail when everybody was in jail there was such a shift in that family uh who is uh i mean coffee boy term on the boss he had everything because everybody's got every every other week and i wasn't talking about me every other week somebody was getting picked up you know a four panel committee uh then you had guys that were made and then six months they were captains it was just it was it was it was it was mayhem and for people that don't for people that don't know uh frank tell people how louis ha ha got his nickname i don't know how he got his nickname i had the way he laughs or something like that when something hit that news i don't know it was it was when he hears about murders he laughs that was how yeah i thought that was maybe once or twice in my life i i'd say maybe twice and i'm an ominous uh i'm like i told you i wasn't too close to the american faction and the one as the same is the only reason i mean growing up i was close to them because like i told you by time i'm 15 16 they ain't around no more was because they were like family you understand uh we would go to and i worked in these clubs as a kid these are gambling all and i knew them and my family went back so it was a respect thing but that's why so a lot of these the americanized ones i i i actually met on my own as i was getting older but just to give an example of like when when frank talks about people getting killed back in sicily because it's something that i'm really interested in it's something that we're going to talk about in this book but um just some how you can connect the dots so we've mentioned so we've mentioned chesrey bon ventre we have frank as a guest i'm here as a butchilado joe butchilado we talked about we all have a common relative and that was martino butchilado he was he was dad's cousin he's frank's cousin he's chesrey bon ventre's cousin he's a cousin by marriage right right so so he he's killed in 82 and so um that's that's just an example one example of what was going on back on right right and then um santo giordano he's a butchilado he has relatives who are who are killed who are being killed in customary at this time so it's um it's it's pretty intense so and santo giordano is paralyzed right in the three paralyzed in the uh in that in that three captain hit that's correct stray bullet yeah it was a friendly fire apparently um apparently i uh niki san toro shot it niki mouth yep yeah so um um anyhow back to sorry but if you want to go back to the 90s i just i wanted to so now so we're getting into the late 90s and i think this is when you start to see some of the um chickens come home to roost if you will some of the chinks in the armor uh especially that this 98 early 99 period where he names tg anthony graziano uh joe massino names graziano his conciliary and there is some criticism of this decision because graziano i guess it's not a secret likes to dabble sometimes in uh recreational narcotics and uh george from canada makes some comments to massino and then to some other people about it not being a um a smart choice to fill that job and whether or not the people in canada knew or not massino decides to kill george from canada right yeah yeah but there's a lot of scenarios to that you know joe himself says that not to me or anyone he said that on i think on uh in court somewhere that um they george was responsible for the guy who got killed in the canada that was made and nobody even formed uh new york about it the guy the guy who got into drugs um he was made guy i forgot his name and uh that was one of the reasons there's other reasons that that just they they felt that they didn't have time anymore for uh dealing with this decision faction so it was a number of a lot of things were they quote did you know it was massino in george from canada did they have a yeah they went back they of course they went back and um george you know even among the sicilian faction was one of the most respected out of the sicilians um you know he was always at funerals always at weddings every time he seen he was you could tell that everybody gravitated around him especially in the 90s when a lot of the people weren't around anymore um so yeah they they went back they went back as far as the act that i know of and that's based on the the three captain hits on 81 they and even before that so was he did you think he was getting pressure from other people to kill him or you think it just came from no i could have been arrogant it could have been like you know let's just make a message this is a good message to make could have been a lot of things maybe uh maybe the everything tg thing um because george all had that thing about him that he felt that he was probably uh i don't think i don't think superior but just that the same and that could have bothered uh joe yeah it seems like there seems to be a pattern here of that guys joe was still out on the street after the day he died and he was still the boss and he would have seen a Sicilian getting a little bit more uh you know a little bit more uh played in him he would have said about it that he definitely had that in his mind would you say that the morale of the family was started to dwindle at that point because because precisely because george was so popular and well liked because it didn't fool anyone right like the they got it right there in new york nobody gave us nobody gave us that's interesting okay is all friends whatever but the the Italians that were there at the time they didn't ask no questions they would make the money didn't and that was it life went on yeah because they had this whole ruse scott i don't know if you remember like yeah they were in on the Albanians they stuck they dropped them on the street you know all that other stuff right which i don't think anyone bought right but but but maybe they didn't care either way anyhow that's interesting that's interesting yeah i mean you know everybody talks about and this is important everybody always talks about the Sicilian faction of the banana family and i and i said this and i'm always going to say this it died in the mid eighties anybody who was Sicilian and still around Joe Massino it was because they were doing all uh they were doing whatever Joe Massino wanted them to do you follow me yeah and and that's just the way it is and you know you get people all these uh mobologists and fanatics out there like oh no there was a meeting in Italy and they were talking about uh relations in new york you gotta remember a lot of people from my time have family back home so every time somebody who knows somebody it talks to somebody who knows somebody over there the wheels turn on these people you know they will that's what they want but it's not going on there were a number of people sorry jimmy go ahead yeah i was just going to say to that point there's there's sometimes law enforcement in Italy will will get surveillance of mafiosi in castellamari and they'll see guys from new york going over there and they're and they're meeting and then the media in Italy in italia right like they'll usually report it as some kind of nefarious conspiracy global conspiracy and um i think frank's point is or sometimes they're just related to each other and they're and they're meeting because they're related to each other and they're interacting and it's not necessarily mafia shit i mean i know people legitimate people that castellamaris that that have relatives at least eight or nine or ten of them that's still in some form of uh life not today more maybe maybe back in the day and they you know what's that mean you know and then the people that they mentioned i mean you gotta know these people to understand i wouldn't believe it if you knew them and what's being written about them you'd be like now you got the wrong people it's ridiculous with the george from canada hit uh you had a more than one major player in the bananos that mesino named as a participant in the conspiracy that never actually got charged in the murder one of them again i'm not afraid to say this it's it was in court testimony was the or is the reputed current boss of the bananos mikey mancuso um i know that uh tony uh tony green was also someone that was alleged to have played a role i think he delivered the gun and all right now i've never heard that all i knew is what i was in jail with both uh patty and um yeah pat pat pat yeah just so johnny joe spurrito and patty patty from the bronx were the ones that actually went went down for the hit yeah yeah i remember that i was in i was in the bullpen with them in jail as well patty died in patty died in prison prison johnny joe's out right now and is you know reputed the underboss no yeah i i didn't know the particulars about that case at all and um if you know anything about me i don't like to talk about anybody active but i even even if i wanted to i i just don't know anything about that no i'm just throwing it out there for the audience to know yeah i get it i didn't know that was new to me i i yeah i mean yeah yeah i didn't know that yeah i don't want to throw this name out there uh for whatever reason but i know that someone yeah of course of course supposed to be a couple right now uh in a queens faction was the person that supplied the car so there there were like three people that were pretty integral in in the conspiracy to murder george from canada that never actually had an account account for it in a court of law so that brings us into the into the 2000s which is really kind of the end of the line for joe massino was last three years in power at least on the street uh from 2000 to 2003 kind of maybe talk to us a little bit about what the feeling amongst the uh rank and file word there as the new millennium hit well the new millennium hits and i think he's probably the only guy out at this point if i'm correct and the paper start with the last time all that kind of all that kind of media talk and you kind of had the feeling that eventually uh bust were going to come about and and and why you say because they was taken they were starting to take banana guys down now like spiral and the bad damn you crew then you had baller and the janini crew so they were taking these guys i looked for anybody who knew anything about something so at that at that time they the uh the district attorney s the a usa was jim walden and he was working on the case and then after that andres greg andres takes over the case and he goes with that with whatever whatever he gets and that was the chains that started moving on a operation machine oh yeah they get all these uh smaller smaller participants uh or tell on a couple of captains and another boston one incident and see what they could get out of that that was all to see who would flip right away um we get taken down in 2002 of march first 14 nobody flips in that case believe it or not but in october 2002 that's when they bring in coper and cannella and they had a one to flip on um on mesina was it was it well i actually flip on one that flips on mesina on sunny black i want to flip on the tally when the tally comes in that's the beginning of the end he just with copa though let's just i want to unpack this for a second with frank copa this is a guy that was known strictly as an earner i think i think everybody on the street knew even though i think he did a little bit of time at some point but i think people understood that frank copa wasn't a guy that was going to be able to do a long sentence as opposed to cannella who's who's flipping was probably a little bit more shocking but once copa got jammed up didn't it kind of make sense with the kind of guy copa was that he was going to cut a deal not really because he was looking at another five or six years uh where cannella was looking at two murders okay so um copa brings in copa didn't want to do four or five more years in jail he had he was in there ready for three or four years yeah and then we're going to supersede him on another case and and um and he said nah he wasn't doing he was a big man he was in the best of health and and he flipped and then after that cannella flipped and he had two bodies on him right so bobby perino and uh perino and uh take the mirror if i'm correct i think it was yeah if he marries on yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but that that's how that went down and after they flipped people other people like jota miko he'd even make it to the to the uh didn't even get arrested he went straight to the freaking the the a's office to see if they're here i am what do you want to know yeah you know i said i was like the third guy that flipped there was so many like another guy pete rose a flip um that that didn't even get arrested did the list went on and so where's the chronology here where where you get swept up in the in the in the case too and and and how you end up with misino uh explain that to us please well the indictment at the end of that they had like close to 60 70 people but i was one of the first to be arrested on that indictment that i've been on indictment uh and he gets arrested a year later after the information that these people give on him okay so what was for me i was arrested 2002 he was arrested 2003 but then you eventually got to know him when you guys are both in a uh protection yeah because at that point a lot of people start to take once he gets arrested a lot of these people want to disassociate from him like tg for example and he got a pretty good deal on his case he got like nine years he took it um so the only ones that were left with guys were fucking on uh that were looking at a lot of time and then we ended up going through co-defendant meetings just to find out to weave out who's telling on on me who's telling on them and see what we're trying to make the connections to get it yeah so for about a year a year and a half we used to uh about a year and a half we used to go down to the mdc building and uh and i'll call defender meetings and what was your sense of him at at that time um friendly i mean nice just uh you know nice and then when when you you could tell when he was serious you could tell when he was just walking around you can tell when you had the feeling of just what we're fucked you know um but his demeanor just broke and started changing when his brother in law he finds out his brother in law flipped he got real uh you could tell his shoulders were down and um just wasn't the same person as when i met him it kind of like made a lot of when sal flipped it made a lot of other people give up too i guess they were like you know what fuck this frank lino was one of them exact you know uh he flipped um there was a lot of people that were flipping right after him so you're saying up until that point mesino still thought maybe he had a way to uh slip out of this oh definitely he he'd say that himself he goes the only person i gotta beat is sal you know and and that was it at one point it was just me and him left everyone was taken please i was six days before trial and obviously he was going to trial and then you know i flipped we talked about that and that was it go ahead did you did did you know him though like after all the cooperation were you locked up with him no no you're not a lot about you're not a lot to be locked up with the same people you testify again yeah okay they don't want you to cooperate anything okay i'm sorry i messed up the chronology you were you were one of the people that testified at his trial he he flipped after he was convicted he flipped after he was convicted which is uh you're next the district attorney am i correct yeah so you know that's every tough to do unless you really got the goods because after you flip um they're not gonna take your deal anymore not most people anyway but there's certain few that they do and he he fit that they took him he brought a lot he brought a lot to the table for uh for the government he's the biggest head on the wall the government ever had yeah in that way in that world i i think so anyway some people might argue it's the guy in Arizona i don't know yeah um so frankly i'm with you on that though i so i know at this point you're you're isolated from from people on the street for obvious reasons both just you know where you're at and and what you know right decision um did you get did you hear any like any rumors or anything from anyone when when mesino decided to flip but did you hear any any rumors like on the street like what was the sense of people still active i mean had they were did they see that coming or were they completely shocked um i would i know i didn't hear from i haven't heard from anybody active and since i flipped um and that's 20 years or even in even around those people but at the same time i've heard from all the people that is still in the neighborhood and they and yes they were very shocked of course i mean with jimmy now we've talked about it before and i i have no problem expressing this belief but and i'm interested on freaks take on it i mean i i say shame on the government for even making that deal i i don't see the point i i mean i do because like you said he's bringing a lot to the table and i guess the government does a cost benefit analysis they see that the the benefits outweigh the the negatives but the fact that you would take someone like that and then use him to go after people that were underneath him just seems like it's counter the way that it it should go it should be the little guys take down the big guy not the big guy takes down the lesser ranking guys it just didn't happen never happened that way so people weren't ready for that you know we're not in a title of a nice crime anyway you get you get to see that in other organizations but not that one and yeah it was a surprise but what do you do i mean imagine every boss flipped that you know what they bring you know what they could get give you uh some of these guys maybe he didn't give you as much as uh another boss could give you you know imagine uh what they know you know more than a boss they know everything right yeah i i think it's um i i could understand the cost benefit analysis but i'll also i i agree with scott like from an ethical perspective yeah yeah well it doesn't it doesn't sit well with me either no the guy who tells you to do this like well letting charles manson go and uh it follows you know right i mean i i get it that's a good and it doesn't it doesn't a guy that murdered one or two people and this is a guy that was responsible for you know a well you know what lesson lesson are we sending out there when you win when the boss gets uh there's a lot to tell you you know that's just he should be paying for everything that's his responsibility yeah i agree because something we didn't we didn't talk about really you guys just acknowledged it but because we talked about more when when joe messino was a captain and the shot called in the boss when when he was on the come up he was directly involved in murders himself so you know his hands are pretty bloody and and to get a get out of jail you know pass um because he he turns on his subordinates ethically and morally i i think that's very problematic i would say well the lesson i got from him was that in the in the time i was around them in jail is that he was he was very money oriented you know and he would do anything anything to keep that money so who knows you know if um he was a lot to keep the money they told them you you get life would he take a life i don't know so when we say like that he reconciled with his family and frank i suspect you know because of your situation you don't have insight into this necessarily which is okay but maybe scott from your reporting i mean when we say he reconciled are we talking about the vitali family is that what is that what his daughter his daughter well at least his daughters i can't speak about i don't know his wife uh his ex-wife but i know that uh his daughters who hadn't been speaking to him brought a lot of people do that i mean i brought him back to new york for the final month or two of his life i'm probably one of the only few people that my family i don't me and my family don't talk to each other um but i who knows these people that's what that's how they go about it they don't want problems i mean it had again not to make it all about scott bernstein's career benny hit the siren but uh tony zarelli who was in the same uh position as joe musino the detroit mafia uh long time underboss former acting boss uh who was shunned and kicked out of detroit and stripped of all of his physical assets his monetary assets his his action they took all his everything away from him and at the very end uh in the last couple weeks uh he made amends with some of the people that had had promised to never speak to him again right they uh they they were able to talk before um before he died so yeah i mean we're talking about my siblings left they were my kids i think they could be a little bit different you know it is what it is i haven't spoke to them since i flipped and um my my parents are not along with us so it's just i don't see i don't even think about it anymore i'll tell you the truth you know i'm gonna say when i heard when i heard about that i thought of tony's really when i heard about going back to new york to die yeah i think when we when we had tony destefano on i think that was just the audio podcast not video i asked him if he heard that musino was talking to his family and i believe someone can go back and listen to the episode and fact check me on this i believe tony destefano said this was what scott three four years ago something like that yeah i think he said his understanding was they at that point they weren't they still weren't talking to musino they weren't yeah okay um so uh frank um as we wrap up here um you want to talk to it we've already you know mentioned that we're working on a project about uh the bananos and civilians anything else you want to let our audience know about where they can where they can find you well yeah usually sometimes i like to go on a gun smoke show and uh mess around with him a little bit that it's pretty cool if it's not always mob it's a little priority of everything we just joke around and fuck around and that's because even myself uh probably like i get sick of them mob stuff sometimes no offense no we do yeah some of our i get sick of it too i write about it every day sometimes i get sick yeah i know exactly i mean i know some of some of my favorite episodes are about the cartels and the bikers and the stuff just because uh you know the lcn stuff i just like to diversify it but but even at your point i'm just interested in other things but yeah shout out to gun smoke to don uh i was uh frank brought me on there the other day and um he is so funny i mean that dude i encourage people to check out he's so funny i mean i i laugh out loud and i text frank that i'm laughing my ass off watching his so just to give people some context scott and i don't get involved in this stuff but with some of the people that have a podcast like we do there's a lot of infighting and i'm not going to mention any content creators names people know what we're talking about there's a lot of people who like to fight with each other and diss each other and so what gun smoke does is he creates these parodies of the people that are fighting with each other and it's really funny because it's not me i don't think it's mean spirited i think he's not it's kind of light you know he's just sort of kind of making fun of the absurdity of it and uh he's really talented creative dude so you know maybe one of these days we'll figure out a way to get gun smoke on on our show too and and and talk with him he's a funny guy and frank goes on there a lot so so check it out frank before we let you go just answer one question what what's the legacy of of uh Joe Massino like what's in a hundred years when people are studying and what are people gonna other than the fact that he was the first major new york boss to flip i i'm gonna go by like when he died right for example it was really quiet you'd figure i thought there was going to be more reception from the new york media or anybody i just think that he killed his legacy bro um i just think that when he flipped that that that was gone i don't know if people are gonna know who he is in a hundred years i'll be honest with you he doesn't have that al capone or about him you know or even or even let's say john god he won't know who he is a hundred years from now yeah i think i think the rat life is not too popular even even people gonna know say me to both for a hundred years but probably not no he'll be like uh he'll be like that who who shot booth you know he shot abraham lincoln you just know that he shot booth and that's it but abraham lincoln's um you know legacy's gonna live on forever you know what i mean no that's a good answer it's a great answer and i like how you just pointed out that you thought that this would make a much bigger splash oh yeah and it didn't it it was a little ripple but it was yeah and that was when you asked me before where you know when i first heard i figured by the next day it was gonna be on every paper in uh in new york city at least and not to my dismay nothing uh frank thanks a lot for spending some time thanks for joining us frank definitely thank you for having me guys i'm sorry i was a little bit uh out of it today no it's all great this was great yeah it was it was fun to get your unique perspective on this so thanks everyone for listening again please check us out on social media please subscribe to us i'm jimmy butchilato and scott bursi we're out see you next time