Inside the American Mob (2013–…): Season 1, Episode 6 - End Game - full transcript
It is 1993, and the American mob has reached a low point. Enter the newly Bath Avenue crew, who ushers in a violent new day in the life of Cosa Nostra, and the bloodshed gets out of hand.
Jimmy Calandra: I'm
from Brooklyn, New York,
Bensonhurst.
The neighborhood is
run by the Italian mafia.
One day, April 4th,
my friend
John Polio was murdered.
The kid
Michael Hamster
was taking
credit for his murder.
It goes around
in the neighborhood,
this kid's bragging
that he killed John Polio,
you know, so I
wanted some payback.
I go to Joey Calco
and Pauly Gulino.
And Pauly G.
gave us a 380,
me and Joey,
and we go hunt
for Michael Hamster.
We see him get into
Bobby DeCicco's car.
We follow him.
He stops at a red light
on 17th Avenue and Benson.
He rolls down the
window 'cause he thinks
he's a tough guy
and all of a sudden Joey
puts out the pistol,
and he starts
unloading on him,
pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
The kid,
Michael Hamster,
is jumping one leg across
the street like hopping.
The kid Joey Calco
with the shotgun boom
hits him and he falls.
Joey hands
me the gun.
I put it
down my pants.
Joey takes off.
As we're driving,
there's a cop car.
This is
a true story.
Therefore,
he pulls us over.
Now, we're
a little nervous.
I got a gun down
my pants, you know,
we just shot
this kid 5 times and
all of a sudden on
the cop's radio we hear,
"Man shot,
17th and Benson."
Police Radio:
All units report.
Jimmy Calandra:
The cop goes like this,
"Today's your lucky day."
And he
just takes off.
Phew.
He had us
right there.
Narrator: It is 1992 and
most of the old bosses of
the five families of
Cosa Nostra are in prison.
Fearing life sentences and
payback from their own side,
gangsters everywhere
start cooperating with
the United
States government.
Sammy Gravano: As
part of my cooperation,
I told the government
about my life of crimes,
including the fact that I
participated in 19 murders.
Narrator: Which leads
to the take down of the
most famous boss of
modern times, John Gotti.
But the remnants of
the five families remain
loose on
the streets,
trying to
rebuild on the ashes,
and none is more
determined and dangerous
than the
Bonanno family,
which begins their ascent
below law enforcement's radar.
These people are witnesses
to that secret history,
stepping out of
the shadows to tell
their
story first-hand.
A few remain concealed
for personal safety,
fearful of an
organization that even in
the 1990s is fully capable
of resurrecting itself,
like the Bonanno's.
Jim Walden: I think it's
fair to say that 2 events
brought the Bonanno family
to the edge of extinction.
First obviously
its boss was murdered,
Carmine Galante, famous
image of him lying dead
with a cigar
still in his mouth.
But at the same time
there was the Donnie Brasco
infiltration and
subsequent prosecution.
Agent Pistone: This
operation really kicked
the Bonanno's
in the arse.
We kind of
really decimated them.
Mitra Hormozi: That was
a huge blight on the Bonanno
organized crime family.
As a result they were
kicked off the commission.
It was a
major embarrassment.
Narrator: The commission
is the board of executives
that oversees the
five families of the mob:
Gambino, Colombo, Lucchese,
Genovese and Bonanno.
They call the shots
determining who lives
and who dies.
Ironically, the Bonanno
family's expulsion from
the commission turns
out to be their big break.
Agent Pistone: The FBI
and other law enforcement
agencies moved on to other
cases so they didn't really
keep a clamp on
the guys that were
left in the family.
Jim Walden: Their headlines
were about the Gambino's and
about the Lucchese's,
and about the Genovese family,
and the internal
war in Colombo family.
Edward McDonald:
You know, Gotti's gone,
Castellano's gone.
And the
Colombo family,
they're having a
Colombo family war.
The Genovese family:
Fat Tony is gone,
he's been convicted.
The Lucchese family
is in total disarray.
Chin Gigante is on the
run, he's been indicted
or about to be indicted.
Jim Walden: These
different problems within
these families
allowed the Bonanno's to
continue to exist to
keep a lot of its turf,
and for a period of
time to fly low on the radar
to give it a chance to
rebuild its infrastructure,
and that's
exactly what they did.
Narrator: While
Bonanno boss Joe Massino
is in prison serving
6 years for racketeering,
his subordinate, old
school gangster Anthony Spero,
takes over
daily operations.
Spero is one of the last
major mob figures still on
the street, and
a believer in traditional
mafia values of
secrecy, respect and murder.
Jim Walden: He had
strong connections with
the other families,
and he had the respect
of lower
level members.
Detective Dades:
He was a gentleman to
law enforcement, and he
was very well respected,
you know,
in the neighborhood.
Jim Walden: He was known
to host an extravagant
fireworks show
every year for members
of the community.
Detective Dades:
But he was a lethal guy
and he would kill you.
Jim Walden: He was a bit
of an eccentric guy though.
Anthony Spero:
Come on baby, come on.
Detective Dades: He was
very big into pigeon races
and pigeon coops and
whatever you do with pigeons.
Jim Walden: They would
fly in a big sweeping flock
around the
neighborhood and ultimately
come right back home.
Jimmy Calandra: He was
going like this, voof,
and all the pigeons
are following him,
you see them flying.
Jim Walden: And if
you think about it,
it's almost a metaphor
for Spero's criminal
organization, where
he's releasing not pigeons
but villains, murderers,
thugs, out on the streets,
all for them to make money
and to bring it back to him.
Narrator: Spero
excels at taking children
off the streets
of his neighborhood
and grooming them for
a life of crime and violence.
Kids like
Jimmy Calandra,
who grows up in the
Bensonhurst neighborhood
of Brooklyn in
the 1980s at a time
when the mafia is
fighting for its life
against law enforcement
but still has the power
and glamour to make a big
impression on little boys.
Calandra and his best
friends are nothing
but kids when they
start their journey
into the underworld.
Jimmy Calandra: The
core group of my friends
was Pauly Gulino, Tommy
Reynolds, Joey Calco, me,
and Fabrizio DeFrancisci.
We were troubled
kids in the neighborhood,
we were bad kids.
You know, we
decided to form a crew.
Jim Walden: They got
tattoos on their ankles
to label themselves
number 1 through number 7.
Jimmy Calandra:
We were making a pact
with each other.
You know, we were all
in the same crew together,
you know.
One for all,
all for one.
Narrator: The boys of
Bath Avenue have each other's
backs in a Brooklyn
neighborhood steeped
in the code
of Cosa Nostra.
All five families
have a foothold here.
Jimmy Calandra: Bath
Avenue was a known avenue for
mob-related activity.
Detective Dades:
Bath Avenue was filled
with social
clubs, you know.
There was
three on the block.
You knew who were the
guys that were connected,
who were the guys
that were up and coming.
Jimmy Calandra: You
know, I was a young kid
growing up
around wise guys.
The guys making the
money, you know every time
they see us, here,
here's 20, you know.
As soon as I leave my
house, I got 20 dollars.
I go to the corner,
I hang out, you know?
What do I
got to work for?
We had Nick's Candy
Store right around
the corner
from my apartment.
That's where we
would all come together.
Detective Dades: You know,
there was a group of guys
on every other block,
no matter what time,
day and night, there
was always somebody there.
That corner
was home base.
Jimmy Calandra: And we
would do errands for them.
They would give
us a couple dollars,
"Here, go up the block and
get me two French bread."
Say they need
someone's window broke,
thrown us the keys,
"Go wash my car,"
whatever
the case may be.
You knew they
controlled the neighborhood,
you know, with
their walk and talks.
In the neighborhood,
you know who was who.
You know, these were the
guys that I looked up to.
Jim Walden: Imagine that
you are an eight-year-old boy
in a working class
neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Most of the men and women
that you know are struggling
to make ends meet, they're
working their fingers to the
bone but what you
see down the street at the
social club are
Cadillac's pulling up and
men dressed in $500
suits getting in and out
of the Cadillac's.
Jimmy Calandra: These
men were my father figures.
You know,
if I needed anything
they just helped me.
If we had a problem,
we knew where to go.
Jim Walden: These kids
really did start as kids.
Some of them were 8 or 9
years old when they first
started running
numbers at the social clubs.
Detective Dades: Social
clubs were really big.
Gambling parlors,
you know, were really big.
They were bookmakers
and if you tried to use
the payphone on a Sunday
they'd cut your hands off.
Jimmy Calandra:
We'd do straight bets,
we'd do parlays;
we were gambling
every football game,
Sundays, everything.
I was
loaning out money.
I was a little kid.
I was maybe
13 years old.
We thought we were
somebody, you know,
and we were looking
up to these guys and
we actually thought
we were doing something.
Jim Walden: 8 or 9
they're running numbers,
12, 13, 14
they're parking cars and
hiding weapons
and moving money,
and they move up the
ranks to do more violent
and more
profitable things.
Narrator: As the
Bath Avenue boys grow up
what starts with
trips to the bakery ends
in crime and violence.
Jimmy Calandra:
As we got older,
we just got
more dangerous.
You know, so instead of
boys, now we're just a crew.
Narrator: It's now the 80s,
the era of crack cocaine,
a drug that ignites
rampant street violence in
New York City and the
Bath Avenue Crew fits right in.
Fat Sal: The
Bath Avenue Crew,
they would smoke drugs,
rob drug dealers,
and then they got
into the drug business,
started
extorting drug dealers.
Jimmy Calandra:
We were doing bookmaking,
we had the cocaine
business on beepers,
we had the
pot business.
We were
stealing cars.
I was doing banks,
I was doing burglaries.
Detective Dades: They're
out there earning because
being a good earner is a
way to get in good graces,
you know, by sending
money up the ladder,
getting some respect
from some of the wise guys.
Jim Walden: So the
Bath Avenue Crew was
embraced by the Bonanno
family as associates because
they were
good at their jobs.
And the job of an
associate is to earn money
and to engage in violent
acts when they're needed,
and this group
really excelled at both.
Detective Dades: They
were a gruesome bunch of guys.
Jim Walden:
Fabrizio Defrancisci,
one of the most ruthless
enforcers the group had.
He took a blowtorch
and literally tortured one
crack dealer who was
using product on the street.
Tommy Reynolds,
out of anger,
picked up a fork and
jabbed it in someone's eye.
That's how violent
these guys were.
Fat Sal: They killed
a lot of innocent people;
they committed a double
homicide for I think an
eight ball of cocaine.
Jim Walden: They were
doing exactly what associates
had been doing,
maybe more violently,
but doing for
many, many years.
Jimmy Calandra:
We're Spero's muscle.
And when Spero
needs something done,
we are at his disposal.
Narrator: The acting
boss of the Bonanno family
soon puts them to work.
Jim Walden:
Spero had a daughter
in the neighborhood.
One day there
was a drug addict
named
Vincent Bickelman.
He broke into her
house and stole a necklace.
Jimmy Calandra:
After he stole it,
he went to somewhere on
86th street to sell it.
It had Jill's name on
the necklace, it said,
"Jill," and it
got back to Spero.
He broke into a Bonanno
boss's daughter's house.
Jim Walden: Spero went
to Gulino to pass the
order to kill
Bickelman and of course,
Gulino saw this as
his opportunity to get
inducted into
the Bonanno family.
Detective Dades:
Pauly Gulino was
the leader
of that group.
Vicious guy.
Jimmy Calandra:
He didn't give a (bleep).
He wasn't
afraid of nobody,
he was a ballsy
kid he was a tough kid,
and a lot of wise
guys were afraid of him.
So when a thief
inadvertently robs the
daughter of
Bonanno family crime boss,
Anthony Spero, the Bath
Avenue boys get the call.
Jimmy Calandra: It was
a big opportunity for us.
This was a very, very
important piece of work to
do for Anthony Spero
because this was gonna get
Pauly Gulino recognized
and hopefully become a made
member in the family.
Agent Pistone: You know,
there are certain rules to
become a made guy and one
of them is you have to earn
your button, you
have to kill somebody.
Jimmy Calandra: One day
Pauly Gulino's driving
around, he saw the kid
and he runs up on the kid,
Vincent Bickelman,
right around the corner
from the police station,
right off the corner,
he jumped out and he
just shot the kid 5 times.
That's it, drop.
We all went to the bar,
Pauly told all of
us what happened,
we celebrated,
we were drinking,
are you kidding we had
a great (bleep) time.
Narrator: The
Bickelman murder cements
the Bath Avenue
Crew's reputation.
It tells everyone on
the street there's a new
gang in town,
guys who are on their
way to becoming made
men in the Bonanno family.
Detective Dades: They
want people to know that
they just killed this guy
because you're recognized
now by made guys,
by captains, that you're
capable of doing
things like that.
Jimmy Calandra:
We ain't kids no more.
You know, we're
looking to you know
move up to
the next level.
Narrator: The members
of the Bath Avenue Crew want
to join the Bonanno
family at a crucial moment:
just as Joe Massino,
the family boss,
gets released from prison
after serving six
years for racketeering.
Edward McDonald: So
Joe Massino gets out of
prison and all the other
bosses have been convicted.
They're
replaced by underlings,
people who were
not that significant.
So Joe comes out and he
is someone who is revered.
He is like the last don,
the one well-respected boss.
Agent Devecchio:
Unlike a lot of organized
crime members,
Massino was very friendly.
Very affable.
Mitra Hormozi:
Very jovial,
beloved by
members of his family.
Agent Sallet: He
worked with John Gotti,
they were close
friends and close
confidants in
truck hijacking.
Narrator: He's also
one more made guy with
a violent past,
routinely ordering associates
like Sal Polisi
to use their muscle.
Sal Polisi: The Bonanno
family had a case running,
and Joe Massino who
later became the boss,
called Foxy and I said,
"Look, you
gotta do us a favor.
There's a
witness you gotta go,
you gotta go
beat this guy up.
I want you to break
his arms and legs to give
a message, give a beating
so that he wouldn't testify."
So we beat this
guy up with bats,
broke his arms and
legs, only to find out
he was the wrong
guy, he was the father.
And then when Massino called
us in for a meeting he said,
"Look, you beat up the
wrong guy, but it's okay.
The witness
disappeared anyway."
Narrator: But
Massino doesn't
just subcontract
his killing,
he's done it himself.
His claim to fame is
as one of the shooters in
the Three Capos Murder,
an infamous gangland massacre
from the early 1980's.
Agent Pistone: Three
captains wanted to take
over the family:
Sonny Red Indelicato,
Phil Lucky Giaccone,
and Dominick Trinchera.
Mitra Hormozi: Massino
goes to the commission,
he then gets
permission to go ahead
and kill the
three captains.
Narrator: But when
Massino gets out of prison in
1992 after six years,
he's faced with a new reality.
He needs to
keep a low profile.
He recognizes the
mistakes of other bosses like
John Gotti and
Joe Colombo who spent
too much time in public
or got caught on tape
by electronic
listening devices.
So Massino reforms the
Bonanno family starting with
his own extreme
variation on that tried
and true
code of silence.
Mitra Hormozi: No one
is allowed to say his name.
Instead, he says
anyone who wants to refer
to the boss must just use
the visual hand to the ear.
Edward McDonald: Just
like Chin Gigante in the
Genovese family, you
had to touch your chin,
well Joey was
gonna be called the ear.
Mitra Hormozi: Also,
he did not go to weddings
and funerals where
people would be photographed.
Agent Sallet: He
doesn't use a cell phone,
he doesn't use a pager,
he doesn't use his home phone.
Narrator: He also
takes the extreme measure
of ending a
decades old tradition,
closing down the
places that were once the
hub of all mob
activity: social clubs.
Agent Devecchio: For many,
many years I'm sure they
thought they were
invincible in social clubs,
but we managed to bug
a number of social clubs
and overheard a lot
of incriminating information.
Agent Sallet:
Joe Massino learned
what he should
and should not do.
Narrator: At
the same time,
he encourages a
major new front in the
way the
mob earns money:
Wall Street.
Agent Barrows: 90s brought
a tremendous bull market,
enormous amounts of money
and some loose regulations.
Everybody wanted
to be in the market,
everybody was making
money who was in the market.
So it was really a
perfect and fertile ground
for organized crime.
Narrator: By 1993,
Bonanno family boss,
Joe Massino,
is the last of his kind,
an old school Godfather
who believes in the
code of silence and secrecy
characterizing the
Golden Age of the American mob.
But he's also an innovator
when it comes to earning,
seizing new
opportunities not in
Bensonhurst
but on Wall Street.
Edward McDonald: By
the time Joe got out of
prison the heady days
of labor racketeering were
pretty much
coming to an end.
So the big, big money
that the mafia was making
through labor racketeering
was really just not available
anymore and they began
to move towards Wall Street.
Agent Barrows:
In the 90s, it was
certainly a bull market.
There were
tons of new companies,
the internet was sort
of new and burgeoning
at the time and certainly
where there's a lot of
easy money to be made
you can be rest assured
that the mob's gonna
be there to make it.
Narrator: Legitimate
stockbrokers must follow
the rules of the Securities
and Exchange Commission,
but not Joe Massino
and the Bonanno family.
Fraud is the
key to their success.
Agent Barrows: The
underbelly of Wall Street
is where
the mob operates.
That's where the
boiler rooms come in.
These boiler rooms are
filled with very young kids,
unsophisticated kids,
who have one task and that
is to sell stock and
to say whatever it is they
need to say, follow
whatever script they have
in front of them to make
sure they accomplish that task.
Most of the boiler rooms
look like New Year's Eve
party had been
thrown the night before,
often scantily clad
women walking around,
stacks of papers,
cigarettes, alcohol.
Looks nothing
like you'd imagine
that a brokerage
house looks like.
Narrator: The game is
called "Pump and Dump,"
and it works like this:
mobbed up traders acquire
large blocks of stocks
worth 5 dollars or less.
By controlling supply,
they increase demand,
artificially
inflating the stock's price.
Then they sell those
stocks to unsuspecting
investors for much
more than the original value,
in turn earning
an enormous profit.
Agent Barrows: The mob
makes sure things stay
in order and if they don't
successfully do their job,
they're going
to get a beating.
Sal Polisi:
Violence, threats,
extortion, blackmail;
the mob was a
master at bullying.
Salmieri: The fear
of the violence is
what keeps
everybody in line.
Agent Barrows: They make
sure those boiler room kids
keep that
stock put away.
They sell it and they
don't let it get sold
back to the market.
Agent Barrows: It's paid
in cash and it's undisclosed.
There's no paper trail,
nobody knows about it.
Get a bag of
cash on Friday.
Narrator: The
cash is divvied up,
some going into
the brokers pocket,
the rest
going to the bosses.
Raking in the cash
for Joe Massino of the
Bonanno family is
this guy, Robert Lino.
Agent Barrows: Lino was
the muscle at the higher level.
He was the Capo.
He was the one
who represented
them in sit-downs.
He was the one
who essentially ran a
investment firm
in lower Manhattan
called DMN Capital,
which was under the
auspices of the Bonanno family.
Narrator: To rat out the
Bonanno family's corruption
on Wall Street,
Agent Kevin Barrows
needs to get
inside DMN Capital.
Agent Barrows: It was
too risky in this day and
age to have an agent
try to go undercover,
because you had
to know somebody.
It wasn't the days of,
you know, Joe Pistone,
where it was somewhat
easier to infiltrate.
My partner and I began
to really develop a lot
of co-operating witnesses.
Narrator: But not just
any cooperating witness.
His informant
works as a mole inside
the mob's boiler rooms.
With his help,
Operation Uptick is born.
Agent Barrows: The
goal of an informant
is always to get the
next person up in the chain.
As we always say,
"We gotta eat our way up
the chain and
get to the top."
Narrator: The Feds want
Bonanno Boss Joe Massino,
but before they can reach
the top of that food chain,
FBI agents must
snare a smaller fish and
catch Bonanno Capo
Robert Lino on tape first.
So they send their DMN
informant to work wearing
a wire and the
stakes couldn't be higher.
If discovered, they'll
almost certainly be killed.
Robert Lino: [on tape]
You better get my (bleep)
money and Louis,
I better have it soon.
I am going to put the
word out with everybody
I know, everybody,
you are done.
You understand me,
you rotten (bleep)!
Agent Barrows: There were
times when we had him wired
up and ready to go and
found out somebody was coming,
and we'd take the wire off
seconds before he walked in.
Simply because
Robert Lino was a very tough,
very violent guy.
But my partner and I were
extraordinarily successful
at getting people to
cooperate and we just kept
getting more and more
cooperators who gave us more
and more information
about more and more people,
who, which led to
more and more indictments.
Narrator:
Operation Uptick grows,
putting increasing
numbers of mobsters in
the FBI's crosshairs,
including Robert Lino.
Man: In the largest
federal arrest operation
ever in the New York City
metropolitan area,
more than 600 FBI
agents began arresting
120 defendants as
a result of a 10-month
investigation
code-named: Uptick.
Agent Barrows: It
really awakened the public
and it
awakened regulators.
Narrator: But Joe Massino
knows how to play the system
like an old school boss,
and his anti-surveillance
techniques pay off.
He's never caught
on tape and gets away
clean in
Operation Uptick.
While the Bonanno
family tries its hand
at white-collar
crime in Manhattan,
back in Brooklyn the old
friendships on Bath Avenue
are about
to disintegrate,
starting with this
guy, Tommy Reynolds.
Fat Sal:
With Tommy Reynolds,
he's a
cracked-out maniac.
Smoking crack, kill you
for a $100 piece of crack.
Narrator: Reynolds and
fellow Bath Avenue member,
Jimmy Calandra,
join a third guy,
a street thug
named Chris Ludwigsen,
on a heist that is
supposed to be an easy score.
Jimmy Calandra: He
notified me, he says,
"Jimmy, I got this
score with this guy,
big money in his house,
safe in his house
in his basement."
The money Chris was
talking about, you know,
he said it was close
to a million dollars.
Detective Dades:
There's just gonna be a
guy at home,
it's an easy score.
Jimmy Calandra: I said,
"Okay, sounds good."
So I brought
Reynolds with me because
Reynolds was always
my guy to do scores with.
Jim Walden:
And at the time,
Tommy Reynolds
was one of the key
people who was
organizing the crack
distribution ring
and he started using
some of the
product himself.
Jimmy Calandra:
No one else was supposed
to be in this house.
Only this guy was
supposed to be there.
So we all get out,
Chris waits in the car.
I knock on the door.
All of a sudden,
I see this woman.
I hear "boom."
The lady goes
flying across the room.
Jim Walden: Reynolds in his
crack stupor accidentally
pulled the trigger to the
gun and shot her in the head
in front of her
then 9-year-old daughter.
Jimmy Calandra: I went
there to go rob a safe and
Tommy Reynolds ends up
shooting the lady by accident.
I said, "What
the (bleep) did I
just get
myself involved in?"
I was so ashamed of it.
I mean it's
one thing, you know,
killing someone from
the street but you're
killing an
innocent woman.
It was like so (bleep)
hard for me to live with.
Detective Dades:
Jimmy lived with that,
I know, I know that
still affects him to this,
to this day.
Jim Walden:
As it turned out,
there was no safe
in the house at all,
and they had just
gotten bad information.
Narrator: The violence is
starting to get out of hand
even for a rough
crew like Bath Avenue.
A bloody battle over
turf and bragging rights
is about to start
and no one can imagine
where it will end.
Jim Walden:
The Bath Avenue Crew,
given the violence
of its members,
had more pride, ego,
than just about anyone else.
But there was
a rival in the area.
A group on
20th Avenue was
extraordinarily
violent as well.
Turf is an issue
and pride is an issue.
Jimmy Calandra: They
had a little crew that
grew up just like us.
They lost some
of their friends;
they retaliated at the
guys who killed their friends,
so they were
like tough like us.
Jim Walden: There were a
number of extraordinarily
violent shoot-outs.
Jimmy Calandra: With
the 20th Avenue kids,
everybody was
always on high alert.
I never left my
house without a pistol.
I had a bulletproof vest,
with a plate in the front,
plate in the back.
Plus I also had the
strap-on where you got a
pistol over here and
you got a pistol over here,
you know, you got
2 pistols like this.
We were ready
to go to war.
We didn't
trust anybody.
My friends were being
killed left and right.
We were shooting
people left and right.
Detective Dades: When
I think back how much
craziness was going on
up there it really was,
it was like a
shooting gallery up there.
Narrator: Violence gets so
extreme that Spero steps in.
Jimmy Calandra: There was
a sit down with their people,
and Spero told them,
you know what we're gonna
straighten this out,
we're gonna put this
underneath the table;
let's go forward,
stuff like that.
But Pauly Gulino
didn't want that.
Narrator: Gulino,
the hothead of the
Bath Avenue Crew,
wants more respect.
Jim Walden: Gulino was
very upset about the lack
of support he was getting
and he obviously felt,
as the person that carried
out the Bickelman murder,
that his place
should be more important.
Narrator: So Gulino
does the unthinkable for
a small time
mob associate,
he challenges Spero,
one of the most respected
men in the Bonanno crime
family and a seriously
dangerous individual.
Jimmy Calandra: Pauly G.
wanted his full support.
You know, I'm with
you, you're supposed to
defend me,
(bleep) them.
Detective Dades:
He wanted to kill Spero.
Jim Walden: Everyone
knows that Anthony Spero
is, you know, one of
the kings, one of the
few bosses that
still lives in the area.
And in the middle of
this heated confrontation
on the public street,
Gulino pushes Spero,
puts his hands on him.
Jimmy Calandra: He gave
himself a death sentence.
Jim: Walden: There are
some rules you cannot break.
I mean you can't stay
in the neighborhood after
you hit a made
member in a crime family,
because your own
friends are gonna be the
one to take you out.
Spero essentially turned
around and walked away,
turned his
back on Gulino.
That was the day that Paul
Gulino became a marked man.
Jimmy Calandra: Spero gave
the order to kill Pauly,
and you know,
who's gonna kill Pauly?
Pauly's a hard
person to kill.
The only people that could
kill Pauly were his friends.
Jim Walden: He was
holed up in his apartment.
He doesn't know when
the day of reckoning is
going to come and so he
can trust almost no one.
But he does trust
Joey Calco and Tommy Reynolds.
It's those two that were
in the short list of people
whose knock Gulino
would have responded
to with an open door.
Jimmy Calandra: Tommy and
Joey went to Pauly Gulino's
house on a Sunday.
They asked him for
something to drink,
he opened the
refrigerator door.
As he opened the
refrigerator door,
Joey put a couple bullets
in the back of Pauly's head.
Jim Walden: Gulino
fell to the floor dead.
Detective Dades: You know,
you can go from being on top
of the list to,
you know, to get a nod,
and two friends
blow your brains out.
Jim Walden: Gulino,
Reynolds, Calco,
they've been friends
for their whole lives.
They grew up together,
they marked their ankles
together, and yet,
at that critical moment,
it was the two best
friends that snuffed out
Paul Gulino's life
because they were ordered to,
but more importantly,
because they wanted to,
because they knew that
it would be a path to
their own rise within
the Bonanno family.
Jimmy Calandra: They
left like nothing happened.
That's it.
Narrator: But
Pauly Gulino's murder will
change everything
for the Bath Avenue Crew.
At the time of the
killing, Jimmy Calandra,
one of the original members
in the Bath Avenue Crew
is in jail where
he hears about the hit.
Jimmy Calandra: I call
Tommy Reynolds that night
from federal prison.
I said, "Was it you?
Was that, was it you?"
And he was crying.
He said, "No,"
he said, "No."
But I knew it
was my friends.
Detective Dades: Jimmy
saw a lot of deceit and
treachery and saw his
best friend get killed.
Jimmy Calandra:
I felt sick.
I wanted to throw up.
I was sad.
I was like a baby crying
in my cell, seriously.
Pauly was a really
good friend of mine,
a dear friend, a childhood
friend and just you know,
I was never the type
to kill my own friends.
That wasn't me.
You know, if Spero
would've gave me the hit,
in all honesty, I
probably would've told Pauly.
I stopped and I looked,
said, "You know what;
we're not friends
no more over here.
You know what we are?
We became gangsters."
Narrator: Law enforcement
round up the remaining
members of the crew while
Calandra is still in prison.
But when he gets out,
his past catches up
to him again.
He's under investigation
for an old murder in
Staten Island,
the unsolved killing of a
woman with no
connection to organized crime.
New York Police
Detective Tommy Dades
has been piecing
together the details
and is getting
close to an arrest.
Detective Dades:
I was investigating him
to lock him up.
He did some jail time,
he got out and he knew
that we had just locked
everybody else up and
he knew that the
axe was gonna fall
on him
sooner or later.
Jimmy Calandra: The
feds knocked on my door
and told me your past
came back to haunt you.
When I got home, I didn't
say a word about nothing.
Then all of a sudden,
people are
flipping on me again.
You know?
I said,
"(Bleep) this."
I said, "What the
(bleep) kind of life is this?
I keep my mouth shut
and then I come home
(bleep) want
to tell on me?
There's no
(bleep) loyalty,
I might as
well flip too.
What am I gonna
do, be a sucker?"
Narrator: By the 1990s,
dozens of guys are flipping.
The old code of silence,
what used to be called
"omerta",
no longer holds.
Faced with the threat
of life sentences in prison,
or getting whacked
by their own side,
gangsters up
and down the
ladder reconsider
their options.
Jimmy Calandra: After my
friend Pauly was murdered,
I was at the point
of my life you know,
where I had enough.
I wanted away
from this life.
I sat down
with a prosecutor,
I made an
agreement with him
and I testified
against Anthony Spero.
Narrator: Spero,
the onetime acting boss
of the
Bonanno family.
Jimmy Calandra:
You know, it was hard.
It wasn't easy;
it's not an
easy thing to do.
Spero was someone I
knew for a very long time
since I was a
little boy that told
me never
tattletale on anybody,
you know,
because at one time
I really
liked this guy.
You know, I had
respect for him.
But when I sat down
on the stand all I
thought about was how
Anthony Spero used to send
us out on
missions for him.
He might put on the nice
guy appearance, you know,
that gentle way about him,
but I know deep inside,
I know that he was a
gangster and if he could,
he would have me
killed right there and then.
If he could
get away with it.
Jim Walden: So
Anthony Spero was
sentenced to life in
prison and he went to prison
and he
died in prison.
He did not cooperate,
even though we very much
wanted him to cooperate
to build a case against
Massino and the other
members of the Bonanno family
that were on the rise.
Narrator: So Bonanno
Boss Joe Massino remains
insulated from the
problems created by the
Bath Avenue Crew
and continues running his
increasingly
profitable empire.
Fat Sal: Joe Massino
was able to come home from
prison and run a
well-greased machine,
and they made
a lot of money.
Edward McDonald:
Joe Massino was running
the Bonanno crime
family in an effective way,
but what they were
doing was they were leaving
a lot of
paper trails.
Mitra Hormozi:
You have agents in the
Bonanno Organized
Crime Squad who are
trying to figure out,
how can we get
to this family?
And they thought
maybe the way to this is,
"Let's follow the money,"
because a lot of these
captains are now very wealthy,
living the good life.
Narrator: One of
them is Sal Vitale,
Joe Massino's
brother in law.
Mitra Hormozi:
Joe Massino taught Sal Vitale
how to swim when
they were little kids.
I mean, they were
just very, very close.
Once Massino
gets out of prison,
their relationship
becomes a little bit strained.
Other members of the
Bonanno organized crime family
perhaps were
jealous of Vitale,
or did not like his
style of running the show,
and so they're starting
to whisper in Massino's
ears about Vitale.
Narrator: After Mob Boss
Joe Massino is released from
prison in 1992, he makes a
series of sweeping reforms
that turns the
Bonanno family into a
well-greased machine.
But the family's
foundation trembles when
Massino's
Underboss, Sal Vitale,
believes a rumor that
the boss wants him whacked.
Mitra Hormozi: This
is the ultimate betrayal
for Sal Vitale.
Here's the man who he
loved more than anyone else,
who he believes
he served faithfully,
and the fact he may
have wanted to kill
him just switches
something in Sal Vitale.
Jim Walden: The underboss
deciding to cooperate
against his
brother-in-law was
the last nail in the
coffin for Massino.
Sue Simmons:
Federal prosecutors are
claiming victory tonight
after reputed mob boss
Joseph "Big Joey"
Massino was convicted
on all counts of murder,
extortion and racketeering.
Edward McDonald: He's
charged with 8 murders.
One of the murders,
Joe was facing the
death penalty
on that case.
So he reaches out
to the trial judge and
he says that he
wants to cooperate.
Agent Pistone:
Joey Massino finds out
he's gonna get
the death penalty,
the first thing he
does is he cooperates.
He had that fear that he
was gonna die in the chair,
and he cracked.
Mitra Hormozi: And
that was the first time
that an official boss of
an organized crime family
had decided to
become a turncoat.
Bruce Cutler: Imagine!
The head of the group!
Fat Sal: He knew how
to play the system.
But when the
(bleep) hit the fan,
the (bleep)
hit the fan!
Michael Franzese: Gosh.
I mean that's the
ultimate betrayal in my view,
for a boss, somebody
that is supposed to
be so
entrenched in this life,
so entrenched in
the ideology of this life,
a leader.
The fact that a
boss could do that is,
is devastating.
Narrator: By 2003,
the sun's finally setting
on the American Mob.
After 70 years as the
most powerful organized
crime force in
the United States,
Cosa Nostra
is decimated.
The mob first
stumbles in 1970,
when Mafia Boss
Joe Colombo steps out of
the shadows and
into the public eye
and is
gunned down shortly
thereafter by a
mob hired hit man.
It continues with the
landmark infiltration of
the Bonanno family
by FBI Agent Joe Pistone,
and the prosecution
of the leaders of the
five families in the
commission case by U.S.
Attorney Rudolph
Giuliani in the 1980s.
Rudolph Giuliani: We have
now proven in a court of law
beyond a reasonable doubt
not only that there's a
mafia, but that
there's a commission
that it
runs the mafia.
Narrator: Publicity
hungry don John Gotti
turns out to be another
nail in the coffin in the 90s.
But it all culminates
with the betrayal by the
last don, Joe Massino
when he becomes the
first boss of a
family to cooperate with
the federal government.
Mitra Hormozi:
Joe Massino's conviction
really was the
end of an era for
the five families
in New York.
Rudolph Giuliani:
That's sort of the real
deterioration
of all their values,
all their principles.
Bruce Cutler: The
underworld as I knew it
has been pulverized!
Pummeled!
What there was then
certainly, I don't see now.
Edward McDonald: They're
on the run because the
Justice Department and
local law enforcement
in those regions
have gone after the
mafia with a vengeance.
Jimmy Calandra:
Too much technology.
Too many
people talking.
Too much
law enforcement.
Too many cameras.
You know?
Too many people
taking pictures.
[makes clicking sound]
Narrator: Organized
crime still exists,
but it's
not the same.
Agent Kallstrom: There's
still thugs that hijack
and sell dope
and run prostitution
and gambling rackets,
but it's nothing like it was.
Detective Dades: Is
there a handful of real
tough guys out there?
Is there a handful
of guys out there
that got good
schemes going on?
Yeah.
To compare it to anything
of like it used to be?
Those days
are over forever.
Narrator: The mob's
downfall is the culmination
of a determined
decades-long campaign
by law enforcement.
Bruce Cutler: The goal
that the government had
was to denude
La Cosa Nostra
of all its armaments.
They have succeeded.
Agent Devecchio: We
took a lot of their assets
and their
moneymaking opportunities
away from them.
Agent Pistone: We
took 'em from being the
top organized crime
group in the country
to just another
organized crime group.
We really kicked the
(bleep) out of the mob.
Narrator:
One key victory:
the breaking of
the code of secrecy
known as Omerta,
practiced on pain
of death for
decades, now in ruins.
Michael Franzese: What
separated us is that we had
that structure,
we had that respect,
we had that honor,
and we had to
abide by it or
there were
serious consequences.
Salvatore Polisi:
There was greed,
there was jealousy,
and all of the
sudden the principles
and the honor
was out the window.
Philip Leonetti:
La Cosa Nostra,
you know, I
believed in it one time.
It's like when I was a kid
I believed in Santa Claus.
As I got older,
I didn't believe
in Santa Claus anymore
and it's the same way
with La Cosa Nostra.
Rudolph Giuliani: They had
these delusions of grandeur.
I think by the
time you get to 2003,
all the delusions
of grandeur are gone and
they're just a bunch
of, a bunch of creeps.
My father, from
the time I was young,
would describe
them as bullies.
"If you need 2 or 3
men to fight your battles,
you're not a real man,"
my father would say,
"a real man can
fight his own battles."
Narrator: But almost
no one believes the mob
is gone for good.
Selwyn Raab: The mob
has taken a lot of hits.
They're wounded, gravely.
But not mortally.
Michael Franzese:
This thing is cyclical.
Organized crime, boom.
They pound on everybody,
they pound on everybody
for a period
of time and then
something else
becomes important.
Terrorism
becomes important.
So they take the agents
off, they focus on that,
and the guys on the
street they build up again.
Selwyn Raab: It's
what some people call
"the cockroach theory":
when the
lights are out the
cockroaches roam freely.
If you turn the spotlight
on them they have to scurry.
Agent Mouw:
I remember talking to
Sammy "the Bull"
Gravano about this.
And he said,
"One theory is everybody
lay low for 10 years,
the government will go
away, we'll come back,
we'll be
stronger than ever."
Fat Sal: It's
gonna grow again.
There's gonna
be a spike.
And this time
when it spikes,
it's gonna spike bad.
There's a fresh crew coming
out after serving 20 years,
they're coming
out in the next year,
the next two years,
they're coming
back to Brooklyn.
They know nothing
but to commit crimes.
They're gonna come
back old, tight and hungry.
God knows what's
only gonna happen when
they hit them streets.
from Brooklyn, New York,
Bensonhurst.
The neighborhood is
run by the Italian mafia.
One day, April 4th,
my friend
John Polio was murdered.
The kid
Michael Hamster
was taking
credit for his murder.
It goes around
in the neighborhood,
this kid's bragging
that he killed John Polio,
you know, so I
wanted some payback.
I go to Joey Calco
and Pauly Gulino.
And Pauly G.
gave us a 380,
me and Joey,
and we go hunt
for Michael Hamster.
We see him get into
Bobby DeCicco's car.
We follow him.
He stops at a red light
on 17th Avenue and Benson.
He rolls down the
window 'cause he thinks
he's a tough guy
and all of a sudden Joey
puts out the pistol,
and he starts
unloading on him,
pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
The kid,
Michael Hamster,
is jumping one leg across
the street like hopping.
The kid Joey Calco
with the shotgun boom
hits him and he falls.
Joey hands
me the gun.
I put it
down my pants.
Joey takes off.
As we're driving,
there's a cop car.
This is
a true story.
Therefore,
he pulls us over.
Now, we're
a little nervous.
I got a gun down
my pants, you know,
we just shot
this kid 5 times and
all of a sudden on
the cop's radio we hear,
"Man shot,
17th and Benson."
Police Radio:
All units report.
Jimmy Calandra:
The cop goes like this,
"Today's your lucky day."
And he
just takes off.
Phew.
He had us
right there.
Narrator: It is 1992 and
most of the old bosses of
the five families of
Cosa Nostra are in prison.
Fearing life sentences and
payback from their own side,
gangsters everywhere
start cooperating with
the United
States government.
Sammy Gravano: As
part of my cooperation,
I told the government
about my life of crimes,
including the fact that I
participated in 19 murders.
Narrator: Which leads
to the take down of the
most famous boss of
modern times, John Gotti.
But the remnants of
the five families remain
loose on
the streets,
trying to
rebuild on the ashes,
and none is more
determined and dangerous
than the
Bonanno family,
which begins their ascent
below law enforcement's radar.
These people are witnesses
to that secret history,
stepping out of
the shadows to tell
their
story first-hand.
A few remain concealed
for personal safety,
fearful of an
organization that even in
the 1990s is fully capable
of resurrecting itself,
like the Bonanno's.
Jim Walden: I think it's
fair to say that 2 events
brought the Bonanno family
to the edge of extinction.
First obviously
its boss was murdered,
Carmine Galante, famous
image of him lying dead
with a cigar
still in his mouth.
But at the same time
there was the Donnie Brasco
infiltration and
subsequent prosecution.
Agent Pistone: This
operation really kicked
the Bonanno's
in the arse.
We kind of
really decimated them.
Mitra Hormozi: That was
a huge blight on the Bonanno
organized crime family.
As a result they were
kicked off the commission.
It was a
major embarrassment.
Narrator: The commission
is the board of executives
that oversees the
five families of the mob:
Gambino, Colombo, Lucchese,
Genovese and Bonanno.
They call the shots
determining who lives
and who dies.
Ironically, the Bonanno
family's expulsion from
the commission turns
out to be their big break.
Agent Pistone: The FBI
and other law enforcement
agencies moved on to other
cases so they didn't really
keep a clamp on
the guys that were
left in the family.
Jim Walden: Their headlines
were about the Gambino's and
about the Lucchese's,
and about the Genovese family,
and the internal
war in Colombo family.
Edward McDonald:
You know, Gotti's gone,
Castellano's gone.
And the
Colombo family,
they're having a
Colombo family war.
The Genovese family:
Fat Tony is gone,
he's been convicted.
The Lucchese family
is in total disarray.
Chin Gigante is on the
run, he's been indicted
or about to be indicted.
Jim Walden: These
different problems within
these families
allowed the Bonanno's to
continue to exist to
keep a lot of its turf,
and for a period of
time to fly low on the radar
to give it a chance to
rebuild its infrastructure,
and that's
exactly what they did.
Narrator: While
Bonanno boss Joe Massino
is in prison serving
6 years for racketeering,
his subordinate, old
school gangster Anthony Spero,
takes over
daily operations.
Spero is one of the last
major mob figures still on
the street, and
a believer in traditional
mafia values of
secrecy, respect and murder.
Jim Walden: He had
strong connections with
the other families,
and he had the respect
of lower
level members.
Detective Dades:
He was a gentleman to
law enforcement, and he
was very well respected,
you know,
in the neighborhood.
Jim Walden: He was known
to host an extravagant
fireworks show
every year for members
of the community.
Detective Dades:
But he was a lethal guy
and he would kill you.
Jim Walden: He was a bit
of an eccentric guy though.
Anthony Spero:
Come on baby, come on.
Detective Dades: He was
very big into pigeon races
and pigeon coops and
whatever you do with pigeons.
Jim Walden: They would
fly in a big sweeping flock
around the
neighborhood and ultimately
come right back home.
Jimmy Calandra: He was
going like this, voof,
and all the pigeons
are following him,
you see them flying.
Jim Walden: And if
you think about it,
it's almost a metaphor
for Spero's criminal
organization, where
he's releasing not pigeons
but villains, murderers,
thugs, out on the streets,
all for them to make money
and to bring it back to him.
Narrator: Spero
excels at taking children
off the streets
of his neighborhood
and grooming them for
a life of crime and violence.
Kids like
Jimmy Calandra,
who grows up in the
Bensonhurst neighborhood
of Brooklyn in
the 1980s at a time
when the mafia is
fighting for its life
against law enforcement
but still has the power
and glamour to make a big
impression on little boys.
Calandra and his best
friends are nothing
but kids when they
start their journey
into the underworld.
Jimmy Calandra: The
core group of my friends
was Pauly Gulino, Tommy
Reynolds, Joey Calco, me,
and Fabrizio DeFrancisci.
We were troubled
kids in the neighborhood,
we were bad kids.
You know, we
decided to form a crew.
Jim Walden: They got
tattoos on their ankles
to label themselves
number 1 through number 7.
Jimmy Calandra:
We were making a pact
with each other.
You know, we were all
in the same crew together,
you know.
One for all,
all for one.
Narrator: The boys of
Bath Avenue have each other's
backs in a Brooklyn
neighborhood steeped
in the code
of Cosa Nostra.
All five families
have a foothold here.
Jimmy Calandra: Bath
Avenue was a known avenue for
mob-related activity.
Detective Dades:
Bath Avenue was filled
with social
clubs, you know.
There was
three on the block.
You knew who were the
guys that were connected,
who were the guys
that were up and coming.
Jimmy Calandra: You
know, I was a young kid
growing up
around wise guys.
The guys making the
money, you know every time
they see us, here,
here's 20, you know.
As soon as I leave my
house, I got 20 dollars.
I go to the corner,
I hang out, you know?
What do I
got to work for?
We had Nick's Candy
Store right around
the corner
from my apartment.
That's where we
would all come together.
Detective Dades: You know,
there was a group of guys
on every other block,
no matter what time,
day and night, there
was always somebody there.
That corner
was home base.
Jimmy Calandra: And we
would do errands for them.
They would give
us a couple dollars,
"Here, go up the block and
get me two French bread."
Say they need
someone's window broke,
thrown us the keys,
"Go wash my car,"
whatever
the case may be.
You knew they
controlled the neighborhood,
you know, with
their walk and talks.
In the neighborhood,
you know who was who.
You know, these were the
guys that I looked up to.
Jim Walden: Imagine that
you are an eight-year-old boy
in a working class
neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Most of the men and women
that you know are struggling
to make ends meet, they're
working their fingers to the
bone but what you
see down the street at the
social club are
Cadillac's pulling up and
men dressed in $500
suits getting in and out
of the Cadillac's.
Jimmy Calandra: These
men were my father figures.
You know,
if I needed anything
they just helped me.
If we had a problem,
we knew where to go.
Jim Walden: These kids
really did start as kids.
Some of them were 8 or 9
years old when they first
started running
numbers at the social clubs.
Detective Dades: Social
clubs were really big.
Gambling parlors,
you know, were really big.
They were bookmakers
and if you tried to use
the payphone on a Sunday
they'd cut your hands off.
Jimmy Calandra:
We'd do straight bets,
we'd do parlays;
we were gambling
every football game,
Sundays, everything.
I was
loaning out money.
I was a little kid.
I was maybe
13 years old.
We thought we were
somebody, you know,
and we were looking
up to these guys and
we actually thought
we were doing something.
Jim Walden: 8 or 9
they're running numbers,
12, 13, 14
they're parking cars and
hiding weapons
and moving money,
and they move up the
ranks to do more violent
and more
profitable things.
Narrator: As the
Bath Avenue boys grow up
what starts with
trips to the bakery ends
in crime and violence.
Jimmy Calandra:
As we got older,
we just got
more dangerous.
You know, so instead of
boys, now we're just a crew.
Narrator: It's now the 80s,
the era of crack cocaine,
a drug that ignites
rampant street violence in
New York City and the
Bath Avenue Crew fits right in.
Fat Sal: The
Bath Avenue Crew,
they would smoke drugs,
rob drug dealers,
and then they got
into the drug business,
started
extorting drug dealers.
Jimmy Calandra:
We were doing bookmaking,
we had the cocaine
business on beepers,
we had the
pot business.
We were
stealing cars.
I was doing banks,
I was doing burglaries.
Detective Dades: They're
out there earning because
being a good earner is a
way to get in good graces,
you know, by sending
money up the ladder,
getting some respect
from some of the wise guys.
Jim Walden: So the
Bath Avenue Crew was
embraced by the Bonanno
family as associates because
they were
good at their jobs.
And the job of an
associate is to earn money
and to engage in violent
acts when they're needed,
and this group
really excelled at both.
Detective Dades: They
were a gruesome bunch of guys.
Jim Walden:
Fabrizio Defrancisci,
one of the most ruthless
enforcers the group had.
He took a blowtorch
and literally tortured one
crack dealer who was
using product on the street.
Tommy Reynolds,
out of anger,
picked up a fork and
jabbed it in someone's eye.
That's how violent
these guys were.
Fat Sal: They killed
a lot of innocent people;
they committed a double
homicide for I think an
eight ball of cocaine.
Jim Walden: They were
doing exactly what associates
had been doing,
maybe more violently,
but doing for
many, many years.
Jimmy Calandra:
We're Spero's muscle.
And when Spero
needs something done,
we are at his disposal.
Narrator: The acting
boss of the Bonanno family
soon puts them to work.
Jim Walden:
Spero had a daughter
in the neighborhood.
One day there
was a drug addict
named
Vincent Bickelman.
He broke into her
house and stole a necklace.
Jimmy Calandra:
After he stole it,
he went to somewhere on
86th street to sell it.
It had Jill's name on
the necklace, it said,
"Jill," and it
got back to Spero.
He broke into a Bonanno
boss's daughter's house.
Jim Walden: Spero went
to Gulino to pass the
order to kill
Bickelman and of course,
Gulino saw this as
his opportunity to get
inducted into
the Bonanno family.
Detective Dades:
Pauly Gulino was
the leader
of that group.
Vicious guy.
Jimmy Calandra:
He didn't give a (bleep).
He wasn't
afraid of nobody,
he was a ballsy
kid he was a tough kid,
and a lot of wise
guys were afraid of him.
So when a thief
inadvertently robs the
daughter of
Bonanno family crime boss,
Anthony Spero, the Bath
Avenue boys get the call.
Jimmy Calandra: It was
a big opportunity for us.
This was a very, very
important piece of work to
do for Anthony Spero
because this was gonna get
Pauly Gulino recognized
and hopefully become a made
member in the family.
Agent Pistone: You know,
there are certain rules to
become a made guy and one
of them is you have to earn
your button, you
have to kill somebody.
Jimmy Calandra: One day
Pauly Gulino's driving
around, he saw the kid
and he runs up on the kid,
Vincent Bickelman,
right around the corner
from the police station,
right off the corner,
he jumped out and he
just shot the kid 5 times.
That's it, drop.
We all went to the bar,
Pauly told all of
us what happened,
we celebrated,
we were drinking,
are you kidding we had
a great (bleep) time.
Narrator: The
Bickelman murder cements
the Bath Avenue
Crew's reputation.
It tells everyone on
the street there's a new
gang in town,
guys who are on their
way to becoming made
men in the Bonanno family.
Detective Dades: They
want people to know that
they just killed this guy
because you're recognized
now by made guys,
by captains, that you're
capable of doing
things like that.
Jimmy Calandra:
We ain't kids no more.
You know, we're
looking to you know
move up to
the next level.
Narrator: The members
of the Bath Avenue Crew want
to join the Bonanno
family at a crucial moment:
just as Joe Massino,
the family boss,
gets released from prison
after serving six
years for racketeering.
Edward McDonald: So
Joe Massino gets out of
prison and all the other
bosses have been convicted.
They're
replaced by underlings,
people who were
not that significant.
So Joe comes out and he
is someone who is revered.
He is like the last don,
the one well-respected boss.
Agent Devecchio:
Unlike a lot of organized
crime members,
Massino was very friendly.
Very affable.
Mitra Hormozi:
Very jovial,
beloved by
members of his family.
Agent Sallet: He
worked with John Gotti,
they were close
friends and close
confidants in
truck hijacking.
Narrator: He's also
one more made guy with
a violent past,
routinely ordering associates
like Sal Polisi
to use their muscle.
Sal Polisi: The Bonanno
family had a case running,
and Joe Massino who
later became the boss,
called Foxy and I said,
"Look, you
gotta do us a favor.
There's a
witness you gotta go,
you gotta go
beat this guy up.
I want you to break
his arms and legs to give
a message, give a beating
so that he wouldn't testify."
So we beat this
guy up with bats,
broke his arms and
legs, only to find out
he was the wrong
guy, he was the father.
And then when Massino called
us in for a meeting he said,
"Look, you beat up the
wrong guy, but it's okay.
The witness
disappeared anyway."
Narrator: But
Massino doesn't
just subcontract
his killing,
he's done it himself.
His claim to fame is
as one of the shooters in
the Three Capos Murder,
an infamous gangland massacre
from the early 1980's.
Agent Pistone: Three
captains wanted to take
over the family:
Sonny Red Indelicato,
Phil Lucky Giaccone,
and Dominick Trinchera.
Mitra Hormozi: Massino
goes to the commission,
he then gets
permission to go ahead
and kill the
three captains.
Narrator: But when
Massino gets out of prison in
1992 after six years,
he's faced with a new reality.
He needs to
keep a low profile.
He recognizes the
mistakes of other bosses like
John Gotti and
Joe Colombo who spent
too much time in public
or got caught on tape
by electronic
listening devices.
So Massino reforms the
Bonanno family starting with
his own extreme
variation on that tried
and true
code of silence.
Mitra Hormozi: No one
is allowed to say his name.
Instead, he says
anyone who wants to refer
to the boss must just use
the visual hand to the ear.
Edward McDonald: Just
like Chin Gigante in the
Genovese family, you
had to touch your chin,
well Joey was
gonna be called the ear.
Mitra Hormozi: Also,
he did not go to weddings
and funerals where
people would be photographed.
Agent Sallet: He
doesn't use a cell phone,
he doesn't use a pager,
he doesn't use his home phone.
Narrator: He also
takes the extreme measure
of ending a
decades old tradition,
closing down the
places that were once the
hub of all mob
activity: social clubs.
Agent Devecchio: For many,
many years I'm sure they
thought they were
invincible in social clubs,
but we managed to bug
a number of social clubs
and overheard a lot
of incriminating information.
Agent Sallet:
Joe Massino learned
what he should
and should not do.
Narrator: At
the same time,
he encourages a
major new front in the
way the
mob earns money:
Wall Street.
Agent Barrows: 90s brought
a tremendous bull market,
enormous amounts of money
and some loose regulations.
Everybody wanted
to be in the market,
everybody was making
money who was in the market.
So it was really a
perfect and fertile ground
for organized crime.
Narrator: By 1993,
Bonanno family boss,
Joe Massino,
is the last of his kind,
an old school Godfather
who believes in the
code of silence and secrecy
characterizing the
Golden Age of the American mob.
But he's also an innovator
when it comes to earning,
seizing new
opportunities not in
Bensonhurst
but on Wall Street.
Edward McDonald: By
the time Joe got out of
prison the heady days
of labor racketeering were
pretty much
coming to an end.
So the big, big money
that the mafia was making
through labor racketeering
was really just not available
anymore and they began
to move towards Wall Street.
Agent Barrows:
In the 90s, it was
certainly a bull market.
There were
tons of new companies,
the internet was sort
of new and burgeoning
at the time and certainly
where there's a lot of
easy money to be made
you can be rest assured
that the mob's gonna
be there to make it.
Narrator: Legitimate
stockbrokers must follow
the rules of the Securities
and Exchange Commission,
but not Joe Massino
and the Bonanno family.
Fraud is the
key to their success.
Agent Barrows: The
underbelly of Wall Street
is where
the mob operates.
That's where the
boiler rooms come in.
These boiler rooms are
filled with very young kids,
unsophisticated kids,
who have one task and that
is to sell stock and
to say whatever it is they
need to say, follow
whatever script they have
in front of them to make
sure they accomplish that task.
Most of the boiler rooms
look like New Year's Eve
party had been
thrown the night before,
often scantily clad
women walking around,
stacks of papers,
cigarettes, alcohol.
Looks nothing
like you'd imagine
that a brokerage
house looks like.
Narrator: The game is
called "Pump and Dump,"
and it works like this:
mobbed up traders acquire
large blocks of stocks
worth 5 dollars or less.
By controlling supply,
they increase demand,
artificially
inflating the stock's price.
Then they sell those
stocks to unsuspecting
investors for much
more than the original value,
in turn earning
an enormous profit.
Agent Barrows: The mob
makes sure things stay
in order and if they don't
successfully do their job,
they're going
to get a beating.
Sal Polisi:
Violence, threats,
extortion, blackmail;
the mob was a
master at bullying.
Salmieri: The fear
of the violence is
what keeps
everybody in line.
Agent Barrows: They make
sure those boiler room kids
keep that
stock put away.
They sell it and they
don't let it get sold
back to the market.
Agent Barrows: It's paid
in cash and it's undisclosed.
There's no paper trail,
nobody knows about it.
Get a bag of
cash on Friday.
Narrator: The
cash is divvied up,
some going into
the brokers pocket,
the rest
going to the bosses.
Raking in the cash
for Joe Massino of the
Bonanno family is
this guy, Robert Lino.
Agent Barrows: Lino was
the muscle at the higher level.
He was the Capo.
He was the one
who represented
them in sit-downs.
He was the one
who essentially ran a
investment firm
in lower Manhattan
called DMN Capital,
which was under the
auspices of the Bonanno family.
Narrator: To rat out the
Bonanno family's corruption
on Wall Street,
Agent Kevin Barrows
needs to get
inside DMN Capital.
Agent Barrows: It was
too risky in this day and
age to have an agent
try to go undercover,
because you had
to know somebody.
It wasn't the days of,
you know, Joe Pistone,
where it was somewhat
easier to infiltrate.
My partner and I began
to really develop a lot
of co-operating witnesses.
Narrator: But not just
any cooperating witness.
His informant
works as a mole inside
the mob's boiler rooms.
With his help,
Operation Uptick is born.
Agent Barrows: The
goal of an informant
is always to get the
next person up in the chain.
As we always say,
"We gotta eat our way up
the chain and
get to the top."
Narrator: The Feds want
Bonanno Boss Joe Massino,
but before they can reach
the top of that food chain,
FBI agents must
snare a smaller fish and
catch Bonanno Capo
Robert Lino on tape first.
So they send their DMN
informant to work wearing
a wire and the
stakes couldn't be higher.
If discovered, they'll
almost certainly be killed.
Robert Lino: [on tape]
You better get my (bleep)
money and Louis,
I better have it soon.
I am going to put the
word out with everybody
I know, everybody,
you are done.
You understand me,
you rotten (bleep)!
Agent Barrows: There were
times when we had him wired
up and ready to go and
found out somebody was coming,
and we'd take the wire off
seconds before he walked in.
Simply because
Robert Lino was a very tough,
very violent guy.
But my partner and I were
extraordinarily successful
at getting people to
cooperate and we just kept
getting more and more
cooperators who gave us more
and more information
about more and more people,
who, which led to
more and more indictments.
Narrator:
Operation Uptick grows,
putting increasing
numbers of mobsters in
the FBI's crosshairs,
including Robert Lino.
Man: In the largest
federal arrest operation
ever in the New York City
metropolitan area,
more than 600 FBI
agents began arresting
120 defendants as
a result of a 10-month
investigation
code-named: Uptick.
Agent Barrows: It
really awakened the public
and it
awakened regulators.
Narrator: But Joe Massino
knows how to play the system
like an old school boss,
and his anti-surveillance
techniques pay off.
He's never caught
on tape and gets away
clean in
Operation Uptick.
While the Bonanno
family tries its hand
at white-collar
crime in Manhattan,
back in Brooklyn the old
friendships on Bath Avenue
are about
to disintegrate,
starting with this
guy, Tommy Reynolds.
Fat Sal:
With Tommy Reynolds,
he's a
cracked-out maniac.
Smoking crack, kill you
for a $100 piece of crack.
Narrator: Reynolds and
fellow Bath Avenue member,
Jimmy Calandra,
join a third guy,
a street thug
named Chris Ludwigsen,
on a heist that is
supposed to be an easy score.
Jimmy Calandra: He
notified me, he says,
"Jimmy, I got this
score with this guy,
big money in his house,
safe in his house
in his basement."
The money Chris was
talking about, you know,
he said it was close
to a million dollars.
Detective Dades:
There's just gonna be a
guy at home,
it's an easy score.
Jimmy Calandra: I said,
"Okay, sounds good."
So I brought
Reynolds with me because
Reynolds was always
my guy to do scores with.
Jim Walden:
And at the time,
Tommy Reynolds
was one of the key
people who was
organizing the crack
distribution ring
and he started using
some of the
product himself.
Jimmy Calandra:
No one else was supposed
to be in this house.
Only this guy was
supposed to be there.
So we all get out,
Chris waits in the car.
I knock on the door.
All of a sudden,
I see this woman.
I hear "boom."
The lady goes
flying across the room.
Jim Walden: Reynolds in his
crack stupor accidentally
pulled the trigger to the
gun and shot her in the head
in front of her
then 9-year-old daughter.
Jimmy Calandra: I went
there to go rob a safe and
Tommy Reynolds ends up
shooting the lady by accident.
I said, "What
the (bleep) did I
just get
myself involved in?"
I was so ashamed of it.
I mean it's
one thing, you know,
killing someone from
the street but you're
killing an
innocent woman.
It was like so (bleep)
hard for me to live with.
Detective Dades:
Jimmy lived with that,
I know, I know that
still affects him to this,
to this day.
Jim Walden:
As it turned out,
there was no safe
in the house at all,
and they had just
gotten bad information.
Narrator: The violence is
starting to get out of hand
even for a rough
crew like Bath Avenue.
A bloody battle over
turf and bragging rights
is about to start
and no one can imagine
where it will end.
Jim Walden:
The Bath Avenue Crew,
given the violence
of its members,
had more pride, ego,
than just about anyone else.
But there was
a rival in the area.
A group on
20th Avenue was
extraordinarily
violent as well.
Turf is an issue
and pride is an issue.
Jimmy Calandra: They
had a little crew that
grew up just like us.
They lost some
of their friends;
they retaliated at the
guys who killed their friends,
so they were
like tough like us.
Jim Walden: There were a
number of extraordinarily
violent shoot-outs.
Jimmy Calandra: With
the 20th Avenue kids,
everybody was
always on high alert.
I never left my
house without a pistol.
I had a bulletproof vest,
with a plate in the front,
plate in the back.
Plus I also had the
strap-on where you got a
pistol over here and
you got a pistol over here,
you know, you got
2 pistols like this.
We were ready
to go to war.
We didn't
trust anybody.
My friends were being
killed left and right.
We were shooting
people left and right.
Detective Dades: When
I think back how much
craziness was going on
up there it really was,
it was like a
shooting gallery up there.
Narrator: Violence gets so
extreme that Spero steps in.
Jimmy Calandra: There was
a sit down with their people,
and Spero told them,
you know what we're gonna
straighten this out,
we're gonna put this
underneath the table;
let's go forward,
stuff like that.
But Pauly Gulino
didn't want that.
Narrator: Gulino,
the hothead of the
Bath Avenue Crew,
wants more respect.
Jim Walden: Gulino was
very upset about the lack
of support he was getting
and he obviously felt,
as the person that carried
out the Bickelman murder,
that his place
should be more important.
Narrator: So Gulino
does the unthinkable for
a small time
mob associate,
he challenges Spero,
one of the most respected
men in the Bonanno crime
family and a seriously
dangerous individual.
Jimmy Calandra: Pauly G.
wanted his full support.
You know, I'm with
you, you're supposed to
defend me,
(bleep) them.
Detective Dades:
He wanted to kill Spero.
Jim Walden: Everyone
knows that Anthony Spero
is, you know, one of
the kings, one of the
few bosses that
still lives in the area.
And in the middle of
this heated confrontation
on the public street,
Gulino pushes Spero,
puts his hands on him.
Jimmy Calandra: He gave
himself a death sentence.
Jim: Walden: There are
some rules you cannot break.
I mean you can't stay
in the neighborhood after
you hit a made
member in a crime family,
because your own
friends are gonna be the
one to take you out.
Spero essentially turned
around and walked away,
turned his
back on Gulino.
That was the day that Paul
Gulino became a marked man.
Jimmy Calandra: Spero gave
the order to kill Pauly,
and you know,
who's gonna kill Pauly?
Pauly's a hard
person to kill.
The only people that could
kill Pauly were his friends.
Jim Walden: He was
holed up in his apartment.
He doesn't know when
the day of reckoning is
going to come and so he
can trust almost no one.
But he does trust
Joey Calco and Tommy Reynolds.
It's those two that were
in the short list of people
whose knock Gulino
would have responded
to with an open door.
Jimmy Calandra: Tommy and
Joey went to Pauly Gulino's
house on a Sunday.
They asked him for
something to drink,
he opened the
refrigerator door.
As he opened the
refrigerator door,
Joey put a couple bullets
in the back of Pauly's head.
Jim Walden: Gulino
fell to the floor dead.
Detective Dades: You know,
you can go from being on top
of the list to,
you know, to get a nod,
and two friends
blow your brains out.
Jim Walden: Gulino,
Reynolds, Calco,
they've been friends
for their whole lives.
They grew up together,
they marked their ankles
together, and yet,
at that critical moment,
it was the two best
friends that snuffed out
Paul Gulino's life
because they were ordered to,
but more importantly,
because they wanted to,
because they knew that
it would be a path to
their own rise within
the Bonanno family.
Jimmy Calandra: They
left like nothing happened.
That's it.
Narrator: But
Pauly Gulino's murder will
change everything
for the Bath Avenue Crew.
At the time of the
killing, Jimmy Calandra,
one of the original members
in the Bath Avenue Crew
is in jail where
he hears about the hit.
Jimmy Calandra: I call
Tommy Reynolds that night
from federal prison.
I said, "Was it you?
Was that, was it you?"
And he was crying.
He said, "No,"
he said, "No."
But I knew it
was my friends.
Detective Dades: Jimmy
saw a lot of deceit and
treachery and saw his
best friend get killed.
Jimmy Calandra:
I felt sick.
I wanted to throw up.
I was sad.
I was like a baby crying
in my cell, seriously.
Pauly was a really
good friend of mine,
a dear friend, a childhood
friend and just you know,
I was never the type
to kill my own friends.
That wasn't me.
You know, if Spero
would've gave me the hit,
in all honesty, I
probably would've told Pauly.
I stopped and I looked,
said, "You know what;
we're not friends
no more over here.
You know what we are?
We became gangsters."
Narrator: Law enforcement
round up the remaining
members of the crew while
Calandra is still in prison.
But when he gets out,
his past catches up
to him again.
He's under investigation
for an old murder in
Staten Island,
the unsolved killing of a
woman with no
connection to organized crime.
New York Police
Detective Tommy Dades
has been piecing
together the details
and is getting
close to an arrest.
Detective Dades:
I was investigating him
to lock him up.
He did some jail time,
he got out and he knew
that we had just locked
everybody else up and
he knew that the
axe was gonna fall
on him
sooner or later.
Jimmy Calandra: The
feds knocked on my door
and told me your past
came back to haunt you.
When I got home, I didn't
say a word about nothing.
Then all of a sudden,
people are
flipping on me again.
You know?
I said,
"(Bleep) this."
I said, "What the
(bleep) kind of life is this?
I keep my mouth shut
and then I come home
(bleep) want
to tell on me?
There's no
(bleep) loyalty,
I might as
well flip too.
What am I gonna
do, be a sucker?"
Narrator: By the 1990s,
dozens of guys are flipping.
The old code of silence,
what used to be called
"omerta",
no longer holds.
Faced with the threat
of life sentences in prison,
or getting whacked
by their own side,
gangsters up
and down the
ladder reconsider
their options.
Jimmy Calandra: After my
friend Pauly was murdered,
I was at the point
of my life you know,
where I had enough.
I wanted away
from this life.
I sat down
with a prosecutor,
I made an
agreement with him
and I testified
against Anthony Spero.
Narrator: Spero,
the onetime acting boss
of the
Bonanno family.
Jimmy Calandra:
You know, it was hard.
It wasn't easy;
it's not an
easy thing to do.
Spero was someone I
knew for a very long time
since I was a
little boy that told
me never
tattletale on anybody,
you know,
because at one time
I really
liked this guy.
You know, I had
respect for him.
But when I sat down
on the stand all I
thought about was how
Anthony Spero used to send
us out on
missions for him.
He might put on the nice
guy appearance, you know,
that gentle way about him,
but I know deep inside,
I know that he was a
gangster and if he could,
he would have me
killed right there and then.
If he could
get away with it.
Jim Walden: So
Anthony Spero was
sentenced to life in
prison and he went to prison
and he
died in prison.
He did not cooperate,
even though we very much
wanted him to cooperate
to build a case against
Massino and the other
members of the Bonanno family
that were on the rise.
Narrator: So Bonanno
Boss Joe Massino remains
insulated from the
problems created by the
Bath Avenue Crew
and continues running his
increasingly
profitable empire.
Fat Sal: Joe Massino
was able to come home from
prison and run a
well-greased machine,
and they made
a lot of money.
Edward McDonald:
Joe Massino was running
the Bonanno crime
family in an effective way,
but what they were
doing was they were leaving
a lot of
paper trails.
Mitra Hormozi:
You have agents in the
Bonanno Organized
Crime Squad who are
trying to figure out,
how can we get
to this family?
And they thought
maybe the way to this is,
"Let's follow the money,"
because a lot of these
captains are now very wealthy,
living the good life.
Narrator: One of
them is Sal Vitale,
Joe Massino's
brother in law.
Mitra Hormozi:
Joe Massino taught Sal Vitale
how to swim when
they were little kids.
I mean, they were
just very, very close.
Once Massino
gets out of prison,
their relationship
becomes a little bit strained.
Other members of the
Bonanno organized crime family
perhaps were
jealous of Vitale,
or did not like his
style of running the show,
and so they're starting
to whisper in Massino's
ears about Vitale.
Narrator: After Mob Boss
Joe Massino is released from
prison in 1992, he makes a
series of sweeping reforms
that turns the
Bonanno family into a
well-greased machine.
But the family's
foundation trembles when
Massino's
Underboss, Sal Vitale,
believes a rumor that
the boss wants him whacked.
Mitra Hormozi: This
is the ultimate betrayal
for Sal Vitale.
Here's the man who he
loved more than anyone else,
who he believes
he served faithfully,
and the fact he may
have wanted to kill
him just switches
something in Sal Vitale.
Jim Walden: The underboss
deciding to cooperate
against his
brother-in-law was
the last nail in the
coffin for Massino.
Sue Simmons:
Federal prosecutors are
claiming victory tonight
after reputed mob boss
Joseph "Big Joey"
Massino was convicted
on all counts of murder,
extortion and racketeering.
Edward McDonald: He's
charged with 8 murders.
One of the murders,
Joe was facing the
death penalty
on that case.
So he reaches out
to the trial judge and
he says that he
wants to cooperate.
Agent Pistone:
Joey Massino finds out
he's gonna get
the death penalty,
the first thing he
does is he cooperates.
He had that fear that he
was gonna die in the chair,
and he cracked.
Mitra Hormozi: And
that was the first time
that an official boss of
an organized crime family
had decided to
become a turncoat.
Bruce Cutler: Imagine!
The head of the group!
Fat Sal: He knew how
to play the system.
But when the
(bleep) hit the fan,
the (bleep)
hit the fan!
Michael Franzese: Gosh.
I mean that's the
ultimate betrayal in my view,
for a boss, somebody
that is supposed to
be so
entrenched in this life,
so entrenched in
the ideology of this life,
a leader.
The fact that a
boss could do that is,
is devastating.
Narrator: By 2003,
the sun's finally setting
on the American Mob.
After 70 years as the
most powerful organized
crime force in
the United States,
Cosa Nostra
is decimated.
The mob first
stumbles in 1970,
when Mafia Boss
Joe Colombo steps out of
the shadows and
into the public eye
and is
gunned down shortly
thereafter by a
mob hired hit man.
It continues with the
landmark infiltration of
the Bonanno family
by FBI Agent Joe Pistone,
and the prosecution
of the leaders of the
five families in the
commission case by U.S.
Attorney Rudolph
Giuliani in the 1980s.
Rudolph Giuliani: We have
now proven in a court of law
beyond a reasonable doubt
not only that there's a
mafia, but that
there's a commission
that it
runs the mafia.
Narrator: Publicity
hungry don John Gotti
turns out to be another
nail in the coffin in the 90s.
But it all culminates
with the betrayal by the
last don, Joe Massino
when he becomes the
first boss of a
family to cooperate with
the federal government.
Mitra Hormozi:
Joe Massino's conviction
really was the
end of an era for
the five families
in New York.
Rudolph Giuliani:
That's sort of the real
deterioration
of all their values,
all their principles.
Bruce Cutler: The
underworld as I knew it
has been pulverized!
Pummeled!
What there was then
certainly, I don't see now.
Edward McDonald: They're
on the run because the
Justice Department and
local law enforcement
in those regions
have gone after the
mafia with a vengeance.
Jimmy Calandra:
Too much technology.
Too many
people talking.
Too much
law enforcement.
Too many cameras.
You know?
Too many people
taking pictures.
[makes clicking sound]
Narrator: Organized
crime still exists,
but it's
not the same.
Agent Kallstrom: There's
still thugs that hijack
and sell dope
and run prostitution
and gambling rackets,
but it's nothing like it was.
Detective Dades: Is
there a handful of real
tough guys out there?
Is there a handful
of guys out there
that got good
schemes going on?
Yeah.
To compare it to anything
of like it used to be?
Those days
are over forever.
Narrator: The mob's
downfall is the culmination
of a determined
decades-long campaign
by law enforcement.
Bruce Cutler: The goal
that the government had
was to denude
La Cosa Nostra
of all its armaments.
They have succeeded.
Agent Devecchio: We
took a lot of their assets
and their
moneymaking opportunities
away from them.
Agent Pistone: We
took 'em from being the
top organized crime
group in the country
to just another
organized crime group.
We really kicked the
(bleep) out of the mob.
Narrator:
One key victory:
the breaking of
the code of secrecy
known as Omerta,
practiced on pain
of death for
decades, now in ruins.
Michael Franzese: What
separated us is that we had
that structure,
we had that respect,
we had that honor,
and we had to
abide by it or
there were
serious consequences.
Salvatore Polisi:
There was greed,
there was jealousy,
and all of the
sudden the principles
and the honor
was out the window.
Philip Leonetti:
La Cosa Nostra,
you know, I
believed in it one time.
It's like when I was a kid
I believed in Santa Claus.
As I got older,
I didn't believe
in Santa Claus anymore
and it's the same way
with La Cosa Nostra.
Rudolph Giuliani: They had
these delusions of grandeur.
I think by the
time you get to 2003,
all the delusions
of grandeur are gone and
they're just a bunch
of, a bunch of creeps.
My father, from
the time I was young,
would describe
them as bullies.
"If you need 2 or 3
men to fight your battles,
you're not a real man,"
my father would say,
"a real man can
fight his own battles."
Narrator: But almost
no one believes the mob
is gone for good.
Selwyn Raab: The mob
has taken a lot of hits.
They're wounded, gravely.
But not mortally.
Michael Franzese:
This thing is cyclical.
Organized crime, boom.
They pound on everybody,
they pound on everybody
for a period
of time and then
something else
becomes important.
Terrorism
becomes important.
So they take the agents
off, they focus on that,
and the guys on the
street they build up again.
Selwyn Raab: It's
what some people call
"the cockroach theory":
when the
lights are out the
cockroaches roam freely.
If you turn the spotlight
on them they have to scurry.
Agent Mouw:
I remember talking to
Sammy "the Bull"
Gravano about this.
And he said,
"One theory is everybody
lay low for 10 years,
the government will go
away, we'll come back,
we'll be
stronger than ever."
Fat Sal: It's
gonna grow again.
There's gonna
be a spike.
And this time
when it spikes,
it's gonna spike bad.
There's a fresh crew coming
out after serving 20 years,
they're coming
out in the next year,
the next two years,
they're coming
back to Brooklyn.
They know nothing
but to commit crimes.
They're gonna come
back old, tight and hungry.
God knows what's
only gonna happen when
they hit them streets.