Inside the Criminal Mind (2017–…): Season 1, Episode 4 - Crime Lords - full transcript

Get down on the ground!

They are some of
the most powerful business executives

on the planet,

described as, "part CEO,
part terrorist and part rock star."

They control powerful organizations
that generate unimaginable wealth.

But their fortunes aren't spawned
through clever corporate strategy.

Their businesses are built
on gambling, drugs,

intimidation, fear and murder.

Their tactics are heartless,

their methods are cruel
and their psychology is pure evil.

Crime Lords.
Next on Inside the Criminal Mind.



They are
the most feared names in crime:

Capone.

Gotti.

Escobar.

El Chapo.

The cunning and ruthless
leaders of syndicates, cartels,

mobs and crime families
throughout the world.

Most are scorned by their rivals,
despised by law enforcement,

but strangely, loved by their people
in their communities.

What is the complex and twisted psychology
that drives these men

to achieve enormous financial success,

while not hesitating to murder
with cold-blooded brutality?

And how is it possible that they can also
act with great generosity and kindness.

The organized
crime members are clearly different



than the normal people in society.

They're able to lead essentially
two lives:

One is that of the crime lord
or the crime leader,

and then also have a family,
kids, successful.

They may have business ventures as well.

So they're able to essentially bifurcate,
or separate, that aspect of their life,

their criminal life,
from the remainder of their life

which may appear
as normal as the neighbor down the block.

Crime lords have been able to
build and lead large,

efficient organizations to carry out
their illicit business enterprises.

Gambling, drug smuggling, prostitution,

racketeering and extortion
are their stock-in-trade.

They consistently outmaneuver
and outgun their enemies

for years and even decades.

John Gotti came to prominence in 1986

when he gained control
of the legendary Gambino Mafia Family.

The organization was earning
over $500 million a year

and Gotti himself was taking home
more than $10 million annually.

Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug kingpin
was called the Godfather of Cocaine

in the early 1990s, and is considered
the wealthiest criminal in history.

His Medellin Cartel earned him
a net worth of about $30 billion.

Russian mafia kingpin, Semion Mogilevich,

is nicknamed the "Brainy Don"
for his skillful business acumen.

The FBI describes him as "the
most dangerous mobster in the world."

He's known for weapons trafficking,
extortion,

prostitution and money laundering
on an international scale...

and also, cold-blooded
confidence in his alibis.

These are just words,
they don't have documents proving that,

and the people
saying it understand nothing.

I'd say they are making a mountain
out of a molehill.

Where does the gratification
of being a crime lord come from?

Is their motive simple insatiable greed?

Or is it more about power?

Or maybe respect?

Their drive to rise may be
linked to their narcissism.

I think that's one of the important
common characteristics,

that sense of narcissism,
that sense of entitlement,

and being able to motivate people
around them

to follow their lead
and to listen to every word that they have

as if it's a command without
questioning it.

According to psychologists,
narcissism comes in three forms:

Healthy, pathological, and aggressive.

Most people possess a certain amount
of healthy narcissism,

but crime lords exhibit the other,
more dangerous types.

Pathological generally means

that you tend to behaviorally devalue
other people around you,

not just in thought,
but in actual behavior.

I call it the lemon theory
of relationships.

You squeeze all the lemon juice
out of someone and you throw away the rind

and you just go get another lemon.

It could be a sense of that
you view yourself as superior,

better than other people,
that you're entitled to special treatment.

And then you have the aggressive form

which is not just behaviorally
devaluing people,

but engaging in aggressive
behavior against that individual.

Either verbal or physical aggression...

humiliating them,
embarrassing them to an extensive degree.

And that's what you tend to
see in psychopathic individuals.

And many of them are anti-establishment.

They just believe that the rules
don't apply to them,

and they get some type of visceral thrill
from flaunting it,

from being able to get away with stealing,
or get away with murder.

That's something that drives them.

What is the root of their
determination to become crime lords?

Some theories, based on social structures,

maintain that crime evolves
from conditions of poverty.

These are known
as "anomie" or "strain" theories.

The "strain" of dealing
with terrible living conditions

leads people to resort to crime
to improve their lives.

There's no one psychological
theory.

One could be that they were exposed
to this kind of behavior growing up.

So, I mean, they come from a family
that engaged in similar behavior,

so they learned that behavior
from being exposed to it.

They could also be financially
driven where they come from lower means,

socioeconomic means,

and that they see
that this is a pathway to surpass

or to make something of their life.

I think criminologists and
sociologists have studied this for

decades if not centuries, whether or not
there's a genetic predisposition

to criminal activity or criminality,

or whether or not you're just a product
of your environment.

I think it's more related to the
circumstances in which you find yourself.

If you grow up in a neighborhood
where the Bloods, or the Crips,

or the Gambino organized crime family
has a hold of it, sometimes it's hard.

Especially when maybe you come
from a single-family household

or your educational level's not where
it should be,

and you see yourself
as not having opportunities.

Every single one of us wants to be
part of something bigger than ourselves.

Unfortunately for those in those types
of neighborhoods,

they don't see the other opportunities
available to them,

and they reach out to the first thing
that they can become a part of.

It can also be from, again,
some psychopathic kind of propensity

that this is the best way to inflict
whatever kind of damage

or harm they want to do with individuals.

So it could be a variety of different
reasons, either learned, economic

or that they, again, maybe some
psychopathic, sociopathic tendencies

that the person is looking to engage in.

Al Capone was born
in Brooklyn, New York,

to poor Italian immigrant parents.

Life in the Italian ghetto
led him to join the Five Points Gang.

He was expelled from school at 14
for hitting a female teacher in the face.

He soon became a bouncer
in brothels run by organized crime.

Al Capone is going back to
a different era.

You have to remember that prohibition,

which was the United States making it
illegal for anybody to transport,

sell, or purchase alcohol
from 1920 to 1933,

was basically a boon
for the organized crime syndicates,

because people
in this country wanted alcohol.

And so even though it was against the law,

the organized crime folks
moved in and said,

"Hey, we can make some
money doing this."

Back in those days,
if you were a rum runner,

or you were selling alcohol
on the black market,

people appreciated
you were actually providing a service.

They looked at alcohol as a harmless vice,

and, basically, someone like Al Capone
became a hero, in a sense,

because he was able to provide
that service for them.

John Gotti also grew up poor,
in the slums of Bronx, New York.

His father worked as a day laborer,
but often gambled away his salary.

John grew to resent his father for
not being able to provide for his family.

By the time he was twelve he got involved
with the Italian Mafia street gangs.

Pablo Escobar was the son
of a peasant farmer,

and his mother a was a school teacher.

When he was just two years old,
his family moved to a violent suburb

in the city of Medellin, Colombia.

As a young teenager,
Pablo was expelled from school,

and soon gravitated to petty crime
and car theft.

His devious criminal mind
was evident early on.

He'd steal gravestones,
grind off the inscriptions,

and resell the headstones.

I believe in many of
the instances

of folks being drawn into organized crime,
they generally start out in poverty.

I think that was the instance
with Pablo Escobar.

And cocaine, especially the cocaine
trade back in the '70s and the '80s,

was a viable option because
it was such a lucrative business.

As wealthy
as crime lords become,

they often seem to remain mindful
of the plight of people living in poverty.

They often shower gifts on
the people of their old neighborhoods.

To speak of a couple,
John Gotti was one like that.

He was revered by some
in his Howard Beach neighborhood.

The same thing with El Chapo in Mexico,
people in the Sinaloa or Durango regions,

where he was basically
operating his drug cartel out of,

because he gave money away and did
a lot of nice things for the community.

Al Capone started one of the
first soup kitchens to help feed families

during the Great Depression.

In Pablo Escobar's hometown in Colombia,

the drug lord is still considered
a folk hero.

He is known as El Patron, "the boss,"

because he would often bring two
or three trucks to the poor barrios

distributing food to people
who didn't have any.

You're certainly gonna have
people that are fed up

with crime in their neighborhood
or in their region,

but you're also gonna find people
that find an affinity for these folks.

As Pablo Escobar did during the early
1990s and late 1980s in Colombia,

by building schools,
or building gymnasiums,

or financing housing and
giving money away to the poor people.

They're viewed as modern day Robin Hoods.

They view it as the man
fighting back against the establishment.

Despite any charitable acts,

at the core, these men were all
cold-blooded killers.

And the question is: Were they ever
really concerned about anything

but their own evil empires?

The syndicates run by crime lords
are not set up in a haphazard fashion.

Like most successful businesses,
they are carefully organized ventures.

There's essentially three
different categories of organized crime.

There's transnational,
national, and local.

An example of transnational
would be Russian organized crime,

where they are directing things
from Russia,

but they have compatriots
here in the United States

to conduct the illegal activity.

National organized crime, and
there's a whole host of different gangs

and criminal organizations
that do that here.

And then the third is local gangs,

like, basically local
violent street gangs.

They organize themselves to commit
crimes because it's more effective.

There's always the strength in numbers.

So turf gets established and carved out,
which is very important.

The Mafia was really good at doing that,

at basically assembling a council,
or a commission,

of the bosses of the major crime families
so that there would be no overlap.

As these gangs grow larger
and expand their reach,

they grow more organized.

At that point, to continue to succeed,
they need strong leaders,

setting the stage for a crime lord.

I think, for many of the mob
bosses, Pablo Escobar and Chapo in Mexico,

and John Gotti, for instance...

I think many of them recognize that
the first thing that you have to establish

to head an organization like
an organized crime unit would be fear.

You need to make sure
that your competitors

or potential competitors fear you,

and you need to make sure that the people
that work for you fear you

so that they're not stealing from you
or cooperating with authorities.

And I think that's something
that those figures were very good at.

First instilling fear, and then
establishing respect through fear.

The syndicates are created
with a strict hierarchy,

similar to a military operation,
which allows them to operate smoothly.

You have a boss,
you have an underboss.

In the Mafia
you have what's called a consigliere,

which is an Italian term for counselor,
or advisor to the boss.

And then it's generally broken down
by what they call lieutenants,

or captains, or people that have a crew,

you know, five, eight,
ten people that answer to them.

And, again,
in the Mafia those are called soldiers.

Some of the most legendary
crime lords gained infamy as kingpins

in the American Mafia,

also known as the Cosa Nostra,
meaning "This thing of ours."

If you were gonna talk
about the origins of the Mafia,

which basically started in Sicily,
which is where my family is from...

In Sicily, which was an island

that basically had been subject to foreign
invaders until the mid-19th century,

Mafioso were honorable people.

They were basically partisans, people
that kind of looked after the villagers

that were beleaguered or being taken
advantage of by the foreign invaders.

So, in the Sicilian Mafia,
from back in the mid-19th century,

ended up becoming a bad factor

and something that, basically,
was a burden to the villagers

and to the people in Sicily.

When they began
to immigrate to the United States,

back at the turn of the 20th century,
they brought that criminal activity,

and that cancer,
if you will, to the United States.

Throughout the 20th century,
the Mafia grew and evolved

into a multimillion-dollar
criminal enterprise.

There's generally established five modern
day mafia crime families in New York.

The Gambino Family,

which was the largest and most powerful
for much of this century,

the Genovese, the Bonannos, the Luccheses,
and the Colombos.

The Gambino Family
was established in the early 1900's,

but the crime family name was established
during the 1960s and 70s

when the "Godfather"
was Carlo Gambino.

The Gambino Family,
the first boss for the family

is generally considered to be
Albert Anastasia.

And Albert Anastasia was the head
of Murder, Inc. Back in the heyday,

in the '20s, and '30s, and '40s
in New York City.

He was executed, actually assassinated,
in 1957 in a gangland slaying

while he was getting a hot shave
here in Manhattan.

In 1976
Paul "Big Paulie" Castellano,

took control and ruled the family until
he was assassinated in December of 1985.

That was engineered by
John Gotti,

who, at the time, was a caporegime
and was unsatisfied with his status

and stature in that,
in the Gambino Crime Family

and decided
to take matters into his own hands,

which was against the rules on the books
for the Mafia.

No boss could be slain
unless it was greenlighted

by the other four reigning members
of the commission.

There are always factions
within organized crime syndicates.

There's always folks moving
and jockeying for power.

There's always gonna be people
that are disgruntled,

thinking they're not getting
enough of the acclaim or enough money.

So, the Gambinos are not unlike any
other organized crime syndicate, or unit,

in that there were constantly factions
jockeying for position.

Gotti seized control
of the family,

despite not following the well-defined
rules of the organization.

Different criminal syndicates operate
under different creeds, or manifestos.

In the instance of the Mafia,
it's all predicated

on an Italian word called Omerta,

which is a fealty to silence,
or not speaking about La Cosa Nostra.

In the instance of the Latin Kings
or some of the modern day street gangs,

there's a manifesto and code that is,
you know, governs how individuals operate,

and what the punishment is
for not following the code

of the particular organization
that you're part of.

Silence is sacred
in most criminal organizations.

And that's probably another motive
for the crime lords' frequent "generosity"

to their communities and public officials.

Often times the kingpins,
or the crime lords, will put money

or reinvest in the community that they
operate their illegal activities out of.

And this is a way of basically
buying silence, or buying fealty to them.

In Mexico there's a saying,
"Plata o plomo," which is Spanish for

"I'm either gonna pay you in silver,
to get you not to say anything,

or you're gonna end up
being filled with lead."

Plata o plomo.

And that's, generally speaking,
applies to the Mafia

as well as any of
the neighborhood street gangs as well.

The list of rackets the Gambino
family controlled was long and profitable.

Gambling, loansharking,
extortion, money laundering,

fraud, prostitution,
car hijacking, and theft.

But the crime lords tried to keep
a low profile

until John Gotti took control.

He was known as "The Dapper Don".

One of the things that set John Gotti
apart from most of the modern day mobsters

was his propensity for flashiness.

I mean, he liked eating dinner
out in public.

He liked wearing $2000 suits
and handmade shoes

and flashy ties and pocket squares.

He liked being the modern-day
cartoon caricature of a Mafioso,

and that rubbed a lot of
the old-time establishment the wrong way.

Today it's said that
the most powerful mafia in the world

is not in New York City or Sicily.

It's in Russia.

Semion Mogilevich is "the boss of
bosses" of the Russian syndicate,

and for decades he's been able to maintain
his appearance as a reputable businessman.

He's a sophisticated racketeer

who uses a cover
of an international businessman

to basically convince people, you've
got nothing to hide by dealing with me.

This is all a mistake,
and just take a look at my bank accounts

and the people that I run with
and you'll see that this is all...

an error on the part of the authorities.

But in fact, Mogilevich
is as ruthless as any crime lord.

While some use machine guns or knives,

Mogilevich's signature weapon
is the car bomb.

He's dangerous because
he'll get anybody who gets in his way.

That is the philosophy
that you've got to understand,

is that while people will smile,

people will paint themselves
as legitimate businessmen,

anyone who gets in their way
becomes a target.

Of course, drugs became
a lucrative staple of the crime lords.

In the 1970s, a cruel new mob boss
came to power in Colombia, South America.

Pablo Escobar,
the infamous Colombian crime lord,

took his inspiration
from American mafia dons

and earned the title,
"The Godfather of Cocaine."

Like his mobster idols,
Escobar was a cold-blooded killer...

but at the same time,
a dedicated family man.

In his hometown, the drug trafficker
is still a folk hero to this day.

But Pablo Escobar
was an ultra-violent narcoterrorist

who eventually organized
one of the largest criminal organizations

the world has ever known.

It's been said that Escobar was to cocaine
what Henry Ford was to the automobile.

By his late teens,
he became a killer for hire.

His ability to kill with a complete
lack of empathy served him well.

Pablo Escobar was known for his violence,
because it sent a message.

And he did things that were brazen,
he did them during daylight hours.

He did them where children were involved,

there was the collateral damage
of children being hurt.

He did it in going after politicians,

and law enforcement,
and members of the military.

He did it to send a message that
if you dared take on his organization

there were gonna be repercussions.

Escobar was introduced to the
drug trade by driving coca paste

from the Andean Mountains
to the cocaine labs of Medellin.

Like the American bootleggers
of prohibition days,

he enjoyed the thrill of driving fast
and staying one step ahead of the law.

By the time he was 26,
he transitioned from drug runner

to international smuggler.

He started using small airplanes to
transport cocaine into the United States

and millions of dollars
started rolling in.

When you're in a country where
there is so much poverty, it abounds,

and folks that are in the military,
or in law enforcement

don't get paid a lot of money,

I mean, you can pay them quite a bit
from your illegal proceeds,

it compels, or impels loyalty,
and that's what he did.

He figured out ways to pay people off
all along his routes,

as well as in law enforcement and
the politicians that were making the laws

and, basically,
protecting him for so many years.

Before Escobar was 30 years old
he bought Hacienda Napoles,

a sprawling 1000-acre compound
worth $63 million.

His estate was beyond extravagant.

He even had a private zoo on his land,

and his prized possession was a car
that once belonged to one of his idols,

Al Capone.

By the late 1970s,

Escobar's planes were smuggling
over 400 kilos of coke on every trip,

each flight netting more $10 million.

I think Pablo Escobar kind of
encapsulated two of the characteristics

for a successful crime lord.

Pablo was very good at that...

paying off politicians,
paying off law enforcement,

paying off border security.

The second is an unquenchable thirst
for violence.

So, if you did anything
within the organization to cross him,

you ended up dead,

which sent a message to folks,
acolytes of his, not to cross him,

and secondly to his competitors.

It was another thing where that violence,
that propensity for violence,

that unapologetic, just abject enjoyment
of violence for violence's sake,

set him apart for most of
the other criminal enterprise leaders

who kind of didn't want the attention
and the media fanfare

that those murders brought about.

Despite Escobar's
unyielding violence,

competition soon sprung up, with the
Ochoa brothers and José Rodríguez Gacha.

These were all ultra-violent men.

But the competitors realized
the best plan wasn't to fight it out.

They shrewdly decided to join forces, and
the legendary Medellin Cartel was born.

Before long,
the cartel was running five flights a week

into the United States.

Profits for Escobar were exceeding
$1 million a day.

Violence continued to be part
of the Cartel's trademark.

If a father needed to be killed,
the entire family was murdered.

Pablo Escobar behaved like the crime lords
before him...

a loving husband,
devoted father, and cold-blooded killer.

In the 1980s, another drug kingpin
exploded onto the scene in Mexico.

His name was Joaquín Guzmán, but he
was known as "El Chapo," meaning "shorty."

Guzmán was short in stature, but long
on business acumen and evil intentions.

Like other crime lords,
Guzmán was born into a poor family.

His father was officially
a cattle rancher in Sinaloa, Mexico.

But some sources say he was
also a gomero, an opium poppy farmer.

El Chapo was regularly beaten as a child,

dropping out of school in the 3rd grade
to work with his abusive father.

By his late teens,
El Chapo was kicked out of his house.

He became involved
with marijuana farming...

and then worked
with the Guadalajara Cartel

smuggling drugs into the United States.

An ambitious worker,
El Chapo dealt with late deliveries

by simply shooting the tardy drug runner
in the head.

By the early 80s, he was trafficking
huge shipments from Colombia,

through Mexico and into the U.S.

During the 1980s and the 1990s,

essentially when the Colombians
controlled the cocaine trade,

they needed a facilitation to
get their product into the United States.

And one of those ways was to travel
up through Central America, into Mexico,

and then figure out a way, by using
Mexican crime lords and opportunists,

to get the product
across the 2000 mile border

that the United States shares with Mexico.

And that's kinda where
Chapo Guzmán got his start,

because he helped facilitate that
back in the day

when the Colombians
ruled the cocaine trade.

In the early 1990s, El Chapo
built the thriving Sinaloa drug Cartel.

Incredibly, he was arrested in 1993
and sentenced to 20 years.

But while in prison, he bribed
the guards for special treatment,

took a mistress, and continued
to seamlessly run the Sinaloa Cartel.

In 2001, he made a daring escape
from prison

and lived comfortably
on the run for years.

When he was on the run,
because he lived in such a remote region

in the Sinaloa territory in Mexico,
he was able to have a huge compound,

where it was protected by armed guards

and he could bring women in
and he could have meetings there

and he was basically safe because much of
the local police were corrupt there.

And so they, essentially,
provided cover and protection for him.

By 2003, El Chapo was considered

the most powerful drug trafficker
in the world.

In America,
John Gotti's empire continued to expand,

as he added narcotics
to his repertoire of crimes.

Get down on the ground!

The La Cosa Nostra folks,

that did not view his activities
and his antics as consistent

with the way that they conducted
business was,

you didn't want to attract attention.

In fact, it wasn't until 1963,

when Joseph Valachi
testified in front of Congress

about the existence of the Mafia,

that most people in the United States
really believed that it existed.

It really was a mythical,
almost mythological, enterprise

until Valachi testified to it in 1963.

While crime lords like Escobar
and El Chapo spent much of their time

sequestered in their heavily-guarded,
remote compounds,

John Gotti enjoyed an outgoing,
public persona,

basically thumbing his nose
at law enforcement.

John Gotti had a social club
called The Ravenite, on Mulberry Street,

right around the corner
from 26 Federal Plaza,

where the FBI is housed
in Lower Manhattan.

And on certain nights,
one night a week in particular,

he would have all his captains come down
and meet him, and pay him tribute,

not just by showing up,

but also by bringing him
that week's illegal proceeds

that the captain or the boss
of the crime family was entitled to.

Gotti would offer coffee
to law enforcement officers

assigned to follow him,

and he often chatted openly
with the media.

But John Gotti's cocky confidence
would eventually lead to his downfall.

Unlike other crime lords,
Russian mobster Semion Mogilevich

came from a well-to-do family,

earning a degree
in economics from Lviv University.

This financial knowledge served him well.

In 1994, he gained control of Inkombank,

one of the largest private banks
in Russia.

This acquisition gave him direct access
to the world's banking system,

and he created a multibillion-dollar,
international money-laundering network.

In 1998, a Hungarian gangster named
Tamas Boros tried to implicate Mogilevich

in a confession to police.

People I know have been
up to his office on many occasions,

but I've never taken
part in any of the meetings.

I knew they brought
away with them a million dollars.

$100... $200... $700,000...
sums like these.

He is an older guy from Kiev.

I have only seen him once.
He's a big fat man with a big belly.

As far as I know,
he is the main link outward.

Soon after this confession.

Boros was in his car
when his mobile phone rang.

When he answered, the car,
rigged with nine pounds of TNT,

exploded in his face, killing him,
his lawyer and two innocent bystanders.

Mogilevich denied any involvement.

Look, I didn't know the man.

It wasn't my line of business.

Boros and his friends were
selling oil products in Hungary.

Despite the drugs and violence,

Pablo Escobar never felt
like he was doing anything wrong.

He thought of his activities
like the Kennedy family selling alcohol

during Prohibition.

Along the way, "El Patron" continued to
distribute food to the poor barrios,

and he even built 200 homes for the poor.

Remarkably, in 1982, he was so popular
that he ran for public office

and was elected to Colombia's parliament.

The business acumen and savvy
that many of these mobsters has,

it's interesting to see
because you look at it and say,

"Gosh, if they'd just gone to work
in a different pursuit,"

in a legitimate pursuit, they probably
would have been very effective

"at that job and very successful."

But they didn't. They chose
a different course for their life.

By 1989 it was estimated

that the Medellin Cartel controlled 80%
of the world's cocaine market.

To help protect the operation,
Escobar paid rewards to his hitmen

for every policeman they murdered.

Eventually, Colombia's government,
rival cartels,

and even the United States Seal Teams and
Delta Force put an end to Escobar's reign.

Police tirelessly searched
for Pablo for 16 months.

On December 2, 1993, Pablo Escobar
made a phone call from a fixed location.

The police were able to identify
the location

and decided to storm the house.

Shots were exchanged between the officers,
Pablo, and one of his bodyguards,

and Pablo jumped out a window
and onto the roof.

In the end, Pablo Escobar was killed.

In New York, John Gotti maintained
his grip on the Gambino crime family.

Law enforcement continually tried to
convict Gotti of numerous crimes,

but skillful jury tampering, intimidation
and bribery always led to his acquittal.

The elusive Gotti
earned the nickname the Teflon Don.

That was a name, I believe, that the press
kind of slapped on him

after he had a number of cases, a federal
case, and a number of state cases

that, basically, he was either
acquitted in or ended up in a hung jury.

But his arrogance and public
activities finally prompted his demise.

As with many of the crime bosses,
I think, throughout history,

one of their fatal flaws is hubris.

I think, as it applied to John Gotti,
he truly believed the press clippings.

He never ever thought

that the United States government
could bring charges against him

and that he would be convicted
in a court of law

and that ultimately ended up
being his downfall.

On April 2, 1992,
John Gotti was found guilty

and sentenced to life
without the possibility of parole.

I think most successful people
have to have an ego.

I think, in John Gotti's sense,
that ego turned to hubris,

where he thought
he was 10 feet tall and bulletproof

and could never be convicted of a crime.

Gotti died of throat cancer
in prison in 2002 at the age of 61.

El Chapo continued to elude police
for over a dozen years,

usually with the help of generous bribes
to government officials.

He remained the boss of the
Sinaloa Cartel, amassing a vast fortune,

while leaving a trail
of violence and murder.

Guzmán was captured
and escaped several more times.

Once, he managed to disappear
down a mile-long tunnel

through a hole in his cell's shower,
out of sight of the guards...

before he was apprehended and
extradited to the United States for trial

in January 2017.

After decades of leadership,

Semion Mogilevich
remains the head of the Russian mafia.

He moves freely around Moscow
in his bomb-proof limousine,

seemingly immune
to capture or prosecution.

It's been said he has a knack

for never being in the wrong place
at the wrong time.

In 2009, Mogilevich was named
to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.

However, in December 2015,
he was dropped from the list,

as it was determined his close
relationship with the Russian government

makes him virtually untouchable.

So what is the psychology that made these
crime lords so successful and so brutal?

They're driven, they're
Type-A personalities, generally speaking.

They're good leaders,

and we often use the term leader
to think of good people with consciences

and good citizens,
but leaders can also be evil

and in this instance,
these are people that are good leaders

that are just conducting
illegal activities.

But it's more than
determination and leadership.

In their profession, there also seems
to be an insatiable appetite for violence.

I think what separates the upper echelon,

or the leaders of an organized
crime syndicate, or enterprise,

from the members,
is basically naked ambition.

They're much more ambitious,

and I think being ruthless
also plays into that as well,

and you have to be prepared
to mete out mob justice.

And with this taste
for violence,

there also seems to be lack of empathy

that goes hand-in-hand
with the diagnosis of psychopath.

Cutting-edge brain research
now reveals that psychopathic behavior

may be more than the result
of abusive childhoods.

The brain imaging scan
results have indicated

that there are some brain differences
between individuals who were psychopathic

and non-psychopathic.

They're not definitive,
but we are seeing some differences

in terms of prefrontal cortex functioning

and brain functioning
in terms of stimulus field,

meaning, you and I, if we hear
really terrible words like murder,

rape and profanities,
our brains kind of light up.

Their brains seem to not respond.

Even the psychologists
feel the unique,

frightening presence
of these psychopathic criminals.

I think that all of them

probably have certain personality
disorders or traits that are similar.

Meaning, anti-social behavior,
it tends to move towards violence,

lack of conscience,
and lack of personal responsibility,

and to be a crime lord,
I think, at the street level,

to be effective, you have to have
a propensity for violence.

You can't just threaten violence, you
have to be prepared to execute violence.

Whatever the cause
of their behavior,

there's little doubt that crime lords

possess a depraved
and frightening criminal mind.