Fed Explains The Gambino Crime Family & John Gotti
Episode Stats
Length
2 hours and 10 minutes
Words per Minute
162.56978
Summary
In this episode, we cover the Gambino Crime Family. This family is one of the most famous families in the American mafia, and is responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The Gambino Family was founded by Carlo Gambino in the early 20th century, and has been described as the most powerful crime family in the United States.
Transcript
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And we are live. What's up, guys? Welcome to FedItMan. Today, we're going to be covering
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the Gambino family. This is the one that won the poll from the last episode we did on the intro to
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the Mafia. So I'm not going to play an intro, guys. We're going to get right into it, not waste any
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time. So here's a Wikipedia page for the Gambino crime family.
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The Gambino crime family, pronounced Gambino, is an Italian-American mafia
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crime family and one of the five families that dominate organized crime activities in New York City,
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United States, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the
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American mafia. The group, which went through five bosses
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between 1910 and 1957, is named after Carlo Gambino, boss of the
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family at the time of the McLennan hearings in 1963, when the structure of
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organized crime first gained public attention. And as you guys know, this kind of came
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to public attention when people, the government was basically
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subpoenaing all the bosses to come in and testify. And that's kind of when
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the murder, the code of silence, basically became public knowledge. The group's operations
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extend from New York and eastern seaboard to California. Its illicit activities include
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labor and destruction, dracketarian, gambling, loan sharking, extortion, money laundering,
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prostitution, fraud, hijacking, and fencing. And if you guys notice, it says
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in 1963. Guess what also happened right around that time? Kennedy was
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assassinated. So there's a bunch of, you know, theories out there as far as
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excuse me, why Kennedy was killed. But it's pretty much undoubtedly
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so that the mafia, the American Italian mafia, to be specific, did have a hand in it, as well
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as some other people to include them boys, if you know what I'm talking about. Okay. And
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some people from the CIA. And this is a fact because it's been declassified as of the past
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two months or so ago. So yeah. And also, Angie here. Angie, can you pull up the, actually,
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introduce yourself to the people real quick. I got so ahead of myself. So some to the people.
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Hi, guys. It's Angie here. My name is Angelica. But you know, I prefer Angie because you guys
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don't know how to pronounce it well. And yeah. So I'm back here helping Myra co-hosted the
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mafia family series that we're going to have on Thursdays. She means series, guys. Don't make
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fun of her. What did I say? You said serious. Serious? All right. It's fine. It's all good.
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English is her second language, guys. Whatever. So she actually pulled this up for you guys here. So
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from a bird's eye view, guys, here's the Carlo Gambino family. Can you enlarge it for the people
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real quick so they can see? As you guys can see here. And this is why if you didn't watch our
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first episode, guys, make sure to watch it because we actually cover how to read this stuff. And oh,
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my bad. Yeah. The mafia organization. Exactly. We actually explained that, which is why in the
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first episode, we gave the hierarchy, the history, et cetera, so that when we cover all the families,
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you kind of can just hit the ground running. So anyways, you guys can see here, you got the boss,
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which is the top guy. You got the underboss, Joseph Biano. And then you got the consigliere,
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Joseph Ricambano. And then all the capos, et cetera. So this is kind of a bird's eye view,
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guys, of the organization. We're going to go ahead and react to a documentary I have here
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that goes into more detail. But this is kind of like just a quick little preliminary look
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at the Gambino crime family. And obviously, this family is one of the most famous ones because
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your boy, John Gotti, was also a member of the Gambino family, actually took on as boss before
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his arrest in the early 90s. So yeah, the successors and everything. This is pretty cool.
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Yeah. Yeah. Really cool chart. We'll put the link in the description for y'all. But yeah,
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let's get into it, guys. So this is a documentary right here. It's called The Gambino's First Family
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of Crime Season 1, Episode 1. Let's get into it. The Gambino's No Crime Family in America has been
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as powerful, as wealthy, or as treacherous. The founder, Carlo Gambino, had the intelligence of a
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fox, the strength of a lion, and the nose of a hawk. This guy was calling the shots. Well, he definitely
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did have the nose of a hawk, guys. You guys can see here. He had a beak on him, man. Yeah, I got a
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big nose, too. So I can definitely see one of them. Shots ended in murder. How he himself. And no,
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he was not one of them boys, guys. He was Sicilian. And we're going to get into his history as well.
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And this guy, Carlo Gambino, guys, was one of the few mafia bosses that actually died of natural
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causes, not in prison or killed through some type of murder for hire situation. So, and he's revered
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pretty much as one of the best bosses of all time. Avoided being murdered is an astonishing mystery to
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me. He ruled quietly, controlling so many rackets in New York City, he had more power than the mayor.
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His successor. Guys, let that sink in. At his height, he had more power than the mayor. That
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should let you guys know what kind of money these guys were rolling with. Paul Castellano,
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a pampered businessman who had not paid his dues on the street. Guys who had been in the trenches,
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robbing and stealing and killing and hijacking and everything. That's John Gotti on the left right
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here, guys. Surveillance footage. You know, for years said, hey. And the short guy with the little
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striped jacket there was Sammy Gravano, a.k.a. Sammy the Bull. What about me? The new boss was lonely
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and fearful. When I say to him, why you are very lonely? He said, I only have money in my pocket.
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People like me die in the street. He knew all too well. Then came the Gambino boss straight from
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central casting. You know, I always feel good. And quick little fun fact for you guys here,
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okay? I actually lived in New York when John Gotti was the boss. I actually lived in New York City.
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And I remember as a child seeing this guy's face all over the papers, man. It was crazy. When was
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this? I knew you were going to talk some shit, midget. This was in the early nineties,
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mid-early nineties. Like, I was born in 1990. So I remember seeing him, you know, back in like
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90, what? Three, four, like six, seven, seven. Maybe around like 95, 96, I would say.
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Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, yeah. But he was on every newspaper. I remember because my dad used to read
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the New York Post every day religiously. And John Gotti's face was always spread all over.
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Back in the day, yeah. That's the only way to get, you know.
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They walked into a restaurant dressed impeccably. It was an event. And everybody stopped and
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And John Gotti tells Sam, you see what I, what did I tell you? Everybody loves us.
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But in the end, the dapper Don would take the family down in flames.
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You know, they're going to try and keep you in jail. They say you're in danger while you're out.
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100 years ago, well-dressed men rode carriages through the quaint cobblestone streets that wind
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through the city of Palermo, Sicily, and converge on its ancient town square.
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Many of these well-dressed men belong to the Mafia, otherwise known as the Honored Society.
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A criminal brotherhood that used codes of honor, millions of lira, and above all,
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violence to control every aspect of daily life throughout Sicily.
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These so-called men of respect had been a law unto themselves for centuries.
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So it's no surprise that Palermo has been the birthplace of many powerful Mafia bosses.
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On August 24th, 1902, a boy was born who one day would build the most powerful crime
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Carlo was born into a prosperous and well-connected family.
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In a part of the city so dominated by the Honored Society that it was off-limits even to police
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Like others his age, young Carlo looked up to his Mafia elders.
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The men of respect had everything a man could want.
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As a teenager, Carlo watched them stroll along the streets of the city in their beautifully
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All the men would take off their hats to them, doff their hats, and the women would
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And he said, my God, how can you get to be one of these guys?
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The man who made the biggest impression on young Carlo was the head of the Honored Society
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Makes no difference to, you know, American crime movies, you know, like Boys in the Hood,
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They see these D-Boys making all this money, whatever, and then they want to get into that
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Same thing going down in Sicily in a different time.
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Don Vito was both charismatic and fearless, but it was his criminal intuition that Carlo idolized
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Where earlier mafiosi had pillaged and destroyed the businesses who would not cooperate with
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In charging moderate fees for mafia protection, the businessmen could operate without fear,
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Also, guys, I really, if you haven't seen episode one of this mafia series where we go
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over the hierarchy, et cetera, I heavily suggest you go and watch it before you finish watching
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this because, as you can see here, we're going through the history, and this might not make
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sense to some of you guys watching this unless you saw the first episode where we talk about
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There are some terms that you won't understand if you don't watch the video.
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So, because this right now, we're going over mafia history only specific to the Gambino
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family, not the overall La Cosa Nostra Italian mafia as you know it, okay?
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And again, like I told y'all before, this is why I was putting this off.
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The Italian mafia is a monster, so if you want to properly do it, you need to be able
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to separate history versus Gambino versus Lucchese versus Colombo, because if you want
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to do this organization justice, you've got to break it down family by family.
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So, again, if you guys have not seen it already, go watch episode one before you finish watching
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this because this is only going to give you the Gambino perspective.
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Out of school as a teenager and with the help of his family's connections, got a job.
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If a businessman failed to pay his protection money on time, Carlo would arrange an accident
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He was only 5'7", of average build, and he did not parade around in fancy suits.
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This guy with the big nose walks in and freaking throws a brick through your freaking business.
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Then next thing you know, hey, forget about it.
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Only intimidating feature was his prominent nose, which looked like a hawk's beak.
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He also had a mischievous grin, which became his trademark.
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Carlo was shy and reserved, yet he lived by a creed which would take him to the top of
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One of the great lines that he uttered was, you know, you have to be like a lion and a fox.
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The fox is smart enough to recognize traps, and the lion is strong enough to scare away
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You'll be like a lion and a fox, and, you know, no one will ever beat you.
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Carlo proved to Don Vito and other men of respect that he was both a lion and a fox, carrying
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out all their orders with ruthlessness and cunning.
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They immediately recognized in Carlo a superior intelligence.
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He was known as a man of great shrewdness from an early age.
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It's a quality in Italy which they called furberia, shrewdness, the kind of intelligence
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At the age of 19, Carlo's hard work and efforts were rewarded with a formal induction into the
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But now, events outside Palermo would begin to shape his life.
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In the early 1920s, fascism was gaining popularity throughout Italy.
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Its leader, Benito Mussolini, had little tolerance for the honored society.
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So a lot of young mafiosi thought that they're talking about.
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This wasn't mentioned in episode one, but yes, this was a huge,
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impact on guys getting the hell out of Italy and going to the United States where there
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And by opportunities, I mean being able to commit crimes.
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And if they had any connections in America, they used them.
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Part of his mother's family, the Castellanos, a powerful mafia clan, had already moved to New York.
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With his future at home in jeopardy, he set his sights on America where his New York relatives
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could introduce him to a criminal life full of golden opportunity.
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And as you guys know, Paul Castellanos is going to take over the organization later.
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So as you guys can see, there's a very strong connection with everybody in the family.
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So, on a November day in 1921, the young Carlo was smuggled aboard a freighter bound for America.
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His family had paid the captain a substantial sum to escort the privileged young man across
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A month later, the ship pulled into Norfolk, Virginia, with a cargo of wine, anchovies, and
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Dressed in a Sunday best, one lone passenger slowly emerged.
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Carlo Gambino, all of 19 years old, had arrived.
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And he was met by his Castellanos relatives who whisked him up to New York.
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He made him a spectacular entry into the United States.
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You know, it wasn't some scruffy little mobster.
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And guys, keep in mind, he came to the United States when?
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Which, at this point, them boys and a bunch of other mafia guys were already making money
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And he would let nothing and no one stand in his way.
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Just before Christmas, 1921, the teenaged Carlo Gambino set foot on American soil and began
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moving up the mafia ladder of success the old-fashioned way, through hard work and violence.
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But Carlo had a leg up on other gangsters of his generation.
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His American relatives, already members of New York's bustling underworld, rented him a small
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They wasted no time in introducing Carlo to the rackets.
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All over America, organized crime was supplying it and reaping the profits.
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Guys, these bootleggers were making billions of dollars in U.S. dollars today, guys.
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The Castellano family had a small trucking business.
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The truck, naturally, like so many other small trucking businesses, was used to transport booze.
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And Gambino was both a driver and sometimes he would serve as a shotgun because different
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bootleg guys used to hijack each other's trucks.
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In his new criminal career, Carlo met one of the local mafia leaders, Joe the Boss Masseria.
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And guys, in the first episode, we talk about more details with Masseria and the war that
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So go back and watch the first episode if you haven't already, guys.
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Carlo, sensing an opportunity to move ahead, went to work for Masseria.
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Carlo was just a very acute businessman and organizer.
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And he soon became indispensable to whoever he was working for.
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He knew that clinging to a single boss could mark him for death by a rival gang.
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Besides, his own driving ambition left no room for lasting loyalty to anyone, including Joe the Boss.
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In the early 1930s, Carlo's boss was locked in a bloody turf war with a longtime Sicilian rival named Salvatore Maranzano.
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The younger gangsters, including Carlo, thought the battle was tearing the mafia apart.
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To include Lucky Luciano, who you guys are going to see here right now.
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One of Carlo's friends, Lucky Luciano, devised a clever plan to eliminate the boss.
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Lucky told Carlo about it and made him an orphan.
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And Charlie Lucky said, Lucky, well, you got an option.
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You can come with us and we're going to be the winning side.
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And the war, guys, that they're talking about is called the Casta Milanese War.
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Probably butchering that name, but you guys get the idea.
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This war was pivotal in the formation of the modern mafia, as you guys know now,
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In doing so, he positioned himself for future leadership with little personal risk.
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Carlo's motivation became the motivation of practically everybody in those days.
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And don't worry about all the old rules and codes of the Sicilian mafia.
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On April 15, 1931, Luciano invited Masseria to lunch
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four gunmen walked in and put an end to Joe the boss.
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That leaving an ace card on the dead individual's hands was a tactic employed back by then the show.
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So, you know, this is the hand they were dealt in life.
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Those men, including Carlo Gambino, joined forces with the new boss, Salvatore Maranzano, but not for long.
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Maranzano was very happy to have these really smart, bright, young thugs working for him.
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But Maranzano didn't realize that those bright, young thugs were plotting his murder so they could take over everything.
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On orders from Charlie Lucky, Maranzano was shot and stabbed to death in his office.
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Which I talked about this in more detail, guys, in the past episode of Showell, a video clip of it.
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Cards being dealt by Carlo's friend Luciano, who turned the underworld into a corporation.
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And the main reason why they killed Maranzano, guys, just as a quick little reminder, is because Maranzano, when he took power from Messeria, he called himself the boss of all bosses, right?
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So, basically, that caused a lot of rift in the organization.
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So, Lucky, and yet this guy, Maranzano, actually put a hit on on Lucky.
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He ended up getting them killed by some of Mayor Lansky's...
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And once he took power, what he ended up doing, and Lucky Luciano, I mean by this, what he ended up doing was sharing that power with all the other crime families and saying, let's start a commission where everyone has all their own organizations and dispersing the power.
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So, what he was able to do, which was very smart of Lucky, by the way, was take the target off his back and have the target be put on the organizations together to keep them from killing him as being the top guy.
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Because his main thing was, I just want Maranzano out so that I can work with my boy, Mary Lansky, who's a part of them boys, and all my other, you know, organized criminal individuals who aren't necessarily Italian.
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So, Lucky looked at Maranzano as a, basically a block to his pat to earn more money.
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Once he got power, he's like, nah, I don't want to be the boss of all bosses, guys.
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Make your own families, you know, have your own boss structure.
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We'll meet every couple of years to iron out issues and make sure everyone gets paid.
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And that's why he's credited a lot of times as being the godfather of organized crime.
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Each major gang getting a vote on the board of directors, Carlo was assigned to the boss who controlled the Brooklyn Waterfront, Vincent Mangano.
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From there, Carlo began plotting a course to create his own criminal empire.
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Under Mangano, Gambino learned to run a variety of mob rackets, ranging from loan sharking to numbers to cargo theft.
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He was a good earner for the mob and, therefore, entitled to respect.
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And the bottom line in any mafia endeavor, whatever it is, is how much money do you make?
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Just 29 years old, he earned a promotion to capo, or captain, in charge of his own crew.
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One of the first men he chose for the crew was his teenage cousin, Paul Castellano.
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The son of a Brooklyn numbers runner, Paul was also born into organized crime.
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Carlo, having learned firsthand how mafia wars are weighed, knew that a mobster should be wary of his underlings.
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And he knew he could trust Paul, a blood relative.
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The less time Gambino spent watching his back, the more time he could devote to planning his rise to power.
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He only really trusted the people who had been with him all his life.
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And he built up this little wall where nobody could get in who wasn't a blood relative.
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Blood ties would be of the highest significance to Carlo throughout his life.
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This is why nepotism was practiced so hard in the mafia to prevent from getting whacked by your underlings who want to overtake your position in power.
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He solidified his bond with the Castellano family when he took the unorthodox step of marrying Paul Castellano's sister, Catherine.
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It was amazing that Carlo Gambino married Catherine Castellano because she was his first cousin.
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And as a good Catholic, you're not supposed to do that.
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But the Castellanos were extremely powerful in the mafia.
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Carlo and Catherine settled into a modest Brooklyn row house.
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Together they raised three sons and a daughter.
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By all accounts, Carlo was a devoted husband and family man.
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Marriage and family could not curb his appetite for power and money.
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The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 brought harder times from many mobsters drying up their lucrative bootlegging operations.
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But Carlo saw a new path to profit in a new racket, contraband liquor.
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By dodging liquor taxes, Carlo could undercut his legitimate competitors.
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With this scheme, Carlo made the first of his several fortunes.
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In 1937, he was convicted of tax evasion in connection with running a million-gallon illegal still in Philadelphia.
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And that was really all the government could get there.
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So the only way they were really able to go after these guys was for not paying taxes on all the money they made,
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So this is way before the Giuliani era of, you know, the mid-80s,
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where they actually had the tool of Rico to take these guys down.
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By 1941, with America entering World War II, Carlo was busy devising ways to make money off it.
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As part of the war effort, the government began rationing essential goods like meat, chocolate, nylons, and gasoline.
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Government issued ration stamps were as good as gold.
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So Gambino and his crew found ways to steal them and hoard them.
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I tell you guys all the time, when things go down,
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criminals always look at it as an opportunity to make money nefariously.
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They did any and everything to earn money for the organization scamming.
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These dudes were the original scammers, you know, from back in the day.
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Every scammer you know now that has these credit cards, you know, the Hinton and all this other shit,
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they got that inspiration from these boys right here, man.
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When the government began protecting the ration stamps by storing them in banks,
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Gambino simply bribed corrupt officials to steal them for him.
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It wasn't long before Carlo made his next black market million.
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Carlo saw opportunities everywhere, including a business few mobsters would touch, gay bars.
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He didn't personally go in there and pat people on the ass.
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He realized that a lot of gay men were lawyers, doctors, everything.
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And these people at that time were much more susceptible to blackmail than they are now.
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This wasn't that they were supporting the gay lifestyle.
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Carlo had established an excellent reputation as a big earner for the Mangano crime family.
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But his path to further advancement seemed blocked.
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In 1951, his boss, Vincent Mangano, mysteriously disappeared.
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Many suspected that Mangano's underboss and Carlo's rival, Albert Anastasia, was responsible.
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Nicknamed the Lord High Executioner, Anastasia was one of the most feared gangsters of his time.
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He headed up the infamous mafia hit squad known as Murder Incorporated.
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Now y'all see where Irv Gotti and Ja Rule and all them boys came from.
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Carlo knew he was unlikely to ever become boss through natural succession.
00:28:27.800
Unlike his boss, Carlo Gambino was selected in his use of violence.
00:28:33.400
But when he saw no other way, he would not hesitate to kill.
00:28:47.760
On October 25th, 1957, Anastasia went for a shave at his usual barbershop at the Park Sheraton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
00:28:59.120
As a hot towel was placed over his face, two gunmen rushed in and shot him five times.
00:29:13.180
His wits and tenacity had gotten him to the top of the...
00:29:15.760
Murder was way easier to get away with, guys, back then.
00:29:25.740
So it was fairly easy, guys, to carry out a murder back then.
00:29:30.240
You know, no cell phones that can tell you where your location is.
00:29:37.800
Yeah, the most prolific serial killers pretty much were all from 1960, right, with the Zodiacs and et cetera, all the way up until the early 90s with people like Jeffrey Dahmer.
00:29:49.680
Well, forensic evidence really didn't get started getting used until the late 80s, mid-90s, early 2000s.
00:29:58.100
So murder was very easy to get away with back then, guys.
00:30:04.500
By the age of 55, Carlo Gambino had finally achieved his lifelong ambition to become boss of a crime family.
00:30:28.880
Now it was time to exploit his power in the service of that most basic mafia principle, breaking the law to make money.
00:30:37.960
The crime family, which now bore his name, already controlled the Brooklyn waterfront.
00:30:43.340
But like any good executive, Carlo knew the future lay in diversification.
00:30:48.160
He expanded into a wide range of rackets, gambling, construction, bid rigging, loan sharking, even securities fraud on Wall Street.
00:31:00.380
In 1962, Carlo once again used bloodlines to strengthen his hold on organized crime.
00:31:07.700
He arranged the marriage of his eldest son, Tommy, to the daughter of fellow New York crime boss, Thomas Lucchese.
00:31:14.000
The marriage soon gave Gambino access to yet another lucrative and more modern racket.
00:31:21.520
See, smart as hell, aligning himself with powerful people through marriage, man, and relationships.
00:31:28.280
Lucchese started doing a tremendous business by hijacking freight from JFK Airport, corrupting the unions that handle freight.
00:31:37.540
And then he cut his friend Carlo Gambino in on that racket because Carlo Gambino's son had married his daughter.
00:31:45.920
Gambino had infiltrated what had become the nation's greatest port of entry, and the cash poured in.
00:31:52.540
His men bribed airport employees to tip them off when valuable shipments were arriving.
00:32:02.460
Gambino expanded his criminal empire by taking control of yet another racket.
00:32:08.840
And see, guys, see how creative these guys are making money?
00:32:12.140
Now you guys are seeing why I want to split this up by family, because different families were getting money in different ways.
00:32:17.820
And the Gambino's were notorious for, you know, messing with the airport, stealing cargo and stuff like that.
00:32:24.800
And garments, which we're going to see how they made money in this industry.
00:32:29.380
New York garment industry, an industry responsible for 70% of all the clothes sold in the U.S.
00:32:35.580
By infiltrating the small but powerful truckers' unions, Gambino could effectively demand a percentage of every garment sold.
00:32:45.100
If the businesses did not pay up, their goods would not get to market.
00:32:48.880
Following the old mafia tradition of secrecy, or omerta, Gambino conducted business in his Brooklyn home in code to foil any attempts by law enforcement to eavesdrop on his meetings.
00:33:01.580
If he and his capos met in the meeting room in his house to decide whether a certain guy should be killed or not, the scene would be, would go something like this.
00:33:15.740
And one of the capos would get up and say, froggy legs.
00:33:44.020
Just so you guys can kind of get a glimpse here.
00:33:46.200
2230, if I'm not mistaken, Ocean Parkway Drive.
00:34:33.140
I lived 16 minutes away from one of the fucking most notorious crime bosses ever.
00:34:44.080
And the reason why I even thought about this is because I remember as a kid vividly, right?
00:34:49.300
This is the street you had to take to get to Coney Island.
00:34:56.220
So if you look at it, right, here, you got this parkway, and you would have to go all
00:35:05.780
the way down back this way to go to where I used to live, right?
00:35:11.160
And then you'd get on this road, and Coney Island was this way, if I'm not mistaken.
00:35:18.040
So let's go ahead and try looking at a street view.
00:35:22.400
I only noticed it because in the documentary, it said Ocean Drive there.
00:35:31.280
You guys want to see Myron Gaines' old stopping grounds right here as a kid?
00:35:42.540
It's where I lived as a child, and it's still there to this day.
00:35:49.920
And I'll never forget, my dad was a cab driver, right?
00:35:53.060
And he got robbed so many times because back then, Brooklyn was so dangerous.
00:35:57.800
Not to the same degree as it was in the 80s and 90s, though.
00:36:01.400
But we were on the second floor, and the landlord lived on the first floor.
00:36:09.380
It'll be crazy if they actually see this video one day.
00:36:13.040
But either way, my dad would go up the stairs with his cast, and my mom would help him.
00:36:18.320
And this is why, bro, I honestly have no sympathy for people that were born here that are bums.
00:36:23.300
Because my dad used to drive the cab every night, been robbed multiple times.
00:36:26.720
One time, he got hit by a car, and when they tried to rob him, broke his leg, drove the cab with a broken leg and cast.
00:36:34.100
And he would come up these stairs, and my mom would come down every night, get him, and walk him up the stairs to get up to the second floor, guys.
00:36:41.460
This is bringing back so many fucking memories.
00:36:47.860
Yeah, so this used to be, growing up, I remember, this was like a little storage thing that they would use, which is crazy.
00:36:55.140
But I remember this grocery store right here, okay, was where I used to always go to get candy and shit like that.
00:37:06.280
I've never told this story before in my life, so you guys are about to get a treat right now.
00:37:11.200
I remember me and my sister were sitting on this balcony one day, not balcony, like this window, and we were fucking with, like, the people walking by, and we were, like, throwing, like, fucking water balloons at them.
00:37:19.860
Bro, we were throwing water balloons at them, fucking, like, can't, you know, fruit and shit, and they'd get hit, and they'd be like, what the fuck?
00:37:28.340
And they'd, like, look back and say, you motherfucker, I'm going to get you.
00:37:31.800
And we'd just be up in the window laughing at them and shit.
00:37:35.000
And then my dad found out, right, because he owned a mechanic shop down the street over here, right?
00:38:02.040
We left in New York City in 99, but he opened this up, I think, in, like, 94, 95.
00:38:10.400
He walks back, as you can see the distance, and he finds out that we have been throwing water
00:38:14.960
So he comes, right, sees the water spots on the fucking corner over here.
00:38:21.580
And he starts losing his shit, and he comes upstairs and whoops the fuck out of us.
00:38:28.700
He literally whooped the fucking shit out of us, guys.
00:38:35.240
And it was truly a lesson in life not to fuck with people.
00:38:46.200
Almost 30 years later, I remember this story vividly because I did something so fucking
00:38:52.020
I was, like, maybe six or seven years old at the time.
00:38:57.080
So maybe seven or eight, somewhere in that range.
00:39:01.480
The fact, like, ooh, that just went down memory lane right there.
00:39:07.180
Let's get back to Carlo Gambino, my neighbor, now that I know.
00:39:19.180
And, of course, that was the successful way to be.
00:39:21.840
The boss also kept a low profile in his personal life.
00:39:25.740
For all his wealth and power, he lived modestly and eluded the media.
00:39:29.260
Yeah, and that area, guys, he lives in is a middle class neighborhood.
00:39:33.720
You know, you wouldn't think a mob boss of his stature making the kind of money he made would be there just, you know, chilling.
00:39:57.300
Because his invisibility ultimately was his power.
00:40:00.920
Mr. Gambino, do you have any idea why you've been brought here?
00:40:06.340
His desire for anonymity aside, Gambino could not resist one public indulgence.
00:40:11.800
Here was a guy who went to so much trouble to live in the small, modest house.
00:40:16.580
He went to so much trouble to not have the big, long, shiny black Cadillac.
00:40:21.520
He kind of had this gray or dark, you know, Oldsmobile.
00:40:28.640
And he had to allow himself that one little trapping of power, that one little vanity,
00:40:37.980
By the mid-60s, Carla was moving into his mid-60s.
00:40:42.460
Aging gracefully and looking more like a grandfather than a mafia godfather.
00:40:47.320
He liked to give the appearance of a harmless, humble old immigrant.
00:41:13.680
If it wasn't brought to your attention, you'd say, oh, a nice little old Italian man.
00:41:21.580
And this is why he was able to get away for so long.
00:41:26.120
No, I was going to ask you to do an impression of an Italian accent.
00:41:38.860
I got a funny story to tell y'all actually here later on in this podcast.
00:41:46.600
I'll tell the audience when we hit maybe 30 minutes left in the show.
00:41:51.780
Say, this guy looks like Geppetto, the shoemaker with Pinocchio.
00:42:03.380
One side of Carlo's high-powered business life was his strong addiction to coffee.
00:42:07.960
When he went to these cafes, he drank from a bottomless cup.
00:42:12.180
I couldn't believe that anybody could drink that kind of black coffee and not get a jolt of adrenaline
00:42:18.580
He told me how many cups he used to drink a day.
00:42:21.580
He used to drink a dozen cups of black coffee a day.
00:42:25.960
The outwardly mild manner did not fool those who knew Carlo well, allies and enemies alike.
00:42:35.140
He was the most treacherous mafia boss of them all.
00:42:41.260
He would not hesitate to kill someone who would help them very much.
00:42:46.760
By the late 60s, the Gambino crime family had swelled to 25 crews with a total of about 800 men.
00:42:57.780
Carlo Gambino had arguably become the most powerful in all of New York.
00:43:02.940
Do you think that a man who never became an American citizen, who never got out of high school in Italy,
00:43:11.200
could assemble this gigantic empire worth millions and millions and millions of dollars,
00:43:18.220
a conglomeration of rackets, 30, 40, 50 rackets during his lifetime, and it took some brains.
00:43:26.400
Meanwhile, stupid Americans broke as hell, speaking in English, taking handouts.
00:43:36.940
And earned the respect of those around him, and they were careful to show it.
00:43:42.000
When in Little Italy, he always stopped by Ferrara's Bakery for espressos and cannoli.
00:43:47.840
There, he would hold court, dispensing advice and favors.
00:43:51.580
And the thing is, guys, is a lot of people think, like, you know, the Italian mafia, all they do is criminal stuff.
00:43:56.400
A lot of these Boston guys actually operated legitimate businesses as well.
00:44:00.360
It's just that, you know, greed always gets the better of us, and you want to make money in other ways,
00:44:03.820
and sometimes you've got to break the law to do so.
00:44:05.840
But, you know, this goes to show that if he can do it, anybody can.
00:44:15.260
I mean, if people would come in, they would fall over themselves to kiss his ring.
00:44:20.100
In one of his rare nights on the town, Carlo took in a performance by Frank Sinatra at the Westchester Theater.
00:44:28.280
Sinatra may have been the star, but it was Gambino who received the royal treatment.
00:44:33.760
Sinatra invited him and his entire group into the dressing room between the two shows Sinatra was putting on.
00:44:40.500
The second show was going to start, like, at, say, 10 o'clock, for example.
00:44:45.480
It started at 10.40 that night because Sinatra didn't want to chase him out of the room.
00:44:55.100
Even Michael Francis, guys, who you guys know, former capo for the Colombo crime family,
00:45:00.300
I think he made a video talking about the top bosses that, you know, ran the mafia.
00:45:03.960
Pretty much Carlo Gambino was the number one guy on his list.
00:45:07.980
So this goes to show elite-level type boss maneuvers by a mafia head honcho
00:45:15.120
because he was one of the few that never went to, you know, extended time or was killed.
00:45:25.740
Carlo's dedication to the crime family was matched by his devotion to his other family at home.
00:45:31.260
To insulate his eldest son, Tommy, from his own violent world,
00:45:36.440
Carlo sent him to Manhattan College, a rarity among the sons and daughters of mob bosses.
00:45:42.720
Carlo was extremely close to his wife, Catherine, who never asked too many questions
00:45:47.820
and, in her own way, proved quite an asset to the boss.
00:45:52.060
Her warmth softened even the toughest wise guys who came to call on Gambino.
00:45:56.480
She would offer you an espresso coffee and she would invariably ask you how your family was
00:46:07.940
She completely disarmed you, you know, but she melted you.
00:46:12.380
You were going to go in there pretty tough, you know, trying to make a deal or scare the boss.
00:46:17.240
And by the time you left Catherine Gambino, you were a marshmallow.
00:46:23.560
Catherine helped Carlo keep the appearance of a decorous and respectable household.
00:46:32.900
They knew Gambino was the biggest crook in the country
00:46:35.540
and they kept his home under constant surveillance.
00:46:39.240
There was a marked police car parked in front, right in front.
00:46:43.780
And on the door it said, Organized Crime Control Bureau.
00:46:47.480
A marked police car with two plainclothesmen sitting in it.
00:46:53.560
That was probably Carlo Gambino's response to them sitting outside his house, bro.
00:47:02.840
I'm saying, okay, you know, this is our harassment.
00:47:05.900
You know, we're telling everybody, all your neighbors.
00:47:10.560
And then actually implemented until like the 80s.
00:47:13.080
The end of the 60s marked the beginning of the decline in Gambino's fortunes.
00:47:18.300
In 1969, a Gambino associate by the name of John Gotti and his brother Gene were caught hijacking...
00:47:26.500
Probably one of the most famous Gambino eventual crime bosses.
00:47:33.360
The incident didn't disrupt family business for long, but it brought more unwelcome attention to the Godfather.
00:47:43.760
And you're going to see this as a recurring trend, guys, with John Gotti.
00:47:46.520
John Gotti did a terrible job of being, sticking to Armurta, basically that code of science.
00:48:01.480
Again in the spotlight, the boss was charged with masterminding an armed robbery.
00:48:07.860
They were holding up armored cars, Chase Manhattan armored cars.
00:48:11.860
And he was actually arrested, indicted and arrested, and was supposed to go to trial.
00:48:15.780
Carlo and his attorney succeeded in getting one delay after another.
00:48:22.880
His wife, Catherine, had been diagnosed with cancer.
00:48:34.100
Frustrated with delays in the armed robbery case,
00:48:36.760
the government pushed to deport Gambino to Sicily as an illegal alien.
00:48:41.560
But each time he was about to be sent back to Sicily,
00:48:44.980
Carlo's heart troubles would conveniently get worse.
00:49:01.000
Gambino's connection stepped in to save the day.
00:49:06.080
And all of a sudden, a word comes down, blocking this.
00:49:09.940
Gambino's people made a deal with two very powerful congressmen.
00:49:13.940
And the deal was that they would be paid $1,000 a month for life if Gambino was allowed to stay here.
00:49:25.540
Could you imagine these fucking Italian guys like walking into the Capitol and be like,
00:49:29.820
Hey, buddy, we need you to do us a favor, okay?
00:49:33.360
All those crimes that Carlo did that y'all got them on, you know, I need y'all to forget about it.
00:49:39.600
Or else we're going to break your fucking kneecaps, okay?
00:49:48.960
I need some congressmen to do that for me, too.
00:49:54.800
Dudes could literally walk into a fucking government building,
00:49:57.000
tell the fucking law enforcement and government,
00:50:11.620
As his heart weakened, he grew increasingly frail.
00:50:14.400
On October 15th, 1976, Carlo died of a heart attack
00:50:19.360
while watching a New York Yankees game at his summer home on Long Island.
00:50:23.880
How he himself avoided being murdered is an astonishing mystery to me
00:50:30.080
because he had harmed so many tough mafia bosses.
00:50:38.720
Carlo Gambino had successfully led the crime family for 20 years
00:50:43.000
and left a criminal dynasty that would far outlive him,
00:50:53.080
drawing mourners from New York and around the country.
00:50:58.040
My guess is there were thousands and thousands and thousands of people
00:51:01.180
who walked through there and paid their respects.
00:51:06.840
look at the amount of people that attended man's funeral
00:51:14.600
the search for a new direction would carve a bloody trail
00:51:32.220
Just before his death, Carlo had picked a successor.
00:51:35.120
In making this faithful decision about the future of his criminal empire,
00:51:42.060
set off a chain of events that would eventually bring the family down.
00:51:49.540
None of them had positions of sufficient seniority in the family.
00:51:56.180
so he chose his 61-year-old first cousin and brother-in-law,
00:52:28.480
had helped Carlo get a foothold in the New York underworld.
00:53:04.180
Well, it wasn't anymore because of the commission.
00:53:28.180
Wait, did it show that he had been a capo before?
00:54:04.800
and began helping his father in the numbers record.
00:54:46.220
yet Paul wouldn't rat on his partners in crime.
00:55:03.320
hey, what kind of criminal activity are you doing?
00:55:41.140
She was talking about what she was going to make
00:56:03.080
dressing well and driving a sleek Buick convertible.
00:56:31.540
These crimes guys are like the bread and butter of the mafia,
00:56:40.140
Like New York City guys is arguably built by the mob.
00:56:44.500
Like a significant amount of New York City projects
00:56:51.660
that didn't go over with the meat and potatoes thieves,
00:57:06.460
not because he had paid his dues on the street,
00:57:11.820
He was the mob's version of Little Lord Fauntleroy.
00:57:19.840
He didn't have to get his hands dirty or bloody.
00:57:41.680
the more popular candidate to take over after Carlo
00:57:54.920
which is obviously going to cause a lot of resentment.
00:57:57.280
Della Croce operated out of the Ravenite Social Club
00:58:06.920
which is another reason why people didn't like the fact
00:58:19.600
one of the scariest individuals I've ever met in my life.
00:59:19.900
Big Pauly looked down his nose at such activities
00:59:22.660
and at men like John Gotti in their polyester suits.
00:59:32.740
as a corporate entity with various investments.
00:59:41.580
that were his way to respect in private industry
00:59:46.200
I think that the fact that he went to so much trouble
01:00:13.800
a mansion worth three and a half million dollars.
01:01:12.360
and tell them what cut of meat he wanted them to cut
01:01:29.820
Though his marriage to Carlo Gambino's sister-in-law
01:01:45.300
were all the time sleeping in their separate rooms.
01:01:57.560
Sparks Steakhouse is still open to this day, guys.
01:02:37.720
Paul turned to his young Colombian maid for solace.