The Megyn Kelly Show - Serial Killer Israel Keyes, Scott Peterson, Sammy the Bull - Megyn's ＂True Crime＂ Mega-Episode

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00:01:00.800 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:01:12.500 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and today's True Crime

00:01:16.680 mega episode. We're going back to the very first time Mark Garagos was on this show.

00:01:21.780 Now he's one of our hosts on the MK True Crime Show, In the Well.

00:01:26.880 But a couple of years ago, we dug into some of his biggest cases like Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson.

00:01:33.800 He's done everything.

00:01:35.040 And then there is another MK Media star.

00:01:37.760 Her name is Maureen Callahan.

00:01:39.160 She swung by the set to discuss the serial killer Israel Keyes.

00:01:43.760 She actually wrote a whole book about this guy.

00:01:46.180 Fascinating.

00:01:46.700 And finally, we are closing things out with our feature interview of Sammy the Bull.

00:01:53.100 This is the guy, right, who like the crime family guy, the hit man.

00:01:57.880 There was a question in this interview that was like, after your 19th murder, I mean,

00:02:03.840 that's something I've never asked anybody before or since.

00:02:06.640 This guy was fascinating and has an incredible life story about like the time he moved to

00:02:13.800 the suburbs, like the really nice suburbs, the more affluent suburbs, and what happened when

00:02:18.600 his children tried to make friends. I've never forgotten this exchange. Out of all the interviews

00:02:23.480 I've done, his stands out. I hope you enjoy. We'll see you Monday. My guest today for the full show

00:02:30.680 is someone I have long admired, Mark Garagos. He's one of the most fascinating, accomplished,

00:02:37.240 legit lawyers, trial lawyers in the country. He has defended some of the biggest names in the

00:02:43.100 famous and infamous cases over the past few decades, including several cases, several making

00:02:48.460 big headlines right now and even today. Here are just a few of his most famous clients. Michael

00:02:54.260 Jackson, actress Winona Ryder, actor Jussie Smollett, oh yes, Colin Kaepernick, and Scott

00:03:01.840 Peterson. Do you know that there's news in the Scott Peterson case? This is one of the first

00:03:06.340 cases I covered when I was at Fox News. I was a young cub reporter. I didn't know what I was doing.

00:03:11.180 I was much closer to being a lawyer than I was to being a journalist at that point in time.

00:03:16.160 And so I love this case because it had all the elements and the whole country was riveted by it.

00:03:20.900 Scott Peterson was convicted of killing his wife and their unborn child back in 2004.

00:03:27.720 Well, he was in court yesterday being resentenced.

00:03:31.540 He was given a death sentence at the time.

00:03:33.420 Well, he received a new sentence for those 2004 murders.

00:03:37.820 But Peterson might be getting a new trial as well.

00:03:40.640 So it's not just that his sentence has been effectively reduced.

00:03:44.800 He may be getting a new trial.

00:03:46.380 So we're going to get into why that is.

00:03:48.600 And Mark Garagos believes to this day that Scott Peterson is innocent.

00:03:52.000 Going to get into Jussie Smollett.

00:03:54.040 Talk about that.

00:03:55.000 And new testimonies underway right now in the trial of Minnesota police officer Kim Potter,

00:03:59.380 who's on trial for having shot Daunte Wright with a gun, which she believed was a taser.

00:04:05.200 So lots to discuss.

00:04:06.000 Mark Garagos is a trial lawyer and managing partner of Garagos and Garagos.

00:04:10.100 and co-host of the podcast, Reasonable Doubt, with Adam Carolla.

00:04:14.660 Thank you so much for being here, Mark.

00:04:15.980 How are you?

00:04:17.160 Thank you.

00:04:17.660 I'm wonderful.

00:04:18.540 It's, I guess, kind of come full circle.

00:04:22.060 I remember you covering the Peterson case and thought you had a bright future and see

00:04:26.780 I could prognosticate things then and now.

00:04:30.680 Oh my God, I would have been so honored if I had known that at the time.

00:04:34.320 I just watched you and you're such a skilled trial attorney, such confidence, and you're

00:04:39.360 at the peak of all these massive cases, a lot of pressure. So that does mean a lot to me. Thank

00:04:44.580 you for saying that. It was quite a, it was quite a different time. I'm the, uh, you were just

00:04:49.740 starting out. Kimberly Goufoyle was just starting out, uh, then married to the, uh, the mayor and,

00:04:56.060 um, Nancy Grace and just kind of blown up, uh, so to speak. And court TV was, uh, was really in

00:05:03.920 its heyday at that point true i will tell you i'll tell you though that the um i was thinking

00:05:09.480 about a lot of those things yesterday because as you just mentioned scott was just resentenced and

00:05:14.720 by the way i think that's a little bit of kabuki theater because the same judge who has this and

00:05:20.860 you had mentioned that the uh california supreme court had reversed the death penalty unanimously

00:05:27.400 by the way because we had complained in real time the judge was using the absolute wrong standard

00:05:33.520 for excusing jurors. If somebody didn't have a kind of a preference for the death penalty or not,

00:05:44.000 he was just excusing anybody who was against the death penalty, which is not the standard. I

00:05:49.280 was bitterly complaining at the time. Yeah, he should have followed up and said,

00:05:53.520 but can you still be fair? Could you still impose it if the facts justified?

00:05:58.320 Which, by the way, was the law and it was clear, it was U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

00:06:02.060 And the California Supreme Court, not only the poor judge DeLuki is now dead, but not only reversed it, but kind of excoriated the prosecution.

00:06:12.280 Why did you allow this to happen? You know, this was basically a year long proceeding.

00:06:16.900 And what a waste of time. My position has been, well, if you get kind of pro death penalty jurors, you're getting pro law enforcement jurors.

00:06:26.660 And that should have tainted the guilt phase as well.

00:06:31.200 What they did instead of going that far, what they did is they issued right after the reversal an OSC, Order to Show Cause, saying to the trial judge, look, there's this woman who was a juror, Strawberry Shortcake is the way she was dubbed by the media.

00:06:47.080 And just to jump in, just hold on, Mark, because I just want to make sure that our audience is with us. We're shifting gears a little. He got a new trial instead of a death sentence because the judge shouldn't have been disqualifying jurors who had doubts about the death penalty. So that's why he got a different sentence.

00:07:02.400 He got a different sentence sentence, but he wants a new trial. He wants to have a redo on

00:07:09.360 the guilt or innocence phase based on something else involving jurors. Yes, but it's a different

00:07:14.760 issue. And it revolves around this, as you say, strawberry shortcake. OK, go ahead.

00:07:19.700 Exactly. And so what they've done is they had a they issued the Supreme Court issue in order

00:07:26.360 to show cause. So now there's they're back in the trial court. The same judge who resentenced him to

00:07:32.720 life yesterday has now set a hearing for next year. And the kind of an interesting twist that

00:07:39.180 hasn't been reported on. She filed a declaration denying that she had lied or denying that she 0.96

00:07:45.760 hadn't been truthful. But now she's got a new lawyer and she's invoking the Fifth Amendment. 1.00

00:07:51.280 Oh, and so wait, wait, wait. So again, let's set it up because people are not as neck deep in it as you are. So this juror, the alleged misconduct is when you guys were going through because you were Scott's lawyer. I mean, I guess we should remind people of that again. You were his trial lawyer. So when you were voidering the jurors and figuring out who you guys wanted on the jury, you and the prosecution had to agree.

00:08:12.740 um this woman filled out a form and did not disclose that she had been the victim of domestic

00:08:19.900 of abuse while pregnant which of course was the situation being alleged right here might have

00:08:26.520 given might have given us pause right yes of course and as a defense lawyer you can either

00:08:31.840 bounce somebody for cause saying there's no way this person can be fair or you can use your 0.68

00:08:35.640 peremptory challenges saying i don't have to tell you why i don't want her i just i don't want her

00:08:38.780 um you don't you weren't given that opportunity because you didn't know you didn't know that this

00:08:42.320 woman had been abused while pregnant. She kept it a secret orally in writing. I guess it came up a 0.81

00:08:48.380 couple of times. She never disclosed. And so I'll bounce it back to you on what. So now she's

00:08:53.120 pleading the fifth. Yeah, she filed a declaration, presumably at the behest of the prosecution,

00:08:59.180 because it was a test. It was attached as an exhibit. And then she gets a new lawyer. Now

00:09:04.440 she's now she's asking for immunity, which is shocking to me, which if you read between the

00:09:11.080 lines, the prosecutor got her to say something, presumably that she no longer thinks is true or

00:09:17.440 didn't think was true at the time. If they don't give her immunity, then, as you know,

00:09:23.740 they'll strike the declaration. And Scott's got a better than even chance of getting a new trial.

00:09:29.040 What did she say in the declaration? Because she she like, as I understood it, it's his defense

00:09:34.600 counsel saying we came to understand that she had this thing and she didn't disclose it.

00:09:39.780 therefore were entitled to a new trial because he's entitled to a jury that doesn't have any

00:09:44.860 sort of unfair bias against him. Why was she submitting an affidavit or a declaration, the

00:09:49.840 juror? Because they were trying to say, the appellate lawyers were saying for Scott that

00:09:57.240 she had not disclosed this, that she knew that it was relevant. One of the reasons that this was a

00:10:05.640 hot issue. I had caught two other jurors who had lied, prospective jurors who had lied about their

00:10:12.040 background and having domestic violence and caught them in real time. And they had fooled me. I mean,

00:10:18.360 one juror had gone back. I mean, we're going back 17 years. Back then they had chat rooms and

00:10:24.320 somebody had faxed me a chat room conversation that one of these prospective jurors had where 0.99

00:10:30.840 she had was bragging that she fooled the dumb shit defense lawyer me um and was going to get 0.99

00:10:37.100 on this jury and fry his client and i confronted her with that after i got that i was a little 0.99

00:10:42.920 ticked at my pi for not finding it but that was the kind of stuff we were dealing with that's

00:10:49.220 where we coined the term stealth jurors jurors who wanted to get on a jury for you know some

00:10:54.900 other agenda other than to do justice so what so now this court is uh i guess february 20th i think

00:11:01.740 is what the february 25th the hearing on whether he should get a new trial on guilt or innocence

00:11:07.060 will begin and i wonder what you think i know what you want but what do you think the odds are

00:11:13.580 because i've read a lot of articles on it now and and half of them say legal analysts say it's very

00:11:18.760 very unlikely he's going to get it and then half of them say legal analysts say he has a very good

00:11:23.460 chance of getting it? Well, we're in the state court. So the California Supreme Court, as I

00:11:31.360 indicated, had unanimously referred this back to the state trial court. It's an awful heavy lift

00:11:37.560 for a trial court judge in a case like this. Remember, at the time, you probably have a

00:11:43.520 pretty good memory of it. I mean, this was the most hated man in America. As soon as Amber Fry

00:11:49.280 came on the scene, that was all she wrote in terms of the kind of pretrial prejudice and animosity

00:11:55.980 and animus towards Scott. So I hate to be a cynic, but it is a heavy lift. However,

00:12:02.160 if Strawberry Shortcake does not get immunity and will not testify, that declaration of hers

00:12:09.980 gets struck and they're left with no evidence to rebut, they being the prosecution, to rebut the

00:12:17.000 OSC. And so the, presumably the, he would get a reversal. Now, if I, if you're asking me to

00:12:23.440 prognosticate, I'm always more confident that that would happen in federal courts and state court,

00:12:28.420 but we'll see. It let's go back through it because his sister, Scott's sister, Janie

00:12:35.200 has been a tireless sister-in-law has been a tireless advocate for him. I watched a 48 hours

00:12:41.980 piece not long ago that got into it in depth with her and um she and his supporters maintain

00:12:48.940 he didn't do it it's not just like the prosecution didn't meet its burden that he is innocent of this

00:12:55.660 crime and the theory is and just to remind the viewers um what happened was it was december

00:13:02.360 it was it was december 24th it was christmas eve right 2002 and i'll let you tell them mark what

00:13:08.020 was the the theory of the prosecution was what happened? The prosecution was that he had at least

00:13:13.200 in the opening statements, they had taken the position that he killed her on the 23rd, that he

00:13:19.700 transported her in the back of a boat up to the bay, that he dumped her on the 24th and then came

00:13:26.640 home and had made conflicting statements, golfing or fishing, blah, blah, blah. During the trial and

00:13:33.920 by closings, we had, I thought, demonstrably proved that she was alive on the morning of the

00:13:40.300 24th. And the way we had done that is they had a forensic computer expert who was on the stand.

00:13:46.300 And during cross-examination, I got him to admit that it appeared that the activity on the morning

00:13:52.040 of the 24th was consistent with the websites that Lacey would go to, that she had logged in and

00:13:57.740 had all the signatures of Lacey. And we had shown in the hamper that the clothes that were there

00:14:04.160 would have been the dirty clothes that she had worn on the 23rd. The prosecutor, Rick DeStasso,

00:14:10.220 who's now a judge, by the way, got up in closing rebuttal and said, well, it really doesn't matter.

00:14:16.740 Yeah, we may have been wrong. We don't know when she was dead. We don't know how she's dead.

00:14:20.660 we don't know where, but the fact is his alibi was in the Bay. That's where she was found four

00:14:27.340 or so months later. So therefore you, you must convict a couple of the jurors in real time back

00:14:34.260 then said, but for her being found in the Bay, um, they never would have convicted. Um, I always

00:14:41.680 thought, and I publicly before I took the case said, you know, there's guys in, in state prison

00:14:47.720 on a lot less evidence that the body washes up in the same location where your alibi was. But

00:14:54.240 the problem was, it was a four-month hiatus. Everybody in the world knew where he had been,

00:15:00.340 and so that kind of takes away, if you will, the causal connection. And number two,

00:15:07.460 that area where the Bay was searched repeatedly by four or five different agencies, and they found

00:15:15.320 nothing until after this huge storm. And that's when they found Lacey's body and Conor's body as

00:15:22.980 well. Because Lacey was eight months pregnant with their son, Conor. And the theory of the

00:15:28.640 prosecution was that he killed her because he was having an affair with Amber Frye and he didn't

00:15:34.100 want a child and he didn't want to be with Lacey anymore. He wanted to be with Amber Frye,

00:15:39.260 very beautiful blonde who, you know, it was the Gloria Allred moment, you know, that we see in

00:15:44.440 virtually every case. And that was the bombshell because when Lacey was missing, the whole country

00:15:49.360 was saying, where is she? Where is she? Is this beautiful eight-month pregnant woman,

00:15:53.780 adoring mother, Sharon Rocha, you used to see her everywhere. Scott Peterson's a good-looking guy.

00:15:59.500 It's like, oh, they seem like this all-American couple. My God, it's Christmas Eve. What happened

00:16:03.780 to Lacey and Connor, the unborn baby? And then things turned when Amber Fry came forward. Amber 0.97

00:16:11.880 had been told by Scott, and this is one of the things that led people to hate him and believe

00:16:15.660 he did it, that his wife was dead. She only met Scott Peterson on 1120, November 20.

00:16:22.100 And he said, my wife's dead. This will be my first Christmas without her, which of course,

00:16:26.460 you know, the prosecution was like, that's foreshadowing by him. And then Sharon turned

00:16:31.940 on him. Lacey's family turned on him. And then you tell me, Mark, because I know you don't like

00:16:36.720 it when your clients give interviews to the press. I've listened to you for years and I know you'll

00:16:41.540 dump a client for that. But he sat down with Diane Sawyer and spewed a bunch of nonsense that we all

00:16:49.320 knew wasn't true. We actually pulled a clip because I wanted to ask you about how you, the lawyer,

00:16:53.320 felt about this. But here he is 17 plus years ago talking to Diane Sawyer on GMA.

00:16:59.260 Did your wife find out about it? I told my wife.

00:17:03.840 When? Early December.

00:17:05.360 did it cause a rupture in the marriage it was not a positive obviously it's uh

00:17:20.480 you know inappropriate um but it was not something that we weren't dealing with

00:17:28.880 a lot of arguing no no no um i you know i can't say that

00:17:38.020 that even you know she was okay with the idea but it wasn't anything that would break us apart

00:17:48.200 there wasn't a lot of anger no

00:17:52.640 the diane sawyer confused face speaks for us all oh she was fine with your affair

00:18:00.380 i used to say during this case that um the uh the absolute worst demographic for scott and for me 0.98

00:18:10.780 was professional white women i have never seen i could go to the gym in the morning during this 1.00

00:18:17.560 trial and there would be because there were no cameras in the courtroom which by the way was 0.76

00:18:22.400 probably my biggest mistake because things were being reported from New York and there were all

00:18:28.580 these urban myths and I could explain or disabuse somebody about any of the pieces of evidence but

00:18:35.500 ultimately they would say what about this what about this and I would debunk it debunk it debunk

00:18:40.000 it and then it would always default to yeah well I had an ex-boyfriend just like him and I could

00:18:45.920 see where he would have done this and you can't you know there's a there's a visceral quality to

00:18:50.400 that where you just can't get over it. And this interview, I mean, you've captured my sentiment.

00:18:55.680 Exactly. I tell people funny, I suppose we may talk about Alec Baldwin, the the idea that somehow

00:19:04.760 you need to go out and do an interview and you need to curate your image, so to speak, when you're

00:19:10.980 in the eye of the storm is I can't think of worst advice consistently. The only guy who ever did it

00:19:16.980 with any success ultimately was robert blake um and um other than that i can't give you an example

00:19:24.840 where it worked out well for somebody to go do an interview while they're pre-charging or while

00:19:30.900 the prosecutor's making decisions it just makes no sense whatsoever no i mean he i i always say

00:19:37.080 it's so obvious that he's lying he did not tell lacy about his affair and there there was no

00:19:42.140 tension because she didn't know there may have been tension for him and then the other thing he

00:19:46.420 did, you know, apart from, I believe, murdering his wife and unborn child. But the other thing he

00:19:51.540 did was he, while he was at Lacey's vigil, you know, they're having the vigils, like, where is

00:19:57.340 she? Where's Connor? Because their body didn't come up, as you say, until April at the marina.

00:20:03.060 He's on the phone. We now know Amber Fry. She went to the cops when she realized the guy she

00:20:07.240 was dating was the guy married to this Lacey Peterson who everybody's looking for. So to her

00:20:11.300 credit, she went to the cops and said, I think I'm dating this man. They had her do 29 hours

00:20:16.120 worth of tapes with him and one of them i will never forget is she's talking to him he's like

00:20:21.680 i'm at the eiffel tower paris it's so beautiful he was at the vigil for lazy mark he is guilty

00:20:30.280 as the day is long well i you know what i the the counter to that is and what i look i'm with you

00:20:38.220 the first time i heard it i said how are we ever going to get over this but then in talking with

00:20:42.740 And he said, look, I understood that the minute Amber surfaced, that the minute she came out, all bets were off.

00:20:50.580 They were going to stop looking for Lacey.

00:20:52.360 I had to do something.

00:20:53.520 I had to keep her on ice, hoping that we would find Lacey and then that would solve the problem.

00:21:00.060 And I, you know, I've often said people say, well, how can you you're drinking the Kool-Aid, you're inside, you know, you're psychotic.

00:21:08.100 How could you believe these?

00:21:09.060 look i've represented over the almost 40 years probably i don't know 500 uh homicide cases over

00:21:17.380 the 40 years maybe maybe less but i i know when somebody's good for something i know when they're

00:21:23.940 capable of it i've figured that out i can tell i know when somebody's a sociopath i know when

00:21:28.980 they're i mean i can just read it just by going through it this guy doesn't have the capability

00:21:33.820 I mean, that's just my spending that amount of time with him.

00:21:38.460 And I'll tell you, based on the evidence, the evidence, I know that people say, well, circumstantial, he didn't act right.

00:21:45.800 You know, the tapes you mentioned always are thrown back in my face.

00:21:50.740 And I said, yeah, but the problem is nobody can explain where this happened, how this happened, how this guy who gets on an interview and does not acquit himself well, was able to not leave a forensic trace anywhere, anyhow, of this crime.

00:22:09.400 How is it the perfect crime?

00:22:10.600 Why couldn't he have smothered her or strangled her, which wouldn't lead to blood evidence?

00:22:16.440 Her DNA would already be all over the house.

00:22:18.940 And then he got her body out of the house.

00:22:20.740 Yeah, but there wasn't anything that was consistent with that. I mean, they went through if you saw kinds of the and we went extensively over the forensic, they couldn't even find anything. There would be excretions. There would be evidence or telltale signs, trace evidence that would have got another one for you. I got another one. Why wouldn't why wouldn't he take a polygraph? And the night cops came over the first day she was reported missing. And they said, we take a polygraph and he refused.

00:22:47.380 only because it's not admissible in california no but this is at the point where she's missing

00:22:52.740 he's supposed to be the grieving terrified husband where is she oh my god right like if i go missing

00:22:57.660 for a day and they say doug will you take a polygraph doug says yes of course whatever

00:23:00.960 whatever you need but he didn't well it depends i don't know if doug was playing around on the side

00:23:06.440 but you know so he did not what do you know what no i don't want to i don't want to i don't want

00:23:14.160 to ruin what appears to be a very happy marriage. So you never know. But look, I always advise

00:23:21.680 clients, if you want to take a polygraph, I'm going to do it with my guy first. I mean,

00:23:26.100 polygraphs are notoriously slipshod. There's a reason there's a code section that doesn't

00:23:32.960 allow them in. And there's people who know how to pass them and people who would never pass them,

00:23:38.240 even if you are telling the truth. So to me, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I still come

00:23:43.020 back to or circle back there is no evidence there's absolutely no evidence of anything that

00:23:49.180 shows where how or when well he the evidence was all circumstantial about his affair about him

00:23:55.400 saying she was dead about him on christmas eve weirdly going fishing in his boat he couldn't

00:24:02.180 remember what bait he used when the cops asked him he went fishing in the very same place her

00:24:06.820 body and connor's body washed up four months later he was researching the currents um like

00:24:12.660 that was basically the case they never were able to say how he allegedly killed her or even as you

00:24:17.960 point out when exactly when and by the way we did a um a demonstration in that boat of trying to

00:24:23.940 toss a body over you would have capsized every every time the judge would not allow that

00:24:29.820 demonstration to be admitted into evidence which i thought was outrageous because he allowed it a

00:24:35.260 prosecution demonstration that did not replicate it also on the fishing on christmas eve it came

00:24:41.720 out in trial i never knew this that um lacy's uh stepfather was fishing on new on christmas eve as

00:24:49.120 well he had never disclosed that even though people were saying who goes fishing on christmas

00:24:54.040 eve um so you know there's a lot of things you can always weave together things that don't look

00:24:59.340 right but at the end of the day the this is not this is a guy who's got absolutely nothing a

00:25:05.720 complete pristine background and if you think he just committed cold-blooded murder especially of

00:25:11.160 his unborn son, which nobody will tell you that he wasn't excited about having a son.

00:25:16.820 And I think that's what he wanted to say yesterday in the sentencing hearing, but the judge wouldn't

00:25:21.480 let him alecute.

00:25:22.540 Right.

00:25:23.040 I'll make just a couple of points for you.

00:25:26.100 The affect, his weird affect, he was weirdly aloof.

00:25:30.360 He was smiling at the memorial, caught on camera with big smiles.

00:25:33.980 And people were like, that is not a grieving husband looking for his wife. 0.98

00:25:37.140 That's a sociopath. 0.83

00:25:38.720 But we recently had on Amanda Knox and she was talking about, you know, obviously she was wrongly prosecuted by this crazy Italian prosecutor. 0.54

00:25:48.480 And she her affect, too, was a little off seeming at the time.

00:25:52.640 And it was used against her in a very unfair way.

00:25:55.680 You really can't go by that, as it turns out.

00:25:58.760 And then the other thing is what the theory seems to be from Janie and others is that there were robbers, there were burglars in their Modesto, California neighborhood that they were seen, that previously we were told that the robbery or the burglary they committed was on the 26th, but they have evidence that it actually happened on the 24th and that Lacey may have been walking her dog, may have seen them and may have been kidnapped by them.

00:26:22.340 the dog was later found by itself with its leash still on. Some believe Scott did that to make it

00:26:28.700 look like somebody grabbed her and others, you know, his side will say that the burglars got

00:26:33.080 her. So we'll watch all of it play out. I think it's fascinating if he actually does get a new

00:26:38.560 trial, it will be the new trial of the century. It's going to like, no one will be able to peel

00:26:44.560 their eyes away. It's just got too many salacious, interesting elements. Okay. So much more with

00:26:50.040 Mark Garagos. He's represented everybody, everybody, including Jussie Smollett, including

00:26:54.340 Michael Jackson. You're going to ask him about Kim Potter, Ghislaine Maxwell, and much, much

00:26:57.980 more. Don't go away.

00:27:02.300 Okay, Mark, so let's talk about Kim Potter. Kim Potter is the police officer who's now

00:27:07.200 on trial for having shot Daunte Wright to death, where she clearly mistook her taser

00:27:14.120 for her gun, or I guess her gun for her taser. And you can hear her on the tape saying, I'm

00:27:19.900 gonna tase you taser taser taser and then she shoots with her firearm and he dies and it's

00:27:25.180 obviously a tragic accident but the prosecutor there has decided to treat it as a crime she's

00:27:30.180 charged with first and second degree manslaughter and uh boy they are in a battle there in that

00:27:35.720 courtroom i mean both sides are fighting it out um this is the case in which the prosecution had

00:27:40.720 i'm sorry the judge had some lunatic show up at her house trying to videotape her

00:27:44.620 she spoke to that uh just the other day saying it was an effort to intimidate me

00:27:49.380 good luck um and the guy who did it was arrested but anyway a new piece of videotape now showing

00:27:56.940 kim potter after the shooting we've all seen the taser taser taser here's a new piece of videotape

00:28:02.100 showing her right after that upset and hear how her fellow officer officer johnson

00:28:08.180 tries to console her listen there's a lot of crying and then we'll get to the dialogue

00:28:11.940 there you have it i mean i don't know mark i think the average person looks at that and says

00:28:38.260 why are we charging her again she she screwed up but like how is it criminal you know there's um

00:28:46.660 i've been on obviously the criminal defense side i also do a probably half of my practice are

00:28:54.560 suing police agencies in situations where people have been wrongly killed and i've watched police

00:29:02.560 officers almost uniformly get acquitted or have the judge dismiss at a probable cause proceeding.

00:29:10.160 It's very, very difficult to ever convict a police officer. This case, I think, is very tough

00:29:20.220 for the prosecution. And this tape, and I'm glad you played it, certainly gives, you know,

00:29:29.260 people often say, well, they didn't show remorse or they didn't understand or they there wasn't

00:29:35.020 they didn't act right. You know, I've spent a career defending people who didn't act right.

00:29:40.420 I mean, clearly here, this is somebody who's in the throes of a great deal of angst. And I think

00:29:46.560 that that is going to probably carry the day for it. Because remember, other than people who are

00:29:51.720 famous, police officers are the only other category of people that truly get a presumption of

00:29:58.060 innocence. Interesting. You know, to me, it boils down to the, what are the instructions going to

00:30:06.680 be to the jury? Because if the judge tells the jury that she can't have behaved recklessly,

00:30:13.980 which is required to prove first or second degree, if she can't have behaved recklessly

00:30:22.140 without knowing she was taking a dangerous risk, you know what I mean? If it was a true accident,

00:30:27.300 she didn't realize she was pulling out a firearm and shooting, then I don't see how she gets

00:30:32.160 convicted. Andrew Branca, who's been amazing, he's great. He writes over at legalinsurrection.com.

00:30:38.660 They were amazing during the Rittenhouse trial and everything Andrew said was right.

00:30:42.680 He put it as follows. I was like, this is exactly it. He says, the critical question is this,

00:30:47.280 is the state required to prove that Kimberly Potter was aware that she was holding a firearm

00:30:53.180 in her hand in order to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that her conduct in handling it was

00:30:57.960 reckless and manslaughter?

00:30:59.380 Do they have to prove she was aware that she was holding a firearm?

00:31:03.840 The defense is their position is that you cannot be engaged in reckless conduct that

00:31:07.760 you do not know you are engaged in, right?

00:31:10.000 Like you don't you don't know you're firing a gun.

00:31:12.860 And the judge hasn't hasn't instructed the jury and it hasn't and she hasn't given either

00:31:18.020 side guidance on how this is going to come down.

00:31:20.060 And I kind of wonder, like, it all comes down to which way she wrote, how she informs on recklessness.

00:31:27.000 Well, one of the problems is, and we've been arguing this in California state court for years, the difference between the state of mind for what's called an implied malice murder, the difference in homicide between murder and manslaughter is whether there's malice.

00:31:45.180 Well, there's also what's called implied malice.

00:31:48.460 If you act in such a way, the law will imply that you had the malice for murder.

00:31:54.560 I've often argued, and I'm not alone here, that sometimes the state of mind when the jury gets the instruction on one of these manslaughter charges is very misleading.

00:32:08.500 And a jury doesn't know what to do with it.

00:32:11.180 And here you've got I can understand why the judge is not giving guidance, so to speak, because they have what are called pattern instructions.

00:32:19.480 They've got instructions that have been either affirmed or blessed, if you will, by the appellate courts.

00:32:27.500 But she probably in this case wants to hear how the evidence comes out and then tailor it to that and tailor the instruction of that.

00:32:34.080 But it's a horrific job for jurors, for laypeople to have to kind of parse through the language, which never is very clear.

00:32:42.500 And then put that in context of what am I going to do with a police officer who didn't go out there with the intention to do the killing?

00:32:51.660 And so that's a, you know, God forbid that you're one of those jurors.

00:32:56.100 It's interesting because the defense seems to be hedging its bets.

00:32:58.920 They're going to argue that she didn't have a state of mind at all intending to kill anybody.

00:33:04.080 Obviously, she didn't intend to fire her her gun. I think we can all give her that based on what we've seen, although some people aren't. But they also seem to be kind of hedging by saying, even if she did intend to fire the gun, she had cause because the guy, Dante Wright, was was driving away with an officer in the car, half in the car.

00:33:25.740 Here is so what the prosecution did was they put on Officer Lucky, who was a three year officer who she she Kim Potter was supposed to be training that day.

00:33:36.760 And he was a prosecution witness sort of talking about his experience and what he saw.

00:33:41.640 And then the defense attorney got up there and in like 20 minutes, seamless little boom, boom, boom, boom, cross examination, got out the following testimony.

00:33:52.140 Let's listen to it.

00:33:53.120 There's a voice that appears and says, Kim, that guy was trying to take off with me in the car.

00:34:01.560 Remember hearing that?

00:34:02.700 Yes.

00:34:03.700 Whose voice was that?

00:34:05.260 Sergeant Johnson's voice.

00:34:06.940 Is this a high crime area for guns as well?

00:34:10.180 Yes.

00:34:11.080 And for drugs?

00:34:12.420 Yes.

00:34:13.320 And your intuition is formulated by a number of things, but among them is that you've been in this area all your life.

00:34:21.920 Yes.

00:34:22.240 And know the streets as well as anybody.

00:34:25.300 Yes.

00:34:25.980 And you ran the plates, found that the tabs were stale, and then you had a reason to stop the car.

00:34:33.760 Is that right?

00:34:34.380 Yes.

00:34:34.820 So you wanted to find out what was going on.

00:34:38.220 Yes.

00:34:38.720 Because you had an intuition that something else was going on besides the tabs.

00:34:42.520 Yes.

00:34:43.640 You didn't quite know, but you were curious.

00:34:47.580 Yes.

00:34:47.860 And there was nothing wrong with you stopping the car for the reasons you said you stopped it, right?

00:34:55.640 Correct. No.

00:34:59.100 So he's just basically trying to set up it was a proper stop.

00:35:02.440 You were following order and that this was an area that was known for problematic crimes and criminals and so on.

00:35:10.360 And, you know, you also get out the fact that the one officer was half in the car when he tried to take off.

00:35:16.040 it's a technique that was used by the defense lawyer that he's probably been gored by that

00:35:23.960 countless times by prosecutors who go through that same litany when they're trying to convict

00:35:29.440 one of his clients. I've heard that kind of, this is a high crime area. This is why you had an

00:35:35.220 intuition. This is why you did it, blah, blah, blah. That's normally what the prosecutor would

00:35:41.380 do here because you have a cop who's on trial they the other cop is going to support your theory

00:35:47.980 you're being the defense lawyer and is going to give you what you want which is exactly what he

00:35:53.140 just did right there and by the way you're absolutely correct because what this does is

00:35:58.860 even if you think that she that she isn't being truthful when she says she had a gun

00:36:05.320 that even with a gun, there is the, you know, she had a reasonable doubt as to what was happening

00:36:13.320 there and whether or not she could use the force that she used. What do you think? I mean, if you

00:36:18.120 had to place a bet, and I realize the trial's in the middle, but like, what would you guess a jury

00:36:22.260 would do with this? Because I realized the prosecution is like, it was irresponsible.

00:36:26.300 You know, a man's dead. She needs to be held accountable. But it's like, you watch this

00:36:29.840 distraught woman. She's been on the force 26 years. She's not like chauvin. She doesn't have

00:36:35.000 a litany of complaints against her. She's a mom. You can hear her distress. They're really going

00:36:39.540 to throw this woman in jail for upwards of 15 years that Keith Ellison there wants to jack up 1.00

00:36:44.580 the sentencing guidelines on her. He wants them to throw the book at this woman. Well, I'll tell

00:36:49.560 you during, I'll give you an example during the Rittenhouse trial. One of the reasons I was kind

00:36:54.460 of leery of predicting, even though I thought that it looked to me like it was a self-defense

00:37:01.360 was you can't look or I can't see the jurors. I mean, the jury selection, I've said this for

00:37:06.660 years, is everything. Most cases are over by the time you've sworn the panel because you understand

00:37:13.080 I don't care how good you are as a lawyer, you're never going to change people's view or their

00:37:18.620 prism for what they look through and who they are. So you have to basically pick a jury or

00:37:26.140 deselect a jury that'll give you your best shot. So I haven't seen their jury, but I will tell you

00:37:31.780 that so far, the way the evidence is unfolding, it sure is a compelling argument for a not guilty.

00:37:38.860 And that, I think, is probably where it's headed. Like I said, I'll circle back to what I told you

00:37:45.760 before. Cops get a presumption of innocence that a lot of other people don't get.

00:37:50.540 That's true. And they don't always deserve it. But I feel like in this case, come on,

00:37:55.220 The woman did it. She made a terrible mistake. She didn't have a history of negligence on the force. You can show this is like a hothead or she's she never had any business having the badge. 0.74

00:38:04.060 Not only did she resign right after this happened, but the chief of police was forced out. It was like, OK, by the way, the New York Times is reporting that there was a lawsuit against Dante Wright's family, raising questions about whether Dante Wright in May of 2019.

00:38:20.900 The woman filing a lawsuit claims that Daunte Wright shot her son in the head in Minneapolis, leaving him severely disabled.

00:38:28.880 I mean, I don't know that the jury is going to hear anything about that.

00:38:31.580 But, you know, it's the cops walk up to these defendants not knowing what they're dealing with.

00:38:37.160 But they always have to presume the guy's got a gun and is willing to use it.

00:38:42.100 Well, I saw that today, and most probably that will not come into evidence, because unless the cop knew or had some indication that they knew about that incident, the judge would probably rule that that's inadmissible.

00:38:57.060 But having seen that, it certainly, I think, would give pause to a prosecutor if they knew about that when they were filing the case and what charges they were filing.

00:39:06.200 I mean, that's that's when you get back to prosecutorial discretion. And part of the argument you've kind of implicitly made here, Megan, is why? Why are they exercising their discretion in this way on this case? What is the motivation for that? Is it because they want to seek justice or are they pandering?

00:39:27.040 So that's Keith Ellison. He's a he's a political hack. I mean, he is he's a political hack and he's the AG there and he's the one who insisted on jacking up the charges. And now he wants to push for a jacked up sentence if she's found guilty. It happened in the wake of George Floyd and it was in Minnesota.

00:39:45.360 so all the you know temperatures are already up and the nation is stressed and that was

00:39:52.280 reflected i think in her reaction to what she did but we still need to you know the law is the law

00:39:57.480 and uh not everything's a crime just because it's awful and she and the city will be sued i think

00:40:02.840 they already sued um and they'll get millions of dollars that's to me the remedy here civil lawsuit

00:40:08.040 uh which is going to go the way of the family um more with mark garagos we're going to pick up

00:40:12.820 Jussie Smollett right after this break, who is represented by his firm.

00:40:17.200 Oh, that's exciting.

00:40:21.060 So, Mark, Jussie Smollett, the trial is in deliberations right now.

00:40:26.300 The jury has had the case for about five hours, by my count, two hours yesterday after closing

00:40:32.600 arguments, and now they began this morning right after nine central time.

00:40:38.500 So five hours, they're deliberating.

00:40:40.340 And just FYI, the racial makeup of the jury is, let's see, they're white, the majority white, middle-aged, one black man, one black woman is an alternate.

00:40:52.580 And they are now kicking around whether they believe Jussie Smollett was the victim of a hate crime or made the whole thing up for favorable publicity.

00:41:01.740 So I didn't realize until preparing for this that your firm had a role in this case.

00:41:05.260 Well, I handled the case originally the first time it was dismissed and had I violated one of my standard rules, which is I generally will not do a state court case, criminal case out of state, out of California.

00:41:23.000 I just I think I'll do federal anywhere, but state court criminal, I always think is kind of a weird creature, so to speak.

00:41:32.640 But we did it there, got it dismissed. I thought that was the end of it. And then lo and behold, the case was once again resurrected. And I am kind of dancing on the head of a pin here because my New York partner, Tina, is trying it with local counsel Nenye.

00:41:53.220 And I was hoping, actually, that there would have been a resolution before this because the judge has kind of indicated that he's issued an informal gag order.

00:42:03.860 And even though I'm not on the trial team this time around, my partner is, so I'm trying to dance around that.

00:42:09.880 I will tell you that I thought it was resolved fairly last time.

00:42:16.660 I have my own theories as to what's going on right now.

00:42:21.540 But since there's an informal gag order, I'm gagging myself.

00:42:25.000 But I have a lot to say.

00:42:26.340 And after a verdict or a resolution here, I'm happy to fill you in as to what I really think is going on.

00:42:34.140 I accept.

00:42:34.560 You mean with the lengthy deliberation or with the fact that charges are ultimately filed?

00:42:38.860 Why this was resurrected, why the case was resurrected and kind of the players involved in everything that has transpired.

00:42:46.940 I think I think, frankly, it's outrageous that he's on trial again for the very same thing that it was already resolved on.

00:42:57.500 What punishment did he face the first time around?

00:42:59.860 Well, the punishment was he was the case was dismissed.

00:43:03.620 he forfeited ten thousand dollars which was the basically the ten percent of the bail and had

00:43:10.500 performed some community service so that those were all the things i i that's nothing he deserves

00:43:17.340 i don't think he belongs in jail for a long time but he deserves to be punished he made this whole

00:43:21.840 thing up he undermined legitimate claims of racial attacks he did more to damage you know black people

00:43:27.520 who genuinely get attacked by racists than anybody's done in a long long time and he should

00:43:31.360 face trial and be punished okay so you and i can agree to disagree and when i like it when you can't

00:43:37.560 argue yeah i was just going to say when i'm not muzzled i'm happy to respond to all of that

00:43:42.540 including the fact that he's maintained his innocence testified that it didn't happen and

00:43:47.800 the only so does oj yeah well the uh oj i always say the jury got it right in both cases in oj

00:43:55.240 I understand that. I understand that the proof argument in the O.J. case, but that man killed his wife and her friend, Ron Goldman. And there's absolutely zero doubt in my mind.

00:44:04.940 And the civil jury did their job.

00:44:07.760 That's right. Exactly right. All right. So so we'll table Jussie Smollett and we will accept your invitation to come back and discuss it.

00:44:14.520 I do think it's five hours is actually not that long because they have a lot to go through.

00:44:18.680 And I don't think I think it's too early to be drawing conclusions one way or the other.

00:44:22.700 you know people who think it's clear are like why didn't they come back two hours you know

00:44:26.100 but i think out of respect for the process a lot of juries just want to go through the evidence go

00:44:30.300 through the testimonies and you never know there's a whole thing that's that's i've had jurors say

00:44:35.080 that in high profile cases i remember in a case i tried in santa monica 20 years ago that i asked

00:44:41.800 them why they were out they came back and they acquitted the client across the board they said

00:44:46.560 well what were you hung up on they said we really it really weren't hung up it's just it's a high

00:44:50.980 profile case. We didn't want people to think that we were just going to come back not guilty

00:44:55.560 immediately, a la OJ. So they jurors are aware of that. They get that. Yeah. There is a question,

00:45:01.920 interesting piece over on National Review today about whether Jussie Smollett should face perjury

00:45:07.460 charges, because to people on my side of the aisle who think he's clearly lying and have been

00:45:12.500 listening to the police chief and everybody all along, they conclude what he said on that stand

00:45:17.580 was so patently false that he should be facing charges for it.

00:45:20.480 I mean, there's no question either he was lying

00:45:22.400 or those two brothers were lying.

00:45:25.780 Both cannot be true.

00:45:27.860 The idea that you're going to keep torturing me with this

00:45:30.860 when I can't respond because-

00:45:32.560 Well, let me ask it this way.

00:45:33.220 Let me ask it this way.

00:45:33.840 I don't want to get my poor partner in trouble

00:45:35.540 who's sitting there in Chicago.

00:45:36.340 But how unusual is it?

00:45:37.600 Now, forget Jussie.

00:45:38.860 How unusual would it be to,

00:45:41.620 if there's an acquittal in a criminal case,

00:45:44.040 for the prosecutor to then come back

00:45:45.860 and charge the man acquitted with having perjured himself. Well, let me give you an example that

00:45:55.640 happens more often. In federal court, where you have sentencing guidelines, if you get on the

00:46:01.200 stand and testify and lose, you get your sentence enhanced. I mean, that's because you did not

00:46:07.620 accept responsibility. You basically obstructed justice. You lose three levels of acceptance. So

00:46:15.060 it happens in the reverse all the time. And it shouldn't be that way. But it is because you've

00:46:21.580 got an absolute right to go to trial, force the prosecution to prove their case, you shouldn't get

00:46:26.920 punished when you go to trial and try to prove that you're not by taking the stand, which is

00:46:32.900 weighting your Fifth Amendment rights. So I take the opposite. In fact, it reminds me of when people

00:46:37.740 say, how do you sleep at night, knowing that your client is guilty? And I said, I don't lose sleep

00:46:42.780 over that. I lose sleep over going away when I've got a client who I believe is innocent. That's

00:46:48.680 when I lose sleep and engage in alcohol therapy. Right. A hundred percent. You know, when I went

00:46:53.920 to law school, I used to be that person. I wanted to be a prosecutor. And there was a very well-known

00:46:59.220 defense attorney. I never would have guessed. There's a very well-known defense attorney who

00:47:04.220 came in and started talking to us. And the young idealistic me actually asked that question. How

00:47:09.540 do you sleep at night, you know, knowing that you're you're getting guilty murderers and so on

00:47:13.860 off. And he answered it the same way you did. I come around. I'm definitely more prosecuted,

00:47:20.020 prosecution oriented still. But I love the role that criminal defense attorneys play. And it is

00:47:24.840 critical to to do process to the to the nation standing on the stilts upon which it was built

00:47:31.680 originally. And I hate that it's being eroded, you know, more and more in various settings.

00:47:36.680 And you sort of you get railroaded for ideology if without a defense lawyer.

00:47:40.060 You know, it's an interesting flip that has taken place.

00:47:44.540 You know, I made my career basically in the 90s defending Susan McDougal, who was Bill

00:47:50.460 and Hillary Clinton's erstwhile business partner in Whitewater.

00:47:54.300 And I tried her case in Santa Monica.

00:47:56.600 I tried against the Office of Independent Counsel for an obstruction of justice.

00:48:00.800 We wanted Little Rock against Ken Starr.

00:48:03.040 And all the arguments that we used to make and that the Democrats used to make in the 90s about an office of independent counsel and a prosecutor who had political motives.

00:48:16.700 Well, now you see that those are the same arguments that President Trump was.

00:48:21.340 Yeah, it's all been almost identical.

00:48:23.460 And the Democrats were all of a sudden embracing law.

00:48:26.840 All right. Hold on.

00:48:28.360 Stan, I'm standing you by there.

00:48:29.580 There's much, much more to discuss, including Alec Baldwin, Michael Jackson.

00:48:32.620 We'll do it right after this quick break.

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00:49:35.120 all right let's talk alec baldwin because i did listen to your reasonable doubt podcast with adam

00:49:44.220 where you talked about that and as usual you were fascinating on it and had some very strong

00:49:48.640 thoughts on alec's decision to come out and fight the pr war before the legal war which is the far

00:49:56.240 more important war has been settled. You can't stop these huge egos, you know, from going out

00:50:02.520 there and doing what they believe that is best for them and the brand. I want to play for the

00:50:07.980 audience the section I heard you taking particular issue with on the question of whether he feels

00:50:15.760 guilty. Listen. No, no. I feel that there is, I feel that someone is responsible for what

00:50:26.080 happened and i can't say who that is but i know it's not me i mean i i honest to god if i felt

00:50:31.180 that i was responsible i might have killed myself if i thought i was responsible

00:50:34.820 so why did you not like that i look there was an easy way to thread this needle if you're insistent

00:50:44.020 on throwing yourself on the grenade is obviously he is the the you say do i feel guilty yes i feel

00:50:52.380 horrible guilt in a moral sense. But legally, do I feel responsible? No, I would never have done

00:50:58.940 this blah, blah, blah. I mean, there's a way to thread that needle. This response, he is going to

00:51:03.980 get, you know, I don't wish a criminal prosecution on anybody in the world. I mean, it's the worst

00:51:09.520 thing in the world to go through. But he's going to have this thing at a very baseline level,

00:51:15.100 jammed right back up at him in civil lawsuit deposition um all kinds of ways and it's a

00:51:23.080 horrible horrible look and by the way you would mention scott peterson in the gma as we're talking

00:51:30.600 right now as we speak the judge in uh in mr smollett's case is re apparently reconsidering

00:51:38.080 the gma interview there i mean they one of the things i'm gonna have a and i had mentioned

00:51:43.180 Susan McDougal, one of her kind of bet noirs in her prosecutions was the GMA interview. So

00:51:49.940 God knows if you're a criminal defendant, that's the axis of evil is to ever get on the GMA. I'll

00:51:55.660 tell you. Do not do the GMA interview. Anything but GMA. You know, GMA is like they're big. ABC

00:52:02.840 in general is very big on crime. So that's why they get all these exclusives because they've

00:52:06.660 made that part of their beat. What would you do with that? Like if you had Alec Baldwin on the

00:52:11.900 stand and you were representing, um, Helena's, uh, family, you know, she was a cinematographer

00:52:17.340 who got killed or some of the other guys that filed lawsuits who witnessed it for emotional

00:52:22.120 distress. What would you do with that? Yeah, there's a lawyer who's co-counsel, I think with

00:52:27.880 Gloria on one of these, um, uh, lawsuits and I know exactly what they are going to do with it.

00:52:32.340 They're going to take that. They're going to, they're going to jam it right back up. What do

00:52:35.700 you mean? You don't feel guilty. Who do you know that was responsible if it wasn't you? Why are you

00:52:39.760 saying that? Why are you shirking your responsibility? By the way, every actor from

00:52:44.720 John Schneider on the right to George Clooney on the left has already said this is an impossibility

00:52:50.180 if you were careful, blah, blah, blah. They're going to do a tap dance on him. And by the way,

00:52:55.960 he's going to walk himself into, you know, they've only got a tower, apparently, if you believe

00:53:00.880 what's being reported, a $5 million in insurance. He's going to walk himself right into blowing

00:53:06.840 through that tower and being personally responsible on top of it. So I don't know what

00:53:11.980 he's thinking. I don't know why they think that image control is job number one. Job number one

00:53:18.340 is to keep you out of harm's way criminally. Job number two is to deal with the civil liability.

00:53:24.120 Job number three is to make amends morally and ethically for, you know, your role in this

00:53:30.960 horrible, horrible situation, which I don't think it was intentional in the least. I don't buy any

00:53:36.540 the conspiracy theories. But at the same time, how do you you know, he could have said the the

00:53:42.880 obvious solution is it's very difficult for me getting up in the morning because I was the last

00:53:47.800 person who cocked that gun, whether I pulled the trigger or not. I feel an enormous, enormous

00:53:55.440 amount of guilt in a non-legal sense over that. Right. Right. And the more he blames himself,

00:54:03.380 the more our instinct would be to let him off the hook, right?

00:54:07.040 Like if you see him really beating himself up, right?

00:54:09.700 But he's doing the opposite.

00:54:11.680 I explain this to clients all the time.

00:54:14.300 Remorse is, you can't fake remorse.

00:54:17.740 You can't get up.

00:54:19.640 I mean, people can sense that,

00:54:21.340 whether it's a jury or a judge or a fact finder,

00:54:24.740 either you're authentic and you have remorse

00:54:27.200 or you're a phony and you don't.

00:54:29.240 I mean, remorse, by the way,

00:54:31.140 That tape you played earlier of the officer who shot Dante, that, to me, is real, authentic remorse and immediate angst.

00:54:42.760 Yeah. So, Alec, he didn't have to do this.

00:54:46.960 He's been speaking with the police. Right.

00:54:48.400 And so in trying to stave off legal charges, that's the avenue.

00:54:51.540 Talk to the sheriff. Have your lawyer there.

00:54:53.420 Make sure you're giving them all the information.

00:54:55.800 He appears to have ticked off the sheriff with that Stephanopoulos interview, because let me play the soundbite that Alec said that that seems to be getting him in hot water because the sheriff has now responded publicly, which is not what you want.

00:55:09.860 Here's Baldwin on whether he actually fired the gun.

00:55:13.520 So I take the gun and I start to cock the gun. I'm not going to pull the trigger.

00:55:17.420 I said, do you see that you will just cheat it down and tilt it down a little bit like that.

00:55:20.720 And I cocked the gun. Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that?

00:55:23.900 and she says and then i let go of the hammer of the gun and the gun goes off

00:55:26.920 i let go of the hammer of the gun the gun goes off at the moment that was the moment the gun

00:55:33.080 went off yeah that was the moment the gun went off it wasn't in the script for the trigger to

00:55:37.440 be pulled well the trigger wasn't pulled i didn't pull the trigger so you never pulled the trigger

00:55:41.720 no no no no i would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them never

00:55:45.200 right because that really will get me sued well now the santa fe sheriff has responded saying and

00:55:51.660 I quote, guns don't just go off. So whatever needs to happen to manipulate the firearm,

00:55:57.320 he did that. And it was in his hands. What would you have thought if you if you saw that as Alex

00:56:03.940 lawyer? I would have said I told you so. And I would have, you know, probably pulled a Harlan

00:56:10.200 Braun and resigned like he did in Robert Blake's case. I mean, you can't go out there. This is not

00:56:16.560 a public relations issue. This is a criminal investigation. You can't go out there and then

00:56:23.420 inflame the very person who is investigating you. You, as you said, you cooperate. You try to show

00:56:30.560 that you are anything but trying to provoke them. But he's repeatedly done everything that he

00:56:40.560 shouldn't do. It's almost a textbook case of what you shouldn't do when you're in harm's way.

00:56:45.560 Yeah, it's he's not campaigning for an Oscar. He's trying to keep himself out of jail and out of bankruptcy court.

00:56:52.440 Well, you know, he said the other day, I don't know if you saw it or if you've got the clip.

00:56:56.740 He said somebody told me basically I'm not in harm's way. 1.00

00:57:00.540 I don't know who that somebody was unless they're baiting you into being stupid. 1.00

00:57:04.600 So it's mind boggling to me. If somebody's telling you that, I hope it isn't your lawyer. 1.00

00:57:11.120 Yeah, we haven't heard that from the sheriff.

00:57:12.600 Jeff. OK, so let's talk about speaking of famous clients with huge egos who believe they know

00:57:18.320 better when it comes to dealing with the press and how to handle law enforcement.

00:57:21.860 Michael Jackson, while you were dealing with the Scott Peterson case, you were representing

00:57:27.740 Michael Jackson on the child molestation criminal case. And I realized that ended because you had

00:57:34.260 to focus on Scott Peterson. And Michael was like, only one person can represent me.

00:57:37.360 Um, but that was crazy. You were everywhere. I'll give you a backstory there. The, um,

00:57:44.440 originally before that case was filed, I had had repeated conversations with the DA and, uh,

00:57:51.040 his name was Tom Sneddon, I believe. And I kept telling him this case is a loser. I don't know

00:57:56.880 what you're doing. Uh, this family, this Arvizo family I've investigated, I have figured out, 1.00

00:58:02.980 And I did it in real time for Michael because I'd represented Michael for years at that point. 1.00

00:58:07.880 And I knew that this was not a family that was going to end well for Michael.

00:58:15.280 And so I advised them, the Jackson team, they needed to kind of extricate themselves from this.

00:58:23.440 And sure enough, they did.

00:58:25.040 And then the Arvizo family went to the same lawyer that had previously represented the accuser from 1993 that Howard Weitzman.

00:58:36.280 Can I just clarify something, Mark?

00:58:38.100 I just got a little lost there.

00:58:39.600 You told Michael to extricate himself from what really, like when he was friends with the boy and the family prior to them accusing him?

00:58:47.380 You were like, these are grifters. 0.61

00:58:49.180 Do not befriend them.

00:58:50.020 That was basically your take.

00:58:51.160 I won't reveal the attorney client, but that's a pretty good synopsis. And so then what happened was, is the Santa Barbara DA ended up indicting him so that they wouldn't go to a probable cause preliminary hearing.

00:59:07.620 In California, almost all criminal felony cases are prosecuted by way of a preliminary hearing. They didn't want the witnesses on the stand because they knew what we would do to them. So they didn't end run. They indicted.

00:59:20.820 Well, when they indicted, they indicted him on a conspiracy.

00:59:24.640 That was the first count.

00:59:26.120 Well, I took a look at that.

00:59:27.660 And I remember saying to Michael at the time, I said, hey, this conspiracy has nothing to do with you.

00:59:32.620 This was my investigation of the Arviso family.

00:59:35.900 I'm going to end up having to testify in this case.

00:59:38.480 You need another lawyer, which is when we brought in Johnny Cochran, brought in Ben Brofman, my good buddy Ben.

00:59:45.260 Yes, because you testified.

00:59:46.840 I remember that you testified.

00:59:48.060 Not once, but twice that I was the one who did the investigation.

00:59:52.340 I was you couldn't blame Michael for that.

00:59:54.680 I was the one who was any so-called conspiracy, which was kind of manufactured by the prosecutor

01:00:01.640 was at my behest.

01:00:03.440 I see, because they were like, Michael, you've been investigating this poor family, this

01:00:08.300 poor young child.

01:00:09.420 And you were like, it wasn't him.

01:00:10.820 It was me.

01:00:11.280 So you couldn't represent him.

01:00:12.420 You were a witness.

01:00:13.780 I was a witness.

01:00:14.400 And like I say, I didn't testify just once in front of Judge Melville in the jury.

01:00:18.680 I testified twice, and I'll never forget the second time saying something which that jury found to be very humorous.

01:00:26.560 I think I was mocking the prosecutor, and I turned to Pat Harris, who was then with me, and I said, this jury's never going to convict him.

01:00:36.360 This is a laughing jury is an acquitting jury.

01:00:40.220 That's an interesting rule.

01:00:41.480 so and you were right they did not convict him but of course the stories about him would continue

01:00:47.780 well yeah because as you pointed out the family had to like they'd sued other people like when

01:00:51.300 you see these vexatious litigants who sue over and over and over again it's like okay but the

01:00:57.340 accusations against him would never stop and i've been dying to ask you about this and i i use you

01:01:03.220 know a lot of our listeners are just listeners they're not watching this on youtube uh so i'm

01:01:07.980 using air quotes, the documentary about Michael that was on HBO and what you thought of those

01:01:16.380 two accusers, James Safechuck and Mark Robson.

01:01:21.560 I'll tell you what I thought about that documentary.

01:01:24.020 I came very close to suing.

01:01:25.900 I came very close to suing in that case because I remember Adam actually on our podcast had

01:01:32.200 played a clip from the documentary. And they made it seem like I was saying, I'm going to land like

01:01:40.340 a ton of bricks on top of these accusers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That isn't what happened.

01:01:45.840 What the documentary filmmaker had done was he cut and spliced a press conference I had done.

01:01:54.560 The press conference was because when I picked up Michael from Vegas and took him to Santa Barbara

01:02:01.300 to surrender. The air carrier, the private charter had installed a pinhole camera that had

01:02:08.980 spied on my attorney client conversations with Michael. Yes. So I, you know how I found out about

01:02:16.460 that Greta Van Susteren called me the next morning and said, there's a guy who's shopping a lawyer

01:02:21.740 who's shopping your conversation on the jet with Michael for a million bucks. And I, she gave me

01:02:28.560 the name. I called the lawyer. I said, are you out of your mind? You can't shop this. This was

01:02:33.520 attorney client. And he said, my client thinks he's won the lottery. So I went to court. I got

01:02:40.660 a restraining order, came outside and said, I'm going to land like a ton of bricks on you when

01:02:45.300 you violate the attorney client privilege. The documentary maker cut and pasted that to make it

01:02:51.120 seem like I was talking about the accusers, which I wasn't. By the way, that guy who we got the

01:02:56.700 restraining order against, was later prosecuted federally, convicted. And I got a $25 million

01:03:04.160 judge or $22 million judgment against him for that as well. Well, the Court of Appeal reversed it

01:03:11.320 and said that that was excessive. I'm sure the guy doesn't have $22 million anyway,

01:03:15.540 but it's a moral victory. I can't believe it. Your life is so fascinating. You've done everything.

01:03:20.820 He represented everyone. So I saw that documentary and I was like, OK, it's not doesn't look good for Michael.

01:03:27.340 That's for sure. But because I am a lawyer at heart like you, I needed to know more.

01:03:33.040 So I started digging and digging and digging. And then I found all this stuff in particular about Wade,

01:03:39.040 about the the lies he's told in his civil litigation against the Jackson estate,

01:03:44.540 about how he denied having shopped, written and shopped a book about Michael with laudatory things in it.

01:03:49.960 and then it turned out they found it they got it from like random house or one of the publishers

01:03:54.840 so he lied he got caught lying under oath at his deposition then they demanded copies of said book

01:04:00.460 from his computer he he said he didn't have any or so he basically lied at every step and then

01:04:04.700 they proved that he had copies on his computer that he tried to write over i mean he was lying

01:04:10.600 all along and the other guy james every single point and that documentary maker should be ashamed

01:04:18.900 of himself. He didn't mention any of it. Exactly. It was completely sanitized. It was a complete

01:04:27.540 rewrite of history. But, you know, that's I hate to say that that's emblematic, but it certainly

01:04:33.540 seems to be emblematic of what's happening in America right now. And with what I think people

01:04:40.500 on the right like to call mainstream media. But it's really kind of abhorrent as to what's happened

01:04:45.980 with journalism and so-called journalism and the docu-journalism. Well, then you get the

01:04:51.180 imprimatur of Oprah at the end, like interviewing the documentarian, like, oh, tell us all just as

01:04:58.860 truthful as we think you are. Are you even more truthful? Your brilliance shines. It was this

01:05:03.880 bullshit. I don't know what happened between Michael and either one of these men when they 1.00

01:05:08.000 were younger. I don't know. No one knows. We weren't there. But well, they know. But the

01:05:13.600 the documentarian, again, air quotes, had an obligation to include that information about

01:05:20.240 those two accusers because the other guy, Safechuck, had just been hit, I think, with a

01:05:24.540 $500,000 lawsuit two weeks before he came out as an accuser. You know, it's like, now, maybe that

01:05:29.600 doesn't make him a liar, but we deserve as an audience to know. We deserve to know. And I go

01:05:35.640 on this tear a lot, Mark, because I hate the absence of due process and trial by media, even

01:05:39.680 though i'm in the media um and what i hear from everybody is though yeah but he was a molester

01:05:45.040 yeah but he did it yeah but it was a long line of boys that he molested and i don't i don't know

01:05:51.160 whether that's true or not i actually i don't know whether it's true i heard i heard the same

01:05:55.960 things everybody else heard people would say would you take your son because my when i was

01:06:00.600 representing michael my son was 10 years old they used to say would you take your son jake to

01:06:06.360 Neverland. And I said, well, actually, I did several occasions. So yeah, but did you let him

01:06:10.980 stay overnight? I don't know. I don't know anything about the other accusations. I do know

01:06:15.600 that the accusations when it involved the case I was dealing with were ludicrous.

01:06:20.620 But what about that? Right. Because I would not allow my son to spend an overnight with

01:06:26.400 any parent with any grown up. You know, I was like, that's weird. And you shouldn't

01:06:30.920 allow it and michael was a large child i mean i i've read you say that too um but still you just

01:06:39.120 don't let your six-year-old spend an overnight with a with a grown-up under any circumstances

01:06:42.700 but what do you think like when you think about him do you believe you said you have a sixth sense

01:06:48.040 do you have a sixth sense that he was capable of it no i really didn't i mean he just there it was

01:06:53.100 a childlike naivete um on his part and by the time i got to him he had been you know you're talking

01:07:00.540 in the 2000s this was not the same Michael Jackson that was in the 90s and um at least

01:07:06.260 as reported to me and I represented him for a couple of years and every encounter I had with

01:07:12.820 him he was just I thought um he'd just been pilloried he'd been beat up basically and it was

01:07:20.540 I thought awful I mean it really it really kind of made you sad I mean I was a huge fan in the 80s

01:07:26.460 And, and I just, I just didn't think he had, he had kind of become trapped, so to speak.

01:07:33.660 And it was an awful thing to watch.

01:07:36.660 Putting tabling for now, the allegations against him, since we don't, we're not going to resolve

01:07:41.680 those here.

01:07:43.340 Do you think that there is his situation and what happened to him personally was analogous

01:07:47.780 to what happened to Elvis, you know, like that level of fame, attention, grifters?

01:07:53.560 I think it's, I think that's exactly it.

01:07:55.660 I see this play out, you know, one of the I represented Chris Brown for about 10 years and Chris, I was always worried that would happen to him and it did not.

01:08:08.200 I mean, he kind of pulled himself out of all of that that he had been involved in.

01:08:13.500 And you worry when when somebody reaches fame so early and on such a magnitude that what it does to you.

01:08:22.860 And so, you know, they I think that I think that's a an apt comparison by you.

01:08:28.900 And I think that it's interesting that he had that relationship with Elvis's daughter as well.

01:08:34.920 Yeah, that's right.

01:08:36.480 There are just certain people who reach this bizarre level of fame that is in no way healthy.

01:08:42.640 I would put Tom Cruise in that same category, too.

01:08:45.360 I don't think his his weird Scientology rants are totally unconnected to his incredible fame and success.

01:08:52.860 just what it does to a person. I would not wish that on, on my, for my children, for anybody I

01:08:58.500 care about. I've walked down the street with various clients. I'll give you a couple of

01:09:04.300 examples. I've walked down the street. I represented Mike Tyson for a period of time,

01:09:08.320 and I've walked from my office with Mike down to another building to do a mediation. And I've seen

01:09:15.760 what people do. And I've walked down the street with Michael. I've walked down the street with

01:09:20.920 Colin Kaepernick. The level of fame and what happens and the fact that you really can't go

01:09:29.460 outside without stopping traffic literally and people kind of besieging you. I mean, it's on a

01:09:37.500 level that it's really hard to capture and make people understand for certain people when they

01:09:43.620 get to a certain level of fame and kind of notoriety. Would you say that probably the

01:09:51.920 most famous person you've represented and seen that with is Adam Carolla? I will tell you

01:10:01.320 something about Adam. I often say Adam always says that he thinks about me when he sees anything

01:10:08.280 legal i've in the last six or seven years that we've done the podcast together i've learned more

01:10:15.020 about human nature he's a great sociologist and and really kind of social or cultural anthropologist

01:10:22.400 his observations are so spot on he's got such a he's got such a way of viewing the world that is

01:10:30.020 just you know that you've you rarely come across somebody like that it's true he's one of those

01:10:35.000 people you just want to shut up and listen to it's just like go on just keep going because he

01:10:38.660 has a way of of capturing what's happening in the nation that's very unique um but jumping back

01:10:44.680 because i i know you didn't represent him he's just your friend and co-host but um i do can i

01:10:49.820 just ask about michael jackson actually i did represent him but we won't talk oh what'd he do

01:10:53.860 that's a whole different sentence a whole different thing i have i have represented

01:11:00.100 it at him. So I'm going to get him. I'm going to do a joint interview. You get him in here and

01:11:05.000 cross-examine him. I'll see you. We'll test your chops and see what you got. I still got it. I do.

01:11:11.720 I know you do. You're raising boys. You got to, right? That's right. Oh my God, 100%. Although

01:11:16.500 my daughter is just a formidable. I mean, I always say like they could send her down to

01:11:20.640 Guantanamo. She could get anything out of anybody down there. So when you were with Michael Jackson,

01:11:26.780 since you spent so much time with him like what was he like would you mind just describing so he

01:11:30.680 was childlike but like can you expand on it because i'm genuinely curious what that would be like

01:11:35.440 by the time i got to him um in the uh like i say in the 2000s um we spent i spent uh multiple

01:11:45.000 times or multiple days at neverland so watched him there i watched him um in uh when he was

01:11:52.700 camped out in vegas as well um the he was struggling i mean i think that's the best

01:11:58.620 way to put it he was struggling with all the things that were happening with the accusations

01:12:02.760 he was frustrated by it um and i i kind of there was a lot of empathy i had for him i i one of the

01:12:10.760 things that's hardest about doing the kind of work that we do is when you've got people who

01:12:16.400 are in the eye of a storm, it's very hard to try to get them centered because it's kind of an

01:12:24.160 existential threat. The criminal prosecution is there's, I often tell clients, at least with a

01:12:32.460 death, a sudden death of a loved one, you have the ability to mourn, to have a funeral or some

01:12:38.260 kind of a ceremony or wake, and then you get to move on, you get some kind of closure. You never

01:12:42.920 really get that in a criminal case and so that's that that's what i witnessed and it and it was

01:12:48.520 awful to watch it's just a it's a strain it's a drain and it's just a um uh it's a real real

01:12:57.120 painful thing to watch somebody who is so creative who is so brilliant who's such a genius in one

01:13:03.420 area to have to deal with something that is so foreign to them right and so ugly i mean just

01:13:09.200 terrible, terrible accusations. So much more to go over with Mark. I could do this all day. I could

01:13:15.600 keep you here for 10 hours, and I'd still have more to talk about. We're going to pick it up

01:13:18.680 after the break. I want to ask Mark about CNN, where he worked for a while. What does he think

01:13:22.060 about how they are today? Okay, so Mark, I used to watch you for years on CNN, back when CNN was

01:13:33.440 watchable, and you'd give your legal analysis on everything. And then you were gone one day,

01:13:38.900 And I was like, somehow you were linked to Michael Avenatti. 0.94

01:13:41.780 And I was like, OK, he must have been temporarily insane because Mark Garagos is way too smart to associate his brand with that lunatic. 0.75

01:13:50.060 So what happened?

01:13:52.000 You don't work there anymore.

01:13:53.240 What happened? 1.00

01:13:53.820 Why would you ever have associated with that nut case?

01:13:56.420 Well, I represented Michael.

01:13:58.360 So as a client, I mean, he had a DV case and I represented him and I've known him for a number of months.

01:14:05.760 And then the cases you mentioned happened in New York. CNN, in their infinite wisdom, decided to cut and run. In fact, I think I famously called them the cut and run.

01:14:20.640 But they were already kind of descending into this polemic that they've decided the path they've decided to go down.

01:14:29.780 I think there was some kind of irony that you would see Anderson sitting with Toobin next to him as they're announcing that Cuomo would be suspended.

01:14:42.480 And now I'm seeing where Mr. Zucker is being pilloried for his handling of the situation.

01:14:49.700 And I think the writing's on the wall.

01:14:53.380 There's going to be a shakeup.

01:14:55.280 And the largest stockholder in their merger there has already said they need to get back to what they used to do, which is Malone of the Discovery Channel.

01:15:04.080 So I think within the next six weeks, you'll see a reboot there.

01:15:07.920 Given what's happened over there and the ratings and everything else, they're not long for this world in their present kind of composition.

01:15:15.680 Are you shocked?

01:15:16.320 I mean, I said publicly, I used to watch CNN when I was getting ready for the Kelly file.

01:15:20.480 I used to have in my office, I had CNN on, not Fox, because it was like O'Reilly before

01:15:26.440 me and who I think is enormously talented.

01:15:29.280 But he's not, you know, if you want to get facts, at least back then, you would put on

01:15:33.160 CNN, you would put on Anderson Cooper.

01:15:35.520 And that's gone.

01:15:36.680 Even Anderson, gone.

01:15:37.940 They went hard partisan during Trump.

01:15:40.000 And it was way more opinion from the anchors than I ever wanted.

01:15:43.020 And it was all uniformly anti-Trump, anti-Republican.

01:15:45.860 And it remains thus to this day.

01:15:47.180 I wonder, having come from the belly of the beast, what you think when you watch it?

01:15:50.640 Well, I often used to say I thought there was some kind of I hate to psychoanalyze them.

01:15:56.040 But, you know, Zucker, as people tend to forget, was at NBC when Donald Trump was kind of anointed with The Apprentice series.

01:16:07.160 And I think that there was something going on where he just decided to go all in on the anti-Trump network and turn it into that.

01:16:18.060 And, you know, at this point, like you, I have to go search for BBC, sometimes Al Jazeera, to try to get any kind of a factual or what's going on in the world.

01:16:31.040 You just can't find what it used to be 20 years ago.

01:16:34.700 I mean, it used to be that you had Larry King on there for many years, and I always thought that was a fascinating show, which is why I did it, because it was long form.

01:16:46.100 People would talk kind of like what you're doing now, and you would get to at least hear things that weren't just like a Twitter bite of 140 characters.

01:16:54.660 You get people to talk.

01:16:56.140 You have a give and take.

01:16:57.600 They could have different viewpoints, and you would hear that.

01:17:01.620 that to me is more interesting than somebody just going on a polemic with two other people

01:17:06.140 who are kind of their cheerleaders. Yeah, you might learn something. You might be intellectually

01:17:10.420 stimulated instead of just outraged all the time. How about that? What what did you make of? I mean,

01:17:16.900 right. So CNN cut and run because you were sort of with Avenatti when he got caught up in that

01:17:21.920 thing to extort. I was there and had was trying to mind you, I had a relationship with Nike.

01:17:29.540 I knew Michael and tried to kind of mediate a situation that I thought would turn out bad.

01:17:36.620 I mean, I've got a we could do a whole hour on what what happened there.

01:17:42.460 But like I say, Michael was also a client.

01:17:46.040 I don't want to denigrate him in any way, shape or form.

01:17:49.040 I'll do it.

01:17:50.140 Yeah.

01:17:50.600 I mean, you yeah, you will do it.

01:17:52.680 And I'll sit and just listen to you.

01:17:55.380 Well, so he got he wound up getting charged criminally.

01:17:58.280 I mean, he had many legal problems. This is just one of them. But it's funny because he just got a mistrial. He went pro per or pro se federal court in Orange County and got a mistrial based upon prosecutorial misconduct. It's actually up in front of the Ninth Circuit now as to whether that's once in jeopardy, because normally if you get a mistrial and you request it as a defendant, you don't get a once in jeopardy, meaning that you can't be tried again.

01:18:26.120 But there is a kind of a sliver of the law that says if you're goaded into asking for a mistrial by the prosecution, that can be the one instance where the prosecution can't try you again.

01:18:40.000 Well, whatever it is, he's a bad man, but you're not.

01:18:44.140 And CNN did cut in big just because you were in a meeting with him.

01:18:47.340 That's the end of your relationship after, what, a decade?

01:18:50.620 They've been making money closer to closer to 20 years.

01:18:54.340 I mean, I will tell you, it was really and I had always resisted being a contributor because I always felt that being a contributor meant that I would have an issue with kind of advocating for clients because some clients do not belong on CNN in years past.

01:19:12.920 I would want them either on a morning show or I would want them somewhere else in terms of where I thought they were best.

01:19:19.060 But finally, they were kind of relentless. And I did I did take a contributorship with the caveat that I was able to do other things. And if it was client related, they had no input whatsoever. And they just cut and run like nobody's business, I think, because they felt that they you know, there was a lot of people who were second guessing themselves about Michael when that happened.

01:19:45.280 I and well, that was smart of them to do because they expressed no skepticism about him and his ridiculous claims about Trump and so on.

01:19:54.780 I mean, I was at NBC at the time and I had him on and he was expecting to get the same treatment from me that he got from the mainstream media.

01:20:02.340 And I really felt like a simple Google search would have served him very well in misunderstanding me and getting over his misunderstanding of me.

01:20:09.920 And I gave it to him pretty tough and it's fine.

01:20:12.860 I gave it to the other guy who was on the opposite side of him.

01:20:15.320 Tough, too.

01:20:15.820 This is the Stormy Daniels case.

01:20:17.860 But it was very clear that he was this is not an honest lawyer.

01:20:20.760 And what he did to Kavanaugh was unforgivable.

01:20:22.980 But but I think the fact that CNN promoted him and so on, they felt so guilty.

01:20:28.740 They didn't need to take it on you just because it was your client.

01:20:31.160 You were in this one meeting with him. 0.93

01:20:32.500 And to me, they now it's like they won't cut, cut, you know, ties with masturbator on the air, Jeffrey Toobin.

01:20:42.860 How much did Chris Cuomo have to do? Don Lemon, credibly accused by a guy of Don allegedly fondling his own genitals and then rubbing his hands all over this poor guy's face in a bar. 0.99

01:20:53.580 I had him on the show. There's an eyewitness. And I feel like what what is the moral handbook that they are following over there? 0.97

01:21:01.200 Like I say, I think that everything that I've been hearing, I still have friends there that that I've known, like I say, for decades.

01:21:09.540 And everything that I'm hearing is, is that Zucker's not long for the job and that people are not happy with what's happened to it.

01:21:19.360 And, you know, it's not exactly unpredictable.

01:21:23.300 They kind of went all in on the Trump mania.

01:21:27.460 And obviously, once Trump was gone, what are you going to do?

01:21:31.400 So the ratings have cratered.

01:21:33.760 It's really, you know, I'm old enough to remember when they would get a 10 share and now you're talking below a one share.

01:21:42.340 So, I mean, that's astonishing.

01:21:44.700 I read the other day where Chris's nine o'clock show sometimes was getting 900,000 people.

01:21:51.320 I mean, there was a time when CNN, you could just have the color bars on there and you get 900,000 people.

01:21:56.740 Oh, yeah. I mean, when I launched America's Newsroom with Hemmer in 2007, we created that show from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.

01:22:03.380 we get around 1.3 million and we were thrilled and the company was thrilled with that at nine

01:22:09.080 in the morning when everybody's at work it was like great and now i mean all this time later for

01:22:13.680 the 9 p.m on cnn to not even be cracking a million it's embarrassing i mean they're always like in

01:22:20.340 the wake of his downfall they're like the highest rated anchor on cnn i'm like you should not be

01:22:24.240 bragging about that you should not be don't call attention to the fact that he was your and when

01:22:28.020 you have to resort to talking about the demo then you really know you're you're desperate so well

01:22:32.920 Well, the demo actually is relevant because that's what they base the advertisers on.

01:22:35.840 That's how you get paid.

01:22:37.340 But the demo numbers are embarrassing when you take a look at the absolute terms.

01:22:42.320 I mean, Fox's demo numbers, meaning under 25 to 54-year-olds, are higher than CNN's overall number, the number of overall households in the nation that are watching on many hours.

01:22:55.240 So, yeah, they're going in the wrong direction.

01:22:57.020 And I hope it's true that they're going to get back to news because we need a channel that's a little bit more centrist.

01:23:02.640 I agree. I think people are crying out for that. People want that. People want that kind of that.

01:23:09.380 Just give me the news. Let me go. You know, we're 20 minutes. I can watch and understand what's

01:23:15.300 happening in the world. And by the way, not everything is America centric. I'd like something

01:23:19.600 in the context of the world. Well, forget it. You're not going to get that on cable news.

01:23:24.920 Foreign news doesn't rate, which is why you rarely see it. Okay. I want to ask you about

01:23:29.620 another avenue of cases that you've been filing when it comes to these COVID restrictions.

01:23:34.500 You're in the People's Republic of California, where the restrictions have been, I mean,

01:23:40.580 I don't know how you're dealing. And so in addition to being a lawyer, you're a restaurateur.

01:23:45.860 And tell us about what you've been trying to do and how it's been going in the courts.

01:23:49.300 Well, it's frustrating because we won a victory at the trial court level in Los Angeles. We got

01:23:56.540 a judge back when back I want to say in November when we have an unelected county health officer

01:24:04.200 named Barbara Flar without any evidence whatsoever without any data whatsoever we're talking a year

01:24:10.340 ago she shut down outdoor dining now mind you I can sustain it as a restaurant but most

01:24:16.840 restaurateurs can't I mean there's 30,000 some odd restaurants in LA County and they a number

01:24:23.500 of them went out of business due to the COVID shutdowns. Well, then we went to, and we moved

01:24:28.980 to the outdoor dining, and that was working, and it was working well. People were able to survive,

01:24:33.960 not the least of which because of some of the funding that took place, but then she just

01:24:40.160 decreed there was going to be no more outdoor dining, and we sued, and sure enough, we got a

01:24:45.700 judge in the writ court who ruled after basically issuing three orders to show cause, and the county

01:24:53.040 could not respond. They couldn't point to a single piece of data, a single study that showed

01:24:58.560 that COVID was being transmitted outdoors by dining. So he enjoined them. Well, we ended up

01:25:05.020 going with, they got to stay at the court of appeal. That was reversed. I've been up at the

01:25:09.960 U S Supreme court and just within the last five days, they denied the U S Supreme court denied

01:25:15.760 the petition. But one of the things that's happened is Justice Gorsuch has basically

01:25:22.940 called out this case, this 100-year-old, 120-year-old case named Jacobson, and said that

01:25:28.560 it's been given a towering presence, and I couldn't agree more. And that's the fight that

01:25:33.300 we've been fighting, that basically unelected bureaucrats from health departments are decreeing

01:25:41.400 what what people can do or not do, and that all of that is predicated on this state of emergency

01:25:49.820 that our governor has announced, I think, going on 20 months ago. We're still in a state of

01:25:55.820 emergency in California, which is the only basis upon which the county health directors can do

01:26:01.120 what they do. It's it's so crazy because you're out there in California up until recently. I've

01:26:07.840 been living in New York for 20 years almost. And, you know, the mayor of New York just on his own

01:26:13.140 decided that five to 11 year olds must have mandatory vaccinations in order to eat inside

01:26:17.960 any restaurant there. You have to double jab your five year old to eat in a restaurant, to go see

01:26:22.560 the Rockettes, to go to a movie theater, to go to the gym, whatever, go see the Knicks. It's

01:26:28.520 ridiculous. They've been going. They've been going to all of these events and the rates didn't spike. 0.91

01:26:33.420 the spikes coming to the northeast now because it's winter right that's the way it goes um

01:26:39.120 but the children are not to blame the children aren't a major factor in any of this so we have

01:26:43.560 these local legislators who are drunk on their own power like no dining outside that's think

01:26:52.000 about that you just kind of it's like no that's insane that's insane it's not spread outside in

01:26:56.780 And by the way, the only thing I mean, if you saw the stacks of paper that that we file back and forth in the briefing, the only thing that was ever cited by the county in defense of this outdoor dining ban was a what I would characterize as an anecdotal example of a person in Wuhan who had said he got it and he thought he got it outside.

01:27:21.940 That is what that is different.

01:27:24.240 He was eating a bat.

01:27:25.560 That's not the same.

01:27:26.780 i just feel like it's gotten so out of control i love to see the lawsuits because they're they're

01:27:35.460 drunk on their own power de blasio is out of here at the end of this month his reign thank god is

01:27:40.880 ending and what they say is he i mean talk about delusions he thinks he's going to run for governor

01:27:47.900 hello earth to bill and that he want to shore up his support with his far-left liberals

01:27:55.880 by imposing all sorts of draconian orders on the people right before he left.

01:27:59.840 And he's doing it.

01:28:00.780 And now all these people think about the people come from Europe with their kids.

01:28:03.940 You know, they come to see New York the way we go to London, the way we go to Florence.

01:28:07.020 And now what are they going to do?

01:28:08.540 They can't take their kids anywhere.

01:28:09.580 They can't do anything.

01:28:10.240 Their trips are off for nothing, for an Omicron, which, yes, it's more contagious, apparently,

01:28:14.080 but it's it's not killing anybody.

01:28:16.060 There have been zero deaths from Omicron.

01:28:18.120 Well, and the problem is, is when you ask for any kind of data, when you ask for any

01:28:23.760 kind of anything. Just show me something. They can't answer you. And that's a very frustrating

01:28:30.620 situation to be in, both as a lawyer and as a restaurateur, as you call it. Restaurants are

01:28:39.260 on a very thin margin to begin with. And you can't just continue to destroy restaurants and destroy

01:28:45.760 the small businesses. And that's unfortunately what we've got. And it's only a matter of time

01:28:52.720 before this catches up to us. I, I, I've said before, it's not going to, this is not going to

01:28:58.620 end well. All right. Last line of inquiry before I let you go. You've been so generous with your

01:29:03.520 time. I think when we saw what we saw in the Rittenhouse case was what happens, I said this

01:29:09.860 on the air, when social justice meets courtroom justice, you know, that to me, the courts are

01:29:14.780 still the one place that haven't been totally co-opted by the far left social justice warriors

01:29:19.500 who just want identity to matter and not facts, not evidence. And it's a comfort to me, you know,

01:29:25.380 as somebody who did practice law for a long time, it's a comfort to me. But when I see what they're

01:29:30.000 teaching in law schools, there was just some case, oh my gosh, what was it? One of the university,

01:29:35.300 one of the law schools now is requiring people to have an affirmative statement of how they're

01:29:39.140 going to be anti-racist and, you know, pursuing it. And it's like, what? Wait, it's none of your

01:29:44.180 business what their political persuasions are, where they stand on these social issues. Just

01:29:48.660 teach them the law, I worry about the up and coming generation of lawyers and whether we're

01:29:53.480 going to be able to keep that divide between social justice and courtroom justice. What do

01:29:57.940 you make of it? Look, I'll go back. We'll come full circle to McDougal again in the 90s. I was

01:30:04.220 complaining then that that was kind of, at least by the Office of Independent Counsel, a political

01:30:09.080 show trial. And guess what happened? Then the script flipped. And sure enough, the same thing

01:30:14.620 happened 20 years later, except now it was aimed at Republicans as opposed to Democrats. And so

01:30:21.120 there's plenty of blame to go around. But the lesson to take away from this is the worst place

01:30:26.720 in the world to try to test out your social or cultural issues is in a criminal courtroom. That's

01:30:36.500 where that should be the one sacrosanct place where we, first of all, we have prosecutors who

01:30:44.100 We're making decisions that are based on justice as opposed to some other kind of calculation.

01:30:51.380 And it should not be a political calculation.

01:30:53.840 It should be a criminal justice calculation.

01:30:57.960 So I'm with you.

01:30:59.160 I share that.

01:30:59.920 We've got young lawyers.

01:31:00.980 I've got some great young lawyers, and I've experienced other young lawyers who I think,

01:31:06.180 you know, could use a dose of, you know, my father, who was my partner for many years,

01:31:10.480 used to say that one of the things he thought that the criminal justice system could use

01:31:15.160 is a dose of the military justice system. And I'd say, what do you mean? And he'd say,

01:31:19.280 well, in the military justice system, you can be a prosecutor one day and a defense lawyer the next

01:31:24.280 day. And that's a great way to kind of weed out the ideological agendas. If you have to understand

01:31:30.520 what it is to prosecute somebody and you have to understand what it is to actually defend a human

01:31:35.240 being. I like that. And conversely, any plaintiff's lawyer or prosecutor should be sued at least once

01:31:41.880 in their life, right? Be on the other side of it, feel the stress of what that can do.

01:31:46.860 Exactly right. It should be a prerequisite. All right. So now I'll let you go. But are you

01:31:51.320 going to at least are you going to give me a prediction on how Jussie Smollett's going to

01:31:54.680 come out? Hung jury conviction? No, but I'll call you. I'll call you. I'll call into your 0.64

01:31:59.760 what is it? 1-800-MEGAN-LINE? Yeah, 833-44-MEGAN. MEGYN. I'll call you after. All right, good. I'm

01:32:07.180 going to hold you to that. Thank you, Megan. I enjoyed this. Same. Such a pleasure. Come back,

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01:33:14.000 Today, we are examining a serial killer that some in law enforcement have called unlike any other in modern American history.

01:33:27.460 A predator who was meticulous, methodical, unpredictable, and for years completely undetected.

01:33:35.820 His name, Israel Keyes.

01:33:37.960 Keys had no victim type, no geographic pattern, and an M.O. the FBI described to be as, quote, unique as a fingerprint.

01:33:48.440 Our very own Maureen Callahan, host of The Nerve, spent years uncovering how Keys operated.

01:33:56.620 Her investigation led her to write the bestselling book, American Predator, the hunt for the most meticulous serial killer of the 21st century.

01:34:07.960 Maureen also appears in the ABC true crime documentary, Wild Crime, 11 Skulls on Hulu, which traces the disappearance of Samantha Koenig, the crime that finally exposed Keyes' double life.

01:34:24.160 Watch.

01:34:25.160 He was taking trips.

01:34:27.100 He was killing people.

01:34:28.360 He buried victims all over the continental United States.

01:34:31.980 Underneath his bed.

01:34:34.220 There was 11 skulls.

01:34:35.620 Drawn using a finger in blood.

01:34:37.960 All of these victims' souls belong to him.

01:34:41.160 They're mine.

01:34:42.860 This guy is an evil genius. 0.91

01:34:45.620 I'm more sane than most Americans. 0.99

01:34:47.820 He's the best serial killer that ever existed.

01:34:50.600 Maureen is one of the foremost experts on Keys, and she joins me now.

01:34:54.360 Hi.

01:34:54.940 Hi.

01:34:56.020 I've always known that you've written this book, but I had never read it, and I'd never

01:35:01.120 known who Israel Keys was.

01:35:03.260 Why is his name so, like, not on the list of all the big serial killers?

01:35:07.320 It's really wild, isn't it? Isn't it? Yeah. I mean, my theory about it is that, you know, not long after Keyes was apprehended, I'm going to say about nine months in, I don't want to spoil how this sort of ends for anybody.

01:35:22.420 The FBI announced that they had this guy in custody.

01:35:26.960 Nobody had ever heard of him.

01:35:28.620 Nobody knew he'd been operating all over the United States for at least 14 years, probably more.

01:35:35.500 And they asked the public for help in identifying other victims, in locating and identifying other victims.

01:35:43.140 And then they just as quickly pulled this case back from public view.

01:35:48.920 And I could never understand why.

01:35:51.080 so i began the book with the full cooperation of the fbi and in fact one of the agents on the case

01:35:57.860 said to me that he was really surprised because he'd never seen the bureau in his like 26 years

01:36:03.400 there give a journalist such unfettered access to them and then about halfway through uh i got back

01:36:10.240 from one trip to alaska he was based up in alaska keys uh and the fbi just shut down what year was

01:36:17.220 When they shut down with me?

01:36:19.340 Well, the book came out in 2019.

01:36:21.140 So I'm going to say like 2017.

01:36:23.680 Wow.

01:36:24.200 Yeah.

01:36:25.000 All right.

01:36:25.560 So let's start.

01:36:26.700 It's not exactly the beginning, but let's start with the murder of Samantha because this would be the tripping wire for him.

01:36:35.240 Yeah.

01:36:36.700 She was in what state?

01:36:39.120 Alaska.

01:36:39.720 She was in Alaska and she was in one of those little kiosk type things where you buy coffee from, right?

01:36:43.740 Yeah.

01:36:43.840 Like some light food.

01:36:45.760 Yeah. 1.00

01:36:45.980 And she was working late at night, which honestly, like no woman should ever do. 0.77

01:36:49.920 She shouldn't work alone in a little box that anyone can come up to with a gun and get into 0.99

01:36:56.880 because that's exactly what happened to her. 0.99

01:36:58.920 And we actually have that moment where Samantha was working in this little coffee hut.

01:37:03.800 This is from the ABC documentary, Wild Crime, 11 Skulls.

01:37:07.200 And he jumps in.

01:37:09.960 First, he pulls a gun on her.

01:37:11.920 You can see her back away.

01:37:13.120 and then all the lights go out and he jumps in. Watch. In the video, you can see Samantha is

01:37:20.940 closing up for the night in the coffee stand, cleaning and wiping things down.

01:37:26.660 It's late at night, so there aren't many coffee drinkers that are driving up to the stand.

01:37:32.260 And then you can see somebody walking up. You don't see a lot of people just walk up as people

01:37:39.540 We're driving a vehicle.

01:37:42.660 Samantha goes to the window.

01:37:45.080 So she starts making coffee.

01:37:49.060 And she appears to be engaging with the person.

01:37:54.060 At one point, she turns towards the window, and she reacts.

01:38:02.220 I vividly remember Samantha doing this and putting her hands up.

01:38:07.180 she then walks across the coffee stand and turns the lights off

01:38:13.900 Samantha took the money from the cash register

01:38:22.320 then Samantha puts her coat on

01:38:28.140 and then this individual just jumped straight into the coffee hut

01:38:37.180 That moment, Maureen, she saw the face of evil and she knew it.

01:38:41.240 I'll tell you, when I was working on the book, I think I watched that tape, the abduction tape.

01:38:47.720 I mean, I watched it many, many, many times, but I would go through it frame by frame, partly because the initial working theory, Samantha was 18 at the time.

01:38:57.600 So she had just turned 18.

01:38:59.480 She was legally an adult, right?

01:39:01.680 But they decided to treat it like a missing child.

01:39:05.320 um her boyfriend was supposed to pick her up he was 10 minutes late he would have been there i

01:39:10.840 don't know that it would have mattered because keys like taking people in pairs and that also

01:39:15.740 distinguished him from many many other serial killers um they their original theory was that

01:39:22.720 samantha was in on it that that was a staged abduction so they so she could get the money

01:39:28.400 so she could get like the 200 that were in the till and part of this also goes to the ways in

01:39:33.900 which so many assumptions are made about victims of violent crimes samantha's father was like

01:39:40.620 hell's angel hell's angel adjacent uh had his own brushes with the law she was from the wrong side

01:39:48.400 of the tracks she had overcome her own drug issues and so the theory was she's out partying

01:39:55.880 and and that's her accomplice but when you go frame by frame through that and you stopped right

01:40:02.440 there when keys jumps in and he is a big guy he's like at least six four very rangy he jumps like a

01:40:10.140 predator there's something that's almost like a panther the way he because those kiosks are up

01:40:15.960 off the ground they're on the side of the road in alaska until samantha's abduction always stuffed

01:40:21.640 by staff rather by attractive young girls often alone in the summer they used to make them wear 0.93

01:40:26.280 bikinis oh my god that's crazy i know girls do not do this and those were very coveted 1.00

01:40:32.360 jobs in Alaska. It was something of a veneration. It was something of a validation. If you got a 0.51

01:40:37.960 job, that meant you were an attractive young woman who could lure customers in.

01:40:41.540 I used to worry, even my own brother, he's five years older than I am, but he used to work

01:40:47.260 in one of those gas station kiosks for his high school job after hours, up until like 11 o'clock

01:40:54.580 at night or whenever they closed. And he was alone. And I used to worry about him just being

01:40:58.380 in there alone. You just never know who's going to come through. It's literally everybody comes

01:41:02.960 through a gas station and a female, a young female in Alaska, which like a lot of bad stuff happens 0.72

01:41:09.420 in Alaska. It's so isolated, like bad people go there to get lost. 100%. You know, the thing too

01:41:17.900 about that is it doesn't even matter. I think the time was like close to eight o'clock or nine

01:41:21.460 o'clock. You know, in, in, I was, I was sure to go to Alaska in two distinct times, once in the

01:41:27.380 dead of summer and once in the dead of winter because i wanted to experience what those extremes

01:41:30.920 really do to your mind and your body and we're such animals you know like you go in the winter

01:41:36.500 i mean you get like two hours of sunlight if you're lucky two hours of real sunlight and it

01:41:41.520 has a depressive feeling but it also there's a lot of um it's a lot of darkness it's a lot of

01:41:48.040 spiritual darkness it's a lot of psychological darkness most people don't know this but alaska

01:41:52.420 more people come from the lower 48 than our natives up there. And they're all people who

01:41:57.060 are running away from something. Yes. Sorry, Alaska. But it's I mean, you're the most beautiful

01:42:01.160 state in the union, but you got a lot of misfits there. Every other dateline is about something in 1.00

01:42:06.020 Alaska. All these crime series like Alaska, wild Alaska, you know, all the anyway. So it's no

01:42:12.800 accident. Israel Keyes found Alaska, but he was from Washington state, right? Or he was he had

01:42:17.440 been living there he was raised yeah and it's you're the one who turned me on to the bundy book

01:42:23.060 oh the stranger beside me there's a lot of parallels there oh yeah he was also from

01:42:28.180 washington state yeah and preyed on women ey in washington state like the juxtaposition both in

01:42:35.920 alaska and washington state for that matter of like immense beauty and zen and calmness and

01:42:42.120 nature and almost like godlike territory and evil roaming among it all and you know the thing about

01:42:49.060 bundy which when keys was apprehended he did say that was one of the serial killers that he had

01:42:55.360 studied he did it he did sort of quote-unquote admire uh bundy also was interstate he most

01:43:03.640 serial killers like if you think of the gilgo beach killer yeah you know they they tend to

01:43:07.640 operate in one location, the Zodiac killer. Um, he, he was interstate also, but his last

01:43:15.420 major, major spree Bundy's was in Florida. And I know we'll probably get to it later,

01:43:22.200 but there, there is a very famous unsolved cold case involving multiple victims in Florida that

01:43:28.160 I firmly believe is the work of Israel keys. So although unlike Ted Bundy, Israel keys was

01:43:33.660 not an attractive man depends on how you look like honestly there were some images where i was like

01:43:39.840 this guy is kind of attractive like i can see it yeah in the interrogation video oh he looks like

01:43:47.120 nothing in the interrogation you recoil oh yeah no he's he's all of his power he did have power

01:43:53.400 he was the most powerful person in that room they were never going to solve another case without him

01:43:57.680 to a point once the interrogation gets to five months six months jeff bell who is one of the

01:44:03.180 leads began putting some stuff together which was remarkable remarkable detective work um but

01:44:10.140 you know the samantha case when they caught him and that was an interstate chase that was an

01:44:15.900 interstate like he he made the mistake of wait let's see before we get there yeah okay so samantha

01:44:21.660 gets kidnapped from the this coffee kiosk thing late at night and they're not treating it quite

01:44:28.540 with the urgency they would if, you know, some rich woman in California, you know, had this

01:44:33.200 happen to her. And, um, days go by and then a ransom note appears on like a, a park bulletin

01:44:42.600 board. And it shows a picture of her holding a newspaper that is dated post the date of her

01:44:49.400 abduction. So they know actually this is legit. This is from a person who really has her. And

01:44:54.680 And then what happens?

01:44:57.020 And then they go to Samantha's father.

01:45:00.860 The kidnapper is demanding like $50,000, $60,000.

01:45:04.940 He's already started what would be considered now like a GoFundMe.

01:45:08.780 The community is donating money.

01:45:11.100 James is not a man of means.

01:45:13.900 And James is frantic.

01:45:16.740 But they say, okay, now is the time to wire the money into this account.

01:45:20.600 And James says, I don't want to.

01:45:24.680 And then the FBI gets a tip from someone who knows James and says he's acting strangely.

01:45:31.040 He yelled at my daughter, a friend of my daughter's, because she made some T-shirts, find Samantha, and she's selling them.

01:45:39.600 And James is very upset that we're making money off of that.

01:45:42.000 so now the fbi is and and anchorage police are really confused because when they door knocked

01:45:50.580 james he wouldn't let them in the house after samantha went missing so now he's looking

01:45:56.060 suspicious so now they're they're looking at him and they're looking at the boyfriend who has been

01:46:00.900 living with samantha and james and they don't know which end is up but they've never encountered

01:46:08.320 a parent who is resistant to giving the reward money to the kidnapper who's promising a return

01:46:14.840 right yeah well then they do get money deposited into her account and the kidnapper starts making

01:46:24.880 withdrawals with her atm card which is by the way how he gets caught but who made the deposit into

01:46:29.800 her account james eventually relented and they said you we he's gonna ask he's asking for this

01:46:37.020 much we only deposit this much because now we have him we're in contact and now it's a negotiation

01:46:42.840 so that's conversation he doesn't seem to realize that using this atm car they're like five minutes

01:46:48.940 behind him every time he withdraws every time he withdraws they're like five minutes behind him and

01:46:53.520 he knows what he's doing because he knows where all the surveillance cameras are in any given

01:46:58.480 place he's going he's covered up you cannot see it looks like it's a man you can't really see

01:47:04.460 then it's it stops working in anchorage the card stops pinging there and then it starts pinging in

01:47:11.960 new mexico in these very tiny towns in new mexico and up in alaska it's like a movie it's like

01:47:18.480 these fbi agents get word that her card's pinging down there and they jump out of bed

01:47:23.340 and they rush to their war room at the fbi field office and they're calling bank managers

01:47:28.000 in lordsburg new mexico saying can you get there can you get there and the first one they called

01:47:33.040 was like sorry i'm sleeping i'm not getting out of bed for this oh my no it's a serial killer well

01:47:38.540 i guess that that was just a suspicion at the time they knew they had someone who abducted this young

01:47:44.440 woman they still didn't know whether she was in on it or not um it's it was very suspicious a guy

01:47:52.020 that sophisticated if this is a true stranger abduction they're very rare so it's easy to see

01:47:58.060 why the theorizing was such that it's the boyfriend it's the father she's in on it whatever

01:48:02.020 um they they they couldn't figure out why he would be using it it's such an easy mode of

01:48:10.000 detection it's so bold because it's so easy right to see oh my god her her atm just pinged again

01:48:15.540 yeah where and it is sort of how he got caught because they he made the mistake of letting his

01:48:22.120 car gets caught on camera at one of the locations right and so they saw what kind of make model

01:48:30.340 etc of car and maybe even the license weight i'm trying to remember but they they tracked that car

01:48:35.440 and that's how they found him this was also incredible police work and this is where the

01:48:39.500 texas rangers come in and these guys are such badasses they are just like like jeff bell who

01:48:45.700 is one of the main guys in alaska he's a he's i think he's from the northeast maybe originally

01:48:50.060 i don't know but um he was like when he went down to texas and met the texas ranger who led

01:48:57.500 that manhunt that caught keys which was a very cinematic event because keys was driving the most

01:49:03.940 commonly rented vehicle in the united states of america so it really was needle in a haystack

01:49:08.460 he was like oh my god this is a texas ranger just like in the movie it's like a real badass you know

01:49:13.460 right yeah so they track him down they arrested him and they found incriminating materials in his

01:49:21.760 car like it was kind of bob's your uncle once they found him he was not banking on cops pulling

01:49:26.940 him over no um and so then they bring him in for this interrogation now who does the interrogation

01:49:34.280 like is it the feds is it the jeff bell of the washington well first it's um steve ranger steve

01:49:43.020 rayburn since retired and an fbi agent named deb ganaway who was looped in very quickly as all of

01:49:49.880 this was unfolding in a very kinetic moment by moment fashion.

01:49:54.220 And Steve Rayburn told me that they were so caught off guard that they didn't even have

01:50:00.880 like a two-way radio, like a two-way audio system set up in their interrogation room.

01:50:06.000 So they had to go to Target and buy a baby monitor.

01:50:08.780 Oh no.

01:50:09.220 So people could listen to it outside of the room.

01:50:10.800 Yes.

01:50:11.260 Oh my gosh.

01:50:11.800 Like this is how MacGyver-ish and like they, and they had no idea who they were dealing

01:50:15.840 with.

01:50:16.180 They really didn't.

01:50:16.960 They knew he was dangerous.

01:50:17.960 They knew he had this woman.

01:50:18.860 And the lead agent on the case, Steve Payne, even in that moment, he's up in Alaska sitting

01:50:25.840 at a car at one of these coffee kiosks, and he's the one agent on this case who has been

01:50:31.680 holding out hope that Samantha is alive.

01:50:34.060 Jeff Bell.

01:50:35.060 Jeff Bell took one look at that ransom note with the proof of life photo of Samantha.

01:50:39.840 She's looking at the camera dead center with the print paper, and he took one look at that

01:50:46.440 and said she's dead.

01:50:47.780 How?

01:50:47.940 How did he know that?

01:50:48.860 I don't know if he was just more dialed into the realities of what he

01:50:54.320 factually was seeing or if there was something unnatural that he picked up

01:51:02.180 on, you know, Steve, by his own admission, did not want to believe it.

01:51:05.960 He knew he was in denial about it.

01:51:09.200 And even, even the search of his car was like a,

01:51:12.120 it was a multi-state mess because he's up there worried that if,

01:51:16.340 if they go into that car without the proper um i mean what's the word for warrant thank you

01:51:24.860 or they have probable cause then everything they find even if samantha's body is in there

01:51:29.960 is thrown out like it can't can't get in yeah but deb says to steve down here in texas we have

01:51:37.000 a much looser interpretation of this and if we've got a bad guy good old texas and we think he's got 0.97

01:51:42.840 bad shit going on in his car, we can go into his car. Here we have some of this. This is from the 0.98

01:51:47.600 ABC doc, Wild Crime, and it's dash cam footage from the moment that investigators decided to

01:51:53.060 do a warrantless search on Keyes' car. Here it is. When we opened the trunk and the ranger started

01:52:01.000 going through things in the trunk of the car. There you go. Hey. Gray hoodie with glasses in

01:52:12.120 the pocket and a mask we found a gray hoodie that appeared to be the same hoodie that the

01:52:22.400 perpetrator had been wearing in the atm videos and in the pocket of that was this gray piece

01:52:29.520 of cloth that looked like a mask we also found the amber shooting glasses

01:52:35.860 After he was put under arrest, he was transported to the Lufkin Police Department.

01:52:54.140 The ranger and I do a thorough search of Israel's wallet, and we found Samantha's ATM card.

01:53:01.700 i mean that's just devastating from a criminal standpoint that's everything you need you've got

01:53:14.440 the victim's cell phone you've got her license and you've got his disguise that he was wearing

01:53:19.180 all the times when he was making the withdrawals with her atm card really strong very strong but

01:53:25.040 they don't have a body and they don't know whether she's dead and they don't even know whether she's

01:53:29.840 dead or alive so they need a confession from him he is taken to lufkin pd down in texas again small

01:53:39.260 town these small towns he's operating in and um they they try to talk to him and he says i'm sorry

01:53:44.780 i can't help you so then they call up to alaska and jeff bell and his partner his then partner on

01:53:51.460 this case mickey doll who was this sort of very glamorous young beautiful uh detective who had

01:53:58.020 just joined homicide she spent like 10 years doing drugs um as a police officer oh sorry

01:54:04.400 yeah yeah undercover uh on uh on narcotics but um so they jump on a plane and they go down there

01:54:12.820 and they're they're so wired and they're so like dying to talk to this guy and they get in there

01:54:17.780 and keys kind of lights up a bit because now he's got the attentions of this beautiful young

01:54:22.160 detective and it's it becomes this sort of almost like a i talk about it in the book it's like a

01:54:28.540 clarice starling hannibal lecter kind of dynamic you know um but he won't talk to them either and

01:54:35.040 so they have to extradite him up to alaska um and this this is all like the the tiktok is really

01:54:41.980 it's so pressing because at a place like lufkin as would prove true even in anchorage they they

01:54:49.000 did not have the wherewithal to really contain this guy like this guy was such a predator and

01:54:54.780 so dangerous such a genius completely self-taught this guy did not have formal schooling at all at

01:55:00.980 all um and he taught himself how to hunt and kill and so they get him back up to alaska and that's

01:55:06.940 when it really starts clicking in because they know samantha's dead they've gone to the house

01:55:11.480 he shares with his living girlfriend a travel nurse and his 10 year old daughter by all accounts

01:55:16.320 he's an incredible father it's crazy um and they toss the house and they're looking they're looking

01:55:21.920 for samantha they can't find her there's a shed on the property this is before or after he's

01:55:26.660 confessed he hasn't confessed to anything hasn't okay so they're just doing a search of his property

01:55:31.120 because he's under arrest and there's a there are two sheds on his property and they they

01:55:35.760 physically remove a shed from the property and they bring it to the fbi field office

01:55:40.140 where they they leave it and then um so the the fight begins now as to who's going to lead this

01:55:46.100 interrogation because they all know this is a big big case and this this is a career maker

01:55:52.140 this is a star maker if you have your eyes on becoming like a legal analyst on cnn or like you

01:55:58.080 know they're going to make a movie out of this case who's going to play you the egos start coming

01:56:02.260 into play and steve and jeff or steve pain and jeff beller are the most experienced and they're

01:56:08.500 gaming out how they're going to talk to this guy. They have zero, they really don't have much

01:56:12.240 evidence. They don't have that footage of him. He's unrecognizable in that surveillance clip of

01:56:21.320 him abducting Samantha. Sure. A couple of items are in his car, but he says she gave them to me.

01:56:26.480 I was her dealer. She owed me money. Prove it. Prove I took her. You don't have anything.

01:56:32.280 He was an expert at leaving no physical evidence behind. So you have to have very experienced

01:56:37.880 detectives go in there or agents go in there who can say like steve's favorite tactic

01:56:43.480 was to like he would say some people like to go in with like boxes full of paper it's all blank 0.97

01:56:49.460 paper oh we have all this shit on you we've got all these photos and you may as well just give 0.88

01:56:54.000 it to us now before we like really you know throw you away forever and steve his whole thing was 0.99

01:56:59.020 like less is more like one photo that's that's just the tip of what we've got on you you know

01:57:04.880 it's a whole mind game and the federal prosecutor on this case comes in and he sees what this case

01:57:11.040 could be and he says to them i'm leading this investigation now i'm questioning this suspect

01:57:16.920 that's so rare i'm in charge he's white collar megan he's never dealt with more do they usually

01:57:23.120 have the investigator be the prosecutor you can't right because if this goes to trial now the

01:57:28.960 prosecutor is also a witness because now he's going to testify yeah it can't happen but this is this

01:57:33.960 is how wild it is up there it's it's so funny the twin poles of this case are alaska and texas like

01:57:38.880 two states with this psyche which is like don't tell me what to do do it my way you know fine to

01:57:44.340 a point not when you've got like what will become the most high value like suspect in federal custody

01:57:53.900 like only jeffrey epstein exceeds this guy in terms of like the threat he posed even behind bars

01:58:02.440 Oh, so he does confess. We have video of it. So we've only titled it FBI interview. So I don't know which interrogators these are, but you'll tell us after we watch that 53 in which he does admit to killing Samantha Koenig. Here it is.

01:58:20.720 He directed us north out of Anchorage, towards the Matanuska Valley.

01:58:27.260 How many yards off the shoreline or feet off?

01:58:30.920 It's right there.

01:58:33.120 And he pointed to a spot on the lake.

01:58:38.740 And what should they look for specifically?

01:58:42.060 Ice fishing spot.

01:58:45.760 Was it a hole that you cut or was the hole there?

01:58:51.060 No, it was a hole I cut.

01:58:54.760 You'll see it.

01:58:56.040 You'll see where the hole was probably.

01:58:58.040 I don't imagine.

01:58:59.140 There's not very much snow up there.

01:59:02.560 And Israel Keyes said that is where we would find Samantha Koenig.

01:59:07.820 She's not wrapped up or anything, but there will still be some blood on ice.

01:59:13.940 They can find anything else out there?

01:59:16.700 No, you'll find her DNA.

01:59:18.840 Okay.

01:59:20.720 You'll probably, you'll find her, my DNA, on her.

01:59:25.380 She doesn't remember anyone, so.

01:59:27.100 Okay.

01:59:31.440 The one thing I do need to know is how you killed her.

01:59:35.320 Why?

01:59:37.960 I mean, it doesn't really matter how it happened.

01:59:40.900 I'm saying that, yes, I was responsible, and yes, I told you where she is.

01:59:47.840 So you killed her?

01:59:49.160 Yes.

01:59:50.720 okay several things about that clip uh we are looking at jeff bell who was one of the lead

02:00:00.020 guys um and then that voice in there that says i i need i need you to tell me why you killed her

02:00:06.740 that's kevin feldes that's the prosecutor who bigfooted this case that's not a question you

02:00:11.380 ever ask a suspect like that it doesn't matter what you need i need to know no no no no no no

02:00:16.280 know and i i think these little things were tells now the now that's he's telling them where he put

02:00:21.600 her remains he had her in his shed after he murdered her steps away from the home in which

02:00:28.380 his daughter was living yes and girlfriend was packing for their trip the next day they were

02:00:34.900 going on vacation for two weeks so she's out in the shed for two weeks he left her there god and

02:00:41.220 And when they asked him about it, they said, weren't you worried?

02:00:45.680 And he said, was I worried?

02:00:47.300 Like, it's like 10 degrees in Alaska.

02:00:49.220 No, the body's going to freeze.

02:00:50.300 It'll be fine.

02:00:52.720 But they took the wrong shed when they arrested him.

02:00:56.820 They took another shed that he just used as a shed.

02:00:59.760 He was a contractor.

02:01:00.780 They didn't take the right shed.

02:01:02.660 There were a lot of mistakes on this case, a lot, a lot of big ones.

02:01:06.280 The confession, which is in American Predator, the text of the entire confession,

02:01:11.220 uh the fbi has never made that public i had to get that through someone very very close to the case

02:01:17.340 but uh it's in it's in none of the records that have been made public the audio of it doesn't

02:01:22.380 exist they've tried to bury it it's a confession in two parts and it's broken up because one it

02:01:28.280 went on so long but two feldes was in real danger of tipping their hand that they had nothing they

02:01:37.380 had no evidence. And once you lose that power, you can't get it back. Third, Keyes originally

02:01:44.880 spoke to them on the promise that he would not get the death penalty. They broke midday,

02:01:51.940 came back to finish the confession. And he said he would only finish the confession

02:01:55.580 if they promised to give him the death penalty. Right. That's so strange. We don't know what

02:02:00.860 explain the flip the switch i think his mother spoke to me for the book she's never spoken before

02:02:08.020 or since she said when she saw the footage of keys getting arrested in texas she knew that he

02:02:15.240 knew his life was over that that was it yep she knew he was a killer by the way what oh she knew

02:02:20.760 he was a killer how from the cat the cat and the animals well the cat the animals she and her

02:02:26.280 husband kicked him out of the home he was about 14 he was breaking and entering he was gun running

02:02:31.520 um he had this habit of he would break into people's homes and move their furniture around

02:02:38.400 oh and then he would go outside and like peep and wait for them to come home and look through the

02:02:44.740 windows and watch how freaked out they were you know he he was he was a budding budding budding

02:02:48.980 serial killer um and she told me she said oh the fbi thinks israel first killed in this date and

02:02:55.860 i know his first kill was much earlier whoa okay okay great could you be more specific why don't

02:03:01.420 you call the fbi with that information well and he he said something like um it it became apparent

02:03:08.200 to me at a young age that the things i thought were okay no one else thought was okay and like

02:03:14.200 i was different from the others and it really does go to like is a serial killer born is it you know

02:03:19.880 nature, nurture, do you arrive here in the, in the crib as a little psychopath and no matter

02:03:25.640 what happens, that's what you're going to be? Or do you have to subject, be subjected to some

02:03:30.300 amount of torture and neglect and so on as an infant in order to get there? Do we know the

02:03:35.300 answer to that in his case? It's, it's a tantalizing philosophical, neurological,

02:03:42.080 behavioral question that hangs over the book. And I spoke to a guy named Roy Hazelwood,

02:03:47.720 who has since died he was like the godfather of criminal profiling in the fbi godfather and i

02:03:55.040 asked him that and he laughed and he said i was waiting for how long it was going to take for you

02:03:59.440 to ask me everyone wants to know and he said we don't know he said the youngest incidence of

02:04:04.620 psychopathy i've ever encountered was in a two-year-old oh gosh who was self-harming in a

02:04:10.860 sort of psychosexual way um but he said we don't know you know keese was one of 10 siblings

02:04:16.880 they all suffered abuse and neglect at the hands of the parents all of them oh boy only one turned

02:04:22.920 out like this so i don't know yeah i don't know either i wish we did um okay so let's keep going

02:04:28.840 so he gives that confession about do we know how many days he had samantha before he killed her

02:04:33.700 oh he only had her for hours how did he get the paper that was post the abduction in the photo

02:04:40.780 I think he had saved it.

02:04:42.000 He had saved it and how he made her look alive.

02:04:45.460 So she was dead in the photo and he made her look alive.

02:04:47.920 Jeff was right.

02:04:48.800 She was dead in that photo.

02:04:50.160 Oh my gosh.

02:04:51.700 So he took, he was an avid outdoorsman, also an ultra marathoner who was hunting in national

02:05:00.320 parks and the like.

02:05:01.900 But he took fishing wire and sewed her eyes open.

02:05:06.500 Oh my gosh.

02:05:07.840 And then put makeup on her. 0.98

02:05:09.100 he took his girlfriend's makeup this is a very sick person and um that was the proof of life

02:05:14.740 photo okay so at what point did the cops start to glean there's more than one oh once he starts

02:05:22.940 talking about samantha they know the the detail the um the affect the flat matter of fact way of

02:05:32.660 communicating this we're negotiating now we're demanding the death penalty we're demanding it's

02:05:38.980 off the table on the table this is someone who's very interested in power and control and it's not

02:05:44.480 the first time he's done it and in fact jeff told me that when he and mickey doll first worked

02:05:49.580 walked into that police station in lufkin into that interrogation room he said the hairs on the

02:05:55.360 back of his neck stood up before they even said a word to him they knew they knew i think that's

02:05:59.940 right i do think when you're in the presence of true evil you know it's a different energy it's

02:06:05.500 just a vibe shift, as the kids say, but it's real. I mean, you'd like to believe that. You'd

02:06:10.320 like to know that when you're around somebody who's truly evil, you'd have that response with

02:06:14.720 the hair. Well, now that totally tracked to me because he's in custody. They know he took

02:06:21.160 Samantha. Jeff knows she's dead in his bones. He knows it. But he was very, very, very good at

02:06:28.720 wearing a mask in real life. I mean, the irony is that where he and his girlfriend lived, it was

02:06:35.420 it's in a suburb called turn again in anchorage and it is um a neighborhood heavily populated

02:06:41.400 with judges federal prosecutors my goodness lawyers and he was the contractor on all of

02:06:48.760 their homes and so many of the people they interviewed after they apprehended him were like

02:06:53.040 he had the keys to my house when we were away we'd be like going and do all the renovations

02:06:58.180 we trusted him oh my gosh can you imagine yeah finding out that a serial killer had been in your

02:07:03.440 house regularly working on your kitchen so the next murders that he confessed to right are really

02:07:11.500 the only other murders that he owned correct that the husband and wife he fully owned yeah

02:07:17.920 across the country in vermont so tell us about that couple this is so wild and and it's also

02:07:25.460 interesting how they got this confession because they know he's a serial now they know it so they're

02:07:29.820 like, okay, you want the death penalty? You got to give us something else. We can't go to the feds

02:07:34.460 and say, you're getting it for one. You have to give us more. And he says, okay. He says, I'll

02:07:39.560 give you two bodies and a name. And he says, I need you to get a map and I need you to pull it

02:07:46.360 up for me. So now we're in Vermont and he begins with where he dug up his kill kit. So he's got

02:07:55.120 these kill kits buried all over the country and uh they're still out there they're they're five

02:08:00.540 gallon home depot buckets that he filled with um cash he was a bank robber only used cash when he

02:08:06.880 was committing crimes um zip ties uh guns ammo and drano to accelerate human decomposition oh my

02:08:16.260 so then what he would do is he would start walking around and looking for people to take

02:08:23.520 That's what he called it, taking people.

02:08:25.920 And he was out this night in Vermont.

02:08:28.540 He was on a family trip.

02:08:30.300 Was this after?

02:08:31.220 No, it must have been before.

02:08:32.440 It had to be before because she was his last.

02:08:34.220 She's his last known victim, which is very important.

02:08:37.540 Definitely not his last one.

02:08:40.140 So it's a rainy night.

02:08:45.580 This is his own self-report.

02:08:46.900 He's staying in like a Holiday Inn or something.

02:08:49.100 He goes out and he's looking for someone to take.

02:08:51.680 and he comes upon this apartment complex

02:08:53.580 and this car is pulling in this little like VW bug

02:08:56.840 and he likes this and this guy gets out

02:09:00.780 and it's raining and he puts his newspaper over his head

02:09:05.280 and he's trying to rush into his apartment complex

02:09:08.020 and Keyes is right behind him unbeknownst to the guy

02:09:11.080 and the way Keyes described it,

02:09:13.520 his arm went like this behind the guy, like that.

02:09:16.640 Like he just missed him.

02:09:18.460 He was just about to take him.

02:09:19.820 Like reaching forward and missing.

02:09:21.680 And he said that guy has no idea because if he had been like one second slower, he would have gotten it that night.

02:09:28.240 He would have been the one.

02:09:30.000 I mean, he had no victim profile.

02:09:31.520 He would take anybody. 0.98

02:09:32.760 And when I say take, he would abduct, rape, torture, and murder. 1.00

02:09:36.500 And so he was bisexual. 0.99

02:09:38.820 He was always like – they call it practicing the parlances like on sex workers, you know. 0.97

02:09:46.980 Anyway, so he goes back to his hotel, waits for the rain to stop.

02:09:50.560 Then it's like midnight.

02:09:51.220 he goes back out his own self-report he comes upon this house it's a suburban it's it's like a

02:09:57.320 flat single story he sees in the um yard there is no indication of uh dogs or kids he says i won't

02:10:06.760 go near kids since having my daughter now now you sort of see where he's beginning to realize he's

02:10:12.760 going to be in the pantheon you know he says he doesn't want anybody to know he exists but he does

02:10:17.560 this is the kind of thing the fictional character dexter would say like i'm a serial killer with a

02:10:22.620 code you know yep i don't touch kids give me a gold star he did touch kids um so he decides he's

02:10:30.460 going to cut the phone line to see if an alarm goes off which it does not um he smashes his way

02:10:36.540 in as a contractor he's pretty confident he knows the layout uh there's an there's an older couple 0.79

02:10:42.620 living there named bill and lorraine courier they are older they are overweight they are sickly they

02:10:47.880 have medication they have a bird in the house and this was one of the more chilling details that

02:10:53.300 law enforcement told me when he goes in they had this huge bird i forget whether it was a power

02:10:59.060 or something but the bird cage which was like six feet had the had the cover over it so it could

02:11:04.980 sleep at night so it's almost like a shroud of death is already there and he said he from breaking

02:11:11.560 the window pane on the back door to gain access to the house and tying the two of them up like

02:11:17.980 hogtied on the bed six seconds and and the fbi did it and and they figured out he he did it in

02:11:24.620 six seconds he did he took them from the house took them from the house in their car just ask

02:11:30.200 you because yeah that i saw how they look and yes it tracks exactly with what you said and they

02:11:35.760 look to me helpless yeah like even you know in their nice you know picture predating this terrible

02:11:40.920 event they looked completely helpless completely harmless so that he still got a jones from that

02:11:46.580 like he got a jones from capturing and killing people who posed absolutely no threat or conquest

02:11:52.380 to him i think in his mind it was a it was a conquest because it was a strange house

02:11:58.740 he didn't know how many people would be in he could guess it would be two uh probably a married

02:12:04.640 couple um but he's he's breaking into their house in the middle of the night as a stranger

02:12:10.360 and he's not just going to kill them in their home he's going to abduct them and he's going

02:12:14.500 to move them to a second location that he had staked out like a day prior and nobody saw any 0.77

02:12:19.480 of it nobody saw a thing did they dead of night we don't know if they were screaming i mean he

02:12:23.540 probably had them gagged okay so he gets them in the car he moves them to some dilapidated looking

02:12:29.640 like deserted farmhouse yeah falling apart and then he he kills them both he the husband tried

02:12:35.660 to fight for his wife he did he separated them both he put the husband in the basement tied up 0.99

02:12:43.280 uh and then he brought the wife to the second floor and um he raped her up there 0.96

02:12:51.640 and then older woman older woman i he he had an issue he had a lot of rage at his mother a lot of

02:13:01.680 age and this goes into his taking of of people in pairs and mothers and children um and then

02:13:11.780 he brought lorraine no no no then he hears from upstairs bill courier in the basement is making

02:13:21.240 a lot of noise he's a big guy he's a former army uh veteran he's an army veteran and he's he's

02:13:27.680 trying to break free and he's he's like shouting for his wife and leave my wife alone and blah blah

02:13:32.380 blah blah blah keys goes down there and he shoots him dead shoots him dead and he this angers him 0.78

02:13:37.900 because that was not in the plan he wanted to strangle bill he wanted it to be personal he 0.87

02:13:43.420 wanted it to be that violent and it takes a long time to strangle somebody to death it's not like

02:13:47.780 in the movies it takes a long time it takes a lot of force so then he's infuriated but lorraine has

02:13:55.040 begun to run she's gotten out of the house and she's running towards the highway against like

02:13:59.920 three or four in the morning it's desolate out there rain and he catches her he catches her

02:14:04.840 and he brings her down to the basement where he shows her her husband and then he strangles her

02:14:10.860 to death oh that's sick and then he leaves them in the basement he leaves the bodies in the

02:14:15.580 basement he's running out of time the sun is coming up normally what he would do would be

02:14:19.620 to move the bodies across state lines.

02:14:23.220 So you make it multi-state.

02:14:24.740 You make it very difficult to track.

02:14:28.020 But he's got to go.

02:14:29.620 And he figures this house is a teardown.

02:14:33.720 So anybody who buys this property, it's going to be a developer.

02:14:38.040 They're going to tear down the house,

02:14:39.520 and the animals will get to the bodies before any of this even happens.

02:14:43.600 He was right.

02:14:44.740 He was right.

02:14:45.500 Well, I don't know about the animals,

02:14:46.500 But they show that the house gets torn down.

02:14:51.760 It gets dumped in a landfill.

02:14:53.980 No one's walked through and seen two corpses or skeletons.

02:14:58.580 Nope.

02:14:59.220 They went to the landfill, the police, and searched it, trying to find any remnants.

02:15:04.580 Didn't.

02:15:05.780 So their remains have never been found.

02:15:08.240 They're not even classified as murdered.

02:15:11.200 They're classified as missing.

02:15:12.720 Even after a confession?

02:15:14.100 Speaking of which, let's play some of it.

02:15:17.540 Here is Keyes admitting to killing Bill and Lorraine Currier.

02:15:21.760 Sound 54.

02:15:22.200 There was a shovel in the basement and I hit him with that a couple of times.

02:15:30.200 But then he was all hanged up and grabbed the 10-22.

02:15:34.260 He saw the gun and he started to say something.

02:15:37.780 And it just pissed me off and I just started pulling the trigger.

02:15:40.200 I pulled as fast as I could until the magazine was empty. 0.69

02:15:51.680 After he killed Bill, he tells us that he rapes Lorraine Currier. 0.99

02:16:00.900 He rapes her multiple times. 0.92

02:16:04.160 And he said he took Lorraine downstairs and Bill's obviously deceased on the floor. 0.96

02:16:08.900 He describes killing her and then using contractor bags to put their bodies in in the basement of that house.

02:16:20.520 The bodies were completely covered and they were underneath a lot of debris that I piled on top of them, like wood and trash.

02:16:32.200 I mean, just like the callousness is shocking.

02:16:34.920 Not that you expect a killer to, like, respectfully dispose of the remains, but in garbage bags underneath a bunch of garbage left for the animals.

02:16:43.300 Just, like, zero humanity in him.

02:16:46.200 Nothing.

02:16:48.160 Nothing.

02:16:48.920 And, you know, with recovering Samantha's remains, you know, he dismembered her.

02:16:54.380 And he just put the limbs and the head in the water.

02:16:58.800 and um i spoke to the the lead uh on the dive team who led that recovery oh god and the two

02:17:06.360 divers who recovered samantha's remains and um the lead diver the lead bobby chacon um you know

02:17:15.220 he he he's retired now he has ptsd and he has a therapy dog and um he talks about this case because

02:17:22.520 it's instructive for members of law enforcement they should know about it um but that recovery

02:17:29.220 he said was among the most brutal and they see a lot of things no one should ever see and in fact

02:17:34.540 what they do these these tough tough tough guys bobby sent me um these drawings they did and uh

02:17:41.560 especially after recovering children the dive the divers will often their beautiful drawings will

02:17:47.560 draw images of themselves and and and they're they have their all their dive gear on and their

02:17:53.100 helmets on but they have angel wings on and they're always holding the victim intact bringing

02:17:59.680 them up but while they're always bringing them out of water it's also sort of an ascension into

02:18:05.380 a heavenly place of rest you know and and that's how they manage special special people who do this

02:18:12.720 work. You think about them, right? It's like when you're doing your job and you have a bad day and

02:18:18.960 think, oh, this is tough. Oh my gosh. And you remember how tough actual hardworking people

02:18:24.660 with really difficult jobs have to spend their days. And I think about it all the time with

02:18:29.940 child sexual abuse material. And that really does change people. It changes them. Men in particular

02:18:36.400 who have to spend their days chasing the most vile among us, having to look, and they have to

02:18:41.400 look at the images because they've got to go after they got to make a case against these people

02:18:44.800 and I've heard so many on different podcasts and so on just talking about what it does to you like

02:18:50.500 it deadens your soul most don't last that long this is just how can you spend your day doing

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02:20:11.220 So Keys admits to this double murder of Bill and Lorraine.

02:20:16.200 They know he killed Samantha.

02:20:18.800 But then a weird thing happens in the interrogation where they want him to say more.

02:20:24.560 But he's suddenly coy.

02:20:27.220 And now he doesn't want to, like, give it up.

02:20:29.580 And there's a moment in the investigation, this is from July of 2012, where he kind of objects to giving them any more.

02:20:40.060 And it's sort of odd.

02:20:42.160 Please explain this to me.

02:20:43.220 It's SOT 60.

02:20:45.000 I just think at this point, I kind of feel like I'm in a position where I'm giving you a certain amount of information.

02:20:56.980 None of it has, or I shouldn't say none of it, about half of what I thought we had an understanding on from the very beginning hasn't worked out in my favor.

02:21:13.400 Granted, you know, some things haven't worked out in your favor, but I just think at this point, I just don't see what incentive I have to tell you anything else.

02:21:29.220 What does he mean it hasn't worked out in my favor?

02:21:32.400 He wanted the death penalty and he wanted it really fast.

02:21:35.620 How long was this series of interviews?

02:21:38.640 So they started March?

02:21:43.400 april and they went till about he's he really began shutting down i'm gonna say

02:21:49.660 right around there july july august he um he tried to kill himself in prison and it wasn't

02:21:58.760 successful and so there's so much secrecy surrounding this case and i have theories as

02:22:03.760 to why it's not just about a federal prosecutor who's too big for his britches it's not that um

02:22:09.100 But Jeff Bell, Jeff Bell, when he would go over every day to the prison, the jail rather to see they didn't have any anything remotely secure enough for a guy like this.

02:22:18.480 He never should have been up there.

02:22:19.640 He never he should have been in a supermax.

02:22:21.640 Yeah.

02:22:22.940 He went over there every day to see if Israel wanted to talk every day.

02:22:27.620 And he went.

02:22:29.020 So Israel almost escaped from court. 0.62

02:22:31.500 Very Ted Bundy like. 0.81

02:22:32.660 Remember when Ted Bundy?

02:22:33.960 Yes.

02:22:34.280 OK, this this footage has been scrubbed from the Internet.

02:22:37.940 fox had the footage from inside the courtroom keys shackled ankles wrists samantha's father

02:22:47.040 is in the courtroom everyone's in the courtroom keys suddenly in the middle of the hearing

02:22:53.220 leaps up out of his chair he's out of his shackles and he's jumping like what do you call those rows

02:23:01.400 i think of them as pews from church but in a courthouse he's jumping from like benches top

02:23:06.700 to top to top to top before like he's tased he's jumped and he's tased he almost got away

02:23:11.960 um he was tased he seemed to very much enjoy the tasing um but how how did he do it how did he do

02:23:18.680 it well he took he would get a little baggy lunch every day before going over to court and he took

02:23:24.680 the cellophane that wrapped the sandwich and he fashioned little keys out of that thing and he

02:23:30.740 used it to come on yes yes and so jeff would go over there and he would be like stop giving this

02:23:37.660 guy anything take away his shoelaces why does he have subscriptions to magazines like outside

02:23:44.000 adventurer what's going on in here they could never get an answer they could never get an answer

02:23:50.580 he was just so clever he fooled everybody that's that's an advantage right when you're a killer

02:23:54.760 who's very smart and you're smarter than your jailers yeah maybe than the cops yeah of them

02:23:58.980 Yeah. So notwithstanding his lamentation that he wasn't getting put to death fast enough, he hadn't had a trial or anything.

02:24:07.040 It was I don't know how he thought the system worked.

02:24:09.780 They were figuring out that he was responsible for more than just those three murders.

02:24:15.240 Absolutely. Absolutely.

02:24:17.000 The other thing that is I'm remembering now that was stalling him up.

02:24:20.820 This is this is like the lawyer and you will appreciate.

02:24:24.360 So his defender, his public defender is this guy named Rich Kirtner.

02:24:28.980 who is a great lawyer, great lawyer.

02:24:32.760 He's also very anti-death penalty.

02:24:35.900 So there's a man who enters this story

02:24:38.220 named Rich Kertner.

02:24:39.620 What's his story?

02:24:40.280 So he's assigned to Keyes the moment Keyes is arrested.

02:24:43.300 He is Keyes' public defender, okay?

02:24:46.040 Keyes can't afford a lawyer, so he says,

02:24:48.700 because all of his cash is tied up in kill kits

02:24:50.440 all over the United States, you know?

02:24:52.320 So anyway, Rich takes this case,

02:24:54.880 and Rich is way into this case.

02:24:56.260 And I, I talked to Rich, uh, at his office in Anchorage and he was like, I really liked

02:25:00.580 Israel.

02:25:01.460 Oh my gosh. 0.99

02:25:02.600 I know.

02:25:03.600 Rich.

02:25:04.120 I said, you got to get out more.

02:25:05.820 Seriously.

02:25:06.400 He's like, I liked him.

02:25:07.380 Uh, but he, he, he would not, the minute he said, I want the death penalty.

02:25:12.540 Rich was like, well, I'm not arguing for that because I'm anti-death penalty and I won't

02:25:16.720 do it.

02:25:17.340 And so now he's got a court appointed lawyer that he can't get out from under who won't

02:25:22.180 advocate for what he wants.

02:25:23.660 and the FBI is trying to get him what he wants,

02:25:28.340 but it's not moving that quickly

02:25:30.000 and they can't get any traction anywhere.

02:25:33.080 Okay, but they do figure out it's more than these three.

02:25:36.860 Oh yeah.

02:25:37.140 So how did they do that?

02:25:38.840 They asked him, they said, how many people did you kill?

02:25:41.780 They just asked him and he said, well, less than 12.

02:25:47.440 And Steve Payne always thought that was a weird number.

02:25:50.140 Yeah.

02:25:50.340 Because most people go by fives and tens, right?

02:25:52.880 Like you round up to a five or a 10.

02:25:54.900 What does that even mean?

02:25:56.140 Like less than 12. 0.99

02:25:58.420 That's a great point, right?

02:25:59.660 Like what does that mean?

02:26:01.500 But Steve took it to mean 12, like 11 or 12.

02:26:06.500 And, but I, I talked to people on the case who think it was way more than that.

02:26:12.660 And I definitely think it was way more than that.

02:26:15.320 And do we know who they are?

02:26:16.880 Like you mentioned something in Florida.

02:26:18.500 We know some of them.

02:26:19.440 We know some of them.

02:26:20.260 um there are some cold cases i lay out in the book that i definitely believe are the work of keys

02:26:25.740 absolutely um a 12 year old paralympian in colville washington where keys lived

02:26:32.120 very very small town went missing when keys was a very young man he was like 14 and this girl was

02:26:40.640 19. Okay. 19. Um, her, her body was later found with her, um, her feet, her prosthetic

02:26:48.680 feet were, were far away from her remains, but, um, the, she was seen, she knew him,

02:26:54.400 she knew him, she knew him. Um, so it's not true that he didn't kill children to your

02:26:58.680 point. Absolutely. Yeah. And, uh, there was another 12 year old girl who, uh, was murdered

02:27:04.160 with her mother uh and i i think that was keys as well in colville as well um he there's a man

02:27:10.860 named jimmy tidwell who went missing in texas after samantha was taken while keys was still

02:27:17.060 on the loose um i go into all of the evidence as to jeff bell knows it's jimmy too he won't say it

02:27:24.440 publicly but we talked about it um after the book came out after american predator came out i got

02:27:30.080 an email from a woman who said, your book came to me through a circuitous route. I am Jimmy

02:27:37.320 Tidwell's niece. We have never been able to get an answer from either local law enforcement or

02:27:42.400 the FBI, but now we know what happened to him. So thank you. Wow. There is a very famous case

02:27:48.260 I'm obsessed with in Florida called the Boca Murders. There was a man in Boca Raton who was

02:27:57.560 targeting women at the mall upscale luxury mall broad daylight first victim she is going to her

02:28:07.800 vehicle with her toddler son and she's loading up the back of the car honestly megan after writing

02:28:14.700 this book i don't move through the world the same way at all like i will never my head is on a

02:28:18.800 swivel in like a garage he comes up to her and he's got a gun and he's like get in the back of

02:28:23.540 the car, get your kid in the back of the car, takes the car, starts driving them all over.

02:28:28.360 Never, never do it. By the way, listening audience, never let them take you to a second

02:28:32.080 location. And that would qualify as a second location, like from the parking lot into your

02:28:36.320 car to go someplace. Run, run, run, run. You have much better chance of surviving. He's probably not

02:28:41.660 going to shoot you. He's probably not. The difficult victims, they just kind of let them go.

02:28:45.560 But I'd rather somebody take a shot at me while I'm serpentining away than have me in the car.

02:28:50.760 You know, though, what the thing is, and he understood the psychology of this.

02:28:55.540 If you are like the home invasion with the couriers, you know, when you're awoken, startled

02:29:00.320 in the middle of the night, and it's like, it takes you a minute to be like, am I awake?

02:29:03.220 Yes.

02:29:03.720 You know, like he's capitalizing on those five seconds of like orienting yourself.

02:29:08.240 Yeah.

02:29:08.660 And so then who's going to believe a stranger's in your house on top, you know?

02:29:11.920 I know.

02:29:12.800 So he's this woman with her little child.

02:29:15.780 Don't comply.

02:29:16.500 He's got his gun in her back.

02:29:17.860 He's like, get in the car.

02:29:18.620 It's like, she probably couldn't even take that minute to go, you know?

02:29:22.460 Oh, I don't judge her.

02:29:23.320 Oh, I know you're not.

02:29:23.920 But for the people listening, don't comply.

02:29:26.480 You're absolutely right.

02:29:27.500 You're absolutely right.

02:29:28.160 And you do it, especially if you have a child with you, you're like, I'll do anything to

02:29:31.780 protect my child.

02:29:32.380 That thing is to run away.

02:29:33.760 That's what that thing is.

02:29:34.800 Yeah.

02:29:35.400 Yeah.

02:29:36.140 So, so they get in the car and he starts driving out and, and all around Boca Raton and she

02:29:41.860 is terrified and her child begins to cry.

02:29:45.780 and she's worried that the crying is going to just infuriate him further

02:29:50.940 and she just keeps talking to him.

02:29:52.900 She just keeps talking.

02:29:53.740 Samantha tried this too.

02:29:54.860 It was really smart. 0.95

02:29:56.140 Humanize yourself.

02:29:57.580 You don't want to be doing this, right?

02:29:58.860 Like we can end this.

02:29:59.940 Like, you know, he does let them go.

02:30:02.100 He lets them go.

02:30:03.720 He drives them back and he lets them go.

02:30:06.580 The other victims weren't so lucky.

02:30:08.480 Another mother and daughter were found in that mall tied up in their car,

02:30:13.820 zip ties.

02:30:14.280 there was a woman who was also,

02:30:18.360 witnesses saw this happen.

02:30:20.480 This is how she was discovered.

02:30:22.920 She was driving a Jeep,

02:30:24.480 a very well-to-do woman, married, middle-aged.

02:30:28.440 And the Jeep just starts going just erratically.

02:30:32.820 It's like slowing down, but it's going erratically.

02:30:34.680 And then the driver's side door opens and she falls out.

02:30:40.380 So that means there's someone in the passenger side

02:30:42.900 who pushed her out of the car so when the when the police and fbi arrived at the scene at the

02:30:52.060 mall with the woman and and her eight-year-old daughter who were tied up and murdered they were

02:30:57.340 like this is as unique as a fingerprint this mo and it matches keys now jane doe the woman who

02:31:02.620 survived with her toddler spoke to dateline she has never given her real identity we have a little

02:31:08.740 bit of that in sup 55 let's watch i put my son in first i strap him in his car seat he's in back

02:31:14.100 yeah in the back then i go to the back of the truck and i put the stroller in shut the gate and

02:31:21.360 start walking to the front mama mama and i could tell if he's worried or scared that's when i look

02:31:29.080 in to see if he's okay and there's a guy sitting there a guy in a floppy hat wrap around shades

02:31:34.980 sitting in her suv right next to her two-year-old that moment how terrifying is that i was in shock

02:31:41.500 at that moment and i just stood there and the guy said get in the car and i was frozen and when he

02:31:50.100 said get in the car for the second time that's when i noticed the gun the gun is pointed at her son

02:31:55.400 i see him pull out a pair of handcuffs he handcuffs my wrists behind my back and he pulls out a bag

02:32:01.960 of zip ties and he zip ties my ankles together and then zip ties my neck to the headrest and

02:32:10.440 he takes out a pair of darkened sunglasses with duct tape i'm guessing and puts them on my eyes

02:32:17.840 so now i'm blindfolded speak to me of terror i started losing it and i started choking choking

02:32:26.140 myself because the zip tie was so tight couldn't breathe and gagging and um crying and i was just

02:32:33.500 hysterical zip tied her neck to the headrest that is disconcerting i mean i can't imagine

02:32:42.600 being able to function with any like anything like your full brain power when you're in that

02:32:47.020 position no and actually i had that detail wrong he was in the car he got in the car before she

02:32:51.960 knew and her kid was crying and going mommy mommy um but that that was that was keys's mo and and

02:33:00.080 the sketch that she worked up they showed a little bit of the police sketch that she worked up of her

02:33:04.940 abductor at her and her child's abductor uh it's a dead ringer for israel keys it's amazing he let

02:33:10.780 her go like why would he show empathy in that case and none other it's such a great question

02:33:17.100 I don't know.

02:33:18.240 I don't know what it was.

02:33:19.940 I don't know if it was the crying child.

02:33:22.000 I don't know if it somehow sparked something in him about his own daughter.

02:33:27.780 But it makes no sense because a couple of months later, another woman with her eight-year-old daughter, he murders.

02:33:36.080 So it doesn't make any sense.

02:33:37.780 This is after he has his own daughter or no?

02:33:39.820 Yeah.

02:33:40.880 Is she around, his biological daughter?

02:33:44.500 She is.

02:33:44.980 What's her story?

02:33:45.540 She was raised by her mother on a reservation way up in Neah Bay in Washington State.

02:33:54.780 It's a very, very remote place.

02:33:58.500 And Keys lived there for quite some time.

02:34:01.360 It's real poverty up there.

02:34:02.920 It's real, real poverty. 1.00

02:34:04.960 People know who she is, and she just lives her own life.

02:34:10.820 You know, she's never sought publicity or anything.

02:34:14.200 I remember I reached out to her mom right before the book came out and I said, you should know that it's coming out.

02:34:20.140 Like you might want to remove photos you've got of her on your social media.

02:34:24.280 You know, it'll be easy for people to find her.

02:34:27.040 So she's probably mid-20s now. 0.99

02:34:28.620 Yeah. 0.98

02:34:28.980 Oh, my gosh.

02:34:30.360 He had a stepson, by the way, who killed himself.

02:34:32.520 That's been omitted completely from the FBI narrative.

02:34:35.540 Killed himself after Keyes was caught.

02:34:36.920 So what happens? Because now they're starting to get what they think is a toll, a number, and then it all comes to an end one day.

02:34:49.360 It all comes to an end one day. Jeff Bell is getting ready to barge into a house and make some arrests and he gets a phone call. It's very early in the morning that Israel Keyes has successfully committed suicide in his cell.

02:35:06.920 And he has left in blood drawings of 11 skulls with the words, we are one.

02:35:16.720 What the FBI did not make public was that he also wrote on the wall of his cell.

02:35:22.260 And I went there.

02:35:23.160 I went to the jail and I went to the cell and I saw exactly where it was.

02:35:25.720 And this was a plexiglass cell.

02:35:27.760 So if you want to tell anybody that he did it in secret and nobody would ever have known, it's impossible.

02:35:33.100 So they knew he was killing himself.

02:35:34.620 Yes.

02:35:35.080 Yes, there is video of blood pulling out from under his door for hours.

02:35:41.860 He used a razor blade.

02:35:44.820 Yeah, the razor blade from his razor.

02:35:47.260 Well, you know, the warden of the jail told me that he put a sign on Keyes' door that said, do not give this prisoner a razor blade.

02:35:56.160 Wow.

02:35:56.600 And they didn't follow that?

02:35:58.420 It's Keystone Cops.

02:35:59.540 How did they ever get past that?

02:36:01.060 How did they ever get past that?

02:36:02.300 Dictat.

02:36:02.820 I don't know.

02:36:03.240 But I got – after the book came out, I spoke to somebody who was impacted me.

02:36:08.880 Wait, wait.

02:36:09.160 You were going to say something that was on the wall.

02:36:10.740 Oh, on the wall.

02:36:11.560 In his own blood, he wrote Belize, the nation.

02:36:15.520 Why?

02:36:16.420 Well, I asked his mom about that, and she said he went to Belize on vacation, and he was really struck by the poverty in Belize.

02:36:24.820 And it really – it made him hate America even more and hate the federal government even more.

02:36:31.080 and um you know he had planned to um he had in his planning you know at one point this case in

02:36:39.340 the middle of it it was reclassified it went from serial murder to domestic terrorism and the fbi

02:36:45.360 has never said why wow well does that reclass do anything for the fbi's ability to hide the case

02:36:52.200 i i think they're doing exactly what they want to do you know there's like 50 000 pages why would

02:36:58.680 they get to the point where they don't want to disclose it just because they look bad because if

02:37:02.280 the numbers climb too high they look like they they're do or know nothings i don't know because

02:37:07.620 i think they're as discussed like with just a few of those there are others in the book there are

02:37:11.840 there are plenty of cases i believe could easily be ascribed to him you know you could say we could

02:37:15.920 close this out with a fair degree of certainty right give survivor surviving family members some

02:37:21.120 peace of mind yeah um he was allowed to join as a volunteer a volunteer recruit the united states

02:37:28.040 army despite not existing on paper he was raised off the grid by these cultists who belonged to a

02:37:35.820 church a white supremacist church where um they were friends with keys was very good friends with

02:37:42.300 um chevy and shane kehoe who grew up to be on the fbi's 10 most wanted list of domestic terrorists

02:37:47.860 potential ties to timothy mcveigh oklahoma city bombing keys mentions mcveigh in his

02:37:55.180 interrogations with the fbi and he says a lot of people i know regard that guy as a hero

02:37:58.880 wow he was a super soldier in the army his special forces training i asked for his army records i got

02:38:06.240 like three pages and one of those two of those pages that interesting things one is uh his father

02:38:12.640 died they have no idea how or what happened to the body oh boy and they were interrogating the um

02:38:20.920 um the discovery of a skull a human skull on the base where keys had trained for quite some time

02:38:26.880 well it's no accident he drew skulls with his own blood as his final his final thing here on earth

02:38:34.440 and he drew 11 which is less than 12 um and now we only know officially of three so yeah that's

02:38:42.160 the big mystery who are the other nine we just don't know yet i mean we don't we have we have

02:38:46.040 suspicions but we don't know and we're probably never going to know given that you're saying the

02:38:49.420 FBI has kind of clammed up on it. What did his mom say after, after the fact, after all this was

02:38:54.640 done? So his mother is a member of a cult called the church of Wells last I heard in Texas. Um,

02:39:03.020 and she said to me, these interviews were really difficult because there was a lot of

02:39:09.880 proselytizing to get to the point. Oh boy. I must've loved that. It was hard, but, uh, she said

02:39:16.240 one day they were driving somewhere in his jeep and she knew something was wrong with him and she

02:39:23.300 said um he turned to her and said you know mom not everyone wants to live the way you do not all of

02:39:30.160 us want to live the way you do and then she said she knew her son was guilty of these things like

02:39:36.300 when the fbi showed up at her door and they were like we have your son arrested in connection with

02:39:41.160 the disappearance of this young girl it she was like yeah that sounds about right and jeff bell

02:39:46.880 saw heidi at the courthouse and he said she looked like someone out of little house on the prairie

02:39:50.680 like the long dress and like the handmade thing and like the long braid and he went up to her and

02:39:56.680 he said please can you help us your son won't talk there's a missing girl they didn't know if

02:40:00.880 she was dead yet i mean they knew but and she said to jeff if the lord wants that girl to be found

02:40:06.260 that girl will be found and turned her back and walked away okay this is what we're dealing with

02:40:10.560 This is what we're dealing with.

02:40:12.600 So as you look back on the case now, it's been a couple of years since you wrote the

02:40:16.560 book, like where does he fall in the pantheon of American serial killers?

02:40:24.880 Well, you know, the FBI said they'd never seen one like him before.

02:40:29.180 And I think that's why his case remains so little known.

02:40:33.940 They know more than they're telling, but not nearly as much as I think we think they do.

02:40:38.440 they have something called the evil minds research museum the fbi does what yeah i tried to get in

02:40:46.000 there they really wouldn't let me in they let david fincher in for my hunter but they wouldn't

02:40:51.280 let me in who is this pest who keeps subpoena knock knock but they they they have there they

02:40:57.320 have the brains of serial killers they have um artifacts they have a lot of keys of stuff like

02:41:03.980 his journals his own self-reports um they have also when they were gonna let me in they were

02:41:10.640 like don't publicize this but screw them they have like a big stuffed hannibal lector in like a a

02:41:17.780 prison cell like you know in the middle of the movie senator comes in yeah that's like that's 0.96

02:41:21.680 their idea of kicks oh my god yeah this is like at where quantico adjacent oh wow so it's like

02:41:28.380 off the side of the highway like it's an unmarked building but it's a real thing so like agents are

02:41:32.320 supposed to go there to learn or like the the the academics i guess at quantica or they are in there

02:41:36.860 trying to figure out the the origins of psychopathy to this degree well i'm glad they're studying it

02:41:41.460 i mean it sounds like to me they'd be better off reading your book but yeah they should give it a

02:41:45.020 shot yeah that's that's helpful well i can't believe i didn't know i mean i am obsessed with

02:41:49.460 true crime i feel like i listen to all of them and i've never heard his name before and my dear

02:41:54.540 friend wrote the book on him so it's like i i mean i'm i was gonna say thrilled to know but

02:42:00.940 That's not the right word.

02:42:02.320 I'm fascinated because they're all so different.

02:42:04.840 And this guy is so bizarre where there's not an MO.

02:42:07.280 There's not like a typical victim.

02:42:08.940 There's not a geographic tie.

02:42:11.180 Just so bizarre.

02:42:12.540 I don't, it doesn't make me, it's somewhat unsettling, right?

02:42:15.060 Because you want to believe there'll always be that and that'll make them easier to catch.

02:42:18.980 But the thing is, is like the more we learn from this one, you know,

02:42:22.240 Keyes said, he was asked, who is your favorite serial killer?

02:42:25.780 They thought they would get something, right?

02:42:27.620 And he said, it's the one who hasn't been caught.

02:42:30.940 Because he knew that there was someone better at being undetected right behind him.

02:42:36.040 And I'll tell you this, Megan, when the Idaho College murder story broke and before we knew

02:42:42.540 who did it, I was convinced that whoever did it had studied the case of Israel Keyes.

02:42:49.100 Definitely could be.

02:42:50.000 I mean, he was a criminologist.

02:42:51.120 He was a criminologist.

02:42:52.520 He was, it was like he had Washington state connections, but he crossed state lines.

02:42:57.980 A lot of them do.

02:42:59.220 Washington state is another one.

02:43:00.860 it is so is iowa so is long island yes just i know as much as you think it would be like

02:43:07.880 new york or chicago or baltimore they have different kinds of murders but they it's not

02:43:14.700 really serial killer central they're much more dispersed than that yeah the serial killer thing

02:43:19.420 although i will say just a note of comfort for the audience since it's the holidays

02:43:22.700 um cc moore the great genetic genealogist woman who like catches everybody speaking of brian

02:43:31.300 kohlberger um she told me she doesn't believe you can have a serial killer in 2025 america

02:43:36.920 she's like we've gotten too good touch the touch dna that they like it's no longer they don't need

02:43:44.480 a fingerprint they don't need blood or semen or bodily fluids it's like touch dna look how 1.00

02:43:51.080 Kohlberger kind of got caught. Touched DNA on the knife sheath, which yes, then he left behind,

02:43:57.980 but like that touch DNA 10, 15, 20 years ago would have been meaningless. They wouldn't have been

02:44:02.660 able to find that. That would have been nothing if it wasn't like a bodily fluid that you could

02:44:05.800 see in like bag, forget it. Now they know to look for it. And that touch DNA, they didn't have a hit.

02:44:12.800 They had to be the genetic genealogy. They went, they got like some hit to somebody,

02:44:16.440 some distant relative of Kohlberger, which they then traced back to the dad of Kohlberger.

02:44:21.380 And then they start using her skills to figure out who's around this dad, who could be potentially

02:44:26.200 in Idaho on this night. And then they quickly got to Brian. But anyway, she doesn't think that you

02:44:32.080 can have a serial killer in 2025 America, which makes me feel better. The only, I would say my

02:44:37.580 caveat to that would be, if you look at the Gilgo Beach killer, who was active for many, many, many,

02:44:41.780 many years. It's the victim. It's just as important, right? He was, he was targeting

02:44:46.440 sex workers and they don't stay on sex worker cases for very long, you know? So I guess if

02:44:52.720 you're, if you're, if you're a predator and you know your prey, that's, that would be my one

02:44:58.420 thing where I'd maybe push back on that. Yeah. You're going to like the victims no one cares

02:45:02.540 about. Exactly. That society regards as kind of disposable. Well, I was trying to leave it on an

02:45:07.680 I'm sorry.

02:45:08.780 I don't think we're going to be able to now.

02:45:10.780 Well, the book is fun to read.

02:45:12.800 And there's, oh, and they're great.

02:45:15.300 I didn't see The Eleven Skulls, but I hear it's great.

02:45:18.640 The Keyes case is fascinating.

02:45:20.120 I was amazed you found the Dateline footage because I was trying to find it while doing the book and I couldn't find the footage.

02:45:25.340 Yeah.

02:45:25.760 My crack team found that.

02:45:27.720 So good.

02:45:28.880 It was, I mean, the whole case is dark, but fascinating.

02:45:32.380 You know, it's like sometimes the serial killer stuff is too much for me.

02:45:35.380 Like I can't take any torture stories.

02:45:37.680 But we think we did a good job today of skimming over some of the more disturbing parts of this guy because you can go deep and you can go way darker on him even than we did.

02:45:48.240 And that's our silver lining.

02:45:50.800 I like it.

02:45:51.540 You could have gone worse.

02:45:52.480 It could have been worse.

02:45:53.920 We say nothing says Christmas like true crime.

02:45:59.080 So look, I think the reason so many people are drawn to true crime is because it takes your mind off of your own problems.

02:46:04.880 you cannot be thinking about whatever thing is stressing you when you are thinking about

02:46:08.040 something like this. There's something soothing about solving it, you know, like justice. I think

02:46:12.940 there's a good contingent of us who that really feels validated when justice comes to bad guys.

02:46:17.920 It makes you believe again in the world, you know, like people aren't all going to get away

02:46:22.440 with it. Mother effers. And that will conclude the things of positive things. I have to say the list

02:46:28.180 love you. I love you. Oh, happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy new year. Happy new year.

02:46:34.640 All of it, lady. Great to see you.

02:46:36.400 Great to see you.

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02:47:12.600 All right, full-time force.

02:47:14.120 Craig, who stood out?

02:47:15.080 Brazil's lime cheesecake started bright, didn't let up.

02:47:17.640 Nah, for me, Italian cappuccino was the standout in the box.

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02:47:23.540 Chocolate creme brulee had the richest finishes.

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02:47:38.840 Pick some up today and while you're at it, check out Footy Prime Daily.

02:47:44.340 We have a fascinating program for you today, one filled with crime, murder, money and betrayal.

02:47:51.500 Today, we're talking to one of the most infamous mobsters in American history,

02:47:55.800 Salvatore Gravano, otherwise known as Sammy the Bull.

02:48:00.020 To understand his story, we have to take a step back in time to the early 1970s when

02:48:05.520 The Godfather hit the big screen and changed the perception of the mafia in America.

02:48:11.780 You spend time with your family?

02:48:13.900 Sure I do.

02:48:15.340 Good.

02:48:16.900 Because a man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.

02:48:21.400 You look terrible.

02:48:23.320 I want you to eat.

02:48:24.980 I want you to rest well.

02:48:26.240 and a month from now, this Hollywood big shot's going to give you what you want.

02:48:30.460 It's too late. They start shooting in a week.

02:48:33.860 I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.

02:48:38.920 At about that same time, Gravano, a kid who grew up without mob connections in his family,

02:48:44.940 slowly eased into La Cosa Nostra and made his first kill.

02:48:50.820 Over the course of the next two decades,

02:48:52.440 sammy the bull would rise up the ranks of new york's notorious gambino crime family raking in

02:48:58.400 millions upon millions of dollars and repeatedly killing he has admitted to 19 murders in all

02:49:04.980 including his own brother-in-law his best friend and the gambino family mob boss paul castellano

02:49:12.300 in 1985 deadly messages from organized crime to organized crime and the rest of society

02:49:18.440 The murder of Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano yesterday, or the 1979 assassination of Cosa Nostradon, Carmine Galenti, unsolved very public executions by an underworld that plays by their own rules and their own code of justice.

02:49:34.280 The Castellano murder, particularly brazen and defiant, since Castellano was gunned down a day before, he was to resume standing trial for auto theft and murder.

02:49:43.560 Organized crime had served up its own sentence.

02:49:48.440 By the late 1980s, the new Don, John Gotti, had named Sammy the Bull his right-hand man.

02:49:56.100 Gotti himself was a ruthless mobster and media darling who dressed in expensive suits and enjoyed the finer things in life, earning him the nickname the Dapper Don.

02:50:07.040 He also repeatedly escaped conviction with, as it would turn out, Sammy's help, which we'll get to, earning him another nickname, the Teflon Don.

02:50:16.980 Remember how they use that about Donald Trump? Well, it was first about John Gotti.

02:50:21.880 But in 1991, everything changed. John Gotti and Sammy the Bull were behind bars facing a slew of

02:50:28.060 charges when Sammy decided to flip and do the unthinkable, cooperate with the feds. At the time,

02:50:36.180 he was the highest ranking gangster to break his blood oath, earning him the ire of mob

02:50:42.700 aficionados who dubbed him 0.88

02:50:44.740 a rat. Not since Joe

02:50:46.760 Vellacci in the 60s has such a high-ranking

02:50:48.940 member of the mob turned traitor.

02:50:50.920 Sammy the Bull Gravano now joins the ranks

02:50:52.740 of those who have broken the cardinal rule of the

02:50:54.740 mafia. Omerta, the code

02:50:56.780 of silence.

02:50:59.900 Sammy's testimony

02:51:00.860 helped send John Gotti

02:51:02.680 away for good.

02:51:04.600 The Teflon is gone, the

02:51:06.740 Don is covered with Velcro, and every

02:51:08.720 charge in the indictment stuck.

02:51:12.700 and resulted in dozens of other mobsters going to prison as well.

02:51:16.680 One top FBI agent says that testimony by Sammy led to the demise of organized crime in New York.

02:51:24.860 Since then, there have been numerous books and movies made about the Gambino crime family.

02:51:28.560 And while some may still consider Sammy a, quote, rat,

02:51:32.640 hundreds of thousands of people are curious fans of his.

02:51:36.840 Subscribing to his podcast launched right around the time our own did,

02:51:41.960 called Our Thing, which is what Cosa Nostra means.

02:51:46.960 In fact, his YouTube channel alone has more than 77 million views.

02:51:52.480 Sammy the Bull Gravano, welcome to the show.

02:51:54.600 Thank you for being here.

02:51:57.540 Thank you.

02:51:58.580 Thank you.

02:51:59.020 It's a pleasure.

02:52:00.440 So let me start with this.

02:52:02.020 After that background, how are you still upright?

02:52:06.120 How are you still walking around on two feet?

02:52:09.160 well the mafia changed quite a bit it doesn't do certain things and people understand the story

02:52:18.840 what happened um that word rat i mean they use that uh they do that all the time but uh

02:52:27.520 in my case i was offered that position to cooperate a bunch of times i was arrested all

02:52:35.720 my life. I never cooperated. I was facing life in a number of different cases. But when it came to

02:52:43.820 John Gotti, I was arrested in 1991 with him. And after 11 months, the worst 11 months I've ever

02:52:53.360 done in prison, I've been in prison 22 years of my life. But he wanted me to take the weight

02:53:00.540 so he can go free he was going to back up the tapes that the government had and most of those

02:53:09.100 tapes were all lies about me killing union people and taking over or killing my partners

02:53:15.100 and taking over none of that was true but he thought that he would have the lawyers

02:53:23.440 back up those tapes and turn around in a way to say well you hear john complaining about him

02:53:31.640 uh it's not john 0.96

02:53:35.120 would be set free and i would go to prison he had the balls to actually tell me this to my face

02:53:47.860 and um that's when i walked away from him the mafia and whatever would happen would happen

02:53:54.500 i wasn't afraid of it now i understand well and let me just jump in because uh we'll get to that

02:54:00.880 in detail in just a bit but and i and what you're basically saying is that you you felt he was going

02:54:06.860 to sell you out up the river and you sold him up the river first but is that why you don't think

02:54:12.960 anybody has tried to seek retribution. I mean, I understand there's been at least one attempt on

02:54:18.860 your life since your testimony against him, allegedly by a family member of John Gotti's.

02:54:26.040 But is that it? Because you did witness protection, you did all that. I can't imagine

02:54:30.840 nobody else has tried to come get you. Well, there was a team that came down

02:54:39.320 And when John Gotti was away, Peter Gotti, his brother, became the boss. 0.89

02:54:44.340 He said he put together a team to come down and kill me.

02:54:48.200 They found me. 0.83

02:54:49.860 They were afraid to even come near me.

02:54:52.360 And they were.

02:54:53.720 They devised all kinds of plans, a bomb.

02:54:58.140 Then this thing that spins around and shoots shotgun shells.

02:55:02.420 And that didn't work.

02:55:05.040 Nothing worked.

02:55:06.140 And I got arrested again in 2000, February of 2000, and it didn't get done.

02:55:20.080 When I got arrested, I had in my apartment, I had five guns, four guns planted in different places, in my kitchen, in my bathroom, my living room.

02:55:31.640 I expected them to come down

02:55:33.940 and I had one

02:55:35.800 on me all the time

02:55:36.860 I was actually waiting for it to happen

02:55:39.820 and they worked with me

02:55:43.800 these were people, some people were my

02:55:45.800 crew, one of them was my brother-in-law

02:55:47.900 Eddie Garofalo

02:55:48.820 and they

02:55:53.760 knew me and they knew

02:55:55.680 I wouldn't run from it

02:55:56.920 and

02:55:58.440 they were 0.95

02:56:01.260 cowards they didn't make the move they were afraid to make the move and i got when once i 0.95

02:56:07.480 went in prison again uh that part of it was over so there was an attempt 0.92

02:56:13.540 excuse me they found me but it didn't work out for them it worked out for me as i said you're

02:56:25.940 doing a podcast now and so on are you at all in hiding i mean is it something that do you need to

02:56:32.000 keep your whereabouts unknown no i think the whole country knows where i am i'm not in hiding

02:56:39.080 listen i went into the witness protection program uh i didn't want to go into the program i had

02:56:45.360 money i didn't want to go in the i did only five years on my first hit uh my first pinch and uh

02:56:53.920 So the government begged me to go in that they would look terrible if I refused and didn't go in.

02:57:01.020 And we had meetings and they said, you know, you got a great sentence.

02:57:05.920 Give us something. Come into the program.

02:57:09.000 I agreed to go into the program for a year.

02:57:12.900 I did eight months in the program.

02:57:16.120 Something came up. A woman recognized me and they wanted me to start over again.

02:57:20.980 I said, no, I'm not starting over again.

02:57:22.600 I promised a year. I'll give you a year. There's four more months.

02:57:26.000 It didn't. They wanted to start over and I quit and walked away.

02:57:31.780 I went to Phoenix where my family was and I stayed there for about another four

02:57:35.740 and a half years before I got busted again.

02:57:40.520 Since I got out, I got out in 2017.

02:57:44.960 This all started by wife. My daughter did a book.

02:57:47.940 I did a book when I got out in 96 and she wanted to do a book.

02:57:54.940 We couldn't sell the book.

02:57:57.500 And then somebody came to her about a podcast and she said,

02:58:01.840 would you work for me?

02:58:03.820 And of course we're divorced and give me the right to use you to do a

02:58:09.940 podcast.

02:58:10.720 And I said, of course I'll help you.

02:58:12.740 And I start, that's how I started a year after that or whatever.

02:58:17.940 Maybe a little bit more than a year, two years after that, my son put me on Facebook a little while after that.

02:58:26.360 He put me on YouTube, unbeknownst to me.

02:58:31.720 I didn't even know it. My phone. I was getting all kinds of calls.

02:58:35.580 And my son left one day and said, I put you on Facebook.

02:58:38.880 I put you on YouTube. And that's what the calls were about.

02:58:41.500 so i just stayed on that and i continued the podcast on that and it grew to big numbers i'm

02:58:50.980 almost at a half a million uh subscribers and i got 77 78 million uh views and now i'm doing a

02:59:00.720 whole bunch of other things and a lot of um i was reading and preparing for this a lot of men and

02:59:07.440 women in law enforcement, in particular FBI agents, watch and listen to the podcast and the YouTube

02:59:13.780 show because they say it's fascinating. They've never been able to get this sort of an insight

02:59:18.920 into a real life mobster's thinking. And you talk openly about the crimes that were committed by

02:59:25.660 yourself, by others. A lot of these guys who were covering you or on you back then are listening,

02:59:30.240 thinking, oh, my God, this is helping me put things together. So it's just the all around.

02:59:35.460 I mean, obviously you have immunity now for those crimes, given the deal you struck with the government.

02:59:39.320 But it's a fascinating thing to think about the FBI agents who once tracked you and guys you worked with now listening to you and are fans of the show.

02:59:49.080 I mean, actually fans of the show.

02:59:50.560 So let me let me pause you there and let's go back.

02:59:52.680 Let's start with you as a kid, because as I mentioned in the intro, you were not raised in a family where your dad was in the mob and your granddad was in the mob.

03:00:02.720 This was not foretold. As I understand it, your dad was fairly successful. You had a nice family

03:00:08.780 and you had some difficulties as a child, but it wasn't related to anything in terms of crime or

03:00:15.840 the mob. No, my mother and father were totally legitimate. My mother was a seamstress. My father

03:00:23.400 was a painter. Back then they used to use lead in paint, got lead poisoning, had to stay away

03:00:29.280 from painting my mother got an offer from a jewish contractor she would go and make the clothes 0.93

03:00:35.760 women's clothes and uh the guy told her katie you're great open up a little factory and i'll 0.79

03:00:44.280 get you work if you could produce you know the quality of work that you do uh we'll give you our 0.98

03:00:52.920 work and that's exactly what she did my father jumped in with her to help her and they worked

03:01:00.140 together they had a dress factory and uh that's what they did i had two sisters um neither one of

03:01:07.700 them had anything to do with the mafia boyfriends or anything one of my brother-in-laws was an

03:01:13.560 engineer uh the other brother-in-law was uh a plumbing contractor later on he came in the mafia

03:01:20.900 with me and he became a made member. But before that, before I was in the mafia, I had no relation

03:01:28.140 to the mafia whatsoever. But in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, it was saturated with the mafia. So

03:01:34.440 it was on every street corner. It was around. As a kid growing up, I was dyslexic. I didn't do good

03:01:41.200 in school. I got left back in the fourth grade, the seventh grade. I had nothing but problems in

03:01:46.500 school. I got thrown out. I never got past the eighth grade and I was in a gang and we stayed

03:01:55.100 away from the mafia. We knew who they were. We knew they were dangerous. So we stayed away from

03:01:59.560 them. It was us against the world and we didn't want nothing to do with the mafia. And at 19 years

03:02:08.880 old, I got drafted and I went into the military during the Vietnam War. I spent two years there

03:02:15.360 and uh yeah when you were drafted you got two years if you join you had to do three

03:02:22.100 i did two i came out and went right back into a gang and the guys why why because i would think

03:02:30.440 i would like to think that a couple years in the army would instill a moral code in you that would

03:02:36.460 give you some pause about going back into a life of crime well it wasn't into a life of crime it

03:02:44.060 was back into being in the gang I mean that's what I knew the only thing I knew I was taught

03:02:49.320 how to kill and how to do things in the military and uh I would have killed people to protect the 0.99

03:02:56.040 country they was gave us that bullshit that it was communism was coming here they're going to 1.00

03:03:00.740 rape your mother your sisters and so I was brainwashed a little bit by the government 1.00

03:03:05.440 I mean I never met a bad Vietnamese person the only people I know who Vietnamese uh do my nails 0.98

03:03:13.580 or my toenails and they just seem to be nice people. I've never met Vietnamese people in

03:03:19.000 prison, so maybe they're good crooks. So I think the whole thing was bullshit. So I went right back 1.00

03:03:25.900 into a gang. But unbeknownst to me, while the two years I was gone, most of my friends hooked up

03:03:35.020 with different mafia families and they were hooked up with somebody. One of my friends,

03:03:40.020 Tommy Spiro said, my uncle wants to talk to you. His name was Shorty Spiro. He was in a notorious

03:03:47.240 crew, Carmine Persico. There was a war going on at that time between the Gallows and the Profaci.

03:03:57.560 And there was different sides. The war stopped for a while. So when I got hooked up with them,

03:04:05.480 There was no war going on. I knew sooner or later they kill people that I would be called.

03:04:12.320 That's where I did my first murder. That's it's a long story.

03:04:17.740 I would tell you if you want to hear it. But I did my first piece of work there.

03:04:23.140 And then Shorty at that after that had told me, Sammy, go get your clothes.

03:04:29.320 Joe Gallo had come out of crazy. Joe Gallo came out of prison.

03:04:33.880 He said, go get your clothes.

03:04:35.160 We're going to hit the mattresses.

03:04:36.460 I didn't even know what that meant back then.

03:04:38.260 It wasn't a million movies.

03:04:40.740 And he said, they're a pack of wolves.

03:04:44.420 We're a pack of wolves.

03:04:46.060 We're going to live together. 1.00

03:04:47.820 If you have a girlfriend, get rid of her.

03:04:49.800 If you got a job, stop. 0.96

03:04:51.580 You're going to live with us 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

03:04:55.280 And we're going to hunt them. 0.70

03:04:57.400 They're going to hunt us.

03:04:58.880 And that's what you have to do from this point on.

03:05:01.900 And that's the beginnings of your your time in organized crime.

03:05:05.660 That wasn't just the gang.

03:05:07.220 That was one of the five New York crime families. 0.92

03:05:10.400 Yes, it became the Colombo. 1.00

03:05:12.540 It was a Profachi family.

03:05:14.760 Profachi died and they made Joe Colombo the boss. 0.95

03:05:20.000 So when I got in, Joe Colombo was the boss.

03:05:22.700 My first hit was ordered from Joe Colombo to Carmine Persico to Shorty to me.

03:05:28.740 And it was somebody in our crew who was plotting to kill Shorty and me.

03:05:35.880 And his wife was having an affair with Shorty's nephew.

03:05:42.040 And he devised a plot to kill Shorty and me to cause confusion.

03:05:49.060 A couple of months later, six months later, he would kill Tommy Spiro.

03:05:53.980 He went to somebody, Frankie, who was in the crew and asked for his help.

03:05:58.740 uh frankie instead of helping him went to shorty and told him about the plot that's how the whole

03:06:04.880 thing happened now just to take a step back you mentioned you had dyslexia as a kid and you didn't

03:06:10.420 make it past the eighth grade and i know that there were some bullies in your life as well

03:06:14.920 and and one of those incidents led to your nickname sammy the bull you they tried to steal

03:06:19.560 your bike you didn't go let it go peacefully you were scrappy and these mobsters saw you fighting

03:06:26.500 and said look at this kid and they nicknamed you sammy the bull now right jumping forward now to

03:06:32.780 this point you may have stood up to bullies but you you didn't go to vietnam when you were serving

03:06:39.000 in 1964 so you you hadn't killed anybody whether in a military uniform or otherwise at this point

03:06:45.700 so when they say to you you're going to kill this guy is it you know is it is it scary is it frightening

03:06:52.400 Is it daunting or is it all business at that point, even as a young man at this point?

03:06:59.180 Well, it was scary.

03:07:01.100 I had a couple of incidents that were scary that I was going to would have used the gun.

03:07:05.520 I never did.

03:07:07.320 But when that came, I knew it would come sooner or later.

03:07:12.580 So.

03:07:14.920 The story, I heard the story, what it was, I thought I was being bullshitted a little

03:07:21.220 bit you know that the guy wanted to kill me I couldn't understand why he wanted to kill me 0.99

03:07:26.140 I had nothing to do with his wife and an affair but he had this stupid little plot like I just 0.97

03:07:32.740 said and when they gave me the order they said who do you want to come with you and I said 0.98

03:07:39.500 your nephew Tommy Spiro he created this monster and then I wanted the guy Frankie because I

03:07:47.440 couldn't understand why he didn't tell me and I wanted to be able to talk to him about that

03:07:51.200 So they put those two people on the hip with me. And, you know, I watched a movie one time and it's a person who was about to kill and he was sweating and scared and all of this stuff.

03:08:07.600 I thought that's what happens to you before you commit this kind of a crime, because I never thought about killing people.

03:08:13.600 But

03:08:16.420 I went through with it

03:08:18.240 We did it

03:08:20.220 One night we went out to half-hour clubs

03:08:23.460 We got in the car about four o'clock in the morning

03:08:27.160 And as we drove away 0.98

03:08:29.260 I shot him in the back of the head 0.99

03:08:31.000 Twice 0.99

03:08:31.860 You were in the back of the car

03:08:33.660 I was in the back seat

03:08:35.700 Where was he?

03:08:36.920 He was in the front seat

03:08:39.260 The passenger seat

03:08:40.260 And

03:08:41.980 when we went to a spot, we went out of the neighborhood, we pulled into

03:08:47.700 like a nice community. It was

03:08:51.500 miles away from Brooklyn, Rockaway,

03:08:56.280 and they had nice homes with lawns and it was quiet.

03:08:59.860 We drove over there. I took them, I picked them up out of the

03:09:04.140 car and I put them

03:09:08.220 on the street the sidewalk i got in the car i opened the window i put the gun out and i shot

03:09:16.640 him three more times we got back we went to the neighborhood we cleaned the car got rid of the gun

03:09:23.820 and we were living together a bunch of guys uh i went and take a shower i stayed in the shower

03:09:32.640 quite a long time the water running on me and I was waiting for this thing to happen being nervous

03:09:38.620 and sweating and it didn't happen nothing happened and I went to bed I slept like a baby

03:09:48.640 I got up the next morning there was confusion some of the young girls who still with us oh my god

03:09:54.160 they killed Joe Colucci and Rockaway and I remember asking one of the girls did they know

03:10:00.000 who did it did they find out who did it she said no it wasn't it's in the papers already but it's

03:10:05.500 not in the papers i don't know if they they caught the people or what and i remember we all went to

03:10:11.760 the corner where we stay and uh i had like an out-of-body experience that i felt like i was

03:10:22.600 above somewhere looking down and listening

03:10:26.560 to all of them talking and I felt absolutely

03:10:30.760 nothing. And then

03:10:34.320 Shorty came with his nephew Tommy Spiro

03:10:37.980 and I came back to reality

03:10:42.200 and they said, Carmine Persico wants to talk to you.

03:10:47.760 So we got in the car and we went down there.

03:10:49.900 But

03:10:51.200 That was the then boss

03:10:53.800 Excuse me

03:10:55.980 Carmine Persico at that point was

03:10:58.200 That family's boss

03:10:59.500 No he was a captain

03:11:01.460 But a very very powerful captain

03:11:03.780 He was leading the war

03:11:05.660 Against the Gallows

03:11:07.060 And

03:11:08.840 So I went down and met with him

03:11:11.800 I was told not to talk

03:11:13.600 I didn't talk

03:11:14.540 Tommy Spiro explained the whole situation

03:11:17.460 What happened in detail

03:11:18.780 he grabbed me hugged me kissed me on the cheek and he told me great job so and i i didn't feel

03:11:28.360 anything i went to the funeral and uh i didn't feel any remorse i didn't feel anything and i

03:11:36.140 thought that was peculiar i thought either something's wrong with me or i'm just a stone

03:11:43.520 cold killer and i'm going to fit in the mafia perfectly and uh i guess i what i when i became

03:11:51.900 not a stone cold killer i was good at what i did i was good at what i did in a lot of ways

03:11:56.960 in construction running unions but i was also becoming a professional hit guy

03:12:04.120 had you ever been a man of faith prior to that had you ever gone to church did you have any

03:12:10.880 relationship with god no of course i still i believe in god i i i don't i went to church as a

03:12:19.880 kid i stopped going to church i believe you know in prison i joined the indians because i wanted

03:12:28.120 to smoke and and you have to join their religion and they allow that in prison in the federal

03:12:35.680 prisons. So I joined them. I went in to get tobacco. 1.00

03:12:39.320 You weren't allowed to smoke from 2004. I

03:12:43.200 went in really wanting to smoke and

03:12:47.160 steal some tobacco and bring it to my cell. But I got to understand

03:12:51.060 their religion, the way they believe in God. I also

03:12:54.840 at one point, a friend of mine grabbed me and said, Sammy, you're not an Indian.

03:12:59.820 We do Wicca. Why don't you join our

03:13:03.240 group and i did i joined their group as well so i started to understand different religions

03:13:10.800 and everybody seems to believe in god they're just a path what path do you want to take to

03:13:17.440 get to god indians have it wicca has it muslims have it jews have it catholics have it christians

03:13:24.240 have it it's just a path and i believe was there a moment back then you know when when you're you're

03:13:31.180 talking about being in the shower and no remorse i wonder whether there was any moment of no matter

03:13:37.040 what i feel i recognize i've crossed over i've done something i've i've sinned in the most

03:13:43.280 profound way possible and at some point there will be a price to pay no no i don't look at it

03:13:50.460 that way i never felt that way i still don't think that way i think that god makes people

03:13:56.460 creates people and he creates lions and he creates lambs i think i'm a lion

03:14:04.800 and whatever you have to pay if you have to pay anything why would he create a lion

03:14:12.720 if there was a god and he was interested in what was going on why do little kids get cancer and

03:14:19.880 die why are little kids get raped why do so many things happen and talking about religions i mean

03:14:26.400 I was a Catholic, brought up that way, baptized, communion, confirmation, until I found out what priests do.

03:14:36.460 And I had no intention of committing or my crimes to talk to him.

03:14:43.080 I was asked that once by a priest.

03:14:45.100 Then I told him, yeah, you want me to tell you what I do?

03:14:49.340 Tell me what you do.

03:14:51.600 And then I'll talk to you about what I do.

03:14:53.380 So I don't believe in religion. I believe in God. But I think religion is bullshit. I think it's they it's all about money. It's all about different things. They commit evil things to good people. So I, you know, I'm away from religions. I respected the Indian religion, the Wicca religion. It stunned me.

03:15:19.740 It's the only religion that they put a woman above God, the goddess of the moon, the water and the earth.

03:15:29.080 God is the God of the forest and the mountains. 0.98

03:15:31.900 Why do they put, I asked, a woman above God? 1.00

03:15:36.780 Because she creates life. 1.00

03:15:40.960 She needs a man's seed, but she in her womb takes care of life and then gives birth.

03:15:49.740 and creates life i understand that i'm somebody with common sense if you make sense to me in a

03:15:56.760 certain way i understand it so i understood that religion now a lot of people will not be happy

03:16:04.100 with me saying this but they of course it's a it's a they call it a pagan religion they call

03:16:09.760 it all kinds of things it was before the christianity even and um i understand that part

03:16:16.740 about a woman giving birth and creating life well i mean i've i've i've read that unlike some

03:16:25.560 i uh in the mob you you were very you were a family man in the midst of all this you

03:16:32.340 went home and had dinner with your wife and your two kids each night your daughter karen has talked

03:16:37.880 about that publicly many times and so there has been this respect for your family members for

03:16:44.420 your wife for your daughter in a way that even the people who were in the mob said you know for

03:16:49.260 example john gotty would go out carousing with other women after hours and you would go home to

03:16:53.040 your family that piece of that piece of your commitment of your life you know you honored

03:16:59.320 despite what was happening on the other front and i know that you you don't see these as as real

03:17:04.560 as murders you know in the same way a soldier doesn't commit a murder when he kills somebody

03:17:09.740 This is how an FBI agent explained it in one public interview that a soldier would not be murdering.

03:17:15.700 You don't see your kills as murders because there was a code behind them, because you say the people you killed had sort of agreed to live by this code and die by this code.

03:17:26.340 And on that on that note, that heavy note, let me pause it, OK, because I want to get into that next.

03:17:33.140 And that's that's a whole other chapter for us.

03:17:35.420 So stand by. Let me squeeze in a commercial break and much, much more with Sammy the Bull Gravano as he stays with us for the whole show.

03:17:43.240 Fascinating story to tell.

03:17:47.480 So, Sammy, it was actually a quote that I was reading, not from an FBI agent.

03:17:51.620 It was from Terrence Winter, who the audience may know as the executive producer of The Sopranos.

03:17:56.280 And he also did Boardwalk Empire. And he was he took part in a documentary about you and said the following.

03:18:01.380 Many mobsters consider what they do almost military in nature.

03:18:05.620 They consider themselves soldiers.

03:18:07.500 So they rationalize a lot of really bad behavior.

03:18:10.780 You wouldn't think about calling a soldier at war a murderer.

03:18:13.820 So therefore, if they're a soldier and they're at war, they're not murderers either.

03:18:18.720 They're just doing their job.

03:18:21.340 Does that capture the mentality?

03:18:24.620 I believe so.

03:18:26.080 A hundred percent.

03:18:27.100 You know, I watched the program one time during World War Two.

03:18:33.620 We dropped an atom bomb, an atomic bomb, an atom bomb twice, not once, twice.

03:18:41.120 But I saw the guy who was in the plane and over Hiroshima or somewhere.

03:18:49.020 And he pressed the button.

03:18:51.300 And it killed 100,000 people, men, women and children.

03:18:56.360 in a split second and they were patting him on the back that he did a great job the war was ended

03:19:04.000 early because of those things and um if i was talking to the guy i would say listen you did a

03:19:11.460 great job great military guy you fought for the country you did what you were supposed to do

03:19:18.160 How do you feel now, knowing you just killed 100,000 people, men, women, and children?

03:19:26.700 Does that bother you at all?

03:19:28.580 And I'm sure he would tell me no.

03:19:31.920 Because he was fighting for the country.

03:19:34.480 He was fighting for what he thought was right.

03:19:37.280 In the mafia, it's part of, it's not a gang no more.

03:19:40.860 It's part of my heritage.

03:19:42.820 It came from Italy, Sicily.

03:19:46.140 It started in Sicily. 0.75

03:19:48.160 And it came to this country.

03:19:50.020 So it's part of my heritage.

03:19:52.540 So it's not just a gang.

03:19:55.180 A gang is, you know, killing in a gang or doing certain things for a drug supply is a different thing.

03:20:01.300 But this is a soldier.

03:20:03.800 It was explained to me.

03:20:05.300 I was involved in the Johnny Keys hit.

03:20:07.480 It was a major, major hit.

03:20:09.940 And it was he was a guy who had 50 hits under his belt.

03:20:15.600 and me and him were going to go at each other and it was explained to me that we were like two

03:20:24.520 samurais now i understand a samurai is a different thing than us they're actually more violent than

03:20:30.960 us but i really felt that way that we were two samurais who met on the battlefield

03:20:40.540 what about can i let me ask you a couple follow-ups on that so obviously when we when we

03:20:46.520 dropped the bomb at the end of world war ii they estimated that we saved somewhere upwards of 25

03:20:52.100 30 million lives by by putting an end to world war ii when the japanese would not surrender

03:20:58.320 and and so you know i'm not defending the the killing of 100 000 people exactly but

03:21:05.060 in a way i am because it was the right decision it saved far more lives than it actually cost

03:21:09.800 But in the in the mafia and I can get it if the guy let me let me answer your question let me answer that question the people who say that it saved 25 to 30 million lives was who the government of course they're going to say that I mean independent analysts to take a look at who have taken a look at this ad nauseum since the end of World War Two will tell you that the the lives saved far far outnumbered the lives cost doesn't make it not controversial.

03:21:39.800 But you can't talk about it without adding that perspective.

03:21:43.300 But I mean, the thing about the mafia, and I can understand if a guy was going to kill

03:21:46.660 you, I mean, even the law recognizes maybe not exactly the way that he would do it, but

03:21:52.400 what recognizes a right to self-defense.

03:21:55.220 But, you know, it seems like it was a whole criminal justice system that you guys agreed

03:21:59.840 to where, you know, you you sleep with the guy's wife, you could get whacked, you you 0.97

03:22:04.120 interfere with my business, you could get whacked. 0.93

03:22:05.800 It basically is just whatever the head of the crime family wants.

03:22:10.600 And the guy doesn't show up like a samurai face to face in a meeting where you fight it out to the death.

03:22:16.020 He just gets in the car with you. 0.97

03:22:17.260 He gets whacked in the back of the head.

03:22:18.920 So I'm interested in the moral, you know, the way you thought about those kind of differences morally.

03:22:26.380 Well, morally, I don't know if it's to me, if it makes a difference.

03:22:32.240 if you kill somebody on a battlefield or you kill somebody in the car or whether you use a gun or

03:22:38.560 whether you use a knife or whether you use poison that is that you just took a life it doesn't matter

03:22:45.620 how you take it you can beat somebody to death you could fight you could win a fight you can go

03:22:51.460 overboard and just beat this person to death so you just took a life no matter how it is whether

03:22:58.660 it's more gory about the means yeah the means of how you're doing it i don't know if it makes

03:23:06.800 any difference now they want to take guns away from everybody because there's a a shooting i mean

03:23:14.000 if there's not a shooting you want to take guns away from everybody you get some sicko so he goes 0.95

03:23:19.420 in with a bomb and he blows half the school up and he kills more people actually than he using 0.53

03:23:25.880 a gun does that make you happy that you didn't have a gun so i i don't think the me the means

03:23:33.080 of what you use is that important you're taking a life whatever it is whatever your reason is

03:23:39.600 whatever the the the senses look at later on you're taking a life whether it's on a battlefield

03:23:46.260 in the street no matter how you do it or what you do you're taking a life bottom line but we have

03:23:53.320 excuses for what how you do it if me and him were in a battlefield in the street we like years ago

03:24:02.340 we back up and we pull out a gun from the side and we both shoot at each other you're taking a

03:24:07.460 life what's the difference how you do it that is dead my brother-in-law had a good saying you get

03:24:14.380 hit by a car and you're all crunched up bleeding all your bones are busted up and you're dying

03:24:22.140 How would you feel if the person ran over and said, it's me, Sammy.

03:24:29.620 He didn't do it on purpose.

03:24:31.420 It's an accident.

03:24:32.140 Does it make a difference to me if it's an accident or it's on purpose?

03:24:37.340 I'm all crushed up.

03:24:38.900 I'm in tremendous pain.

03:24:40.100 I'm about to die.

03:24:42.320 Death is death.

03:24:44.320 I don't know, though.

03:24:45.260 How it happens.

03:24:47.300 That ignores the moral code.

03:24:49.480 I mean, I agree with you in terms of, you know, you die by a knife, you die by a gun.

03:24:53.440 It doesn't make much of a difference to you.

03:24:54.980 But we're expanding beyond that, too.

03:24:57.600 The the law recognizes some some killings as justified.

03:25:02.640 It would not recognize any of the ones that you're talking about is justified.

03:25:06.520 And I think you know that it's just what you're saying is that in the mafia, you live by a different code of justice.

03:25:13.360 And it's as I understand it, your position is that you wouldn't run around killing what you call legitimate people.

03:25:20.720 It's you know, if somebody pissed you off in your social life, he wouldn't be at risk of getting whacked.

03:25:27.580 You only for the most part, and we'll get to one of the exceptions I know about, but it sounds like it may have been an accident.

03:25:34.860 But for the most part, you only went after people who were part of your world and who had agreed to live and die by this code.

03:25:42.740 Right, exactly. I never killed a woman or a child and I never killed even a legitimate guy who I didn't get along with or whatever. I mean, I had fights, but that's as far as that would go. I'm not going to kill somebody because I don't like what he said or something like that.

03:26:02.620 We're not complete lunatics. Some of us became lunatics, but I never I never went to that degree.

03:26:10.700 I live by this code. And I would willing to die by the code.

03:26:16.880 I told my family when I cooperated, we talked about cooperating.

03:26:20.500 When I cooperated, I said, if somebody comes down and kills me, don't don't don't even be mad.

03:26:25.360 Don't say nothing. Don't do anything. Don't be mad. I broke the code.

03:26:29.740 I understood that I could die for what I was doing.

03:26:32.620 If I could understand it, you understand it, leave it alone.

03:26:37.180 So I believe in that code, just like I believe in God, but I don't believe in certain religions, probably most religions.

03:26:45.640 But you got to live by something.

03:26:50.620 And I live by what I was taught by my mother and my father, the legitimate.

03:26:55.460 And a lot of people would say I was a different kind of gangsters.

03:26:59.860 You talked about the law enforcement.

03:27:02.020 I'm still friends with agents, NYPD cops till today, because they were they were different.

03:27:10.620 We got along. We were friends. They had one life. I had another life.

03:27:14.360 We understood each other. And I was basically a different kind of a gangster.

03:27:20.680 I cared about people. I'm a people's person. Basically.

03:27:26.040 My ex-wife and my daughter or my son will say, Dad, you talk to everybody.

03:27:29.900 yeah they're human beings i talk to people i love people i like hard-working people

03:27:36.220 but what about alan kaiser this was a 16 year old boy who you killed and i understand

03:27:43.020 accidental no no it was it was it's not accidental and i didn't kill him first of all

03:27:50.220 there was a gang who came and they actually did movies about this so our after hour club bikers

03:27:57.000 And I went to that place.

03:28:00.360 I wound up getting a beating.

03:28:02.340 I got jumped by six, seven guys.

03:28:05.100 My ankle was broke on both sides.

03:28:08.320 I had a cast from my knee down and I had permission to go after this guy.

03:28:14.220 And it wasn't Alan Kaiser.

03:28:15.940 So I'll tell you what happened.

03:28:16.960 We got in the car and we were looking for him.

03:28:20.660 One night we saw him pull up in front of a different guy.

03:28:24.340 Aldo Candido.

03:28:25.880 Yes.

03:28:27.000 Yes. And I said, that's him. We went back to our club.

03:28:32.040 We got guns. We got a shotgun.

03:28:35.380 Now, it was supposed to be loaded with double O buck, which would put down a moose.

03:28:41.100 But they were using it for pigeons and playing around with it.

03:28:44.840 It was it was a bird bird shot.

03:28:48.900 So anyway, Louie Molino had it. I said, pull up to the car.

03:28:52.580 when you see him coming out of that house

03:28:54.720 where the car was double parked, stop.

03:28:57.960 Ask him for directions like we're lost.

03:29:00.640 I was laying down in the back seat with a cast on my leg.

03:29:04.960 There was a driver, and Louie Molina was in the passenger seat.

03:29:08.820 I said, when he gets to the car to answer you, 1.00

03:29:10.900 I'll shoot him in the face. 1.00

03:29:15.240 Louie Molina rolled down the window when he came out, 1.00

03:29:18.060 um and he must have been told the night before that what they did was to a maid guy me and he

03:29:28.600 knew he was in trouble so as soon as he louis asked him for directions he started to run

03:29:34.800 louis jumped out of the car threw a shot at him hit him in the back he kept running didn't put

03:29:41.580 him down he kept running this kid alan kaiser and i spoke to the family and everybody about this

03:29:47.440 he was 16

03:29:49.860 we didn't know he was 16

03:29:51.300 he wasn't a target

03:29:52.520 wasn't in the hit

03:29:53.840 wasn't supposed to get it

03:29:55.320 no accident

03:29:56.060 he ran at Louie Molito

03:29:58.700 he might have been part of that gang

03:30:00.220 I don't know

03:30:01.560 the driver yelled to Louie Molito

03:30:04.820 guy coming at you

03:30:06.720 he turned around with the shotgun

03:30:08.960 inches away from the guy 0.97

03:30:11.740 and shot him in the chest 0.93

03:30:12.840 when he went down 0.99

03:30:14.160 he put the shotgun to his head 0.95

03:30:15.520 pulled the trigger again 1.00

03:30:17.140 and killed him. 0.64

03:30:19.020 We found out the next day that he was 16 years old.

03:30:23.500 We were in shock.

03:30:26.080 It was terrible.

03:30:27.500 16, the number itself, shock.

03:30:30.660 But why did he run it, Louie Melito?

03:30:34.260 Why did he do that?

03:30:36.040 He wasn't the target.

03:30:37.660 Nobody was shooting at him.

03:30:39.380 He could have ran back at his house.

03:30:40.900 He could have went the other way.

03:30:42.080 He could have just stood there and never got touched.

03:30:45.080 so now whether he was on drugs whether he was part of the gang i don't know you hear stories

03:30:51.440 just for the record his family says he was not a gangster quote he was just an innocent kid

03:30:56.500 walking home no no not a gangster he's 16 years old he definitely wasn't a gangster he could have

03:31:00.920 been a gang member or he knew this guy because the guy was in his house so they the family can't

03:31:07.120 deny that that guy was in his house they were together he came out he the other guy came to

03:31:15.060 the car and he was on the side nobody was going to shoot him and the family recognizes that too

03:31:22.500 I talked with the sister and she said I don't know what made him do that now people will say

03:31:30.280 that I killed a 16 year old kid first of all I didn't shoot him Louis did but it doesn't matter

03:31:34.660 if I could have shot him I would have I'm not trying to make myself a good guy I didn't shoot 0.70

03:31:39.240 him but the police found him exactly where it was in the street where he got to you came off the

03:31:49.660 sidewalk into the street after louie not on the sidewalk with his books coming home from school

03:31:55.120 like you hear some stories none of that's true now it was a shame we were sick about that he

03:32:01.940 was 16 years old and we were confused why he even did that and he wasn't a target of the hit

03:32:08.540 we weren't even looking at it but what would you expect what would i expect louis to do

03:32:14.980 the guy is actually a foot away from him what is he supposed to do just stand there and wait

03:32:21.260 for the guy to grab him and tackle him to the ground or do something he's on a hit you know

03:32:26.500 you know obviously this is why we don't choose a life of crime this is why we don't we don't go

03:32:31.460 to murder people in neighborhoods and take the law into our own hands and why the law prohibits

03:32:36.360 because bad things can happen.

03:32:39.160 And that's why there's something called felony murder.

03:32:40.880 You're in the process of committing one felony

03:32:42.600 and you accidentally or otherwise commit another murder.

03:32:45.680 You're going to be charged for it,

03:32:47.400 even if it was an accident in the course of the felony,

03:32:49.320 because the law recognizes creating extremely dangerous situations.

03:32:52.600 Absolutely.

03:32:53.960 And I'm charged with it because I'm part of the murder,

03:32:57.540 not the shooter.

03:32:59.100 And he wasn't the target, but I still get charged with it.

03:33:02.000 And I understand that.

03:33:03.640 That's why it's on my list of 19 people

03:33:05.740 that he's there i mean and i get it but i i did give a courtesy to the family

03:33:11.920 they talked to my daughter they talked with my son and they wanted to talk with me and i did

03:33:19.220 talk with them i took the time to explain what happened and why nobody wanted to kill this kid

03:33:26.140 they understood that i don't know what they told you or told anybody else and i know that the

03:33:32.040 Gottis instigated these people saying that I killed their son or their brother 16 years old

03:33:39.360 I'm a baby killer that was brought up by the Gottis who were trying to make me look bad or

03:33:46.380 make it look worse and I know how it was brought up and like I said this was talked about with the 1.00

03:33:53.620 families the whole thing it was talked about with the police and it's not I'm not saying it was a

03:33:59.620 good thing it was a horrible thing but it's one of those things that happened i mean if i see a

03:34:05.340 murder i think i'm a pretty tough guy i see somebody shooting at somebody i'm not gonna

03:34:10.540 run at the shooter he's got a gun i got it i got it i got it let me pause you there let me let me

03:34:16.000 squeeze in one more break and we'll be right back uh much more to the story with sammy the bull

03:34:20.860 gravano as we continue at right after this at med can we know that life's greatest moments are built

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03:34:54.240 All right, full-time thoughts. Craig, who stood out?

03:34:56.760 Brazil's lime cheesecakes started bright, didn't let up.

03:34:59.260 Nah, for me, Italian cappuccino was the standout in the box.

03:35:02.340 But if we're talking decadent performance, that's all France.

03:35:05.160 Chocolate creme brulee had the richest finishes.

03:35:07.560 Canadian fireworks really showed up big too.

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03:35:11.940 Gave me chills.

03:35:13.060 We are, of course, talking about Tim's taste of the globe lineup.

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03:35:18.500 available at Tim Hortons for a limited time.

03:35:20.300 Pick some up today, and while you're at it, check out Footy Prime Daily. 1.00

03:35:23.880 I hear this bitch behind my back talking shit about my father. 1.00

03:35:33.460 Do not say nothing when my back is turned. 1.00

03:35:35.260 Say it to my face. 0.99

03:35:36.240 And automatically I just black the fuck out. 1.00

03:35:38.920 I don't give a fuck if he's a rat or not. 1.00

03:35:41.100 Say it to my fucking face. 1.00

03:35:42.900 Check my bloodline, bitch. 1.00

03:35:44.140 I'm coming for you. 1.00

03:35:44.840 You want to keep talking about families?

03:35:46.480 Let's talk.

03:35:48.360 You want to bring up families? 0.69

03:35:49.620 You want to get my daughter into this? 0.94

03:35:51.020 for my daughter for my father from every buddy that you spoke about i will take a piece of you 1.00

03:35:57.360 every time bitch this is why you never talk about families look at the outcome now that 1.00

03:36:03.100 blood was drawn these will never be the same again okay so that was the bulk of that clip is 0.99

03:36:10.460 karen gravano uh sammy's daughter who was one of the stars of the show mob wives which i confess

03:36:16.880 I absolutely loved and she was very open about what it was like to grow up as your daughter

03:36:22.900 and sort of when she how she slowly became aware of what you did for a living and how

03:36:29.960 she could tell you know obviously she's fiery and feisty but how she could sort of tell

03:36:35.440 that you were an important man you know the way people greeted you the way people showed

03:36:39.220 you respect and I know you know that must have manifested in your life too you sort

03:36:44.560 of getting into the clubs in New York. And I saw the ABC documentary where, you know, you talked

03:36:50.340 about, you looked at the Manhattan skyline and said, you know, I own this, I own it, I built it,

03:36:55.420 I control it. So can you talk to us a little bit about that, that piece of your history?

03:37:01.600 Yeah, well, you know, I became very powerful in the construction industry. And one day we were

03:37:08.540 on the other side in in Connecticut I believe it is and we were in a fancy hotel and we went out

03:37:15.800 I went out on the patio and uh smoking a cigar I think and I looked at the skyline at night

03:37:22.180 Manhattan is gorgeous lit up at night and it just the guy who was with me said what are you looking

03:37:29.100 at I said look at this look at the beauty here it's it's it's absolutely stunning it's gorgeous

03:37:34.460 and uh i'm part of building this whole thing i mean you can't get a job at this point in my life

03:37:42.760 without some sort of a wink and a nod from me saying yes or no i mean i became very powerful

03:37:50.100 in the construction industry paul had me paul castellano had me under his wing because he loved

03:37:56.040 construction and um he was part of the reason i became very powerful in the construction industry

03:38:03.160 and uh he enjoyed using me to run certain unit unions and do certain things for him and um

03:38:11.420 yeah i i loved uh what i was doing as far as the construction and i should i should mention

03:38:18.100 because you mentioned paul castellano so because you had sort of started with a different crime

03:38:22.240 family and then eventually moved over to the gambino crime family and that's the family that

03:38:26.040 paul castellano for a time was the head of and you would later become part of his assassination

03:38:31.260 explanation um but before before before we get to that um so you're living large you're living

03:38:37.000 large in new york and this was a time i mean what it's a weird question but like to what extent did

03:38:42.200 that film the godfather affect people's view of the mafia and your own experience within the mafia

03:38:49.040 you know because it when i was growing up you knew about the mafia but there there definitely

03:38:53.200 was a glorification around it you know it seemed like oh they hurt people but maybe mostly their

03:38:58.340 own people well that's not really true i mean the extortion was on regular folks too um and yet they

03:39:04.660 seem kind of cool and people wanted to like rub elbows with them in very high circles there was

03:39:09.780 speculation about frank sinatra and you know so on and so forth so what was your experience of that

03:39:14.600 movie and people's reaction to the mob well that movie stunned me it was probably one of the best

03:39:23.200 movies i ever watched uh it was completely well done uh godfather one and godfather two godfather

03:39:31.740 three was a joke but yeah because you were in it when this was coming out you were you were in it

03:39:36.340 when those movies hit yeah yeah and it it you know it showed the family orientation how we are

03:39:44.480 with family the weddings our family my family had weddings like that and people would get up

03:39:51.140 and sing and it was fun and uh you know uh who was it sonny is with one of the bridesmaids in a

03:39:59.960 in a room upstairs i mean that's typical of us that was really typical of us all that stuff that

03:40:06.740 happened in that uh the the agents watching us and it just gave me a whole different look at the mob

03:40:16.060 and how the people would look at it.

03:40:18.460 And as far as the fascination, I know what it is.

03:40:21.880 Everybody in my mind anyway has a fascination,

03:40:27.160 especially men have a fascination of being a tough guy,

03:40:31.180 going with beautiful women, beautiful cars, making money, 1.00

03:40:36.640 you know, fuck the government. 1.00

03:40:37.820 I don't want to pay taxes and I don't want to do this and that. 1.00

03:40:40.480 The other thing.

03:40:40.840 so everybody looked at it and it's you didn't live that life but you admired it in a way

03:40:49.100 you felt a certain way when you watched it and i watched this new movie that came out

03:40:54.820 the offer how they made the godfather very interesting movie great movie um with the

03:41:02.360 producers in hollywood the whole nine yards i mean just watching these things the mafia really

03:41:08.160 you know it's when i was in prison a couple of times ab's arian brothers and other gang members

03:41:15.140 came to me and tell told me sammy tell me about the structure of the mafia and i would tell them

03:41:22.080 why you're not the mafia you're you're arian brothers why would you want to know and they said

03:41:28.200 your structure lasted a thousand years people admire you guys people want some people wanted

03:41:35.340 to be like you guys so what's the whole structure about so i i realized then even them asking me

03:41:43.200 questions like that that they admired themselves and wanted to be like it my answer to them was

03:41:50.080 we're not savages we don't kill outside our our organization where everybody in the mafia

03:41:59.760 at one time or another has been involved in a murder, 99%.

03:42:03.760 So how do you control that group of people?

03:42:10.260 If there's no violence within us,

03:42:13.460 if there's no punishments that could cause death,

03:42:16.640 how do you stop them?

03:42:18.400 How do you stop a guy?

03:42:20.400 What are you going to do?

03:42:21.020 Cut off his tie? 0.86

03:42:23.120 Slap him on the wrist?

03:42:24.880 He's not going to listen to you.

03:42:26.500 Then he'll do whatever he wants to do.

03:42:28.080 Then there'll be no control.

03:42:29.500 will be no better than a gang.

03:42:31.740 And that's what I would tell some A-B guys

03:42:33.900 and stuff like that.

03:42:35.220 You have to have rules.

03:42:36.700 You have to have ideas.

03:42:39.060 You know, I looked at,

03:42:40.820 there was a conversation I just had recently about,

03:42:44.400 I was in Paul Castellano's house

03:42:46.600 and the union, which we control, 0.98

03:42:49.760 the association and the union for the garbage. 0.97

03:42:52.300 And there was a massive strike. 0.98

03:42:55.240 It was on television.

03:42:56.680 There was garbage piled up everywhere.

03:43:00.500 I came in and he told me to sit down.

03:43:04.340 The maid got me a cup of coffee.

03:43:07.140 And he said, send it for Jimmy Brown and the people who are running the union and the association.

03:43:14.400 So we sat there for a while, 15 minutes, 20 minutes.

03:43:18.160 Those guys came in.

03:43:20.300 Jimmy Brown was a captain. 0.99

03:43:21.760 The other guy was a maid guy. 0.99

03:43:23.400 And he said, look at this television. 0.61

03:43:26.500 He said, what are we?

03:43:28.320 Animals? 0.94

03:43:29.500 Pick up that garbage from schools, from hospitals, from old age homes. 0.99

03:43:35.640 We'll win the strike. 0.95

03:43:38.020 But what are we, animals?

03:43:39.640 Over money?

03:43:41.000 Over winning?

03:43:41.700 We'll win. 1.00

03:43:42.800 Pick up that goddamn garbage. 1.00

03:43:46.300 And it struck me in a way that here's the boss of bosses, Paul Castellano. 1.00

03:43:51.020 He was the boss of bosses.

03:43:52.960 He was the head of the commission.

03:43:54.340 saying something like that,

03:43:57.300 caring about

03:43:58.120 children,

03:44:01.000 hospitals, old age homes,

03:44:02.780 that they would be infected

03:44:04.780 with garbage or whatever.

03:44:07.700 It gave me

03:44:08.780 a different look at things.

03:44:10.500 Those are good things that I

03:44:12.820 saw. There's evil things

03:44:14.600 I saw. There's people who

03:44:16.640 borderline got to

03:44:18.780 like killing and became serial killers

03:44:20.760 like Roy DeMeo or

03:44:22.300 Gas Pipe and people like that. 0.99

03:44:24.340 and we killed them because they became that so we don't believe in pedophiles rapists 0.98

03:44:32.820 serial killers we want to get rid of that when i was in my neighborhood i you know the whole 0.99

03:44:41.220 neighborhood i would say this is my neighborhood people i don't even know maybe you lived in there

03:44:46.680 i didn't even know you you're a beautiful woman you'd walk down the block my guys i would tell

03:44:52.820 them. This is not a construction site. Don't do anything

03:44:56.580 when you see her. She's part of our

03:44:59.480 community. They're us. Nobody's going to touch her.

03:45:05.220 Her husband knew she was beautiful. He'll tell her, go right past

03:45:08.860 Sandy's Club. Don't worry about it. He said that because he knew

03:45:12.620 she was safe. We wouldn't let nothing happen to her.

03:45:17.200 Around the block, only God knows what happens.

03:45:20.300 So we lived a different way.

03:45:23.500 And I think that touched the public in a certain way.

03:45:27.800 They didn't agree with the violence, but we were different.

03:45:33.700 We were a different type of an organization, criminal organization.

03:45:37.300 I'll call it criminal because it is, you know, we would take, like you say, from every industry.

03:45:45.660 But we took a little bite out of every industry.

03:45:48.680 we screwed the government out of taxes

03:45:51.440 yeah

03:45:51.940 we screwed insurance companies

03:45:54.820 yeah

03:45:55.340 we didn't feel any guilt about that

03:45:58.540 because they screwed people

03:46:00.700 all the time 0.91

03:46:01.920 my mother and father that

03:46:04.180 broke their back

03:46:05.440 was so legitimate

03:46:07.940 I don't even know how I became a gangster

03:46:10.280 to tell you the truth

03:46:11.180 they were so legitimate, so honest

03:46:12.740 but they were taken advantage

03:46:15.500 of by unions

03:46:17.820 by by the government so i have no sympathy for government i have no sympathy for insurance

03:46:27.180 companies who sometimes go overboard and people are sick and oh no we're not going to pay that

03:46:33.480 claim or we're not going to do this we're not going to do that i'm not saying all of them

03:46:37.360 there's some really good people honest people out there in every industry and there's some

03:46:42.520 bad people in every industry so you know i have mixed feelings with a lot of these things

03:46:48.900 and what about like the ma and pa shop owner on the corner who were just trying to make ends meet

03:46:54.080 and they got to pay extra money every month for security or you know for permission from you guys

03:46:59.800 to do what is their legal right to do or else never happened right never never happened never

03:47:06.180 happened as far as i'm concerned never happened all the mom and pop stores knew my mother my

03:47:11.740 father me my family it was a community what what if you're worried about the mom-and-pop stores

03:47:18.200 i'll tell you what crushed them is big corporations liberal elites of course get these big corporations

03:47:25.000 and crush them you know i i had a little uh milk farm they called it it's a little grocery store

03:47:31.340 at one point in my life and i bought pampers wholesale and i put them for a cheap number i

03:47:39.860 I wasn't making any money just as a draw for people.

03:47:43.160 So I sent my partner, my Goombada Ali boy, Como, go to the supermarket, see what they're charging.

03:47:50.640 When he came back, he said, Sammy, they're charging like less than we're paying for the wholesale. 0.65

03:47:58.580 So I said, how could they do that?

03:48:01.540 He said, well, number one, they're buying tons of stuff.

03:48:06.860 I wasn't.

03:48:07.840 I'm buying two cases.

03:48:09.860 they're buying 4,000 cases.

03:48:13.100 And if they want to make a sale and do the same idea that I have,

03:48:17.860 how can I compete with them?

03:48:19.240 I took the two cases of papers and threw them out.

03:48:21.940 I can't compete with them.

03:48:23.840 So this is what happened in small business, got crushed.

03:48:28.400 But the mom and pop stores, I mean, I have never, ever thought about,

03:48:33.160 we love these people.

03:48:34.760 We knew them.

03:48:36.060 We went to a bakery, a fruit and vegetable store.

03:48:39.500 those things don't even exist anymore but you guys you didn't charge people for security uh

03:48:45.040 saying no no not security never well for something though i mean i remember i have some personal

03:48:50.580 knowledge on this because in another life before i was a journalist i was a lawyer

03:48:53.580 and um the lawyer i worked for at this law firm jones day was charged with enforcing a consent

03:48:59.600 decree that the mob had entered into in new york city and that meant the mob admitted it had done

03:49:04.540 a bunch of things and we were responsible for making sure it lived up to its promise not to

03:49:08.220 keep doing them and you know the sort of the harassment of small businesses small business

03:49:14.040 owners was on the list money laundering and so on that was another thing but you know this sort of

03:49:19.220 smaller crime smaller than murders and so on within the family that's that's one of the reasons why

03:49:25.800 people don't like the mafia right like it's not all within your own family there are innocent

03:49:30.020 people who get hurt and who have to pay unnecessary money that they shouldn't have to pay and who could

03:49:35.300 get hurt if they don't do as is as told well listen i like i said before you know there's

03:49:41.020 good and bad in every organization and there's bad guys in the mafia who would do something like

03:49:45.820 that do a lot of things like that that wasn't our norm now i would do that with a disco or something

03:49:51.940 to like protect when you talk about protection money if you could mention my name nobody could

03:49:58.980 come in and bother you mafia wise or any any other way i'll take care of your problems but

03:50:05.200 I didn't cripple them. They gave me a pay or they gave me something that helped them.

03:50:10.280 I don't look at it as hurting them, shaking them down. It's like a rent. It's like anything else

03:50:16.020 that or any bill that you pay. And in most cases that I did, it was a reasonable pay.

03:50:23.180 What I did mostly is use my power to help grow a company and I would become their partner.

03:50:30.420 I'll give you a quick example. There was a guy who had a small little container company.

03:50:35.200 He'd go to houses and put the container, you're moving,

03:50:38.760 you put all your garbage in that container and he's making money. 0.98

03:50:41.860 The containers were garbage. And I got to like the guy. 1.00

03:50:45.860 I went to him and I said, listen, I got connections in Jersey.

03:50:51.100 I can get the best containers and I could increase your business.

03:50:55.540 So we had a conversation. I said,

03:50:58.840 I don't want any contracts or anything like that.

03:51:01.240 We could work on a handshake. How much do you make a year?

03:51:05.200 And he said, about $100,000 a year.

03:51:08.360 I said, how about we go partners?

03:51:10.880 The first $100,000 you make, that's yours.

03:51:13.500 That's what you make.

03:51:14.660 Anything above that, me and you are partners,

03:51:17.560 and I could get you more work.

03:51:19.200 I could get you better containers.

03:51:21.360 So we did that.

03:51:22.340 We shook hands, and we did that.

03:51:24.680 At the end of the year of our partnership, I says, how did we do?

03:51:29.100 What did you make?

03:51:30.660 He says, Sammy, I made $400,000 this year.

03:51:32.740 all right the first hundred thousand is yours the other three hundred thousand

03:51:37.580 the allegation the allegation against you by your critics is that nobody should have accepted this

03:51:45.160 kind of an offer from you because if they wanted to renegotiate or if they wanted a bigger piece

03:51:50.720 of the pie you would kill them no it's not true that is not true i've never killed a partner

03:51:57.300 And listen, what we're talking about happened 40, 50 years ago.

03:52:03.380 And if you came to my office, I'll show you 14, 15 different letters of people who were partners with me and knew me back then are sending me love letters.

03:52:11.160 And I'm not talking about women, men.

03:52:13.480 Sammy, it was great.

03:52:14.480 I watch your podcast.

03:52:16.520 I hope you make it.

03:52:17.840 Our partnership was great.

03:52:19.420 So I don't know.

03:52:20.300 What would happen to the guys for whom it wasn't great?

03:52:23.160 What about what would happen to the guys who said, I don't like the deal and I actually want to break up?

03:52:31.100 I didn't care. The guy with the container business after a couple of years when I grew and I was making so much money, I gave him the business back.

03:52:39.080 I didn't charge him a penny. I walked away. This is yours.

03:52:42.500 I did it with a guy named Joe Madonia with the Ace Partition.

03:52:46.520 We had 200 carpenters. When I grew in status, I said, Joe, I love you.

03:52:51.600 I made a ton of money with you. It's yours. It's all yours now.

03:52:55.580 And if anybody bothers you, get in touch with me.

03:52:57.760 And if I could get you some big work, give me a piece.

03:53:01.600 And I got a letter from him in my office.

03:53:03.860 Now a letter from him loving, loving the partnership,

03:53:09.300 the relationship we had now,

03:53:11.180 what would happen if a guy was wanting to take advantage of me in some way

03:53:16.980 or throw me out or push me out or do something on his own.

03:53:20.940 he wouldn't be happy with it he wouldn't get killed it's not a killing in my eyes it's not

03:53:25.820 a killing offense but i was powerful with unions and everything i could be a tremendous pain in the 0.98

03:53:31.680 ass and that's what i would be if he's going for job if he would go for jobs i would tell him don't 0.98

03:53:39.260 give him no work yeah i imagine if sammy the bull tells you don't give this guy any work you don't 0.95

03:53:43.500 give the guy any work because there's a lot of power behind that name at that time especially

03:53:47.480 So that leads me to Donald Trump, because there were there was speculation in the press when he was running for president that he had mob ties.

03:53:56.740 No one could ever get him on it. Like, you know, the press tried to get him on everything.

03:54:00.560 None of that was ever proven. But it reminded me of this this one exchange he had with David Letterman.

03:54:05.860 This is before he ran for president back in 2013, where he was asked, because this is a guy in New York City real estate.

03:54:12.640 You know, he has to deal with construction and some of the industries that you just mentioned, unions all the time.

03:54:18.820 And here's how that went. This is Sada Levin.

03:54:21.360 Have you ever knowingly done business with what I like to call organized crime?

03:54:29.000 Have they ever stopped by?

03:54:30.400 I've really tried to stay away from them as much.

03:54:33.280 Right. But have you ever had a case where a guy stopped by and said, Donald, we're going to handle the linens?

03:54:38.900 you know growing up in new york and doing business in new york i would say there might have been one

03:54:45.800 of you know you're one of those characters along the way but uh generally speaking i like to stay

03:54:50.560 away from that group yeah well i think that's that goes without saying but sometimes sometimes they

03:54:55.980 don't let you stay away from them there's truth to that but if you're smart you can stay away you

03:55:00.720 have to stay away and uh just sort of lead your life you don't want to get involved although i

03:55:05.140 must say i have met on occasion a few of those people they happen to be very nice people you

03:55:11.240 just don't want to owe them money yeah i understand don't owe them money

03:55:14.580 i've heard you talk about him before and sort of said like he was you knew not to don't go there

03:55:25.640 you knew no here's what it was with donald trump he was smart he was a good builder he was a great

03:55:32.880 builder he was pretty honorable with the people he dealt with um he had a group of ex-fbi agents

03:55:40.640 for security purposes so we knew i knew that so you could push on him a little bit i tried

03:55:48.000 but couldn't succeed what he's saying is right he knew we were there he knew that he had to deal

03:55:55.560 with situations but he built it as a as a business guy you couldn't go up there and try to

03:56:01.360 talk like this guy was talking are you going to threaten him give me you would be arrested in

03:56:06.180 three minutes those agents were around him 24 7 so i backed away from him because there was

03:56:13.040 nothing i could do a guy named eddie garrett fall had a a demolition company he did a job

03:56:20.140 for him uh he was able to reach some people in the company but it never went to his level

03:56:27.280 that we know of and uh he didn't want to deal with us i left him alone because i thought that was

03:56:34.260 a a bad problem he was a legitimate guy i didn't want to go try to threaten him because i thought

03:56:41.340 we would go to prison so we left him alone there was plenty of people who wanted to deal with us

03:56:46.120 so to go up there like a thug and walk in his office and try to threaten him you would go to

03:56:53.920 prison for sure so i don't think anybody bothered him i'm going to give you a quick example of a

03:56:58.680 news reporter a woman who called me one day and told me the same thing you're telling me

03:57:03.900 you were very powerful during the 80s and he was a big builder you must know something they're

03:57:11.740 asking me because after he became the president so i said i really don't know you know just what

03:57:18.160 i told you now that's what i know about him i really don't know any incidents that he's done

03:57:22.980 anything if that's what you're looking for. Sammy, please, come on. She's begging me for

03:57:28.660 information. It'll just be between me and you, which I know is bullshit. That's not going to 0.99

03:57:34.860 happen. She's looking for information. It's not going to stay between me and her. So I felt like 0.99

03:57:40.180 goofing on. And I said, listen, it's just between me and you. Sammy, yeah, yeah, I'll give you my

03:57:46.080 word nobody will ever know I said all right there was a drywall job I wanted I knew this beautiful 1.00

03:57:54.780 woman was a friend of mine she was a hooker so I hooked it up with Donald Trump me Trump and her 1.00

03:58:01.780 we had a menage a trois and I couldn't help it I started laughing so she said you fuck you're 1.00

03:58:07.480 lying so I said I'm not lying you keep pressing me and she was asking me what's her name what's 1.00

03:58:13.280 her name? Why? Who do you care what her name is?

03:58:15.880 You're not going to say nothing. Why do you care?

03:58:18.060 So they're giving it to BuzzFeed. It would have been printed on the front page.

03:58:22.040 Yeah. Yeah. So so now she's laughing. I'm laughing.

03:58:24.660 And I said, listen, there's one thing I definitely would never do with Donald Trump.

03:58:28.740 I don't dislike him, but I would never have a mirage of 12. 1.00

03:58:33.560 That's the shit. So my head. 1.00

03:58:37.380 Wait, can I just let me pause this right now?

03:58:40.220 just have a bit of breaking news uh at this moment you just mentioned him uh the movie godfather and

03:58:47.760 sonny corleone james khan was the actor played that role just died just got that news in 82

03:58:54.680 years old james khan just died wow sad yeah what an icon yeah yeah yeah do you know he was hooked

03:59:03.280 what do you mean he was he was in the mob what james carl was it was in hooked him with the mob

03:59:11.480 that's the guy who played uh sunny right yeah yeah yeah yeah what do you mean i was there i was

03:59:16.800 there when he came down and asked permission to be in that movie i was there with carmine persico

03:59:21.880 joe colombo gave who did he ask permission of to be in the movie but who who is he see whose

03:59:28.560 permission was he seeking joe columbos and he came to carmine persico because there was a guy

03:59:34.060 uh andrew mush who was friendly with him matter of fact uh andrew mush who was a captain in the

03:59:41.700 colombo family uh became godfather his kid or vice versa they were real tight um all their lives so

03:59:51.580 he was connected with the colombo family wow so at some point in his when he was being cast for

03:59:58.520 the godfather you're saying he had this connection yes wow yes i was there when he came down and

04:00:04.900 they i you know they said he's an actor he's coming down and they played the part they brought

04:00:09.880 him over to carmine to his permission and you you witnessed him asking for the permission

04:00:13.700 no absolutely i was there what did he say no he asked for permission carmine told him i'll talk

04:00:20.640 to joe colombo i'll make this happen don't worry about it what he did is he put him in uh andrew

04:00:27.760 marsh's hands tight you know what i mean he might have got the part anyway but they played this whole

04:00:33.860 little game with him but he they became super close they became one became the godfather one

04:00:40.320 of the kids and you can look that all up you can you can see that but i was confused because james

04:00:45.660 con was a successful actor i think i'm i don't have his whole bio in front of me prior to the

04:00:51.740 the godfather so are you saying he was young he was young i don't think he was a major actor he

04:00:57.460 could have been an actor oh of course he was an actor but i don't think but he wasn't in the mob

04:01:01.400 like you were in the mob you're saying ties like connections and what friends what does it mean

04:01:06.280 yeah it's it's an associate it's an associate of the mob in other words he's on record now

04:01:14.040 with the mafia as an associate he's not a maid member he's not one of us but he's an associate

04:01:19.920 of the columbia just like sinatra was he was too you say i mean of course there's been rumors about

04:01:26.800 this for years but you're saying that without a doubt they're true you know when we took over 0.89

04:01:30.540 John Gotti and me and uh John Gotti was a fucking egomaniac and he was in a restaurant Sinatra had 0.94

04:01:37.480 come in and uh he didn't say nothing to John he was gonna buy him a bottle of wine or something 0.97

04:01:43.460 John refused it and he sent this guy Joe Watts over to Sinatra and tell him whenever you come

04:01:50.900 in the restaurant you see John Gotti you come over and you kiss his hand oh boy and now Sinatra

04:01:57.060 went to where he's supposed to go to the Genovese family because that's where he was for years this

04:02:02.400 guy Frankie Blue Eyes and Chin Gigante I was there when he got in touch with us and told John

04:02:09.660 you know bro he's always been with us what do you send somebody over to abuse him he does a lot of

04:02:16.300 favors. It's not us, but he's my dog, bro. If you need a favor, he'll do it. Don't go sending

04:02:23.080 people over and threaten them in front of people. And so, I mean, how much more, I mean, and I always

04:02:30.480 knew it, but I'm giving you that example where he was abused by this Joe Watts on John's orders

04:02:37.520 and the Genovese family came right out of the woodwork and protected him.

04:02:42.800 I should say, I mean, with respect to James

04:02:44.760 Khan, of course, we haven't had the

04:02:46.780 chance to reach out to anybody in his camp and ask

04:02:48.680 these questions, and they're

04:02:50.820 quite clearly going to be in mourning today.

04:02:53.560 Andrew, ask for

04:02:54.820 Andrew Russo. They used to call him

04:02:56.720 Andrew Mush, if he's

04:02:58.780 related to him. Okay.

04:03:01.480 I will say I knew

04:03:02.740 James Khan just a bit personally through a

04:03:04.860 mutual friend, and he was an

04:03:06.680 absolute gentleman and completely kind

04:03:08.780 and lovely. Yeah.

04:03:09.920 and i'm not saying anything bad about no no i know i know you're not no i know i just don't

04:03:14.000 i feel uncomfortable uh if none of this is true disparaging him on the day of his death and so

04:03:18.640 and i haven't had the chance to check it out myself so with respect to you not not saying

04:03:22.200 it isn't just don't know i want to make that clear to the audience um but but that's unfortunate uh

04:03:27.240 it's sad to have lost him his work in the godfather earned him an academy award nomination

04:03:31.080 a golden globe nomination and of course a place in all of our hearts because he was this firebrand

04:03:36.440 who was tortured and I think just did such a brilliant job of portraying what one might go

04:03:42.820 through if one were born into such a family or, in your case, willingly joined, quote, the family.

04:03:49.600 Before we leave that subject, did your wife, I always wonder about the wives. Like, did your

04:03:56.140 wife know everything? I know she knew you were in the mafia, but did she know, you know, about

04:04:01.860 murders did she know all that no absolutely not i never told my wife anything about the mafia

04:04:09.080 and it was my way of protecting her she always in other words in my opinion could turn around

04:04:14.940 if she was ever questioned by the feds or anybody she could say i don't know legitimately not as i'm

04:04:21.340 not going to give her information especially but murder something like that i'd have to be out of

04:04:25.440 my mind to do something like that but she knew i was in the mafia um but she didn't know any of

04:04:32.320 that either did my kids i was a family man i i lived two lives at home i i was a father

04:04:39.180 a husband when i made money i bought a farm uh we put horses on the farm we it was a family life

04:04:48.320 when i drove to that place i left the mafia behind me when i got off the highway it was in jersey

04:04:55.000 cream ridge new jersey and smelt uh the trees the grass it was i was like it was i was like a

04:05:01.660 different person yeah that's the farm yeah wow and and it was it was a 30 acre farm we turned it into

04:05:09.480 a horse farm we lived great times in their fun holidays fourth of july so when i left i left on

04:05:16.720 a friday took off usually staying there on a saturday and sunday with my family and we did

04:05:23.400 all great things. When the FBI went up to Cream Ridge, New Jersey, they

04:05:27.160 went to every restaurant, everywhere I went, asking people

04:05:31.620 about me. And not one

04:05:34.260 person said anything negative. When I sold it,

04:05:39.960 there was a woman who was, she sold it. She 0.98

04:05:42.640 asked me for a cart where the kids sit on it and they could drive it.

04:05:48.220 So I had said, I'm not going to sell it. It's part of

04:05:51.440 the farm and um when i did sell it i told him that cart isn't for sale and i gave it to the woman

04:06:00.440 she told the feds that's how he dealt with me never offered me money under the table or doing

04:06:06.480 anything but he gave me this cart for my grandchildren and uh a matter of fact as soon

04:06:13.000 as i'm done with this conversation i'm going to get in touch with him and i'm going to tell him

04:06:16.800 that user here asking me questions so i i was a different animal there yeah well no i mean your

04:06:22.900 kids talk about you in this way it's part of what makes you fascinating uh the dichotomy between

04:06:29.380 your professional life and your home life uh and up next in our last segment together i want to get

04:06:35.260 into turning on gaudy going into witness protection and your job that that you did while while that

04:06:42.600 happened plastic surgery and then how you wound up back in prison and then free again okay so

04:06:49.120 don't miss that stay with us for one more segment as sammy the bull gravano continues with us right

04:06:53.440 after this quick break my team's business has been looking into the james khan thing during

04:06:59.740 the break and says indeed uh andy mush russo part of the uh uh colombo crime family was a

04:07:08.380 longtime friend of james khan and at one point james khan did indeed offer to post mush's bail

04:07:13.080 money when he was accused of a crime and this andy mush russo was indeed godfather to one of james

04:07:19.400 khan's children so to be continued on that front there were there have been reports that khan had

04:07:25.780 this connection though i've never heard it from directly from somebody who was actually in the mob

04:07:29.400 um so we've gone to a different place okay um sammy you wind up you and john gotty wind up

04:07:36.500 running the Gambino crime family uh the Genovese crime family and and um John Gotti's mob boss he's

04:07:43.680 he's the boss of the family you you become under boss and you guys for years and years were very

04:07:48.160 tight very tight and then as I understand it um and as we said in the intro things went downhill

04:07:54.040 and I don't want to spend too much time it's been talked about a lot but they went downhill

04:07:57.620 you were both in jail together you thought he was going to turn on you and and and I know you say

04:08:03.400 that's why you turned on him you went to those two agents who were following you around all the time 0.97

04:08:07.080 and said let's talk about john gotti now his defenders say bullshit they're like that's sammy 0.99

04:08:12.920 trying to cover his own butt so he doesn't look like a rat um john gotti wasn't going to turn on 0.98

04:08:18.380 sammy um and they they basically just call bs on the whole story so what do you want to say about 0.98

04:08:23.980 that right i mean i mean i've heard that they said there's millions of hours of tapes it wasn't

04:08:31.020 millions of hours of tapes there was but the the up in the apartment there was a

04:08:37.260 a small amount of tapes um he four or five it was up there for months but we didn't use the

04:08:46.840 apartment a lot of times when we did use the apartment we didn't talk about anything

04:08:50.900 there was a couple of times that i wasn't in the apartment and he was sitting with frank

04:08:58.900 Casio. Now, when people talk about it was all bullshit, I mean, it's made up. There's agents, 0.98

04:09:09.320 New York State Organized Crime Task Force that heard these tapes, listened to the tapes and

04:09:16.520 knew exactly what was going on. But I'm going to give you one story that's going to blow all that

04:09:23.160 other stuff away the judge got rid of our lawyers jerry shagel and bruce cutler and we had to get

04:09:32.640 new lawyers one of the lawyers that we brought in did an interview and you could check this out

04:09:39.420 in an article with jerry capisi he did an interview with jerry capisi and told him this

04:09:46.320 I was brought in to be the lawyer for John.

04:09:50.640 And he told John I was in that meeting.

04:09:53.480 It was a lawyer's meeting.

04:09:54.540 He said to John.

04:09:58.560 You can't beat this case.

04:10:00.380 Your tapes are devastating.

04:10:02.140 The four, five, six tapes out of all the rest of them are devastating.

04:10:09.080 I could try to work out a plea agreement.

04:10:11.820 And John said, no.

04:10:15.320 I'm going to beat the case.

04:10:17.440 I got a secret weapon.

04:10:20.320 So Bruce Cutler, I mean, Bruce Cutler,

04:10:23.940 what did I just say?

04:10:25.360 His name was.

04:10:29.100 That big lawyer.

04:10:31.900 But anyway, he said,

04:10:34.400 well, tell me your secret weapon.

04:10:37.900 How are you going to beat this case?

04:10:39.680 And he says, I'm going to throw Sammy and Frankie under the bus.

04:10:44.180 And I'm going to go free. We all laughed. Sounded like a joke.

04:10:54.140 The lawyer never came back when he did the interview with Jerry Capici.

04:11:01.780 He told him that story says, I never went back because I didn't want any part of that strategy.

04:11:08.820 but John

04:11:11.000 continued with that strategy

04:11:12.940 because when he

04:11:14.940 was in the apartment with those

04:11:16.860 tapes he had planned 0.74

04:11:19.060 to kill me

04:11:20.020 and he you can't just 0.99

04:11:23.040 kill an underboss who's very powerful 0.98

04:11:25.000 big money earner 0.99

04:11:26.160 the whole family likes you 1.00

04:11:29.040 if you can kill 1.00

04:11:30.980 him you shake the whole family 1.00

04:11:32.900 if you can kill him then you can kill all of us 1.00

04:11:35.200 here's a guy 1.00

04:11:36.740 who's the most loyal guy to you

04:11:38.820 he's rigging your cases he's killing people for you if you could do that so

04:11:45.940 all of the things he was telling Frankie to talk about to the captains to prepare

04:11:53.980 Sammy's killing his partners he's killing union guys and taking over the unions 0.95

04:12:01.100 he wanted that to go out so that when he kills me he would have a justification 0.99

04:12:08.540 That is on those tapes.

04:12:09.900 We looked into what John Gotti was saying on those tapes.

04:12:13.080 And indeed, it's very negative about you and your alleged behaviors.

04:12:16.820 So I see it.

04:12:17.620 And forgive me for skipping past some of this, but this has been out there.

04:12:22.040 So you wind up saying, you're going to cross me.

04:12:24.800 I'm going to cross you first.

04:12:26.520 And you'll wind up going to jail, which he did for the rest of his life.

04:12:30.140 You got a good deal, a sweetheart deal, where you're supposed to go away for five years.

04:12:34.400 you really only had to serve less than one year because you'd already served four

04:12:37.920 prior to you know you're you're you're a little bit off i took a plea with the thing not for five

04:12:46.880 years i took a 20-year plea i got sentenced to five years yes because of the cooperation that i

04:12:54.300 did I took a plea for 20 years got it and uh and I didn't do a year I did uh over four years

04:13:04.720 you got some good time off of the five so I did almost five when I got sentenced I had seven

04:13:11.120 months to go on on what I got it it's immaterial the point is it wasn't a lot of jail time for

04:13:18.500 you know the feds what i did absolutely yeah for what you did um so the you the deal is you're

04:13:24.080 going to go into witness protection as we mentioned at the top of the show for for a while

04:13:27.340 and can you just tell us because i i read that you were you did something with pools where did

04:13:33.340 they send you and what was the job and did you actually run around like looking after people's

04:13:38.420 pools for a year or two or selling people's pools how did that go well when i first got out i went

04:13:46.260 the Witness Protection Program for eight months. I promised them I would do one year. They were

04:13:52.620 begging me to go in the program. I didn't want to go in. I had plenty of money. They said,

04:13:58.020 you're going to make the government look horrible. Come on. You've got a great deal,

04:14:02.520 five-year deal. Give us something. Go in the program for a while. I gave them a year.

04:14:08.420 I only wound up doing eight months because I met a woman there I was talking to and hanging with a

04:14:15.660 little bit and uh uh she recognized who i was and they came back in they said we're gonna take you

04:14:25.100 and move you to another state we're gonna start from scratch and i said no i promise you a year

04:14:31.180 i'm in eight months i'm not doing it they said you have to do it that's the rules but like while

04:14:37.360 you were doing it while you i'm interested in your life while you were doing it like how does

04:14:41.560 a guy who's in the mob and doing the stuff you're doing go to like looking after somebody's pool

04:14:47.120 and claiming that you have this other name and this fake background you know what what was that

04:14:52.940 like i wasn't i wasn't doing it while i was in the program and i changed my name when i left

04:14:58.880 the program in eight months i changed my name back to salvatore gubano so i wasn't walking around

04:15:05.360 with am i wrong i feel like you're you don't like the fact that you were in this program at all is

04:15:09.860 that because it violates like the mob code is it it makes you sound no no no no i don't want to be

04:15:15.080 in it what am i going to do that you can't have any contact with your family or friends or there's

04:15:21.300 all kinds of rules i just did five years in prison i'm not going to live by a whole bunch of set of

04:15:25.880 rules so i gave them that one year you could bounce me around change my name do what you want

04:15:31.900 with me and then i'm done with you i'm out of prison so i didn't want to stay with these rules

04:15:38.460 Did you go to people's cocktail parties?

04:15:40.100 You go to like the barbecue of the neighbor next door and say,

04:15:42.600 what was the fake name again?

04:15:43.900 I can't remember the fake name.

04:15:45.380 Jimmy Moran.

04:15:46.840 Did you say like, hey, Jimmy Moran, and like, come on over.

04:15:49.780 We'll watch the Super Bowl together.

04:15:50.880 Like, how did it go?

04:15:52.160 No, no, no.

04:15:52.840 I was just running around.

04:15:54.100 I was 55 years old, I think I was, or 50-something years old.

04:15:59.160 And I was there.

04:16:01.340 It was in a college town.

04:16:03.500 I wound up in Colorado and it was Boulder, Colorado.

04:16:08.400 It's a college town.

04:16:09.780 And I was hanging out there.

04:16:11.840 I met a couple of people and I played chess with some people.

04:16:17.400 I'm a chess player and friendly like that.

04:16:20.660 But no, it wasn't party time.

04:16:22.400 It was I was I was it was like doing time on the outside.

04:16:27.000 I wanted to get done with the witness protection program and go home.

04:16:30.080 And when I got done, I did that.

04:16:33.500 Sorry, I'm condensed in my time, so I just want to get in the last thing.

04:16:37.160 So you go back to your real name and your life, and we talked earlier about whether that was scary in terms of, like, people are going to come get me, and sure enough, some tried.

04:16:46.860 And you wind up, like, to me, it's just so, like, you know, I get it because if you're in a life of crime, maybe it's hard to get out.

04:16:53.000 But you wind up dealing drugs and going back to prison for 20 years, almost 20 years.

04:17:01.800 How did you let that happen?

04:17:03.500 how like how did that happen now on that one subject not one subject but that's exactly what

04:17:10.820 happened i wasn't dealing drugs it was ecstasy which they consider a drug it's and and it was

04:17:19.700 that that's all it was it was no heroin it was not cocaine it was nothing crack it was ecstasy

04:17:26.540 which is a bullshit drug they put it on a level but anyway i didn't even do that there's a thing

04:17:33.060 coming out a documentary that we're working on and me, my daughter, my son, and I'm tied up on 0.97

04:17:41.220 the contract with that documentary. That's going to talk about that little part of my life. So I

04:17:46.840 don't think I could talk about that or I'll get my head handed to me because I'm in contract with it

04:17:52.260 now. So we'll stay tuned to wait for your, your longer take on that, but you get out of jail in

04:17:59.000 2017 and now what right so now how old are you now 77 77 years old you and your wife divorced but

04:18:10.240 sounds like she's still in your life and kind of a business partner now we talked about your

04:18:14.500 daughter karen you have a son as well so you know what next what what do you do with the time you 1.00

04:18:20.060 have left well she's not my business part she's not my business partner i'm a bitch i work for

04:18:27.640 her she owns the company she she handles my my rights and i work for her i do my podcast i do

04:18:36.280 some other things and i do some things on my own so we're not really partners but we're we're close

04:18:43.620 we have kids grandchildren we've been divorced since 1991 and um so but we are close and i still

04:18:54.360 close with my kids, my grandchildren, and I do this. I couldn't find a better thing to do

04:19:01.060 in retirement. I'm never going to go back to crime. I'm never going to do anything like that

04:19:06.980 again. So I enjoy the social media stuff that I'm doing. I'm in this contract about the story

04:19:16.200 of my life at that time with the ecstasy and all that baloney. Is that the Salvatore?

04:19:23.420 Is that or is that a different project?

04:19:25.060 Because I know you're no, that's you've got your own short film series called The Salvatore that's coming out.

04:19:29.760 Yes.

04:19:30.300 The Salvatore.

04:19:31.720 It's based on a true story, but it's not a true story.

04:19:36.560 It's fiction, but it's me.

04:19:39.640 It's here's what it is.

04:19:41.800 I get out of prison in 2017.

04:19:45.920 I'm contacted by the FBI.

04:19:48.320 My wife and children were in the program, supposedly, and they were all killed.

04:19:54.100 And the FBI wants me to go after and follow some serial killer.

04:20:00.040 And I agree to it.

04:20:02.120 I don't want to do it at first.

04:20:03.780 And they show me a picture of dead woman and kids.

04:20:07.120 And I agree to go after him.

04:20:10.440 Now, I'm going to say this here, but I'm not even supposed to be saying these things.

04:20:15.660 But what happens is, is that these FBI guys got money from the mob and they gave this serial killer, my wife and kids address, and he was supposed to go kill them.

04:20:34.520 So they get the money, they break the link and they got me.

04:20:39.280 Now they got me going after him.

04:20:41.500 Sounds a little confusing, but me going after him.

04:20:44.260 no i get it it's a it's sort of a real life crime drama um so this is going to come out on sammy

04:20:50.800 on his youtube channel so if you're not subscribed you can see it there uh by doing so uh in the in

04:20:57.340 the minute we have left rounding back to the discussion we had on faith and god at the top

04:21:02.460 of the show what do you make of it a lot of a lot of folks and they get to be 77 years old start

04:21:06.880 thinking about the afterlife and what what possibly awaits and forgiveness and all of that

04:21:12.780 So how do you see what's next for you? You know, meeting a maker, making amends, asking for grace, for forgiveness. Is any of that important to you?

04:21:25.480 um it's important to you know what's going to happen i mean i i really don't believe that you

04:21:34.440 go anywhere i'll be honest with you i don't think you go anywhere but if i'm gonna go anywhere i'm

04:21:40.100 a negotiator i'll talk to him and i'll talk to uh i'm not gonna ask for forgiveness if you made me

04:21:47.340 then you made me you could have stopped me anytime you want i'm not gonna you made me what i am i'm

04:21:53.620 lying. You may be that. So if you wanted to stop me, you could

04:21:57.540 stop me anytime you want. I'm not going to ask for forgiveness. I did

04:22:01.720 what I did in an honorable way, if you

04:22:05.720 could call it that, in my eyes.

04:22:10.880 I never really took advantage of people. I never

04:22:13.520 cheated. I never lied. I never bullshitted people to an extent

04:22:17.580 except for the government because, of course, I couldn't tell them the truth and I couldn't tell my family the truth

04:22:21.720 of things I was doing, but I think that's understandable.

04:22:26.680 And I really

04:22:29.920 I'm not looking for forgiveness of what I did and

04:22:33.680 what that would mean. This is taught in the church. If you don't

04:22:37.880 believe this, you're going to hell. I don't believe in all that bullshit. I really 1.00

04:22:41.860 don't. If you don't believe what I say, you're going to hell. 0.99

04:22:46.080 If you don't tell, I don't believe any of that. So I believe

04:22:49.900 there is a God. I look up at the sky, do artwork. I learned how to do artwork in prison. I look up

04:22:55.300 at the sky. Who could do that? What artist in the world could do that? It's got to be a God.

04:23:01.420 Life. You see kids, you see animals, you see things. Animals kill each other. So I don't

04:23:07.800 believe in the stuff they tell us in religion. I got it. I think God is fair. He's honorable.

04:23:18.520 if he's there and uh i don't think i'll have too much of a problem i think people bullshit about

04:23:26.040 religion i think they'll have more of a problem than i will i gotta i gotta leave it at that

04:23:30.560 because we're coming up against a hard break but i agree with you that god is fair and he

04:23:34.200 is honorable and uh he i believe he will have the last say sammy the bull gravano thank you

04:23:41.100 so much for telling your story and as i say for what the mob says giving testimony that led to

04:23:47.200 and their view of what the FBI has said

04:23:48.960 led to the demise of organized crime

04:23:51.480 in New York.

04:23:53.100 Amazing.

04:23:54.140 All the best to you.

04:23:55.320 His podcast is called Our Thing

04:23:56.900 and his miniseries, The Salvatore,

04:23:59.040 is coming out next week.

04:24:01.020 My God, what just happened?

04:24:04.060 What just happened in that last two hours?

04:24:06.740 My team and I were just talking about it.

04:24:08.440 Just like went to a lot of places.

04:24:10.600 I did not expect the thing about James Caan.

04:24:12.960 um and but you know there there's something there's something to be learned there because we

04:24:19.040 we have been so fascinated by the mob in this country so fascinated by the mob and it is

04:24:23.400 interesting to listen to somebody who was in it at the highest levels talk about how it works

04:24:27.960 and what the ethical code actually looks like looks like right like some of that stuff at the

04:24:33.660 end i behaved honorably that's how he sees it um how he believes in god but doesn't think that

04:24:40.600 there will be any judgment for him because he thinks God made him the way God made me alive.

04:24:45.860 I mean, that stuff was very eye opening to me in terms of how his brain works and how people can

04:24:53.140 live a life like this. How could you live a life where you kill 19 people? I understand he says

04:24:59.300 they agreed to live by the same code. But, you know, the rest of us who live by a very different

04:25:04.620 code have trouble understanding any of this. And it's an organization that's had its tentacles

04:25:10.400 in American society for a hundred plus years. Right. So it's like, anyway, there's a lot to

04:25:16.400 be learned. And our fascination with this group remains, it may be dwindling. Uh, it's not done

04:25:22.120 in New York, but it's certainly not what it used to be. Uh, but it's still out there and, you know,

04:25:27.020 it gets glorified in virtually every Hollywood movie still to this day. So, um, I don't know.

04:25:32.720 I, I, I enjoyed the exchange and I enjoyed listening to, you know, his take on it,

04:25:36.900 obviously disagreed with a lot of his ethical conclusions, as I'm sure you did. But

04:25:41.200 I learned, I learned a little bit and I hope you did too.

04:25:46.980 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - May 10, 2026

Serial Killer Israel Keyes, Scott Peterson, Sammy the Bull - Megyn's ＂True Crime＂ Mega-Episode

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