Gangland Wire Crime Stories

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Michael O’Keefe is a retired 1st Grade Detective from the NYPD. For twenty-four years, he worked in the toughest neighborhoods in New York, specializing in investigating Homicides and other violent crimes. He was born and raised on the mean streets described in his fiction. His characters and settings are drawn from the people he encountered […]

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Cam and I discuss a little-known mafia family in upstate New York. From 1970 to 1992, Salvatore and Joseph Falcone led organized crime in Utica, NY. This family went back to the late 1930s. They were a powerful crew of the Buffalo, NY Maggadino Family, also known as The Arm. The New York State troopers

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Our Venmo subscribers are responsible for this special bonus episode that I call “Wearing a Wire on Steve St. John.” If you don’t who Steve is, I once helped a new FBI agent on a drug case by doing surveillance on Steve in 1991. The FBI was working on Steve because they had an informant

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In this episode, the host, Gary Jenkins, interviews retired Missouri State Trooper Tom Gray about his months-long undercover investigation of Kansas City Mafia figures who were buying stolen property. The main target was a man named James H. Bradley Jr. or “Junior” as he was known. Because he operated a popular restaurant across the street

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Sonny Franzese came up the usual path to the life of a career criminal and Cosa Nostra boss. He started as a Brooklyn member of a juvenile gang and slowly graduated through Prohibition to become a member of the Profaci family. He was court-martialed during WW 2 and it was reported he exhibited “homicidal tendencies”

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In this second episode Gary and Cam go into the reason why Vito Rizzuto was charged in the famous murder of the three Capos in New York City. This story is a great example of how no good deed goes unpunished. During upheaval in the Bonanno family, a Bonanno Capo named Joe Messino gets approval

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After watching the Netflix series Bad Blood, Gary and Camulius Robinson take on the Rizzuto crime family and the Montreal Mafia. We believe because of the lack of prohibition, the Canadian mafia was not as fast-growing and organized as the American crime families. Nevertheless, they are a very interesting crime family that grew and prospered

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Host Gary Jenkins interviews fellow mob historian and expert on the life of Frank Costello, the Prime Minister of the Underworld. Casey is also a musician and he had created several original music compositions to be used in the podcast and the recently released mob documentary film, Brothers against Brothers” The Civella Spero War. In

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In this first of 2 episodes about Lucky Luciano, Gary tells a story about Lucky Luciano and the Dannemora priest. In 1936, the politically ambitious mob busting special prosecutor Thomas Dewey obtained a guilty verdict against Charles, “Lucky” Luciano for compulsory prostitution or for being a pimp. The state sent him to the Dannemora prison

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After a few shows about John Gotti, this week, Gangland Wire will go to a 1930s story about a Leavenworth prison break that went wrong for both the prisoners and the town of Leavenworth. I interviewed former Leavenworth prison guard and prison historian Kenneth LeMaster. Kenneth tells the story of how prisoners behind the walls