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In this explosive episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with actor, entrepreneur, and mob insider Gianni “Johnny” Russo, best known for his unforgettable role as Carlo Rizzi in The Godfather.
Russo pulls back the curtain on a lifetime of stories that stretch from Frank Costello and Joe Colombo to Las Vegas skimming, the Vatican Bank, Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Hoffa, and even Pablo Escobar.
Russo discusses his new book, Mafia Secrets: Untold Tales from the Hollywood Godfather, co-written with Michael Benson—an unfiltered account of power, violence, politics, and survival inside the criminal underworld and Hollywood royalty. This is not recycled mythology—this is Gianni Russo’s personal version of history from the inside. Whether you believe every word or not, the stories are raw, violent, and utterly fascinating.
This episode discusses:
The Godfather, The Kennedy assassinations, Vegas skimming, Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Hoffa, the Chicago Outfit, Pablo Escobar
🔥 Episode Highlights
🎬 How Gianni Russo REALLY Got Cast in The Godfather. Russo reveals that Joe Colombo personally helped secure his role. Paramount Studios negotiated directly with Colombo to avoid trouble. The real-life mob influence behind Carlo Rizzi’s casting. Initially, James Caan was slated to play Michael Corleone
🏛️ Growing Up Under Frank Costello Russo describes how Costello became his protector. Living for decades in a Manhattan apartment, Costello employed him as an errand runner and messenger for influential mob figures
💰 Vegas Skimming & Vatican Money Laundering Russo details moving hundreds of millions of dollars through the Vatican Bank. How casino cash from Las Vegas was “cleaned” overseas, and how Chicago Outfit figures like Jackie Cerone were tied to the financial pipeline.
🎭 Marilyn Monroe, the Kennedys & a Dark Secret Russo claims Marilyn was pregnant with Bobby Kennedy’s child. The explosive fallout and her alleged assassination. Why her body would never reveal the truth, according to Russo. The mysterious death of journalist Dorothy Kilgallen
🚬 Jimmy Hoffa’s Fate Russo shares what he says is the real story about Hoffa’s murder, the crushing and disappearance of the body. Why Hoffa was marked for death after returning to union power
🔫 Pablo Escobar & the Vegas Casino Shooting Russo describes killing Pablo Escobar’s underboss in a self-defense shooting. The terrifying private meeting that followed—with Escobar himself, how respect between two men prevented a bloodbath
⚰️ Tony & Michael Spilotro: What Casino Got Wrong Russo disputes Scorsese’s version of the murders. First-hand account of seeing the brothers after their brutal beating. The real setup and why Tony Spilotro sealed his own fate
Mafia Secrets: Untold Tales from the Hollywood Godfather by Gianni Russo & Michael Benson
A memoir covering: The Mob, Hollywood, Politics Vatican corruption, Murder, betrayal, and survival 👉 Available now wherever books are sold
🎯 Why You Should Listen
Few guests in the history of Gangland Wire have touched so many legendary crime stories in one lifetime.
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Transcript
Speaker: Well, hey, are you wire tapper? It’s good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire.
I have a guest today, which is, as you can see, if you’re looking, it’s, Johnny Russo. And I know a lot of you guys know Johnny. , He is, been a, a character, a mover in the shaker in this mob entertainment business for a long time. Starting with The Godfather, I think the first time we heard of him.
He, , somehow got selected for the part to get beat up by James Conn and earned the, the reputation of being a wifebeater. Now that was all fiction. You guys realize that was all fictionalized for the story. But anyhow, welcome Johnny. It’s great to have you on the show.
Speaker 2: Always my man. So much fun.
Always. And I, the fact you’re still doing it and you know, the intrigue of the mob is never going away.
Speaker: Never going away is it’s just, it’s gotten more in the last, I’ve been doing this for five, six years and it’s gotten more and more each year. It’s crazy.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah. The funniest thing you say that, most people don’t know I own all the IP of the Godfather.[00:01:00]
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: All the intellectual property.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like if all your listeners go on right now to quarterly own fine Italian foods.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker 2: my, all my food. I’m in 83 countries, Gary.
Speaker: That’s right. You got in the food business, didn’t you? Crazy,
Speaker 2: crazy food business. I got in the liquor business. I, I mean, clothing. My, I mean, it’s crazy.
My clothing line is called the mia. By Gianna. I try to keep everything in the mod mob feeling.
Speaker: Well now you got a new book out called Mafia Secrets, untold Tales from the Hollywood Godfather. And we’re gonna talk a little bit about those mafia secrets, which that’s what, you know, that’s what we all wanna know.
We wanna know the secrets of mafia. That’s think that’s part of the, that’s part of the, uh, j quo, the, uh. A little bit of something different. What we, what’s, intriguing about the mafia is this code of erta and the secrets that they had tried to keep over the
Speaker 2: years. Well, you know, the situation with this, which book here that you’re talking about, that this [00:02:00] book.
On, on the, one of the cove notes is Chei had it wrong in Casino.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Because I was, I one of the highlights, one of the big chapters in here. It’s pretty gory. I mean, we were just talking about Michael Benson Pryer going on. This guy is really a great graphic. Uh, writer and I mean, when he, when he’s talking about killing somebody, you could smell the blood.
Speaker: Cool. That’s what we like. Well, let’s, let’s talk just a little bit about your history, your background. You go clear back to Frank Costello when you were a kid in, in New York City. You grew up in New York. Right. Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2: In, in 73 when he died, he left it to me. I’ve been in this apartment 70, I’ve been in this apartment 71 years.
Speaker: On the Upper East Side, I guess. [00:03:00]
Speaker 2: Oh yeah,
Speaker: yeah. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Like sit 16. I mean, it’s ridiculous. People come and say, how did you, how could you afford it? I said, I can’t. It was given to me.
Speaker: Really? Especially these days.
Speaker 2: Oh my
Speaker: God. Now you still living in New York City?
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. That’s my base. Yeah. I, I, I, I have a house in Sicily.
I’ve had for a while now. I bought different properties in different, where I like going.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then. I kept them all by made, I’m the only guy, even, even when I bought my boat, they said, that’s gonna be a money pit that’s gonna eat all your money up.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I, I bought a boat when I was 21. I bought a Riva 148 foot Riva
Speaker 4: Damn.
Speaker 2: And I was good friends with Grace Kelly. ’cause Grace was going to the Baran school right around the corner on 62nd Street.
Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: Well, I got to know all of these young actresses when they were just coming out. [00:04:00] That’s how I got invited to her wedding. Sinatra couldn’t believe I got invited to the wedding.
What happened? I, I got the boat and the boat had a slip in Monaco.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I used to go there April, stay on my boat for a couple of months, and then I gave it to the Carlton Hotel to lease out. I made money from that boat every year.
Speaker: I bet. And so it wasn’t holding the water. You stuck money in, as we say,
that’s what you always hear about a boat. So, uh, speaking of of money and money, you talked about money laundering for the Vatican. Now I heard a story here in Kansas City, bear with me. This guy gave, he wanted to buy a church. He gave like a million dollar. Donation and the only way they’d take it if he had it converted to gold, actual gold and he took it over to the Vatican.
Does that sound right to you?
Speaker 2: [00:05:00] Uh, that we do Well, I used to do that myself, so I mean, I know that, but they, gold got too heavy. And then when they put all these restrictions after nine 11, yeah, you would never get on the plane.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker 2: So, so I did something new. I’ll reveal it to your audience. I started buying diamonds.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: Which they don’t even reflect going through the machine. So I have a solid gold Davidoff cigar holder.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I put a hundred karats of diamonds. I put it in my suit jacket. I don’t smoke. It goes right through the machine.
Speaker: Huh, interesting.
Speaker 2: I guess every drug dealer in the world is doing because
Speaker: it probably smell no problem.
Smell that cocaine going through the machine. Be all over that cocaine. Try that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I never took a drug. Thank God.
Speaker: Yeah, me neither. So I see in the background you got the Godfather. I mean this is, I [00:06:00] know it’s been told before, but, so we got some guys out here that that may not know that story. You’re you, how did you get that part anyhow?
You were the son-in-law of the Godfather and the brother-in-law to Son Corleone James. James Conn James Conn’s character. How’d you get that part?
Speaker 2: I, I, I left the country for about three or four years after the Kennedy assassination. ’cause I, I mean, I was a messenger. I knew nothing about who, what and where.
Yeah. But they wanted to question me. So Costello sent me on a nice trip and while I was out the book of the Godfather that came out. I’m an illiterate. I had somebody read it to me because I never went to school. ’cause when I got outta Bellevue from polio, I was 12 years old already. And then I was selling ballpoint pens on the street corners, and that’s how I met Costello.
And the rest was history. But so what happened to me was that I had to read the book. And then I, [00:07:00] I was in la. I landed in LA ’cause nobody knew my name because Costello named me the kid. They couldn’t even get a subpoena on me. Who’s the kid? What’s his last name? What’s his first name? People got to know my name.
Once The Godfather to come out.
Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: That was it, which was great. I mean, the guy was a genius, but long story short, I read that, you know, Joe Colombo. Created the Italian Anti-Defamation League in New York and he had a big rally in, in 71 and a hundred thousand people came and there were cops got stabbed and everything else.
The only good thing he did do was hire Barry Sch Slotnik, a great Jewish attorney, and in fact, his son now is still my attorney.
Speaker 5: Oh,
Speaker 2: really? So it, but uh, a long story short. I came to see Castella, I mean, uh, Colombo. I was in LA. I said, Joe, you’re gonna be in the [00:08:00] club on 86th Street tomorrow morning. I’m gonna fly in from la.
He said, yeah, come up, come on over. I don’t even wanna see you. I haven’t seen you in a while. So I get there and there’s a car outside. He’s, come on, we’re gonna go to the new headquarters on Madison Avenue. And I, that day I met Barry Sch Slotnik. And they were telling me what they were doing. I said, well, you know, whatever you don’t like in the book, now that you got this great attorney, why don’t we have a meeting?
Paramount and whatever you don’t like in the, in the film that you think is detrimental to the Italian image, if they take it out, we can make a lot of money. You So we i’s why? I got the idea. What do you mean this ain’t a gift. I’m on a red suit and a white beard on we, I don’t see a mouse in my pocket who says what’s his?
We so that, with that said, I told him what my idea was. He said. Could you get it on? I said, gimme permission to [00:09:00] go talk to you. So unbeknownst to me, when I shot that screen test for in, in la, I shot it on 18 millimeter Mag Stripe film.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And unbeknownst to me, Francis Ford Coppola was trying to convince them to do it in a C tone.
Don’t shoot it in color or black or white. Give it a SIA tone. So it has that old tinge to it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And, and I happen to buy 18 millimeter film that was old. It came out Sia. So I, I’ve always had my life has always got opportunities and obstacles. Thank God I got more opportunities. Well, this was an opportunity ’cause they passed my test to everybody.
Bobby Evans, Stanley Jaffy, everybody saw the test. They didn’t know me. They didn’t even care about, that was the tone. So when I walked in the Gulf of Western building, the next morning, they’re all looking at me and they know me and I’m saying how they all know me, [00:10:00] but I only knew Bobby Evans because he was going out with Ali McGraw at that time.
I walked right over to ’em. I said, you know, you have a big problem in New York. I think I could strain. I, he said, oh no, we got no problem here. Yeah. I said, I just left Joe Colombo. You got a problem.
Speaker: You do have a
Speaker 2: problem. You just left Joe Colombo. I said, yeah. I said, he wants to meet, he will he come here? I said, I’ll bring him anywhere you want.
So they said, bring him here tomorrow, 10 o’clock. So I go back down Madison Avenue, I down, 59th Street in Madison Avenue. I said, Joe, we gotta go tomorrow. He said, great, let’s do it. I said, but do me a favor. They know the book In and Out, obviously. They bought the script. They got Mario Zo and the director Coppola writing it.
Speaker: Coppola. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Let, let us just go with two of your heavies. So we, we took a butter Dec Chico. Who was a butcher deco was a [00:11:00] tough guy collecting for them. And the other guy was Lenny Montana who got the part of Lenny, uh, Lu Razzi in the movie
Speaker: Razzi. Yeah, that’s right. They probably saw him say, I want him for heavy.
And
Speaker 2: yeah, so we go with these two guys, Barry Sch, Slotnick, Joe and I, the five of us only go, we go up to the 33rd floor. Everybody’s there. Even the Charlie Blue Dawn who just bought Paramount. And they’re all talking and Barry addressed all the things and said, you know, we’ll go through the script.
If you agree to make the changes, I think we can work out a deal. We’ll guarantee you all the locations you want. All the neighborhoods get the cooperation. And they’re getting up there shaking hands. So I’m still sitting. I said, Joe, I pull on his sleeve. I said, Joe, what about me? He goes to them, what about my boy here?
Oh, we’ll give him a part. I said, excuse me, Joe. Tell him to sit [00:12:00] down. He didn’t tell him to sit down. He went like this, like gorged. They all sat. So I got out. I said, listen, I brought this guy here. This is gonna work now I want a big part. I said, who’s playing Michael? So. They all looked at each other, and this may shock your audience.
James Karn was playing Michael originally.
Speaker: I think I read that somewhere. Originally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, originally. And then I said, well, who’s playing Sonny? They said, Carmine edi. He’s in a play called the Manful LA mantra. They thought he should be a big brawly guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I said, who’s playing Carlo? Says, we didn’t get there yet.
So I said to, to Costello, I said, I wanna play Carlo. So he looked at them. Stanley, Jeff, everybody was there. He says he’s playing Carlo. They all looked at each other. So Ruddy starts to say, well, are you in the union? I said, excuse me, I did my [00:13:00] homework. New York is a taf Hartley Acts, state. Yeah, you gimme a little bit a part.
I’ll go get in the union.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That’s how I got the part. Joe Colombo cast me in the movie, nobody Else.
Speaker: Interesting, interesting.
Speaker 2: It changed my life 55 years later. Here we are.
Speaker: Oh yeah. Here we are. You know, I, I, you talked about JFK and I’ve already been. Done a couple other shows here recently. That’s kind of a hot topic right now.
It seems like with the release of all these, uh, documents and, and everything, uh, you had some, uh, dealings with Joe Kennedy maybe and, and as well as
Speaker 2: how I met Joe Kennedy. Joe Kennedy and Frank Costello during prohibition.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They made $30 million each. That’s like 3 billion today In the thirties.
Speaker: Yeah.
Damn.
Speaker 2: And he went to Costello early on. He wanted his son to become president and the deal he made with the mob and nobody realized it. [00:14:00] He said, if my son becomes president, the first thing he will do that week was to evade Cuba and give you all your casinos back. So it was a win-win deal. The great deal everybody.
Now, obviously we know he wins. The mistake they made was put Bobby Kennedy and his attorney general, he hated all these guys. He hated all his father’s friends. And he started going after them. Marcelos, all of them. Yeah. So one year goes by, two years go by. I’m at Cal nva. He says, go to Cal Niva. I want you to be up there.
Be my eyes and ears. I did that a lot. Now for your audience, Cal NVA is a casino. Built in Nevada on the California border.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: So if you in the black book or a mob guy and can’t go at the casinos, you stood in the bungalows on the California side.
Speaker: Ah,
Speaker 2: when you wanna go to the casino, you walked across the pool, you were in there.
Speaker: Yeah. Didn’t Frank Sinatra have a piece of that? Wouldn’t [00:15:00] that his
Speaker 2: for Oh yeah. Sinatra had a, in fact, I was there with Sinatra when I got there. Sinatra was there, Marilyn Monroe was there and a couple of and, uh, Sam Jean Con. From Chicago.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And he was running the whole thing. And what they wanted Marilyn to do was to sleep with Bob because when John became president, he convinced Marilyn, I can’t see you anymore for a year or two.
Speaker 3: Yeah,
Speaker 2: because I’m a Catholic boy, but in a year or two I’ll divorce Jackie and marry you. That’s how naive she was.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: We know that didn’t happen.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: So Bobby was supposed to keep an eye on her. Well, he kept a couple of hands and everything else on her too. That night we found out she just had an abortion six weeks with Bobby’s kid.
Speaker: Hmm. Man,
Speaker 2: and she was hysterical. She, I’m going to the press, these [00:16:00] Kennedys are phony, and we all looked at each other. I flew right back to New York. He said, how’d that meeting go? I said, it didn’t go. She ain’t doing it. I said, what are you talking about? He said, she’s having an abortion with Bobby’s kid, and she’s going to the press.
This was a Monday morning, Gary, you won’t believe this. I said to him, they can’t kill her. She’s a big movie star.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He says they’ll kill her. Believe me, on Thursday, she was dead.
Speaker 5: Mm.
Speaker 2: And it’s funny you bring where you brought this up this past Saturday on the eighth, I dedicated a street on Bark Avenue in 68th Street to Dorothy Kga.
Speaker: Yeah,
Speaker 2: I just heard about that when the investigation on the Kennedy assassination.
Speaker: Yeah. See
Speaker 2: it was, and the Marilyn Monroe assassination.
Speaker: Yeah. She had a mysterious death herself after she had really dug into that big time.
Speaker 2: The same guy I know, the same [00:17:00] anesthesiologist that killed Marlin. All they did. All he did was inject it with oxygen in her fallopian organ in her groin.
You’re not gonna see it through the pubic hairs. Yeah. And when every time they wanted to exhume her body, there’s, what are you gonna exhume? It’s oxygen. There’s nothing there. I mean, Marilyn always had barbiturates in her system. She lived on them.
Speaker: Now there’s a guy in from Chicago that claims that the guy named called the German.
Frank SW was going around Chicago, claiming he was the one that that off Marilyn Monroe. Have you ever heard that story?
Speaker 2: Unless he’s an anesthesiologist, he’s full of
Speaker: shit. Okay.
Speaker 2: English.
Speaker: All right. A lot of stories about Marilyn Monroe’s death isn’t there. And JFK’s. And RFKs. There’s a lot of stuff out there about that that, that you don’t know what to believe
Speaker 2: anymore, never come out, and it’s so, it, I, wait, you know what’s so interesting to me?
I got to know. Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Kga [00:18:00] because I got caught on the streets of New York. I was 15 and a half by a true officer and says, you gotta go to school till you’re 16. This was in August. So I give Costello the ticket. He says, I’ll handle it. So he says to me, when you come out. Of De Dempsey’s upstairs.
There’s Wilford Academy. I said, I’m no fan. I don’t want to pick become a hairdresser. You’re crazy. He said, no, just check in and leave. You’re gonna meet me at 11, go there at nine o’clock and don’t stay. So I got there, carry the first day and it was just like you said, the girls had just signed the book.
’cause they’ll come and check and then leave. So I look over her shoulder, there’s 30 young girls there. 30 young girls. We gonna find 30 young girls in New York City at nine o’clock in the morning.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker 2: I was there every day for a couple hours before I had to meet him
Speaker: working that Russo charm. No doubt.[00:19:00]
Speaker 2: That was, so that’s how I got to meet Marilyn because Kenneth. Marks and Claire, they were lovers when they said they were partners. I didn’t know what they meant. I thought they were partners of the business. They were hairdressers for Lilly Dasher. They came there looking for shampoo boys, and again, a great opportunity.
They hired me. So now I didn’t have to go to the school. I get the credits, I’m making tips over in Lilly Dashay. She was on 56th of Park. Mm-hmm. And the fourth head of hair. I’m, I’m washing Marilyn Monroe. I couldn’t believe it.
Speaker: You’re 15.
Speaker 2: I was 15 and a half.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker 2: That was August in December. I, I could walk out.
So now, and, and it’s not like I want your audience to know, it’s not like a salon where we have all the shampoo basements lined up. These were rooms, these ladies changed. They got that there [00:20:00] cashmere that put a robe on. So she’s laying back in the sink. ’cause the maid put her in the sink already. I walk in, read the card, and I don’t even know how long I was staring at her.
Because I went to see something like it hot. I saw something like it hot 10 times already every night. I was upstairs masturbating in the, in the in the balcony.
Crazy times.
Speaker: Really? Yeah. I’ve been talking about all these mysteries with a lot of stories around about ’em. What about Jimmy Hoffa? I see that you’ve got a little, something about Jimmy Hoffa in there and his body, that that seems to be a much discussed topic.
Speaker 2: There was no big mystery about what happened to Jimmy because, you know, Jimmy came out, found God and Frankford Simmons, including myself, borrowed a lot of money already from, I mean, Vegas was built on the chief’s pension fund.
Every dime was down there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now this guy’s gonna [00:21:00] come out and they had, they got rid of him. You know, was everybody’s gonna dig him up every time the FBI. Once a raise some money off, get some, they’d say someplace else and they go dig something else. They’re never gonna find this guy, this guy was crushing a car presser on Staten Island.
By, by, by the Dreezy brothers.
Speaker: Yeah. Interesting. So, you know, it’s always a point of contention about that. Did they did they take him? Do him right there in Detroit, in the Detroit area and get rid of him. That was always my contention. ’cause he wouldn’t wanna haul a body that far. There’s another guy that said that took him to New Jersey and buried him.
Speaker 2: No, this is what happened on the highway. They had it set up in the Buick. He was in on the highway, a big one of those big like bust. Tow trucks came behind his car.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And they pushed him right up in a ramp, into, into, uh, a semi. They closed the doors and they [00:22:00] asphyxiated themselves by the exhaust of, of the tractor trailer.
’cause they tapped it through the floors. By the time they got to stand Island, both of them were dead.
Speaker: Ah, both of them. Who was the other guy? Well, who was now Chucky O’Brien wasn’t had gone by then. Who else was with him?
Speaker 2: No. Some guy he knew.
Speaker: Oh, okay. That
Speaker 2: He put a bunch of new people together when they got out.
Speaker: Okay. Who is his new driver? Is that that’s what you’re saying? Yeah. Okay. Interesting. I hadn’t heard that, uh, that theory or that story. A lot of ’em out there. He got some stuff in there about Pablo Escobar. Now, how could you. A little nice little Italian boy from New York City who admittedly had a big part at a very young age and met a lot of important people.
How could you end up with Pablo Escobar?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it’s funny because I, we spoke earlier, one of the forwards on my new book is Steve Shepa. And [00:23:00] she ripped, you know, was from Baccala from the Sopranos and now Blue Bloods, and he was going to the University of Nevada and I used to hire all these guys to work my club, Johnny Russo State Street, and that club was 10,000 square foot with a casino and everything else that was in the eighties.
One night a guy came in, we used to have all kinds of people come. We operated 12 hours a day, six at night to six in the morning. I served gourmet food until six in the morning. That’s where I got my biggest clientele. ’cause in Nevada, with the unions, they only had coffee shops after midnight.
Speaker: Ah,
Speaker 2: they would send me all the high rollers.
And this guy came in one night with a girl, and we was comped. They brought him out to the comped area. So I called Steve, I said, Steve, who was the guy? He said, I don’t know who he is. I said, who comped him? They said, Caesars said, all right. The next thing I know, the. We send over a bottle of [00:24:00] a Kristal bottle of Luda 13.
We whw whacked him right up because Caesar’s paying $1,800 Bill he opened up with, he ain’t paying. He gets the Kristal bottle, breaks it on the table and sticks it in the girl’s face.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker 2: So now I call Steve, I said, get to seven. Look what happened. He said, I ain’t going over that guy’s nuts. So I get involved.
I gotta go over there. Yeah. And thank God I, I was wearing, I was wearing Ralph Lauren, the three piece suit I had a vest on and, and Jack Weinstein of tower jewels made me two five shot solid gold derringers. And I had one in each pocket in my vest. So I go over there and I said, sir, you hear these sirens.
They’re coming for you. Why don’t you just get outta here? I don’t need any problems. He said, no, man. I said, no, man. Where the hell are you from? He said, you don’t wanna know. I didn’t know he had the neck, a bottle in his hand. The neck. He [00:25:00] went for me. I went back. I got 81 stitches along my jaw boat. My chin is hanging down and I’m saying, how am I gonna diffuse this guy?
So now I said, look what you did to my shirt. I waited six months for this, the sea island cotton. He’s looking at me like I got two heads. Blood is all over. I just wanted to get my hand on the gun. Soon I got my hand on the gun and I put a righteous fight. I put three right between his eyes. A hundred people at my casino watched me do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Guy was Lorenzo Morales. Pablo Escobar’s. Under boss.
Speaker 3: Under Boss.
Speaker 2: That’s how I met Pablo. Wasn’t a meeting I wanted to go to, but Rieger called for me. I said, you sure I’ll get out? And he said, I’ll call. Go. And I went. So I’m in Pablo Escobar’s house that he just built a prison in. Remember? He built a prison.
They made a deal. Yeah. [00:26:00] So I’m there. I’m having dinner with him. He’s got people all around him and it’s just him and I on a long table. He said, I know we meet, we have mutual friends. They said, you wanted to explain what went on? I said, yeah. I said, I didn’t know who your guy was.
I said, I did my homework. You have a daughter, Pablo Gina. She’s the same order, same age as my daughter, GIA. I said, I know what you know my alitos do. They’re gonna kill my kids, my family and all that. And I don’t think it’s justified. That’s why I wanted to come and talk to you. So he is looking at me because I didn’t, you know, if I’m gonna go, fuck it, I was already there.
Yeah, I’ve been shot. Run over, take me out, but don’t touch my kids. He gets up, Gary and he walks towards me and I don’t know if that guy’s gonna put a knife in me. He says, stand up. I stood up. He gave me a kiss. He says, there’s very few men like us. He [00:27:00] says, what happened? I said, the girl, he came in with a girl.
He broke the bottle, stuck it in the face, had nothing to do with it. I went over looking, I still had this, you know, he still had bandage stitches. I said, guy slit my throat. I said, I don’t know who he was. If I knew he was shook guy, I would’ve never killed him. Had we stayed French from that point on. So crazy.
Yeah.
Speaker: Interesting. That’s a crazy story there, man.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Tell me. I didn think I was coming back. In fact, I bought a one way chicken.
Speaker: Yeah, figured you’d come back from that one. Oh yeah. So Las Vegas, you, you spent a lot of time in Vegas, didn’t you? After New York,
Speaker 2: I went down and realized, I went down in the thirties.
I mean, I went down thirties. I went down in 1959 for 30 years. They were watching the transition that Howard Hughes was [00:28:00] making, taking over their casinos.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: And as long as they had the count room, they didn’t care who owned them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And that’s what I was doing. ’cause as you know, in my last book, I, I moved Nick Nady, Frank NA’s kid at a Chicago.
He and I moved $600 million to the Vatican. From Vegas legal quarries. We were quarries bound by the Lloyds of London, and our employee was the Vatican. When they stopped us at the airports, we had showed ’em the letter tell we here, we, we locked, we legal man. They said,
Speaker: how come the money, why was the money going to the Vatican from Las Vegas?
I don’t quite follow that.
Speaker 2: They were cleaning it for him and red depositing it. We were bringing three or 4 million, just Vatican. They’d take their piece and then they’d deposit it wherever they wanted.
Speaker: Oh, they were watching it. Somebody over there was watching it for somebody in Vegas.
Speaker 2: Oh, well who was, who was watching over there [00:29:00] was, hello?
He was a bishop from Chicago. Okay. Tony Ocado had that wired man.
Speaker: I see. What they didn’t take right back to Chicago. Why they sent over to, out to Las Vegas. ’cause there was some money coming back to Chicago. I’m pretty sure they needed some walking around money divide up for the guys.
’cause Angelo LaPierre and all those guys were getting a piece of it. Or they should have been
Speaker 2: everybody when it came back, they deposit where you wanted it. The Vatican Bank or drop out? Any, any give the account number.
Speaker: What’s, oh, supposed the Vatican would deposit it for those guys. The Jackie Cerone and Angela Lap.
Piera and
Speaker 2: Jackie. I love Jackie Senior too.
Speaker: Who? Ja.
Speaker 2: Jackie. I, I was in Chicago when Jackie first got outta jail.
Speaker: Oh really? You knew him? He was a bad dude, man. His
Speaker 2: son became a lawyer, you know.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, I know he was, he went to law school with an FBI agent. I know. And they called each other C You know how you guys [00:30:00] are, you call each other C but if they’re joking around, calling each other C.
So this F FBI agent tells me he’s in the courtroom when and here in Kansas City when Jackie Cone’s being charged with the skimming in a trial. And he comes out and he said, he said something about. A hi cousin and then some, one of those other guys from Chicago went up to him and he said, what’s wrong with, you’re like a traitor.
He said, here you are a cousin to Theones and, and you do this to us. He said, no, no, no, no. He said, I just know his son and we jokingly called each other C Oh, okay. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He was his character. Even I love the S
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: God.
Speaker: Cork was a character. Nick was not much of a character. He was Mr. All business. Oh,
Speaker 2: no.
He was just, no, he was all business.
Speaker: He never saw him out in the joints. Cork was all out in the joints all the time, man. You probably knew him well. Were you,
Speaker 2: were you from Ohio originally?
Speaker: Who me?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: No, [00:31:00] I, I grew up right here.
Speaker 2: Where’s right here? I dunno where you are?
Speaker: Kansas City. Kansas City. Where I am now.
Speaker 2: Okay, well there you go.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well you’re close enough. Kansas City. Hello?
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Cork was out in the joints all the time. Did you know their nephew, Butch, who ended up out there in Las Vegas and, and
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. He came out, he came to my club a lot. I liked Butchy.
Speaker: Did he? Yeah.
Speaker 2: I dunno if he’s alive anymore.
Speaker: No, I understand. He is in a nursing home now.
Speaker 2: What shame
Speaker: and, and I think he’s back Kansas. He’d be a little older than
Speaker 2: me.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. He’s gotta be closer to 90. He was several years older than me. I remember him. He was never really part of it. The the,
Speaker 2: oh no. They kept him clean.
Speaker: Yeah. He ran joints for him.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker: Here’s, here’s a good story about him. The IRS wanted to get him so bad. That they took a, a, an undercovered him up, put him in as a bouncer and a doorman, and he. Let him in one night and they got all the records [00:32:00] ’cause they wanted to make his IRS case on him. And the only thing they found was that he was not declaring the cash money that they were handing to the doorman.
He was charging like a $2. $2, cover charge or something like that. Just some modicum of, you know, a little bit of money cover charge to keep some of the riffraff out. And he didn’t declare that’s the only thing they could get. So they ended up filing a case on him and of course it got kicked out pretty quick.
So he was, he was clean. He, they kept him out of it.
Speaker 2: What a gentleman too. Very
Speaker: nice guy. Yeah, nice guy. People seem to like him. So what else would you want people to know outta this book? When they get it?
Speaker 2: The book the interesting thing, one of the catchy things that we did on the cover note is that Scorsese got it wrong with Tony and Michael Spilotro.
Because as you know, in the movie, they got beat to death in Indiana in a court field. Yeah, well, on the Sunday [00:33:00] night before they got killed, Tony Scho hated me. He, they Chicago sent him to watch the Stardust and all that in Vegas. And I never got along with the guy. He’s a little short guy. That’s why they call him the an, I had all kinds of broads.
I had 86 girls working for him in my club and I wouldn’t let him in ’cause he was in the black book. I said, I can’t let you in here.
Speaker: Yeah,
Speaker 2: you were in the black book. For your audience that don’t know, if you’re in a black book, you can’t go into a gaming decision. I could lose my
Speaker: license. You can’t even walk inside.
Can’t even go into the coffee shop. Right.
Speaker 2: Right. So he always had me at the end of his nose. So the night before on a Saturday night, he comes to my club about four in the morning and he wanted to come in. He was drunk. I said, you can’t come in. He says, right, there’s nobody in here. I says, I can’t let you in.
I, and I locked the door on him.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker 2: That Sunday night, he machine gunned my house.
Speaker: Oh really?
Speaker 2: My house on La Paloma Avenue. Yeah. He [00:34:00] got some guys to come up from San Diego and they cut my house in half because he knew I had my Sunday dinners. Thank God my house was built on a little knoll, so they were shooting up.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker 2: but what he didn’t realize, Rex Bell, who was the district attorney in Nevada, was my neighbor. They didn’t get off the block. They gave him up in two minutes.
Speaker: Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I call, I called Chicago. I said to I, I never talked to, I never talked to any anybody, but you know the old man. And I said, Tony, the guy’s getting crazy now you shot up my house.
He said, I heard about it. He said, come in on Wednesday. So I get to the airport O’Hare and who picks me up is Frank Colada.
Speaker: Oh
Speaker 2: really? Who I knew was with him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He part of that Vulner war gang. And I’m saying as well, wait a minute, maybe they’re doing the [00:35:00] switch here. Maybe I’m gonna get whacked. Really?
Well you see him, but the only good grace that they had, another guy, Frankie b Frankie, be that I knew. So we, you know, I, I get and. We walked to the car, they opened the door, they put me in the back. I said, well, they’re not gonna choke me. I thought I was, you know, gonna do another collar with which, you know,
Speaker: the old
Speaker 2: Frank next day,
Speaker: and they
Speaker 2: near the Leiden Motel.
We get to a residential house. There’s a couple of cars out it, it’s maybe midnight now. We go down, we get into the house, we go downstairs, and I could smell the stench. They had the tarps up Michael, who had nothing to do with his brother at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah,
Speaker 2: a nice kid, Michael Citro, how they lured Tony to Chicago.
They said, Michael’s gonna be made, you’re getting too much attention and you’re gonna be [00:36:00] his underboss and we want you to sponsor him. So he came. They were stripped nude, shackled to chairs and Joe Batters, I don’t know if you know, that’s how he got the name. He liked beating up bodyguard for Capone. He used baseball bats.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So all they were doing, not all they were doing, they broke every bone in their bodies. And Tony wanted me to see this, and I’m saying, I don’t wanna see this
Speaker 4: really,
Speaker 2: you know, and just to smell alone. I don’t want to get vulgar, but just imagine
Speaker 4: who,
Speaker 2: but anyway, then Tony calls me out of a whisper ’cause he catch me at, at the corner of his eye and I go over close enough and Colorado’s stopping me.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And he said, tell him to kill my brother. He didn’t do nothing. And I said, I can’t say anything. And I walked back and then I laughed. And then [00:37:00] that’s when they brought him to Indiana and buried him. But it was terrible.
Speaker: Yeah. It was, it was a hard, tough way to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: I know the, I know the autopsy said that they’d really been beaten bad.
I didn’t know the extent of it, but the autopsy for sure said they’d been beaten bad. No,
Speaker 2: there, I don’t think it was a, a bone that wasn’t broken.
Speaker: Crazy, crazy, crazy. All right, Johnny Russo. The book is Untold Tales from the Hollywood Godfather Mafia Secrets, with, Michael Benson. I really appreciate you coming on the show, Johnny.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you man. Always. Anytime. All my, my and great pleasure. I’ll send you a book. I wanna sign it and send
Speaker: it. I got one. I got one. I don’t have a signed one though.
Speaker 2: Alright.
Speaker: I got one, but I don’t have a signed one. Soll send, feel free to send me a signed one. Send. All right.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, everybody out there.
God bless you all.
Speaker: All right. All right, Johnny. Thanks for coming on. Alright, I’ll see [00:38:00] you.