Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS | More
In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with author Jay Baer to explore the hidden, human side of organized crime’s biggest names — Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, John Gotti, and Paul Castellano.
Jay’s book, Mob Life: The Private World of Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellano, takes a unique look beyond the murders, rackets, and headlines to reveal how these mobsters actually lived — what they ate, how they dressed, their relationships with religion, and how they handled immense power and wealth.
Listeners will hear:
How Al Capone’s family sold his spaghetti sauce recipe to Ragu — their first commercial product.
Why Meyer Lansky, the most devout of the four, was denied the right to die in Israel by Prime Minister Golda Meir.
The lavish lifestyle and fatal missteps of Paul Castellano, the “Howard Hughes of the Mafia.” The contrast between Gotti’s flamboyance and Lansky’s low profile — and how each approach shaped their downfall.
The staggering fortunes these men built — and how, in the end, they all lost it.
Jay also shares his own lifelong fascination with organized crime, his career outside writing, and his upcoming project, How to Live Like a Gangster — No Prison Required, a look at mob values like loyalty, respect, and power through a modern lens.
Gary and Jay swap mob history from New York to Kansas City, including a discussion of the real story behind scenes from Casino and Kansas City’s own underworld power struggles.
ON AMAZON Wayne said
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Facts on the Mob
Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2021Format: Kindle
If your looking for a good fast interesting read on the Mafia, this is the book for you. Full of information on mob types that most have no clue about.
You can’t lose with this book I believe.
🎧 Listen now to uncover the side of the mob you’ve never heard before.
📘 Get the book: Mob Life: The Private World of Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellano by Jay Robert Baer on Amazon
00:00 – Intro: Gary Jenkins welcomes Jay Baer 01:00 – Why Jay wrote Mob Life and his lifelong fascination with gangsters
03:30 – From detailing cars to writing true crime books
05:30 – Gary and Jay’s early mob reading influences
07:00 – Researching Al Capone’s private life
08:00 – Capone’s secret spaghetti sauce recipe sold to Ragu
09:00 – John Gotti’s love for Cracker Barrel and biscuits & gravy
10:00 – Meyer Lansky’s religious life and denied burial in Israel
12:00 – Castellano’s wealth, arrogance, and fall 14:00 – Jay’s next book: How to Live Like a Gangster — No Prison Required
15:00 – Loyalty and respect in the mob vs. business life
16:00 – How Castellano’s aloofness led to his murder
18:00 – The real Joe Watts story — the German who made millions
20:00 – Gary shares Kansas City mob stories and Casino connections
23:00 – The failed car bombing of underboss Tuffy DeLuna
25:00 – The Mob Museum and modern mob myths
26:00 – Jay shows his book Mob Life and shares fun mob trivia 28:00 – How much money mob bosses really made — and lost
30:00 – Why law enforcement didn’t chase mob money before the drug era
31:00 – Joe Massino’s $10 million cash and gold surrender
32:00 – Final thoughts: The mob’s empire always ends the same way
Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.
Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire
Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee”
To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here
To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.
To purchase one of my books, click here.
Transcript
Gary Jenkins: Well, hey, all you wire tappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. You know, I’m a retired Kansas City police intelligence unit detective and I am now a mob historian and with the podcast and a few other things, some books and stuff out there.
Gary Jenkins: And I interview other mob authors as well as research stories. And today I have an author named Jay Bear. He has written a book about the mob, a really good, solid, historical, factually true book as kind of a basis for a novel he wants to write. So Jay, welcome.
Jay Baer: Oh, thank you. I’m, I’m happy to be here.
Jay Baer: This is really great. So I’m looking forward to this interview.
Gary Jenkins: All right, Jay. Well, you know, we, we like the mob here and we like the the facts about the mob. When I read about your book, that’s, that’s when I got hold of you. I thought, well, this is so interesting. It is Mob life, the private world of [00:01:00] Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellano.
Gary Jenkins: And what did Al Capone wear? How much did it cost? Where did he buy it? You know, what, what kind of Italian, right? What kind of, what kind of food did Gotti like besides Italian and, and that kind of a thing. So I, that, that was really interesting, those esoteric little details that we don’t really know usually.
Jay Baer: What I wanted to do is I wanted to tell a different story. Everybody writes books about their crimes and law enforcement’s effort to put them away. We’ve heard all that. So this was like something I wanted to do for years. Let me just tell a different story. And I did, and the book is filled with, you know what?
Jay Baer: How much money they made, what they, how they dressed religious views really. Which there wasn’t very much in religious views except for May Lansky. The rest of them were, even, even Paul Castellano, the the bishop did not wanna bury him in a Catholic, in, in a Catholic cemetery. And they fought him on it and they got him to do it.
Jay Baer: [00:02:00] But yeah, none of ’em had really any religious views except for, may Lansky.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Jay Baer: He went to synagogue on a regular basis. He belonged, he did a lot of stuff, you know, during the war to help you know, catch the Nazis.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Jay Baer: In fact, there’s a book out there, an older book with called Luciano’s Luck and it’s about their, what they did and how they got involved in the, you know, world War ii.
Gary Jenkins: Interesting. Yeah, I had heard that. I’ve never really, I talked to one guy, an author that had a book really about the, more about the Navy guy that approached Luciano in prison and then worked with this guy named Sox Sox Lanza, who had the Fulton Street Fish market in, in trying to gather information about any possible Nazi saboteurs.
Gary Jenkins: But I’ve never really got into that. Mayor Lansky area. So Jay, tell us a little bit about where you come from. You’re not, you’re not a career author. Sometimes I have guys that that’s all they ever done. They’ve been newspaper reporters and written books and stuff. Tell us a little [00:03:00] bit about yourself.
Jay Baer: Well, I’m from New York based, you know, originally you can probably tell with my voice, you know, forget about it and all that stuff. I knew you were from north of me. Where are you? Kansas, Missouri. Oh, okay. So. My father moved us down here to Florida, like, oh my God. 1972, and I’ve been here ever since. So, but I, I de, I started detailing cars when I was 28, and I’ve been doing that ever since and it’s, you know, brought me, right now I’m kind of like, I only work in the mornings, you know, I’m almost 70, so I’m kind of like maybe semi-retired.
Jay Baer: Yeah. But I’m never gonna retire because, I gotta find something to do all the time. So I write, and right now, you know, I wrote this book, mob Life and I wrote a book before that called Angels of Death. It’s about two girls who are on the run for murder and they become killers for hire and realize they’re in love with each other.
Jay Baer: And I also wrote a nonfiction book about public speaking ’cause I [00:04:00] used to teach public speaking. I’m a distinguished Toastmaster. I did a lot of speaking over the years. I taught hundreds of people how to overcome their fear of speaking. So I wrote, I, I took my course and I put it into a book.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Jay Baer: It was only a very short book.
Jay Baer: ’cause you know, people don’t need a lot. I don’t think people need a lot of information to be successful, but I’ve always been interested in gangsters ever since I was a kid. You know, my, my friends were listening to The Beatles. I was reading books about. Capone and May Lansky. So there’s something about them that always intrigued me, their power, the women, the way that they just controlled so much, you know, they’re very powerful men.
Jay Baer: And it’s just something I’ve kept, kept on for, oh my God, since 35 years. No, 55 years. Ever since I was a kid, 15 years old, I’ve been interested in gangsters. So, and I decided, hey, it’s time to write about ’em. [00:05:00]
Gary Jenkins: Interesting. You know what just outta teens in my teens, I first read my first. True Crime book, which was in Cold Blood by Truman Capote.
Gary Jenkins: And man, that book, I was hooked then in that true crime. And so I was, I was in junior college right outta high school and, and I found green was it Greenfeld Jungle? By Ova DeMars. It was all about the mob in Las Vegas. It was. Thick, real dense book, but, but I bought into it, man, I, I love that book. I devoured that book.
Gary Jenkins: I, I read one by a guy named Ken, a New York City detective named I think it was Joe Erno or Tony Tony Erno, I can’t remember his erno and read that. And he really. You know, made these gangsters come alive in that book back then. And I remember even, even back then, I thought, boy, that veto genovese, that was a bad, that’s a bad dude.
Gary Jenkins: So they I understand. I got hooked on it early myself.
Jay Baer: Oh, that was a nonfiction book.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Right. Oh, okay.
Jay Baer: Yeah. You know, there’s a, there’s a lot of stuff [00:06:00] out there like that. I mean, fiction, like, I’m, I’m, I’m rereading The Godfather ’cause I like the way Mario Puzo writes.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Jay Baer: And I also listen to it, you know, so I’m learning, I’m learning from that.
Jay Baer: And I also I, I like to read Elmore Leonard.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Jay Baer: You ever read any of his stuff? He’s got, yeah, he’s a good one. I started, I started reading him because that’s what Quentin Tarantino learned how to write by reading his books.
Gary Jenkins: Mm-hmm.
Gary Jenkins: Interesting. So this book about private World of Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellanos now, like Al Capo, where, where did you go?
Gary Jenkins: How did, how did you start researching. Information on Al Capone. And what are some of the interesting things? You know, we all know a lot of the public things and the myths. We know more myths than the real life things. I think like the old myth about him beating two guys to death with a baseball bat and some different things like that.
Gary Jenkins: So how’d you go about working on Al Capone and what are some of the interesting things you learned about Al?
Jay Baer: What I, [00:07:00] what I did was is I had about 11 different, I think the, I think I have 11 different chapters. I’m pretty sure that’s it. And I focus on one thing at a time, and I researched all of them. So like when I was doing food, ah, I mean now we have ai, but when I wrote that there was no ai, so I’d put in John Gotti food, hashtag whatever, you know, I, I did, there’s a lot of ways to.
Jay Baer: To research on Google. Mm-hmm. And so I would look it up and I’d find stuff about them. And I, I went on encyclopedia that’s online. There’s a lot of good stuff in there. And I just researched and I spent months doing it.
Jay Baer: You know, I do it at night after working and it’s, it was a lot of work, but I, you know, I enjoyed it. And what I found out about Capone was different thing, well, I’ll give you something really unique about him. He, he had a walnut spaghetti sauce. It was his recipe.
Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
Jay Baer: And when [00:08:00] he died, his sister Mafi sold it to Ragu and it was their first sauce they ever made.
Jay Baer: Interesting. And he, he was a, he was a heck of a dresser. He he had like lime suits and purple suits and he had Oh, really? Stuff made for him for down here when he lived here. And I found out all these things about him. What he, you know, I, I don’t remember much about what he liked to eat. It was usually Italian, you know.
Jay Baer: And the thing about John Gotti that I always about the food that I always find interesting is he was in a cracker Barrel one time with a friend. And a reporter came over to him and said, what are you guys doing here? You’re Italian. And his friend said, how much Italian food can a guy eat? And and Gotti liked to eat biscuits and gravy with a country fried steak, but his favorite Italian food was eggplant tini.[00:09:00]
Jay Baer: These little things you find out. Yeah. And that’s why I wrote the book. ’cause I, you know, something different, something unique so people could s see a different side of them. Instead of, you know, looking at all the murders they created, all the people that they had whacked, I figured it was, you know, time to find something else for them to know about.
Gary Jenkins: So talking, you, you mentioned something about when we were talking about their spiritual life and their relationship with the church and, and I know in, in Kansas City when our mob boss died, Nick Novella, there was a big hubbub among the Catholic church if he could be buried in the church and if what priest was gonna conduct the ceremony.
Gary Jenkins: And, and in the end he was buried in the church. And, and, and they I know actually know the young priest. He was a real young priest that. You know, he wasn’t he, he wasn’t even old enough I think maybe when the mob was really rocking and rolling in Kansas City to, to be that affected by it. And, and so he conducted the ceremony.
Gary Jenkins: So what did you learn about that? You, me, something about Lansky’s pretty connected to a synagogue and, [00:10:00] and that kind of thing?
Jay Baer: Well, you know, Lansky was probably the most religious out of these four men, but he did belong to a synagogue and that’s where he met. No, he met. Arnold Rothstein at a bar mitzvah.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Jay Baer: And that’s when Rothstein took him under his wing. They met at like the Park Avenue Hotel and they just talked for us like six hours. And then he bankrolled Lansky and Luciano during prohibition. See Rothstein. You ever read a book about him? No, I haven’t. Haven’t. Very interesting. You should check him out.
Jay Baer: ’cause they call him the father of the mafia Uhhuh because he was the one that started bankrolling these guys so they could you know, sell booze. And he had the booze brought in from England and when it got here they would cut it with cheaper stuff. They made millions, millions and millions. But he always kept himself out of everything.
Jay Baer: He ran it. No connection. [00:11:00] He just made sure that he was never involved with what he had going on. Other people had to take the fall. So and your question, so, well, you know, Lansky wanted to die in Israel and Goda Maier, who was the Prime Minister then said no. And she basically kicked him out of the country.
Jay Baer: She didn’t want him there. And his, his life, that was his, that’s what was his dream to die in Israel. But she made sure it never happened.
Gary Jenkins: Wow. Seemed like the TRO brothers up in Chicago when they found their bodies that I believe with with Tony, I don’t think they could get a, a, a church to to approve of that one.
Gary Jenkins: His, his brother Michael. They may have, but that’s, that’s been a constant ongoing kind of a theme. Between the church, especially the Catholic church and the Italian mafia, somebody is, is so prominent that it’s like then Lansky and gold. My ear is so prominent, she even [00:12:00] stopped his right of return because every Jew has a right of return to Israel and she denied that based on, really, based on myth and headlines and stuff.
Gary Jenkins: She didn’t, you know, there he’d never really taken a conviction. Come on.
Jay Baer: Well, from what I read about him, the only time he was in prison was in upstate New York, and it was just a gambling charge. He went to jail for two months. He was too smart to get put away.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah.
Jay Baer: He wasn’t flamboyant like Gotti. He didn’t want anybody seeing him.
Jay Baer: Even when he walked his dog, he just did it and then he went home. He didn’t want pe, he didn’t wanna make a a, a scene where, you know, got, Gotti would go into. Restaurants and throw kisses at people, you know? So he didn’t keep a low profile and that was one of the things that led to his downfall, I think.
Gary Jenkins: Oh, got, he’s, yeah. Oh yeah. No doubt about it. And law enforcement can only take so much when a guy keeps throwing it up your face, he’s get there. I tell you what, I used to watch these guys, and I think [00:13:00] if you only knew. The array of forces that were written ready to come down on you, you wouldn’t be doing this stuff.
Gary Jenkins: But somehow they don’t care. They’re different.
Jay Baer: They, they, you know, I’ve been writing in my new book that they just didn’t care. They knew what the life was like. They knew the consequences and they did it anyway. And they all did the same thing. I mean, all of ’em were either put in prison or they died.
Jay Baer: Some of ’em died of natural causes like Banana and Lansky. There wasn’t many. Oh, and Gambino Carlo, he died of natural causes. I know he went to prison, but that’s the fate and they know it, and they, like I said, they actually don’t care. They just lived a life.
Speaker 3: Hmm. And,
Jay Baer: and some of ’em got out like, you know, banana.
Jay Baer: Like I said, he got out, he lived, he moved to Arizona and he lived the rest of his life there. So, but not many of ’em have done that.
Gary Jenkins: No, not many of ’em. Such a strong way of [00:14:00] life. And you mentioned, you mentioned your next book that you’re working on is gonna be how to live like a mobster. And so what did you , glean from these guys here?
Gary Jenkins: How they live like a mobster that was success, made them successful or work for them. .
Jay Baer: How to live like a gangster.
Jay Baer: No prison required. Yeah. I’ve got some things about these guys, but it’s gonna go deeper than that. I’m gonna use other gangsters. There’s a lot of information out there, especially now with ai. You can just pick stuff up in seconds. I mean, I could, you could even have write the whole thing if you want, but I don’t do that.
Jay Baer: Yeah, don’t do that. I like to put my own stuff. Yeah, no, and it doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t come out well anyway. No, but you know, one of the things I’m looking at in that book is loyalty and respect. You know, loyalty was a big thing, but you know what, that’s, that’s the same in regular business. You have to be loyal.
Jay Baer: You have to show respect to your boss, and if you’re the boss, you know, you have to show respect to your employees. But the, you know, the difference is [00:15:00] in the mob, if you screw up, you get dead. In regular life, you just get fired. So you know, it’s a big difference. Yeah. But you know, everybody, even the soldiers, they know it.
Jay Baer: They going in, they know I can screw up. Bam, you’re gone. So that’s just, you know, and if you don’t want that kind of life, that’s fine, then stay out of it. But you know what they say, once you’re in, you’re in. That’s it. You’re not getting out.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. And, and that brings to mind Paul Castellano. That was one that was a mistake he made.
Gary Jenkins: He, he stayed so aloof from the street guys and even the, the capos that they became jealous of him. And, and so the way he lived his life, he lived in this huge mansion that he would have him come in once in a while, but he, he didn’t come down to the club anymore and he had this different life and his clothes and everything.
Gary Jenkins: What did you learn about Paul Castellano’s life?
Jay Baer: Well, you know, he was just like you said, [00:16:00] he, there’s a, there’s a big part in the book about how he had friends, like the guy that started the grocery store what’s it called? IRA Wall Baum Wall Baum Wall Baum G groceries. He was good friends with him.
Jay Baer: He was friends with Frank Purdue. He helped Frank Purdue get his chickens in the grocery. Of course, probably not for free, but he did. He was friends with a, a woman who owned a it was like a, a lumber company. So he hung around with them instead of hanging around with his own men. And people got tired of it, especially Gaia.
Jay Baer: And what I heard, I don’t know but Castellano found out that. Gotti’s brother was selling drugs and he was gonna whack him, but Gotti got to him first. See, that was the thing. If he would’ve acted on it right away, that would’ve been it. That would’ve been the end of it. And he, I mean, he might be in prison now, but he may still be alive, [00:17:00] but he screwed up and he didn’t, I guess he didn’t fear Gotti as much as he should have.
Jay Baer: Mm-hmm. You know, let’s face it, a lot of these guys get to the point where they think they’re invincible.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah.
Jay Baer: And. Well, you know what happened to him? Yeah. You wanna hear a funny, you wanna hear a funny story about that?
Jay Baer: Joe Watts went one day, went to Castellano’s house and said, I am cooking on a really big re real estate deal. You want in. So I. Castano says, yeah, you know, I’ll give you like 6 million. So he is walking to the door with Thomas bti and BTI says to him, Hey, the boss has plenty of money.
Jay Baer: Why don’t you count me in? He goes, yeah, no problem. So a couple days later he goes, he picks up $8 million or 7 million total. I think it was 7 million total. Five from Castellano, two from Bella. And you know, you know who Joe Watts was? He was on the backup team to kill Castellano. Yeah. [00:18:00] He wasn’t one of the, the, the four, he was backup.
Jay Baer: So he knew they gonna get whacked. Guy made himself $7 million like that, like that. And then, and then Gotti gave him Pilate’s, black book. He made, made millions and more dollars. And the guy’s still alive. He’s like in
Gary Jenkins: his eighties. Yeah. I think he, maybe he just got outta jail or maybe he’s still in prison.
Gary Jenkins: I can’t remember they call him. No, no, you’re right. He, he got out a while back. That’s what I thought. Yeah, that’s
Jay Baer: it. That’s
Gary Jenkins: him. It’d be a great interview the German to get him on. Joe. Anybody out there know Joe, the German? Give him a call. Tell him I wanna have him on the show.
Jay Baer: Smart guy. That takes though.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. You know, think
Jay Baer: about it. If Castellano would’ve found out,
Gary Jenkins: yeah,
Jay Baer: he would’ve made it. He would’ve made it down the street.
Gary Jenkins: Well, let’s breed man. I’ve heard of that before where they know somebody’s gonna get hit and then they Joe Macino did this and then he went to the guy and got him to a bunch [00:19:00] of money out of him that he was gonna, you know, have to pay him back.
Gary Jenkins: And then, but they know they’re gonna get hit, so that’s yeah. Yeah. Bob Life. Huh? Bob Life. Yeah. How to, how to live like a mobster a gangster. Don’t don’t be loaning anybody any money. ’cause anybody that’s dangerous.
Jay Baer: Yeah. But you know what’s kind of funny about that is people should know when they’ve screwed up and they’re gonna come after them.
Jay Baer: I don’t know how they always get like whacked. They just don’t believe it. I don’t, I don’t get it. I mean, me, if I knew my life was in danger, I’d pack my crop and go, man. Exactly. I
Gary Jenkins: would not be hanging out on those same streets. I would not be holding, keeping that same pattern that I usually keep. I, I, I don’t get it.
Gary Jenkins: I don’t get it at all. And we’ve seen it here in Kansas City, never big city. You know, they know that somebody’s after ’em, but yet they continue to do the same things. They keep the same patterns. [00:20:00] Over and over and over and really take very little precautions. I, I don’t know.
Jay Baer: So Kansas, Kansas City, was the, they filmed a part of casino with those guys that
Gary Jenkins: Yeah.
Jay Baer: In the market is was that real?
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Well, they didn’t actually. Yeah. And they did actually film that in Kansas City, that that sequence of events happened. But it was in a bar and, and there was a bug there. But, and, and they didn’t pick up exactly everything that, what they used, but it was, it is somewhat along those lines, but yeah, it was, it was just, wasn’t in a market.
Gary Jenkins: Everybody thinks that was a, everybody’s in Kansas City was trying to, oh, that was Jamaica’s, or that was Orlando’s, or it was this market or that market. But I know for a fact it was in a, a pizza joint called the Villa Capri, which is more of a neighborhood tavern.
Jay Baer: Was there a guy like Remo out there?
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Oh yeah. That was, I think that was the toughie doing that was our underboss and, and he handled for Arc family, he handled. All that Las Vegas business. He made the contacts with people. He talked to him on [00:21:00] the phone, you know, and he would carry the information to our boss, Nick, and say, okay, what, here’s what they’re telling me.
Gary Jenkins: What do you want to do? If there’s a decision to be made, you know, what do you want me to do? And then he’d get back with a guy in Las Vegas. They’re, they’re kind of their mole out in Las Vegas. And, and so he was, he did his underboss job there. He insulated the boss. From these people that were on the streets in LA in the casino in Las Vegas to do that.
Gary Jenkins: So yeah, that, that’s all true. And they did have a big meeting with Chicago to decide how to cut up things. And there’s a lot of Nicholas pledging in that movie. I’m getting off on my own story in a way, but Nicholas pledging that movie. He came to Kansas City and he spent about three days with a case agent on that, who also took a lot of documents and things home.
Gary Jenkins: And, and so he went through all that and, and really gathered. The background information from primary sources to put into his book and the, and the screenplay. They just for the screenplay, you know. Okay. They gotta they gotta change things around.
Jay Baer: Yeah. Yeah. ’cause they, [00:22:00] they have to cut 500 page, book four.
Jay Baer: Oh, page book.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah.
Jay Baer: They gotta put it into 120 page screenplay.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah, that’s for sure. It’s tough. But,
Jay Baer: One of the things I like that Remo said, and I use it all the time, why take a chance? Yeah. That’s how he said when they, when they were whacking everybody. Yeah. And they were saying, you know, this guy’s a good guy and he’s a good guy.
Jay Baer: And Rema was like, well, I take a chance. That’s how I look at it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Gary Jenkins: I got killed. Yeah. Well, he ended up dying in prison a after that. Really. I’ve just been working on a book myself and, and part of it is about the time that they tried to plant a bomb underneath his car. He is so lucky. Jay’s so lucky that they had a remote control.
Gary Jenkins: Ated bomb. They put it underneath his car. They watched him come out and get in it, and then as soon as he got in, they started hitting the, the switch and it wouldn’t go [00:23:00] off because the antenna wasn’t quite long enough to make the connection to the receiving unit on the bomb. And they had to run up and get the bomb and the plastic air paper back and go back and experiment with it.
Gary Jenkins: Were they
Jay Baer: trying, who were they trying to kill? Remo?
Gary Jenkins: Yeah, the Remo character. Tuffy de Luna. That was in real, I was in real life here in Kansas City. Yeah. Okay. That wasn’t, and none of that was in the movie casino at all. There was a mob war going on while all that stuff was going on in Las Vegas, we had a inner family conflict in Kansas City that they were killing each other off right and left for a while.
Jay Baer: Oh, really? I don’t know. Well, I, I’ve always focused mainly on New York.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah.
Jay Baer: Yeah. There’s, there’s, I mean, there’s a lot of mob, you know? Have you ever been to the, the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. I have,
Gary Jenkins: yeah, twice actually. It’s really good. It’s, it is worth the trip. It is, it’s worth the 35, 40.
Jay Baer: There’s like a hundred pictures of gang gangsters, people you never even heard of.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah.
Jay Baer: Yeah. I, I really enjoyed that. I spent, I went downstairs to [00:24:00] the still. Did you do that?
Gary Jenkins: No, I didn’t. I don’t, I don’t know if it was there yet or something. I can’t remember, but no, I didn’t, I didn’t go down to the, the bar. They have a bar or something downstairs?
Jay Baer: Well, they, they have a bar and they have their own, they make moonshine, but it’s a modern steel and they, they sell the booth to all the restaurants.
Jay Baer: So I went down there, you know, you pay the lecture and you get these little cups. These little tiny cups Yeah. Of booze. And so he asked a question. The guy that was talking, he said, does anybody know who the Flamingo was named after? So I raised my hand and he goes, who is it? I said, it was Virginia Hill.
Jay Baer: He goes, oh wow, we have a gangster in the room here. People at my table got a extra drink of Peach Moonshot. What? What was the, lemme do that
Gary Jenkins: again. What was the question again?
Jay Baer: Who was the flamingo named after?
Gary Jenkins: Oh, okay. Yeah, I, yeah, Virginia Hill. I couldn’t have called that one up off the top of my head, but I had heard that before.
Gary Jenkins: That’s a [00:25:00] good, he got a gangster among us here. Somebody knows his gangster history.
Jay Baer: You wanna, do you want, you want me to show the book?
Gary Jenkins: Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, let’s see it. Book, its Folks Mob Life, the private world of Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellano by Jay Bear, actually Jay, Robert Bear. . I’ll have a link in the show notes to the Amazon link if you want to get that book. Okay. And I’ll have Cool, I’ll have a link to Jay’s Facebook page too. So our Facebook group, if you wanna get onto that, it’s
Jay Baer: also it’s also on, it’s on audio and it’s, and it’s ebook, it’s all three.
Jay Baer: Yeah. You can get all three of it. So and it’s, it is, it’s a short audio, like an hour and a half, you know. Mm-hmm. I found a guy on five who did a really nice job.
Gary Jenkins: What’s one last thing that you found the most interesting in their kind of private personal lives that people might not know?
Gary Jenkins: What, what, what would you want to tell us about there?
Jay Baer: [00:26:00] Well, I thought the food thing was pretty interesting, but what really became interesting was the money they made, the millions. I mean, John Al Capone was worth over a hundred million dollars when he was 23 years old. Hmm. That was in the twenties. You know what that’s worth today? Yeah. Oh my God. I couldn’t even imagine that meeting today.
Jay Baer: He, he had, he owned a building where they cut out the second store story. So they could put a gigantic vat of beer.
Speaker 4: Hmm.
Jay Baer: That’s how smart this guy was. And they, you know, he owned brothels also, which to me, there’s nothing wrong with that. You know, it’s like you are, you are giving a service. He owned brothels and he did that, and actually he took all that over from Johnny Torrio because they tried to kill him.
Jay Baer: So he handed everything over to Capone and he retired. Then I think like four or five years later, he died of a heart attack.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Jay Baer: But I found that what they made the kind of money when when Sammy the Bull wrote that book, my [00:27:00] boss
Gary Jenkins: mm-hmm.
Jay Baer: The Underboss, it was called Under Boss. Underboss.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah, underboss.
Jay Baer: He was on an interview with Diane Sawyer and she said, what did you guys, what happened to all your money? And he said, nothing. We still have our money.
Jay Baer: They didn’t want our money. They wanted us, and they found out, I said, how, well, how much did you make? He goes, I think he said he made like five or 6 million a year where Gotti was making like 10 or 20, $30 million a year. It was cash. It was all cash. They had duffle bags full of cash in their basements.
Jay Baer: So that’s the thing I found out that I found, you know, interesting. And they, they had, they were persistent men. They weren’t just guys that were like you know, we’ll just go to work today. They weren to work. They worked the streets. They were street men. They knew how to handle things. They knew how to make money.
Jay Baer: Especially Castellano, you know, he was called the Howard Hughes of the mafia. He was so smart. But they all, I think all of ’em were like that. Lansky made millions. [00:28:00] They all made millions and millions of dollars. But you know what, in the end it was all gone.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah.
Jay Baer: Every one of ’em lost everything.
Gary Jenkins: I’ve noticed, I’ve noticed that.
Gary Jenkins: I have people ask me about that and I say, you know, I, I don’t know. I, I don’t know whatever happened to their money. I know a lot. Nicks of El made a lot of money. They were bringing 40 grand a month just out of the Tropicana. That was not even out of part of the Stardust, hacienda Frontier, and there was another one in there.
Gary Jenkins: And, and that was just for him. And then he split, he split a lot of it up among his men, and that’s what these mob bosses do. Some of ’em, the good ones will split it up among their their maid guys that they can depend on have depended on for a long time. But back in those days, Jay, the law enforcement before drugs, before cocaine hit and all that money hit, the government didn’t really go.
Gary Jenkins: Tooth and nail after the money. They, if they got the guy, like you said, if they got the guy, then they [00:29:00] just moved on. That was enough. They didn’t really go try to run down the money and, and trace it down after cocaine hit and all that drug money hit, then they, the government started going after money and then we developed whole units, you know, the, the civil forfeiture unit and had civil for forfeiture laws, state and federal that were not really in place before.
Gary Jenkins: So, so that’s why government, they just didn’t care about the money.
Jay Baer: What did you say earlier? What did you, you were a police officer?
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. A
Jay Baer: detective,
Gary Jenkins: yeah. Here in Kansas City.
Jay Baer: My son just my son was with a city called Margate in Fort Lauderdale, and he just retired, not retired. He went to work for Monroe County, the Keys, and he became a he’s head of emergency management.
Gary Jenkins: No, that’d be a good job.
Jay Baer: Well, it’s better than he’s, he does not have a bullseye on his back anymore. But he was the detective for what, for like the last two years and what I was, you know, they, I was Do you ever listen to that podcast? It’s called Law and [00:30:00] Order.
Gary Jenkins: I don’t think so. Who does it
Jay Baer: check that out?
Jay Baer: Because they they would, they, one of the last ones I listened to, this is their second year Law and order. It’s a podcast and, i, I listened to one where they, they were getting Joe Massino, I think that’s his name.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah.
Jay Baer: And they, Joe was a
Gary Jenkins: bonno. They,
Jay Baer: they stopped using Rico. They said Rico was not working anymore.
Jay Baer: So you know what they did? They hired like a dozen accountants. Yeah. And they went after me. Yeah. And you know how they got ’em? They found a guy in New York that owned a bunch of parking lots, right?
Gary Jenkins: Mm-hmm.
Jay Baer: And you know the story.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. I, I did a whole two or three parts series on Joe Macino in that parking lot guy.
Gary Jenkins: And he, he was like kicking money to their wives and, and they started tracing through their wives and all that. Joe Macino gave up. This is solid numbers. This is not meth. He gave up like $10 million in cash and Gold Bull in when he made his [00:31:00] deal in the end to save himself for life in prison or the death penalty.
Jay Baer: Oh, he did?
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. That
Jay Baer: I didn’t, that I didn’t say.
Gary Jenkins: That’s, that’s the one case I know of where. Factually, law enforcement or anybody actually saw the money that these guys claim to have, and, and he had it. So it’s out there. I don’t know what they do with it.
Jay Baer: Did you ever hear of the, this guy, his name was Slu, C-E-F-A-L-U.
Jay Baer: He was a Gambino boss.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Jay Baer: And I don’t think he’s ever gone to prison. Now, there was another guy after him called Marino, but you should check this guy ou because, he was there for a while and but you know, again, in the end,
Speaker 4: yeah, yeah.
Jay Baer: We get it all. Just like they said in casino, in the end we get it all.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Juniors,
Jay Baer: juniors college fund, the house payment, we get everything. Yeah. Interesting. [00:32:00] Alright, well this has been great. I really appreciate the opportunity
Gary Jenkins: Jay Bear, I really appreciate you coming on the show, Jay.
Gary Jenkins: All right, thank you. All right.