Pasqualina Albano

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Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. In this episode of Gangland Wire, we talk with the niece of the Bootleg Queen of Springfield, MA, Gina Cunningham, and Justin Cascio of Mafia Geneology about the mafia in Springfield, Massachusetts. We explore bootlegging during Prohibition, Pasqualina Albano’s rise to power, rivalries with other mafia groups, and the unique presence of women in the male-dominated subculture. We learn how she married a man from the NYC Genovese family and how this led to the Genovese Family’s continuing presence and influence in Springfield. We discuss Pasqualina’s assassination, the impact of the documentary about her, and the importance of open conversations about family history.
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Transcript
[0:00] Welcome all you wiretappers out there back here in the studio of Gangland Wire.
I really appreciate y’all tuning in every week or maybe twice a week sometimes.
You know, I’ve got a show today about Springfield, Massachusetts.
Now, I’ve gotten several inquiries.
I think it was on my YouTube question and then on the Gangland Wire podcast Facebook page, which you guys ought to get on because we’ve got a huge, we’ve got 50,000 people on that thing with all Sharon Motley information.
But about Springfield and I didn’t know a lot about it and and then I happened to see I think maybe on Justin’s Justin Cascio’s website or he made it into a post or somehow I saw about this new documentary that our other guy other guest had Gina Cunningham who is a great niece of an early.

[0:48] Mob couple if you will a mob power couple in Springfield and so I thought you know let’s go go into this. She has a documentary.
Gina is a great niece of Albano, who was the bootleg queen of Springfield during Prohibition.
And Justin, of course, you guys know, runs the Mafia Genealogy Facebook page and website.
And he has a ton of great Mafia family connections stretching back to Sicily on his website. And he’s a real expert in that.
He has this great, I have to apologize to you on air here, Justin, that guy that stole your picture and wiped out your attribution to it and put it on my Facebook page or group.
So, you know, we took it off and then I posted a link to it and I noticed you’ve updated it. I think we’re all square on that, but he has a lot of great information.
And there’s this one photo he’s got that he made showing the five families in Manhattan and greater New York area and what their geographic outlines of the other domain would, as it were, would be.
So welcome, guys. I really appreciate y’all coming on the show. Thank you, Jerry.
So Gina, tell us a little bit about yourself personally and how you made this happen to make this documentary.
Gina Cunningham’s Personal Journey and Documentary Creation

[1:59] Okay, so my name’s Gina Cunningham. And obviously, when you hear Cunningham, you don’t think of an Italian American, but I’m half Italian American.
But I grew up in a totally 100% Italian American family.
And everything in my family was always a mystery, especially the the story of Pasqualina.
We knew that we had a great aunt Pasqualina, but we didn’t know anything about her.
My mother would take me to her grave where she would ask me to pray for Pasqualina.
But when I asked why I was praying for Pasqualina, I never got an answer.

[2:34] And as I went on in life and, you know, I kind of ran away from this life as soon as I could.
I went to New York City and kind of never came back.
And I’ve lived between New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, all of my adult life.
And I really never came back to Springfield because the life was a little confusing to me.
And it wasn’t the most creative feminist environment that I could be in.
But the story of pascalina was always something that i was thinking about and as i was growing up a lot of my relatives knew her now the only relative alive who knew pascalina was my uncle mario fiori who will turn 100 in june but i was able to get stories about pascalina from Mario, Uncle Mo, I call him.
And about 15 years ago, I started doing research in the Springfield Library, microfiche, microfilm.
I soon transferred my research to the internet and interviewing more distant relatives.

[3:45] And I realized there was a story and as Justin would put it, a cautionary tale here.
Yeah, it is. Anytime one of your relatives kind of strays over, you got the inside scoop on, strays over onto the dark side.
It’s a cautionary tale for the younger relatives. Like, you know, you may not want to repeat some of this behavior, but anyhow.
But now it’s kind of romantic, that whole prohibition and gangsters and, you know, Al Capone and Lucky Luciano and all that is pretty romantic right now. It’s just kind of some interesting turn of events.

[4:21] You know, Springfield, Massachusetts. So that’s not a place where we think of the mafia. We think of the outfit in Chicago.
I even think of over in Little Italy, Columbus Park area here in Kansas City, you know, Boston, Providence, Rhode Island, New York City, New Orleans.
The Mafia’s Presence in Springfield and Overview of Prohibition

[4:37] But don’t think about Springfield, Massachusetts. So Justin, tell us a little bit about an overview of the mob in Springfield, you know, up to getting into prohibition. Okay, sure.
There was a mafia presence, or at least a proto-mafia presence everywhere in the United States that Italians went.
And of course, we didn’t just go to the big cities. We went to little coal mining towns. We were in farming.
And Springfield was a part of the steel belt. It was a part of the chain of northern factory towns.
And so they were making paper and they were making guns and other things here in Springfield, dictionaries.
And so they needed a lot of labor. and Italians came here to find those jobs.
And a lot of people came to Springfield from the country outside of the city of Naples.
And so Gina and her family and a lot of the people that I study in the Springfield Mafia trace their roots back to these few little towns outside of Naples, Kingici and San Giuseppe Vesuviano and a few other little towns that are all kind of clustered together. gather.

[5:44] And one of the people who I think was responsible for that was the uncle of Pasqualina Albano.
He was one of the earliest settlers in this area, and he became very successful.

[5:56] The family, as I said, became very successful. And the story then kind of segues into that of Pasqualina’s story during Prohibition.
And that story culminates in a connection to the Genovese family in New York City, which still is part of the mafia today.
The mafia in Springfield is still a thing, and it’s still controlled by the Genovese family.
Interesting. Yeah, the quintessential story, the story for every major city where there was a large influx of Italians from southern Italy and Sicily was that the black handers got here first, and I assumed they had black hand type type guys in Springfield before they got organized during Prohibition, is that it would have the same history?
I would talk about the early history in terms of Padroni, people like John Albano, Pasquina’s uncle. He wasn’t a black hand. He wasn’t extorting people.
He was helping them, you might say. And he took a, as the papers put it, a strong interest in all of the Italians in the community.
He got to know everybody and he had such a powerful network that he could make himself useful to everyone and that was how he enriched himself and became powerful is because he had helped everybody find jobs find housing etc.

[7:14] Gina, what did you learn about this Padrone kind of society, if you will? And I know that goes back to the old country.
And I talked to a guy from Ireland that’s buying a house in rural Sicily right now.
And he had to go to the local guy who was kind of the fixture and knew everybody and would, you know, line him up with craftsmen and all that even today.
So what did you dig up about that?
Yeah, I think it exists in Springfield to this day.
And most of my family lives in Springfield, and I still think that they know people that they can go to that will help ease their lives quite a bit.
And I think it’s another reason why a lot of people never left.

[7:58] It was something that did not attract me in the 1970s when I left Springfield, but I do think it exists today.
And I know that the early people that Pasqualina’s family, her first husband, who was assassinated, were dealing with what they call black handers.
And they because they were black handers, there were no rules and regulations.
They were not they didn’t have a hierarchy. They were just they were wild people.
And, you know, that exists still today.
You know, there’s people that are gangland associates, which you gentlemen probably know more about that than I do.
So Pasqualina Albano, you said her husband was killed. Her first husband was murdered.

[8:47] Yes, she lost two husbands at before the age of 41 years old.
So what time frame is this? Is this just prior to Prohibition or were one of the husbands starting to get involved in bootlegging?
Because that was for an immigrant community, that bootlegging thing was a godsend.
I mean, it was like it was a godsend because it was kind of illegal.
It’s illegal enough to make that extra profit, but not so illegal that there was a huge community outrage about getting involved in.
So tell us about that, if you would. Well, Pasqualina was born in the 1890s.
Like any woman of her day, she married young and had a bunch of children.
She had six children herself.
She died at the age of 41.
What I thought was interesting, not only did she lose her two husbands, but the last person after her second husband died, who was a very important mafia figure, which is the person, Miranda, who tied Pasqualina to the Genovese family forever, which tied my relatives forever and in this present day to the Genovese family in New York.
But then she took up with a…

[10:03] Relative, my mother’s uncle on her father’s side, on another side of the family.
So she actually had a paramour. She actually had a lover after she lost her second husband, which did not happen to Italian Catholic immigrants in 1930.
So I found that really interesting.
She must have been one strong personality is the only thing I can say. I kept hearing that.
Bootlegging. How did she get into that? Was this, I can’t think of his first name, Miranda.
He was a relative of someone in the Genovese or a relative of Vito.
What was that connection?
Pasqualina’s Early Life and Marriage

[10:49] Pasqualina was born in the 1890s. She married a gentleman who was probably a second, third cousin.
That’s my feeling. Came from the same region outside of Naples.
And his name was Carlos Sinascouchi.
And he got into bootlegging as soon as prohibition was declared in 1919.
But he was soon killed by a rival bootlegger.
So there she was, a widow with a bunch of kids and she had to start, she took over her husband’s business.
She didn’t like leave it to the men. She just started doing what Carlos Sinascouchi, who was assassinated in 1921, she started doing what he was doing.
And she started ordering men around and she had her own gang.
And then from what I gather is that the Genovese family sent Miranda down to marry her because she was in charge of the operations in Springfield, Massachusetts. So she married Miranda.

[11:59] Yeah. Antonio Miranda, her first husband, Carlos Inescouchi, second husband, Antonio Miranda.
And together, as you said, they were a power couple. Correct, Justin?
Oh, very much. All of us would play in his relationships with our couples.

[12:14] Yeah. So then they became well off.
They bought a couple of very big houses on the other side of town.
That was not the Italian immigrant enclave.
It was described as a mansion.
I’d been there several times. They were little mansions.
But the interesting thing was everybody said, and some people have told me, they heard about it from their parents. Their parents played there.
There was a tunnel between the two mansions and there was an arsenal in that tunnel. They kept their guns there.
The Tunnel and Arsenal Between the Mansions

[12:50] Interesting. But, you know, prohibition now seems a little bit silly.
Yeah. And what Pasqualina did, she mainly sold alcohol.
I spend most of my time in L.A. and there’s a weed store every few blocks.
And it’s no longer a criminal activity like it was 20 or 30 years ago.
So these people that sell weed are entrepreneurs now.
They’re no longer pushers.
And that’s what Pascalina did. She was an immigrant mom who would do anything for her kids like most moms would.
And she took what opportunities were available to her.

[13:31] So she had a connection back to New York and they would have more of a connection to like the rum runners that people would bring big boatloads over from England of legitimate booze.
But then in the western Massachusetts like this, were there hills around there?
Did they have stills? Did they make their own whiskey or how did that work?
Were they making wine and whiskey or were they importing it in from smugglers?
Yes, they were in the Berkshire Mountains. mountains, and not far from where Justin is.
And of course, again, I visited those places, found springs, never found any stills, of course, but it was a rural place at the time, and they weren’t that far from Canada.
And Justin lives in that area now, so he might have something to add.
Justin, you know anything about the supply line? Go ahead. When they show up in the papers, anyway, Pasquina and her associates, they were involved in commercial-sized stills. And a lot of them were just over the border in Connecticut.
Commercial-Sized Stills and Small-Scale Operations

[14:33] Springfield’s like a half an hour from Connecticut. And so I believe that mostly they were suppliers.
And what I hear in Springfield and in other small towns, Utica was one, is that people were, they would have a little still in their house or in their barn or in their garage.
Like Jane was saying, it was a pretty rural place. So people People had a bit of space on their properties where they could stick a still.
And it was sort of like 10 years ago, selling weed at your kitchen table.
It was illegal, but nobody was outraged about it. And even though it was sort of small and entrepreneurial, you could get in with very little.
You were ultimately feeding a much larger machine because where are you going to sell your alcohol?
It went right back into the syndicate. So it could be sold anywhere.

[15:18] So she was more like the wholesaler. Did she have a string of speakeasies like Al Capone?
You know, he controlled all the speakes, all the speakeasies.
And so, well, as a source of supply, or did she just, like, get the supply and then sell it to somebody else who had the speakeasies?
Because you know how mafia people are.
They’ve got to line everything up. Everybody’s got to be under somebody’s control.
So do you remember how that worked? Do you know how that worked in Springfield?
In relation to her? I think we have to collaborate on this one, Justin. So I’ll tell you what I know.
Apparently, my grandmother and my other great aunts were part of her system.

[16:01] And they sold the alcohol out of her house.
Pasqualina’s Criminal Activities and Housewives’ Involvement

[16:06] She commanded the stills. It was said that she also robbed shipments.
I don’t have any proof of that.
And she was in charge of the system where housewives sold alcohol that was hitting in their living room, you know, to cops, to judges, to police people, to other Italian Americans.
And what they were proud of is that they didn’t have alcohol that would kill you or poison you.
They were proud of that. They came from a winemaking region of Italy, as Italy is a winemaking country, and they made the good stuff.
And, you know, it was just a crazy law prohibition.
So that’s what I know of their supposedly criminal activity.

[16:59] Justin, what else was going on in Springfield during that time, mafia-wise?
I mean, was there another? Well, there was a challenging gang right across the river in West Springfield.
In fact, I’ve had the really interesting experience of talking with Gina and her family members, who are all related to Pasqualina and Carlo.
But then on the other side of the river, we have the guy who killed Carlos and Escalchi, Joseph Parisi.
And I’ve been talking with his grandnephew, who has written a book about his family’s sight of basically that story.
They were small-time bootleggers. They were doing a lot of the same things that were happening over in Springfield with Pascal Wiemann and Carlos Nascalchi.
But I think that they were a little smaller scale and they didn’t have the same kinds of connections because when Joseph Parisi got cut off, he killed Carlos Nascalchi.
He didn’t go buy it from somebody else.
That book is called Mafia Confession, king of the bootleggers murder my sister sent me said you need to buy this book because our relatives are in it so they’re all connected the hatfields and the mccoy’s on up to modern day yeah so he comes from west springfield wc justin.
Joseph Parisi and the Challenging Gang in West Springfield

[18:14] Okay. So I’m from Springfield and Nicholas Parisi is from West Springfield.
Okay. So it’s very provincial.
Okay. Yeah. I was going to say it’s West Springfield, like in Kansas city, we have Kansas city, Kansas, which is very provincial.
And we think of course, and then St. Louis, you have East St. Louis.
You’ve got the lower end of the social spectrum.
I’m going to let Justin answer that.
Don’t throw that one at me. I think we know more about this growing up in the area.
Yeah i’m 20 miles away and i didn’t go to school there so i don’t really know the culture as much culture well we can let we don’t want to offend anybody they threw me out of the catholic school i i think i inherited a bit of pascalina spirit so by the time i was a very young teenager i was kind of out of that whole world because everyone else was in the catholic school but they didn’t want me.
So I really, I really had to distance to do my life’s work as an artist and an activist.
I had to distance myself from the culture. Yeah.
But it’s come back on me and very happy and proud to give people the message that none of us can choose our family.

[19:29] That’s true. That is true. Well, that whole and she had her was it her sisters or aunts, other female relatives involved in this endeavor. It’s so unusual.
It’s such a male-dominated subculture, if you will, the mafia or organized crime and prohibition bootleggers, whether they were Jewish or Italian or whatever they were, it’s such a male-dominated thing.
And for those women to be able to survive and even thrive in that is just amazing, amazing story.

[20:04] Pardon me. My grandmother sold alcohol under the rule of Pasqualina.
To me, there’s always been a feminist aspect to this story, although Justin was very quick to remind me on camera that the mafia is neither a democratic or a feminist organization.
Neither. either. You guys know more about that than me.
But to me, the story of Pascalina of Springfield is the story of a woman that when she was assassinated, seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Pasqualina’s Assassination and Criminal Prey

[20:37] Her assassins only shot up the driver’s side of the car.

[20:42] She was assassinated at 41 in the prime of her life with her boyfriend in the car.
But I believe the assassins and And I think we kind of figured out who they were, but I think they really thought it was a man driving the car out at midnight in a big car, a 1930 car.
And they didn’t expect Pascalina to be driving that car.
Back in those days, and this goes into modern times, there’s always a subset of criminals that prey on drug dealers now, but back then would prey on bootleggers.
People that they thought had money would prey on those and would try it like she did.
Pasqualina, she stole loads from other people. People were always trying to steal loads from her and maybe thinking she had a cash hoard somewhere.
They always had to watch out for those other criminals. And were there any competing kind of gangs going on at the time?
Was that part of some, wasn’t part of some, not revenge, but some part of some competition murder to try to eliminate her take over a business because that’s really common in this world.

[21:49] I think they tried to eliminate her boyfriend, her paramour.
So her boyfriend was also my great uncle. So she was from the Albano, as Justin says, side of the family.
But there was the other side of the family, Fiori side of the family, all immigrants from the same area outside of Naples.
And she took up with her brother-in-law, so to speak. and nobody liked that.
Nobody liked that she was living with him. And he was a career criminal.
He was an immigrant from Italy, but as soon as he came to the United States, he was involved in being a bookie, the numbers games that were very popular back then.
And he spent time in federal row prison for cutting up a police officer who brutally attacked him, apparently.
So this was a guy that had lots and lots of enemies.

[22:53] And I think the powers that be wanted to see this guy eliminated.
The Genovese Family’s Influence in Springfield

[23:00] And I do believe this was a woman that was in the wrong place.
So she was kind of a cog in a bigger machine, it sounds like.
She wasn’t like the mafia boss of all of Springfield.
There must have been something else going on.
And did the Genovese family, did they get a piece of this action or were they just interested in the numbers and the gambling?
How did that work? Did you ever uncover any of that? It’s hard to find out that kind of stuff. up. Justin?

[23:30] Sure. Well, Tony Miranda married Pasqualina in 1926. They had a small wedding in Connecticut.
And from what I can pick up from the Parisi side of the story, it looks like the blood feud between the Parisi and Albano families, because they had been shooting at one another.
They’ve been having some drive-by shootings. People had already died in this.
That they were the main competitors.
I think that we’re looking at a time before you could say that there was one true boss of Springfield, but that time was about to arrive.
With the introduction of that Genovese protection, they have an investment now in Springfield.
I don’t know what the details of that were, but that’s when the pressure from West Springfield seems to have backed off.
And what you see today is that the gang of teenagers in West Springfield, the They are a little bit separate, but ultimately they’re all on the same side.

[24:32] Interesting. This is quite a story, Gina.
Documentary Premiere and Impact on the Family

[24:37] This is a heck of a story. So now, what are you doing with this documentary?
You’ve been at some film festivals?
I have, yeah. I’ve been to more than a dozen film festivals.
I’ve won a few awards. It’s a very humble documentary.

[24:53] I made most of it on my iPhone. It wasn’t funded by anybody in particular.
I spent a lot of time with my editors, which is Evan and Yadily, and they were young people who knew what to do technically.
You know, I’m a little behind on things, but I spent a lot of time getting it up to cinematic quality.
Quality and fortunately it was selected by a film festival and I was actually able to premiere it at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California.
It screened there twice actually, but I think the best screening was the one that both Justin and I participated in in October of 2023 because the The family in Springfield and the surrounding areas came to see this documentary.
And there must have been more than 50 people who very personally identified with the story in our audience.
And they were just including Pascalina’s granddaughters.

[26:04] And they were so happy to see this woman champion.
Fabian and we we had a party for her and she was it was out in the open and now people talk about her and they talk about this film and you know hopefully it will go someplace my daughter’s a director she’s a Hollywood director she knows people it’s not an easy thing to take an idea and a small film from a film festival and turn it into it wouldn’t be a documentary by the time it it got to a bigger film, better produced film, and a film that, you know, had financial backing.
But that’s always possible.
I know the feeling. I’ve been down that path myself.
Documentary filmmakers, they throw money in a hole. We all know that.
Yeah, I’ve been able to break even on every project I’ve done, so…

[27:03] Which is pretty damn good, I think. Well, maybe I’ll have to call you after we finish.
Well, it’s a lot of work, I’ll tell you what, to get ready to go do programs in every little library that you can find and all kinds of things.
We showed it in the library. It was a grand event, wasn’t it, Justin? Yes. It was really amazing. And I have, sorry?

[27:24] It was just amazing. The room was totally packed and everybody was so engaged in it. And it was like being at a big family intervention in a way, because there was all these people who related to the people on screen.
They all came to see this movie. I felt like the therapist at a big intervention, because you’ve seen the movie, so you know that you see young members of Gina’s family, this young woman sitting on her car, and she’s all kind of, yeah, sure, I would totally marry a gangster.
And I just want to shake this girl and be like, I have to save you from this week.
You can’t follow the rest of your family into this. Listen to their stories.
And so now they were all in this room listening to the story together.
And I think that that was so critical. I can’t imagine that the family is going to be the same again after this, because now they’ve all seen the story together and they have to talk about it. Yeah, I agree.
And I have to say, you know, every time I kind of talk to people in Springfield in in the years preceding making this documentary, which came out in 2022, people would mention Justin’s name.
And, you know, I just, he’s very well respected with my family and with others that are attached to these kinds of stories in the Western Massachusetts area and beyond.

[28:42] And, you know, Justin, the work you do is hard work and it’s work that requires a lot of discipline?
Could you really delve into these stories? And just a shout out to Justin right now.
I agree. My brother was very brave. My brother was, you know, you’re never a made person if you’re not an Italian American.
But my brother was Genovese family associate, both of my brothers.
But my youngest brother, Bob, he came forward and he spoke very candidly on camera about being shot, off about, you know, being a wise guy.
And, you know, he was in the audience.
He got up on the stage in Hollywood on the, you know, the stage of the Chinese theater.
And we answered questions together.
And the whole family dynamic has changed. I bet I can imagine.
I get a lot of locally in Kansas City, especially because I was a police officer here and worked on the mob.
I get get a lot of emails and comments and messages from.

[29:46] Descendants of some of the different mob people here but they always they have one thing in common they say the family won’t talk about any of this can you tell me any more about this relative’s murder or no nobody talks about it you know can you tell me more about you know what he was doing back then my my reality was doing and then they’ll tell me some other stories it’s like oh my God that life you know you you know I raise your kids in that life but you know it’s one big huge secret that everybody has until somebody can bring it out.
And it’s a hard thing to do, those family dynamics in that, from that life.
Yeah, I can imagine, you know, because the mafia, that’s what always interested me about the mafia was they have this family life.
Mob guys, you know, criminals, professional criminals, they have this family life, extended family.
Some of them are criminals. Some of them are just business people.
They have kids. They go to their kids here in Kansas City.
They go to St. Pius, to all the games that their kids and their grandkids play in or participate in.
And yet they go over in the city and there are these gangsters over the city to have this whole other life.
And it’s just it’s it’s amazing. It’s it’s it’s unbelievable sometimes.

[31:01] And we and I think we have to remember that that whole other life that you just mentioned is not glamorous.
And we have as Americans and as an Italian Americans, we have made mafia stories, mafia lore, mafia movies, our form of entertainment.
And it’s kind of bizarre explaining that to an Italian.

[31:29] Some of the Italians don’t they don’t understand that that’s our entertainment in this country.
You’re a purveyor of that entertainment. Yes, we are. We are.
Even no matter how academic we try to do, and I try to look at it beyond just the shoot-em-up stories, the murders, but no matter how academic you try to be, it’s still a certain form of entertainment.
I understand that. I know. And I’ll say this right now that I’ve never condoned any gun use.
I’ve never held a gun. I’ve never seen a gun except on a cop.
You know, that world is not my world.
And, you know, I’m very strongly against any kind of violence and any kind of violence against women.
And ultimately, Pasqualina was a victim of violence against women, and gun violence is not anything I would glorify ever.
Uncovering Family Secrets

[32:25] But unfortunately, it’s part of my family history.
Yeah, it’s a fact. All right, guys, I really appreciate y’all coming on the show.
It’s been a really a little bit different show because we can go really go easily go beyond the shoot them up, the thrilling kind of things that we find thrilling about the underworld we just talked about and talk about these family connections.
And I hope that there’s other I know I’ve got a lot of family members that that listen to the show or watch it on YouTube.
And so I think maybe it might, you know, stir them to say, hey, maybe I ought to talk to my cousin about this. You know, we have this family secret.
We ought to talk about it. That’s kind of what what I’m hoping for, especially as we get done with our show here.
So I really appreciate y’all coming on. How can people see this movie?
Is it available any any place or you got it should be available on Amazon.
On, but I’ll have to put a message on your Facebook page. Okay. Do that.

[33:22] Because I don’t have the facts at this point, but I have a question for you before we go.
How many women do you deal with, you know, in your, in your work?
How many women have been on your show?
Oh, is it all male relatives?
Is it, is this the purview of male relatives? primarily my demographics are about 90% men between 30 and 75 or so.
And I’ve had all about, let’s see, one other woman had a book, Andrea Diogevini.

[33:58] She had been married to a guy, but she was part of a whole drug thing, was connected to Gotti Gambino’s.
And I think that’s the only other woman I’ve had.
I had another one, I forgot who it was, I guess.
Well, you know, I lived near Mulberry Street in New York’s Little Italy for a long time. And I used to see John Gotti all the time.

[34:22] Just coincidence. I don’t know. I lived in New York’s Little Italy because it was cheap as hell back then in the 70s. But I always saw those guys.
So it’s interesting that it’s just still a predominantly male fascination, as I might say.
The Male Dominance in Crime Fascination

[34:40] I don’t know. It was a male operation, if you will, male participants, about 99%, 98% male participants.
And it’s primarily male fans, if you will, or aficionados or whatever you want to call it.
But, you know, I noticed they just did a movie about this Mexican, Griselda, I think is her name, kind of a kingpin down in Mexico in the drug business.
So, you know, women are kind of coming back into their own. But, you know, as a policeman.
Every violent crime we ever ran into, except for domestic, was men.
Every one of them was a man. Women do not commit armed robberies.
Women do not get to heist and are not professional burglars for the most part.
So, you know, I don’t know what it says about our society, but it may say something good about it. I don’t know.
I think that’s the last word. All right. Guys, you know that I ride motorcycles. cycle.
So watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there on the streets.
And if you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve ever been in the service, go to the VA website and get that hotline number.

[35:48] And with PTSD, drugs and alcohol really are usually part of it.
So if you have a problem with drugs and alcohol, doesn’t matter whether you’ve been in the service or not, go see former Gambino soldier, Anthony Ruggiano.
He’s got a website out there and he’s got a hotline and he’s a drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida.
Maybe you could go have former Gambino soldier be be your counselor. Wouldn’t that be cool?
So watch my YouTube page, do a like and subscribe and all that and give me a review and go to the Gangland Wire podcast Facebook group because it’s big and there’s a lot of people going on that and there’s a lot of great stories and pictures.
You’ll really like it. So once again, Justin and Gina, I really appreciate y’all coming on the show and look for a a link.
I’ll find out where you can get that documentary on Amazon and I’ll have a link in the show notes. So thanks a lot, guys. Bye.