The Untold Story of Meyer Lansky: The Man Behind Organized Crime. Who was the real Meyer Lansky? Was he America’s greatest criminal strategist, a financial genius, or simply one of the most misunderstood figures in organized crime history?
In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins welcomes award-winning investigative journalist and author Sandra Peddie to discuss her new book, The Lansky Legacy.
Drawing on never-before-seen family letters, photographs, and personal memories from Meyer Lansky’s grandson, Sandra paints a revealing portrait of the man who helped reshape organized crime in America.
You’ll hear how Lansky forged his lifelong partnership with Lucky Luciano, helped organize the modern Mafia during Prohibition, expanded gambling into Florida, Cuba, and beyond, and quietly influenced some of the biggest events in organized crime history.
The listener will also hear about National Crime Syndicate, Havana casinos, Cuba gambling Las Vegas history, Frank Costello, Santo Trafficante, Bugsy Siegel and others in the pantheon of the American Mafia.
Click here to Get Sandra Peddie’s book The Lansky Legacy: The Life and Letters of Meyer Lansky
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Transcript
Gary Jenkins: [00:00:00] hey, all you wiretappers out there. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. We have a repeat offender today, Sandra Penny. Welcome, Sandra. We had Sandra on talking about Sonny, John Sonny Franzese, here, I don’t know, a year or so ago, a year and a half ago.
Yeah. She wrote that book after a series of interviews with the real Sonny Franzese as he was in a nursing home, I believe, and existed living out of the penitentiary at age 99, and still had a mind like a steel trap by it sounded to me like.
Sandra Peddie: He did. He did, absolutely. He didn’t forget a thing.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah, so that, that was a great book.
And she has a new great book, … The Lansky Legacy, we’re gonna talk about today. But before I get started I wanna remind you guys I have that new podcast out there, Murder Blueprint. And tell your wives and your girlfriends and your cousin, your female cousins, because women like these kinds of horror crimes like serial killers and mass murderers and those kinds of things, and that’s what that one’s all about.
We’re gonna start off with some Kansas City [00:01:00] cases because I know the guys who investigated those cases and they’re gonna be on being interviewed at the start. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna do double bang the true crime genre, the gangster on one side and the horror crimes on the other. Although one might say both of them have a certain horror aspect.
And one other thing, guys, the Million podcast is a website out there that ranks all kinds of different podcasts and we’re number 12 on the Million Podcast website. So they asked me if I would promote that a little bit, their website, Million Pod Podcast. So check that out and see that we’re number 12.
See who’s in front of me and who’s behind me. I was surprised about some of the people , I was in front of. And some of the people in front of me, I was a little bit surprised about too. Of course, we all think we’re number one, don’t we? Let me tell you just a little bit about Sandra Penny.
She’s won more than 75 awards for her stories about corruption. She won a $35,000 Selden Ring Award for stories on pension fraud and abuses that led to some changes in New York state law. [00:02:00] And God save you, work on those pension laws. I live off a pension. I was on a pension board for my pension for about six years and I understand the fraud how that can creep in pretty easily.
‘Cause those pension board members, you can do whatever you want. You can make decisions send yourself on big fancy trips saying you’re doing pension board work and things like that, and there’s a lot of that stuff’s happened. And you can approve pensions for people that don’t really deserve them because they’re in with you or they kick back.
There’s a lot of options. Thank God that people like Sandra are out there watching those pension boards. She even she was in the finalists for a public service Pulitzer in 2014 on a- Series of stories about police conduct and we gotta keep our eye on that. Believe me, I worked the intelligence unit and we were assigned cases in which policemen were accused of crimes.
Internal affairs did it when they were accused of some kind of violations or civil rights kind of things. If they’re actual crimes, then they gave it to the intelligence unit and it’s always gonna be out there. It’s always gonna be there. [00:03:00] So she’s won two New York Emmys for most recently for her documentary, American Gangster.
Today we’re gonna be talking about Meyer Lansky. Meyer Lansky. He’s a, a shadowy historical character, which is really hard to get your hands on, really hard to figure out what the deal is. So Sandra what got you into this? Did did you have… You didn’t have Meyer Lansky to go interview.
You had his grandson, so what got you into this?
Sandra Peddie: What happened was Sunny did very well for the publisher, so they wanted me to do another book, and they found Meyer Lansky online, Meyer Lansky II, who was Meyer Lansky’s grandson. And we talked, and Meyer’s wife, Danny, is a librarian, and I thought, “Oh, boy.
If I have a librarian at my fingertips, that’s like having a researcher.” And so we decided to collaborate, and Meyer provided, Meyer II [00:04:00] provided letters, never before seen letters, photos, and some contacts with friends, and then I did the research and the writing. And you’re right, Meyer Lansky was he was a person who was hard to penetrate because he was s- played it so close to the vest.
He wasn’t emotionally accessible. He was so self-disciplined. And I was looking at my timeline of his life, I guess yesterday, thinking, the last 30 years of his life, he battled very serious health problems, and he was in the hospital, in and out of the hospital. But you’d never know it, because he was, in the Bahamas opening – casinos, in Cuba opening casinos.
So he was a, a rigidly self-disciplined man. He also was aware that FBI agents were listening in on phone calls and that he was under constant surveillance, so he was very [00:05:00] careful that way. So he was hard to access, but thankfully Meyer Lansky II had a lot of memories about his grandfather. In the case of Meyer Lansky II, which is a little unusual.
He was named after his grandfather, which his grandfather didn’t like. He thought that would create a lot of problems for him.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah.
Sandra Peddie: And it did at a certain point, when some people tried to kidnap him. But when he was 14, his parents divorced, and so there was a split, and it was so bad that his mother asked him to change his name.
So he changed his name to Bryant Mason, which is erasing your identity. When you think about it, your name is so tied up in your identity. You don’t really think about it, ’cause it’s always been your name. So in his case, he lived under a different name for many years, and then after his mother died, he changed it back and decided to find out more about his grandfather.
Gary Jenkins: Interesting. And Meyer Lansky is, [00:06:00] as Sammy the Bull Gravano would say, he was more a racketeer than a gangster, so I always find that fascinating. Frank Costello was a, a contemporary of Meyer Lansky, and he was more racketeer than gangster, and then Lucky Luciano was m- little bit gangster, little bit racketeer it seemed to me like.
Do you go much into that early meeting of Lucky Luciano and that blending of the Jewish mob, with the Italian gang?
Sandra Peddie: Yeah, and I think you’re right. I think that’s a really good distinction to make between gangster and racketeer. I haven’t heard b- that before, but I really like that because Meyer Lansky hated being called a gangster.
He probably would’ve been more comfortable with racketeer. But he and Lucky Luciano, they met when they were kids growing up in Brooklyn, ’cause Lucky, or … And he wasn’t known as Lucky then, he was Charlie Luciano. Charlie Luciano had a gang of kids who extorted other kids. And so he was a criminal from very early [00:07:00] on, and they decided to prey on the Jewish kids, ’cause they were easy targets.
They assumed they wouldn’t put up a fight. And Meyer was not a big guy. He never grew beyond five foot four. Yeah. And he was never a, a heavy guy. He was also very self-disciplined about his diet. But so he wasn’t a big kid, and so when Luciano’s gang surrounded him and they tried to shake him down for money, he basically told them to
He didn’t basically. He told them to F off, and that impressed Luciano. He was impressed by his toughness. And they were both very smart, very conniving, and I remember, I don’t think I put this in the book, but I did read an oral, I think it was an oral history of a guy, Doc Stacher, who was friends with both of them.
And he said the communication between the two, they could understand each other without words. They were so close because they viewed the world the same way. And they were both very ambitious. [00:08:00] They were both very hungry for success. And so they clicked, and u- and they wound up, as changing the face of crime in America.
They absolutely transformed organized crime.
Gary Jenkins: And they did because they approached it more from a business standpoint than a gangster standpoint. Extortion, extorting money’s one thing and victimizing people, but providing services that the government states is illegal so you can provide that service and charge a lot more money for it was the genius of of these two young immigrant kids, if you will, as they grew up and realized, how do you make money at this thing?
How do we make money? And started off with prohibition. That’s … We really can thank the temperance movement in the United States for the modern mafia if you ask me, because it’s- You’re
Sandra Peddie: right. You’re right. And that’s what … you’re absolutely right because in 1929 they had the Atlantic City Conference, and it was [00:09:00] organized by Luciano and Lansky, although they both tried to stay in the background more, Luciano less and the reason they did it was prohibition was in full force, and you had all these rival bootlegging gangs killing each other. They’re fighting over this liquor, which was so lucrative. Smuggling liquor was … you could make a fortune in a matter of a few days. And so these rival gangs were killing each other, and they got everybody together and said, “Look, we gotta stop doing this.
If we work together, we can make a lot more money,” and it made sense. And so they literally organized crime. Huge change.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah, and then the move into gambling was just a no-brainer as prohibition ended and liquor became less lucrative to do to provide for people, and some of them did provide, untaxed liquor for quite a while after prohibition, I understand.
But then the moving into gambling was just a no-brainer, ’cause everybody that likes to drink likes to gamble. People that like to [00:10:00] drink and smoke, they like to gamble too I’ve noticed. I don’t know. There’s a correlation there.
Sandra Peddie: It’s an addiction. The other thing that, that happened with prohibition
And you’re absolutely right, gambling was a natural follow because when you have the liquor, they started, they opened clubs to sell the liquor, and that’s how the speakeasies came about. And so they had a- what they called all these carpet joints. And then M- and this was the genius of Meyer Lansky. He realized, “Okay, if I put gambling in those clubs, I can make a lot more money.”
And he was the guy who brought in the top chefs, the entertainers, the stores, and even removed the clocks because he knew that the more people gambled, the more money he would make.
Gary Jenkins: Wow. The the precursor to Las Vegas, modern Las Vegas, removing the clocks. Probably figured out a way to keep people from being able to find their way out.
Sandra Peddie: You’re absolutely [00:11:00] right. They literally would design the casinos to make it so that you didn’t walk right into the casino. You’d see, some slot machines or something like that, but you had to go toward the back because they wanted you to have to take some time to get out.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah, really. So what was his relationship with Frank during that time? When I think of carpet joints and slot machines and organization, I think of Frank Costello and, putting the slot machines in New York and then moving throughout the United States, throughout the South, started in Louisiana and sp- making those carpet joints.
And they would always be, we had one and there are two in Kansas City, they would be just outside the city and the county because you only had to bribe the county sheriff to keep operating. And so tell us- Oh … us about his relationship with Frank Costello and his movement out in, outside of New York with these carpet joints.
Sandra Peddie: He and Costello were close, and Meyer too tells a story about his, that his father told him, his father Paul told him about in their apartment in New York City, Costello [00:12:00] would come over, and they would always go in one of the kids’ bedrooms to have a quiet conversation. And Costello was very formal and imposing and really made an impression on young Paul.
So they were close, and they both thought, knew that they wanted to go national because they knew that if they took gambling national, they’d make a lot more money.
And but at the same time, and I have this from some diary entries that Meyer Lansky wrote. He wrote a, very little, but he wrote he viewed Costello as vain, and he thought he got too involved in politics.
‘Cause Costello very much, in 1932, Costello and Lansky and other guys went with the Tammany Hall delegation from New York City to the Democratic Convention. He was very embedded with the politicians ’cause, he knew. But he came to believe that he was a politician himself, he wanted to appear legitimate, and [00:13:00] Lansky was wary of that ’cause he thought he put himself forward too much, and Lansky always wanted to stay in the background.
Gary Jenkins: Interesting. That’s really interesting. That explains a lot about why we know so little about him today, I think, that it’s not as so much in the, the common popular genre of, Lansky did this and Lansky did that.
It’s really interesting that, that contrast with Frank Costello, ’cause we know a lot about Frank Costello. Got all those images of him talking at the committee, and talk- asking what did you do for your country?” “I paid my taxes,” and that kind of thing. And you don’t see anything about that of Meyer Lansky.
It looks to me like maybe he was looking for new markets and looking for unplowed ground, as we say in the country, when he moved down to Florida. But yet a lot of people, East Coasters were going down to Florida at the time, so there w- the gambling business was starting to build in Florida.
It looked to me like he was one of the early guys that, that started that down in Florida. Can you [00:14:00] talk about the move down into Florida?
Sandra Peddie: Absolutely. He did. He recognized that Florida was going to be a growth spot, and he moved down there. It was largely undeveloped when he moved there in the late ’40s, and he very quickly bribed p- local politicians.
And but he also knew, this is one of his secrets. He hired locals, he spread money around, he hired locals to do PR. He always shared the money. Some of these mob bosses and I wouldn’t call Lansky a mob boss per se, but some- but he was certainly at their level. He was in the top echelon. But some of these mob bosses were considered to be greedy, like Paul Castellano, and they didn’t spread the money around.
Lansky always made a point of spreading the money around, and I think part of it, it was his personality, but part of it was he knew he was an outsider. Remember, he was Jewish. And he was an [00:15:00] immigrant, and he dropped out of school when he was in eighth grade, so he was always an outsider.
So he knew his survival depended on sharing the wealth. And I wanted to say one thing about the very interesting point you made about Costello testifying before the Kefauver Committee, which, the famous testimony on TV. If, Lansky testified before the Kefauver Committee as well, but he, ’cause he was subpoenaed, but he arranged to do it privately.
And very few people did that. And you know how he was able to extract that from Kefauver? He had, according to his, according to Sandra Lansky Meyer Lansky’s daughter- He had proof that Keith Faver was a big gambler and hadn’t paid his gambling debts. So here you have this guy, who was, at the time, one of the most famous men in America, holding [00:16:00] himself up as this moral arbiter a- against illegal gambling, when he allegedly gambled quite a bit himself.
Gary Jenkins: . The guy was smart. He was really smart, yeah. You talked about how he would bring locals in on the action. He did this… I did a little research on Omaha, Nebraska, and Council Bluffs. Council Bluffs had a dog track real early, and it was Lansky’s d- developed that, and he brought the mayor and city government, everybody in.
He shared the wealth with all of Council Bluffs, which is just across the Missouri River from Omaha. So he expanded. Whenever he expanded out, he brought those locals in. That was really smart.
Sandra Peddie: He did and that was a good area, because a lot of people came over from across the river to go to the- Yeah
dog tracks. And what he did, gambling was illegal in Iowa, so when bettors went to the betting window, Lansky called them option slips. So he… They could buy [00:17:00] option slips and sell them back in order to get their winnings, but it was just this very clever way of, “Oh, no, it’s not gambling. These are option slips,” and he was always coming up with those clever ruses, and he liked that. He liked that a lot.
Gary Jenkins: That’s so interesting. I wonder if he dreamed that up. Because we had that here in Kansas City. There’s a, a horse racetrack just not… I can almost look out my window and see where it used to be in a little town called Riverside.
I live up on the hill above it and that’s what they did here. They… It wasn’t gambling. It… They had options. You’d buy an option on a horse. Oh,
Sandra Peddie: funny. That’s funny. I don’t know if it was the first time, but I suspect it probably was, because he really was an
Gary Jenkins: innovator. Yes, he was. I remember reading about that thing.
That was pretty smart. Yeah.
Sandra Peddie: Yeah.
Gary Jenkins: Plus it was out in the county. It wasn’t in the city. And so you only had to buy off the county sheriff and to keep people out, and the federal government wasn’t doing all that much at the time anyhow. So I guess from Florida it’s almost a [00:18:00] natural jump to Cuba. You start making those connections in Southern Florida and did he have anything to do with Trafficante down there in southern Florida?
Sandra Peddie: He did. He did. Absolutely. And he was down, he was in Cuba in the ’40s and there’s this famous incident, I think it was around 1947, ’49, I m- I can’t remember exactly when it was where Frank Sinatra’s picture was taken on a balcony in Cuba, in Havana, Cuba, and he was standing next to Lucky Luciano.
Lansky was there, but of course he didn’t get caught in the picture, as always. And what happened was when Fulgencio Batista came back, came into power, back into power in the ’50s, he asked Lansky to be his gambling reform guy because there was a lot of gambling in Cuba, but all the games were rigged, and people don’t wanna play in rigged games.
People don’t wanna knowingly be cheated. And Batista knew that [00:19:00] gambling would be a great way to draw rich American tourists, so he needed someone to clean up the casinos, so he tapped Meyer Lansky to do it, and that’s why he went to Cuba. And he loved it. He loved the culture, he loved the warmth, and it literally was just, he w- he brought his kids down and they could fly on this puddle jumper from Miami to Cuba, and they loved it.
They thought it was great. So i- and of course he made a fortune. But it wasn’t without risk, obviously, a- as you know from investigating organized crime, whenever someone makes a lot of money, these other guys think, “That’s my money.” Yeah. E- even if they had nothing to do with it, it just, they let you breathe, they get the money.
So Albert Anastasia got very worked up when he heard about all the money that Lansky was shipping back to the various people on the East Coast, and he wanted more. He was getting money, and he wanted more. And [00:20:00] Lansky was very worried. He was tense. He rarely showed his tension, but he was nervous. And he flew up to New York, and there are newspaper clippings that, ’cause they were tracking him pretty carefully, and he met with Santo Trafficante.
And but nobody knew what he was doing, but then a few days later, Albert Anastasia was killed in the barber shop in that really gruesome murder I suspect that it had something to do with his demanding more and more from Cuba. But he got… His life was ended, as we know, in a very brutal way.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. I had read that Trafficante had something to do…
he was in New York City at the same time- Exactly … or something left. I don’t remember what it was. Just picking up clues. And from an intelligence standpoint, you start picking up clues. You say, “Ooh, this guy was in town. Oh, we better look at that a little closer.” So it’s
Sandra Peddie: interesting.
You’re exactly right. You’re exactly right. And Lansky and Trafficante knew each other [00:21:00] well.
Gary Jenkins: That’s crazy. O- one thing that I missed is we’ve kinda chronologically gone through the history, is Lansky’s fight with the Nazis in the ’30s. I just saw a movie about the, this, this Nazi movement in the United States, or a documentary.
This Nazi movement in the United States in the ’30s is like, oh, my God, what was going on with this back then? It’s really scary. So Lansky, I know, organized some young Jewish guys to attack these Nazis. Did you talk about that in your book? That’s, I find that fascinating.
Sandra Peddie: I do. I do. And what’s…
It is, you’re right, it’s shocking. And in New York, there’s an area, New York City, there’s an area called Yorkville that was settled by a lot of German immigrants, and they would hold these Bund rallies in the ’30s. And and, Charles Lindbergh was also famous for being- Yeah … anti-Semitic. And s- and he was a national icon.
And so this antisemitism was really prevalent And these rallies were like Nazi rallies. So a rabbi [00:22:00] reached out to Lansky and said, or a rabbi and a judge re- a Jewish judge reached out to Lansky and said, we gotta do something about this.” And Lansky said, “No problem.” And they offered to pay him, and he wouldn’t take any money.
He said, “I am doing this on behalf of the Jewish people.” And so he organized a group of about 15 guys in- including Bugsy Siegel, who I call Ben Siegel ’cause he hated being called Bugsy. But that’s another story, and the next book. But he, th- these guys, and he used his usual subterfuge, he had them all wearing disguises, and he sent them into the rally so nobody suspected a thing, and then they just went on the attack, and they terrified these big, tough Naz- Nazis.
So they broke up a number of rallies and, took great personal risk in doing so. But they were very successful. And the one thing Lansky told the judge, he said, “I [00:23:00] don’t want any publicity. Don’t…” “I don’t want anything in the papers that my wife, that would upset my wife.” And they agreed, and then but this rabbi gave a an interview to Jewish World, and he referred to Lansky as a gangster, and he was so upset.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah.
Sandra Peddie: And meanwhile, he felt he was fighting a war, and he was. And you know the other thing that’s important about Lansky in terms of fighting the Nazis is he played a key role with US Naval Intelligence when they were worried, when the war broke out, they were very worried legitimately about Nazi submarines trying to sabotage New York Harbor.
And the thing about New York Harbor was it was controlled by the Italian mob. Those guys would not make a move without any kind of orders from Lucky Luciano. The problem was Lucky Luciano was in prison for prostitution related charges. He had [00:24:00] been sentenced to 50 years. So US Intelligence, through Lansky’s lawyer, Moses Polakoff approached Lansky and said, “Can you help us?”
And it was Lansky who went to prison to see Lu- he got him transferred from an upstate New York prison to one closer to New York City to make it easier to communicate with him, and he got Luciano to tell the dock workers, “Notify of, us of any kind of sabotage.” And it was a critical defense during World War II, and it didn’t come to light until I, the, like, mid-1950s.
It was this entirely secret operation where US Naval Intelligence collaborated with gangsters.
Gary Jenkins: Interesting. Yeah I know unless you really look at this area in part of history, what we don’t know today is the Nazis early in 1940, ’41, they had U-boats all right off the coast of the United [00:25:00] States and they tried to land some saboteurs in a couple different places.
One is in New Jersey, I think, and they caught them. But there was… That was a real active threat up in that northeast coast up there.
Sandra Peddie: Oh, absolutely, and they did land a s- U-boat on Long Island, New York, which is just east of New York City, and they had plans to blow up bridges and tunnels, and they got caught by the FBI.
But you don’t know how many… And they had a lot of money, but… With them, but you don’t know how many of these U-boats were not caught. So it was a real threat.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. So the I’ve noticed as I do these different mob stories is during World War II, it’s like everything just stopped, and then it takes up after World War II.
I think everybody… That, that’s how important World War II was. It just stopped everything, including mob activity. Greater and lesser extent, there was still a little trafficking and ration stamps and things like that, but mainly it stopped, and everybody fought the war and then came back, and business as [00:26:00] usual after the war in 1949, ’50.
History’s crazy. History’s crazy sometimes.
Sandra Peddie: It is.
Gary Jenkins: He gets down there in Florida and he goes to Israel. So that’s kind of a famous story. But first I have to ask, you were in, you were close to the Lansky family. What happened to all the money? That’s a question I always get asked. What hap- where is all the money?
Sandra Peddie: Everybody, and everybody asks about that, and what they maintain is there was no money. There was this famous book by this journalist, Hank Messick, who said that, Lansky had squirreled away $300 million. And the truth of the matter was he gave a lot of it to the bosses, but he also was a big philanthropist.
He was a real soft touch for Jewish charities, and he gave a lot of money when, he loved the idea of the formation of Israel. For younger people it seems like Israel [00:27:00] has always been around, but it really- … hasn’t been around that long. Only since, what, 1948? But he contributed a lot of money to that effort, and that’s why he thought he would have a home in Israel, because he poured money into that.
He also spent a lot of money on his children. And one of the things that I wanted to do in this book was flesh him out as a human being, because so many of these mob books, forget about the wives and the children- Yeah … and, and they’re not part of the business, I get that but, gangsters are people too, and they do care about taking care of their children, and, they do care about taking care of their wives.
And so he spent a lot of money. He, his oldest son, Buddy, had cerebral palsy, and he also had a gambling habit. Buddy was a real charmer. Everybody loved him. But so Meyer very much, Lansky wanted to set him up in business so that he’d be okay. And one of the sad twists of the Lansky family was he wanted Sandra, [00:28:00] the youngest daughter, sh- he said, “You’ve gotta promise me that you’re gonna take care of Buddy.”
And he left her money to take care of Buddy, and she didn’t. She blew it all. She blew it all on shopping and partying and stuff like that. So if you talk to the Meyer Lansky family they’ll say there was no fortune hidden away. It just wasn’t there. And if there was, they didn’t get it,
Gary Jenkins: yeah I see the same thing locally here.
Supposedly they made all this money in sports gambling and I know the descendants today, and they work. They work.
Sandra Peddie: Exactly. So- Exactly.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah … the way… I don’t know. Gangsters seem… They make a lot of money, but they spend a lot of money, and they- Yeah … gamble a lot. A lot of individuals gamble a lot.
Yep. Or they make bad investments. They, they get a, a hot stock tip that, from a, a shyster, ’cause that’s, One, one scammer goes with another and- … you get into that, and they paint this picture, and you put, $100,000 in some stock that becomes [00:29:00] zero in about six months or a year.
Sandra Peddie: That’s true, and to me, day trading is nothing more than gambling.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah.
Sandra Peddie: But, and Bugsy Siegel lost a lot of money in stock investments. And L- Lansky w- Meyer Lansky was a big investor in the stock market. When he was in Cuba, he would literally… I have his son call him every night to read the stock tale, tables to him.
But he tended toward AT&T, the blue chip companies. He wasn’t a guy who would listen to another shyster. He was smarter than that.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah, that’s, that was pretty bright. Yeah, they say “How you make $10,000 in day trading, you start with $100,000.”
When I, I, when I was in law school I knew somebody that had been wo- had worked for the stock market here in Kansas City, the, the board of trade and the- they told me that joke ’cause they’d seen it so much.
Sandra Peddie: I agree.
Gary Jenkins: . We’re bigger than US Steel.
, What about that?
Sandra Peddie: He did make that statement, and I actually found it in an FBI file. [00:30:00] Ah. And he tried to deny saying it later on because he was embarrassed that they had caught him, but he said it. And it was in 1962. He was in the Volney Hotel in Manhattan recovering from a heart attack, and he was watching this news program on TV, because he was very big on staying up on current events.
And he turned to his wife and he said… It was about US Steel, and he said, “We’re bigger than US Steel.” And there were FBI agents in the next room-
Gary Jenkins: Ah …
Sandra Peddie: listening in. Yeah. And so that got immediately recorded in the FBI files. But y- he did say it even though he tried to deny it.
Gary Jenkins: The attempt to return to Israel and staying over there, and and there was a case at, in Florida that they tried to put on him that fell through. Let’s talk about that a little bit.
Sandra Peddie: In, in the latter part of his life, from the ’60s on, and this is reflected in the FBI files, they surveilled him [00:31:00] constantly to the point where they were harassing him.
So he flew into Mi- Miami one day, and they charged him with drug smuggling because he had a bottle, I think it was called Donnatal. It was ulcer medication. Yeah. And they charged him with drug smuggling- Yeah … ’cause they were so eager to get him. So he felt harassed. And he not only had the Florida case, he had a case in Nevada accusing him of money laundering and skimming and all sorts of stuff.
And he had just I think it was, I’m trying to remember, in the 1952, no, a little ear- yes, 1953 he had a case in Saratoga where they were accusing him of all sorts of crimes. And he wound up, the, it was one and only time he served time in jail 40 days in Ballston Spa, New York.
And and the newspaper accounts, I’m being a little long wind- winded, but I’ll get to the point.
The newspaper accounts at the time said, oh, he seemed like he didn’t care, he was bored. He [00:32:00] was actually very ill. He had a kidney ailment. So then you go to Florida- And again, he was constantly surveilled, he felt harassed, he had the health problems, and he decided to move to Israel. Now this is a guy who celebrated Christmas.
He really wasn’t an observant Jew. He grew up in that culture, and he was a disappointment to his parents because he wasn’t an observant Jew. But nonetheless, Israel felt like home to him. So he did go back to Israel, and he thought at that point, he wrote to Me- Menachem Begin, he wrote to other world leaders trying to make his case that he should be allowed to stay in Israel.
But it was actually Golda Meir, who was close to Richard Nixon, who understood what a bad publicity move that would be, who blocked him. [00:33:00] And it was a source of great pain and disappointment for him, because that’s where he wanted to end up. He wanted to be home in Israel. Now, he was trying to outrun this indictment in Florida.
Which wound up, he wound up not getting killed with that, but… ‘Cause he did have to go back to the United States. And ultimately when he died in Florida, and he still, to get back to Florida in his older years, the cover of the book, which I think is fun. This is him walk- walking his dog Bruiser in Florida.
And he still, even in his late 70s, he was, scheming and, cooking up deals and all that stuff. But he wanted to present himself as this very old retiree. But Israel was a source of real pain for him. And the other thing that was and it’s probably the only time I found it, he actually gave a TV interview trying to make the case for why he should go, why he should be [00:34:00] allowed to stay in Israel.
It didn’t work, but he really believed that they were gonna see his way of thinking. And I think at that point he had dealt with so many world leaders. How many gangsters, can talk to world leaders? And this guy had an eighth-grade education, but he could hold his own because he was very well-read.
And he thought he could make the case, but he failed.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. So he died in Florida I believe. A heart attack or something, a little bit-
Sandra Peddie: Yeah … not too long after
Gary Jenkins: all this It was,
Sandra Peddie: 1983. He was 81. 83. Oh. And he really, his father died I think when he was about 57. When the father was 57 I think Lansky was only about 39.
But Lansky had a pretty long life given all his health problems, and part of that may have been due to his own self-discipline. As I said, he was very disciplined about eating, very picky about eating what foods he would eat, and he exercised a lot. He would c- even when he would see Meyer II he would insist on [00:35:00] power walking, with his grandson.
But ultimately, his health problems wore him down and he died obviously. Interesting.
Gary Jenkins: They had a relationship later in his life it sounds Meyer II and his-
Sandra Peddie: They did … grandfather Because Meyer II, he understood ’cause his grandfather never talked about what he did.
But it, one day Meyer II ran to his grandfather and he said, I saw you on TV with John Connolly,” who was the US Treasury Secretary, or, “John Connolly talking about you,” not with him but, talking about you. Yeah. And his grandfather didn’t say a word. He just smiled. He said, “Oh, yeah?”
And and nobody in the family, because this was a family that kept a lot of secrets, no one in the family talked about what Meyer Lansky did. And when Paul married his wife, he just told his wife that she was a businessman. She only discovered what he did when she saw it in Life Magazine.
So as Meyer II started to discover who his grandfather was, he wanted to know more about it.
[00:36:00] He also noticed that he got treated a little differently by people when they understood who his grandfather was, and he liked that too, he’s who, it, Meyer II very much wants to preserve his grandfather’s legacy. Some, some descendants of big mobsters, they don’t wanna have anything to do with it.
Yeah. And others are posers who are pretending that they have a familial connection, and they really don’t. Yeah. But Meyer II wants to preserve his grandfather’s legacy. And he’s right. He, it, he had a tremendous impact on American history.
Gary Jenkins: He did. He did. He’s part of, part a important part of American history as this country’s developed in the 20th into the 21st century, so it’s it’s interesting.
What does he do? What has he made his living at, Meyer II? Is
Sandra Peddie: he- he’s a retired bartender.
Gary Jenkins: Ah, okay.
Sandra Peddie: Yeah, and, Interesting … yeah. And he’s he wanted to work in casinos and in that service industry for, and he did it for years. And, bartenders can make a lot of [00:37:00] money in Las Vegas. Yeah.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah,
Sandra Peddie: they can do good.
It’s a reasonable thing to pursue,
Gary Jenkins: yeah, really. So you mentioned, we didn’t talk a lot about Bugsy Siegel. It’s an important part of the Lansky legacy, I know, and I know you must have gone in that. You mentioned something about maybe a book about Bugsy Siegel. Is that what you got in the works?
Sandra Peddie: Yes. In June of next year, the first dual biography of Bugsy Siegel and Virginia Hill, it- Ah … which is coming out. And, That was a little easier because although Bugsy was a stone-cold killer, he killed people. Yeah. Which I don’t have any proof that Meyer Lansky ever killed anyone. He certainly was aware of people being killed, and may have been part of plots in the ba- in the scenes, but I don’t…
I’m not aware, I can’t find any evidence that he killed anyone. Bugsy Siegel was a little more emotionally accessible, he was more, He was a little easier to write about in that sense. But that book is coming out. It’s called Bugsy and Flamingo: The Life and Tumultuous Times of- Oh, wow … Bugsy [00:38:00] Siegel and Virginia Hill and the Founding of Las Vegas.
June of 2027.
Gary Jenkins: All right. We’ll look forward to that, and having, talking to you again here in about a year and a half. Sounds
Sandra Peddie: good. Sounds good.
Gary Jenkins: All right, great. And guys you need to get this book, ’cause you’re gonna… There’s a lot more. I’m looking at my notes that they sent me, and I’ve got the book and some things I saw in there, and it’s really well-written.
Of course Sandra does a great job.
Sandra Peddie: Thank
Gary Jenkins: you. So get this book, and there’s a lot more stories in there, a lot more about that Bugsy Siegel that we didn’t go into at all. And there’s… I see two men tried to kidnap Lansky at one time. Yep … his what else we got here?
Sandra Peddie: I’ll
Gary Jenkins: hold it up
the FBI tried to turn him to investigate narcotics trafficking and, … different things like that. So a lot more in there, and get that book, guys. I really appreciate you coming on the show, Sandra.
Sandra Peddie: Thank you, Gary. It was fun, and it was good talking to you.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah, you too. All right.
Sandra Peddie: I’ll see you next year.
Gary Jenkins: Next year.