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In this episode, we explore the intriguing life of Wayne Newton, “Mr. Las Vegas,” and his unexpected ties to organized crime. I share discoveries into a strange relationship between a Gambino family associate and this Las Vegas entertainer. I reveal Newton’s connections with mobster Guido Penosi amid his performances at the Copacabana Club. The narrative delves into how Newton’s rise to fame attracted the attention of the Gambino family, leading to offers of “protection” and entangling him in a web of crime, investigations, and betrayal. As the story unfolds, I reflect on the complexity of Wayne Newton’s legacy, inviting listeners to engage with our community as we continue to explore the captivating intersections of celebrity and organized crime. Wayne Newton was a dynamic showman in Las Vegas for many years, and his innocence led him to get into a business relationship with a mobster. He even allowed his mob connections to become involved with another Las Vegas entertainer, singer Lola Falana.
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Transcript
[0:00]Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio. This is like a little extra, as you’ll notice, you got this soon. We’re experimenting with trying to get my new logo, this part of this logo here on the top of the email that comes out if you’re a subscriber to Gangland Wire website, which if you’re not, you need to be a subscriber.
[0:19]Although I say you get a free book or a link to get a free book that I knocked out here a few years ago, and I need to change that book up a little bit. It a lot of people have gotten it be that as it may i’ve got to put out the keep experimenting putting out blog shots or blog pieces or a podcast and and i think we’ve got it fixed now so when this comes out if you go to the if you’re subscriber and you go to the email you’ll see a different picture you’ll see my new logo always had that old logo that i had for several years that had the wave sign and the green wave sign and the red gangland wire and i paid a guy to come up with this new logo. And, and, you know, and then I never could figure out how to get it up. Finally, my wife finally sat down. I convinced her to go into the back end and figure it out. And it took her about three hours to figure it out. You’d think it’d be easier than that, but it wasn’t. So I thought I’d do a little separate podcast here for you, just for fun. A story that I had always wondered about when I was younger was Mr. Las Vegas, Wayne Newton. I I don’t know if you know who Wayne Newton is. Most of you probably do. I saw his show once. I was out in Las Vegas and saw his show. He was getting older then. He’s probably, shoot, he’s older than me.
[1:33]But he’s had a lot of work done, and he obviously was wearing a girdle or something. He looked pretty slim and trim for his age and what I know about him. But he put on a hell of a show in Vegas. I mean, he is the consummate showman. I always had heard that Wayne Newton somehow was hooked up to the mob, but yet not really, or the mob, you know, being a Las Vegas entertainer like that, you got to have, you got to somehow get along with the mob back in the 70s and 80s. Now, since then, you don’t have to. I started researching, and I found that he once got himself hooked up with a New York mobster, not a Chicago guy. You would have thought it would have been Tony Splatro. This is a New York mobster named Guido Penosi. There’s not a lot known about Guido’s earlier years, other than he was convicted of murder as a juvenile.
[2:25]1971, Guido Penosi was convicted of tax evasion for not paying income taxes for several years during the 60s. But and he was a cousin to a capo in the Gambino family family named Frank Piccolo. I don’t know who Frank Piccolo was, and he didn’t really come into modern times. He was a cousin to this Capo in the Gambino family. During the 1960s, Guido Panossi had met Wayne Newton when Newton was performing at the Copacabana Club in New York City, which was well-known to be mob-connected. I think it was originally owned by Frank Costello. I think that was a club that they used in Goodfellas where they came back, you know, they let them in in front of everybody and gave them a special table up front. Kind of his, you know, this is living the high life of a mobster in New York City. You know, they were friends. They were really good friends. They say that, well, this was from court records, actually, when I researched it. Wayne Newton’s office calendar had Guido Penosi’s birthday marked on it. You know, I mean, I don’t keep anybody’s birthday marked on my calendar. And one time, Newton spent almost a whole month with Penosi down in Florida.
[3:32]Penosi intended the wedding of Newton’s brother. He’s got a brother named Jerry Newton, which I’d never heard of. One time, Wayne Newton flew to Los Angeles in 1976. He flew to Los Angeles with a whole band and performed for Penosi’s son free of charge. So let’s just say they were close friends. Wayne Newton always claimed he didn’t know anything about Penosi’s mafia connections. Infections a newsman once asked Wayne Newton about his friend he said the only thing i can tell you i met him at the Copacabana several years ago i thought he was just a fan he stayed in how we’ve stayed in contact i liked the guy guido penosi’s cousin is a guy named frank lewis piccolo or piccolo i’m not sure how you pronounce that uh we’ll say piccolo he was a he was a capo in the Gambino crime family but up in the Bridgeport Connecticut faction piccolo was a big guy stood stood six foot tall, weighed 200 pounds, had black curly hair, like, you know, always wanted to be six foot two and weighed 250 pounds, had a full head of black curly hair.
[4:32]As most of us do, his whole family lived up in Bridgeport. He was connected to the Gambinos in, faxing up in Bridgeport. In 1980, this Frank Piccolo tried to blackmail money from Wayne Newton. Newton had been trying to disengage himself from a financial investment in a Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada tabloid newspaper, and that had some partners in it. And the partners were threatening Las Vegas police. He went to the cops out there and then they couldn’t stop these threats, whatever they were. I couldn’t really find out much more about it. It’s not that important. Anyhow, I just was being threatened.
[5:06]And he turned to Guido Penosi his old buddy, who then Penosi, you know, how these mob guys do. Well, here’s a guy that can help you. So Penosi referred Wayne Newton to Gambino guy from Bridgeport, Connecticut, named Piccolo. And he then came out to Las Vegas and used his influence and stopped these threats right in their tracks.
[5:27]Well, as usual with any mob guy, if you’re going to take something like that from a mob guy, you know, as a godfather said, you know, maybe someday you can do me a service. So, you know, of course, someday, you know, Wayne Newton can do Mr. Piccolo a service. And eventually he came back around to a business advisor, Wayne Newton, and he wanted him to purchase life insurance for a singer named Lola Falana from a particular insurance agent, which meant that Piccolo was getting a little piece of this action, whatever it was. Because Piccolo also told some associates in New York he was going to become a silent partner with Wayne Newton and they were going to purchase the Aladdin Hotel and Casino which became the Planet Hollywood Hotel and casino FBI got in on this and they ended up bugging Wayne newton and they got him on some conversations with these guys and and on june the 12th 1981 piccolo and Penosi were were indicted in Connecticut on conspiring to extort money and other valuable rights from Wayne Newton and this Lola Falana. Lola Falana was a famous singer back in the day, kind of Wayne Newton’s ilk. Now, Frank Piccolo will die before he actually goes to trial. And that September 19th, 1981, somebody shot and killed Frank Piccolo in a telephone booth in Bridgeport, Connecticut, right down the street.
[6:55]Now, later on, it will come out that Gambino boss, Paul Castellano, had him killed. He had been trying to encroach on the Genovese’s crime families, control of rackets in Connecticut.
[7:09]And Genovese and the Gambino family already had some really lucrative contracts. And if you know these construction rackets in New York City, they were together like the Windows case and some different cases like that and the Concrete Club and all that. And so when Piccolo was trying to horn in on some Genovese family business in Connecticut, Paul Castellano just gave him up and ordered his murder. So that’s a little story about Wayne Newton, famous singer in Las Vegas, a consummate showman. Never forget when he came out, it was like Elvis Presley’s show. And I never actually saw it in person, but I’ve seen clips of it. But has this special, you know, uh, dramatic music. And then he kind of appears to coming down some like escalator, like came down the gold escalator, if you will. But he came down the, uh, the escalator, uh, was transported down. It was like bigger than life. And, and he did put on a show.
[8:10]
Wayne Newton and the Mob
[8:07]He really put on a heck of a show. He worked his butt off. So that’s the story of Wayne Newton, Las Vegas, and his connections to the mob. And, and this is just a little special episode that I can put out to see if If you, if you got an email, if you’re a subscriber and you get the email, then there’s, you might notice that new logo of a back of a guy sitting, uh, like he’s listening to a wiretap or something, uh, instead of the old waveform and just gangland wire. So let me know.
[8:36]I appreciate everything you guys do for me and everything. All you guys had listened in and you guys had like, and share it. And I’ll tell you what that Joe Massino, when I did last month or a couple of three weeks ago. I need to spend that much work on them more often because, boy, it really did gangbuster. A lot of guys really liked that and obviously liked and shared it. So it went through the roof as far as likes and subscribes and all that and views or whatever, however you do that.
[9:05]
Support and Community Updates
[9:05]And so keep supporting me. I really appreciate it. And I’ll keep putting out this mob content and we’ll continue to have fun with all this. Don’t forget. I like to ride motorcycles and don’t like working on my website’s back end. That shit is hard, man. I hate doing that. Thank God. Thank you, Janice Colt, for taking care of me on that and for not charging me any money, but it keeps coming back. I like to ride motorcycles, and I know if you have a problem with PTSD, if you’ve been in service. As you know, go to that VA website. If you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, get hold of our friend, uh, former Gambino. And I see maybe he wasn’t really a made guy. He was, he was a prospect as they say in the motorcycle gang. Uh, he was a proposed member of Gambino family. Uh, it was a legacy. His dad was a made guy, Pat Andy.
[9:54]And he has a website that, uh, he does his show on and he has a hotline number and he’s a drug and alcohol counselor for a regular living. I don’t know if he’s still doing that, if he’s making enough money off his appearances and his website or his YouTube channel yet. He doesn’t have to keep working. I don’t know.
[10:13]If I didn’t have my pension coming in, I’d be working. Go in my Gangland Wire podcast group and like that and join that. We have a lot of great conversations and I got my YouTube channel and I got stuff for sale out there. If you want to go into my website and go on the the, uh, donate page. You don’t have to donate, but I got some of my stuff for sale. And I, you can also got always have links in the show notes to my,
[10:42]
Upcoming Books and Projects
[10:38]uh, uh, movies that are for rent on amazon.com. I’m working on coming up with a series of books. I’ve got the first one pretty well done on the Chicago outfit. I’ve just taken selected stories from old podcast, download the transcripts, ran that through chat GPT kind of makes sense out of it. And then rewrote of that into stories and so each chapter is a different story that i thought was interesting from my podcast and so we look for those coming out of me i’ll probably gonna do another special one trying to get people to really go and buy a whole bunch of them at one time they’ll be inexpensive they’re gonna be short books with separate chapters and it’ll be pretty inexpensive and so i’ll do one on new york probably next i gotta do one on kansas city and so i’m just to always coming up with something to, to sell or to entertain and educate people. It’s, you know, that’s what it’s all about is entertaining people in an edge or educating people in entertaining matters. So thanks a lot guys.