So, hey, welcome all you Wire Taverns. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire.
I have The Last Mob Lawyer.
Now, you know, we did a series on mob lawyers, Bruce Cutler and,
what's his name, Jerry Nagel and a bunch of those guys. Well, I have Chris Franzblau.
Now, he has written a book called The Last Mob Lawyer.
And I really, I started looking at his stuff and the promos that his editor put out.
And he really has had an interesting career.
You know, he did some stuff with Mayor Lansky and around the Hoffa case.
And he's got a lot of really interesting stories.
So welcome, Chris. I'm really happy to have you on the show.
Thank you. Good morning. Chris, tell the guys a little bit about,
you know, your law school experience and your early practice of law,
how you developed into becoming a defense lawyer.
You don't just jump out and start defending big-time criminals.
We know that. So where'd you go to law school?
Well, I went to law school at Duke University in North Carolina.
Kind of a good Southern school almost, huh? After you got out of law school,
then I believe you went in the service.
I believe we talked a little bit earlier. You went in the service.
So tell the guys about, and you went in as a, in the JAG Corps,
the Judge Advocate General.
Is that what you went in as a lawyer in the Navy?
Not quite. I went in, I went to this very extensive training to become a Naval
officer before there was a JAG unit in the Navy. Okay.
And then during that period of time, though, they sent me to what's called,
after we finished that hectic program, and the Navy sent me to a very top secret cryptography school.
So that I could have those kind of duties if I were assigned to that.
And then they sent me to Navy Justice School because I'd been a lawyer so that
I could also do court-martial work in the Navy.
Then when I got out of Newport, that was all training in Newport.
And then I was assigned to an admiral down in Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida.
In Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was part of the command of the Pensacola Admiral in Florida.
The Last Mob Lawyer, you're going to get out of the Navy, you're going to go
into private practice, I believe.
Now, this book, guys, I want to read you something about this book.
Joe Pistone, aka Donnie Brasco, said, The Last Mob Lawyer, true stories from
the man who defended some of the biggest names in organized crime.
It's a book that pulls back the curtain on mob life in a way only an insider could.
Chris Flansblow's extraordinary legal career offers a fascinating glimpse into
the dangers, the characters, and the often bizarre legal wrangling that defines the mob heyday.
The Last Mob Lawyer is an essential read for anyone interested in the darker
side of American history.
So it sounds like a really good read and a fascinating read for a mob fan of
which my guys out there that are listening, my regular listeners,
especially, they are mob fans.
They want to know all the intimate behind the scenes details.
And I know you've got some being the lawyer and you're the first actual mob lawyer I've talked to.
I only talked to a guy who was a lawyer who studied mob lawyers.
So you're the first one I've talked to. Guys, listen to Chris tell a little
bit about how he got into defending the mob or defending and organized crime
guys. Again, you just don't drop out of,
Law school, the Navy, and defending mob guys. How did that come about, Chris?
Ironically, before I got out of the Navy,
just shortly before, which was in the late 50s and early 60s,
that's when the federal government was starting to unwind this organization
they call La Cosa Nostra and organized crime and the mob.
That's the way they had denoted these investigations.
It started with Keith Alford and McClellan, and then there was that famous meeting in Appalachia.
But I wasn't even here then because I was still in the Navy.
So I got out of the Navy, and then I wound up as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office.
And that was the beginning of the prosecutions of organized crime,
basically by Robert Kennedy, who was the attorney general when John Kennedy was president.
And I was in the U.S. attorney's office doing investigations,
criminal investigations.
So I'd done some criminal work in the court marshals in the Navy,
so it was a natural for me to go to the U.S. attorney's office in New Jersey.
So when I got out, as luck would have it, a couple of the well-known criminal defense lawyers died.
There weren't too many people doing that kind of work. And as luck would have
it, coincidentally, when I was a young man, a boy, a teenager,
I knew some people who were later identified as organized crime figures,
mostly, for example, Jerry Katina or the guy they called the boot,
Boyardo, the boot.
And because they played golf at the same country club, and I was a pretty...
Skillful golfer at that time, as was the admiral in Pensacola.
So that all worked out very well. So they knew me as to what would have it. And I came out of the U.S.
Attorney's Office as organized crime was developing.
Then what happened was very early on, because I'd done this federal work,
I represented a labor leader named Riggie,
who later went to prison and his father in that one union, and the father was being deported,
and I tried that case, and we beat the deportation back then at different times.
And then I got to meet Sam the Plumber, the famous Sam the Plumber, Sam de Cavalcanti.
And that opened up a Pandora's box because in that, But I uncovered the fact that J.
Edgar Hoover had done these very secret investigations, wiretapping and so forth,
in Sam the Plumber's office without a search warrant.
And then when I asked for the discovery, they had to, after a year and a half
of trying not to have to produce that discovery.
Then they had to divulge it, and they'd divulge it to the newspapers,
and it uncovered this huge amount of organized crime, the interrelationships, and so forth.
And that kind of put me on the map, and I was very young at that time.
I was in my early 30s, probably. You know, Chris, that really almost put...
The mafia on the national map, almost as much as Appalachian and some of these
other things, because those tapes were dynamite.
And they released the transcripts of some of those tapes of Richie the Boot
talking so candidly about the mafia and everything.
They were dynamite. So you're the guy that really caused those to be released.
That's really interesting.
Yes. At that time, you know, Giuliano was the U.S.
Attorney in New York. and after the Appalachia meeting,
all the later people who are identified in organized crime were in Appalachia
and then there were indictments in New York and that's when I started to represent
Katina and then it went to the New Jersey State Investigation Commission and
he wouldn't answer questions.
He took the Fifth Amendment and we took that to the United States Supreme Court
and lost And he did almost five years in civil contempt because he wouldn't answer questions.
And then we finally got him out. I did before the New Jersey Supreme Court.
That was the first case of its kind based on cruel and unusual punishment.
So finally, I was able to get him extricated after doing almost five years.
He was almost 75 years old.
Wow. Yeah. See, we've got a picture here of a young S.E.M.
Chris Fransblau with Geraldo Catina as they arrive in Trenton for an appearance
before the Supreme Court.
So that's look pretty young in that picture.
Well, he was one of the guys up at Appalachia.
Yeah, he was. And then he had to be represented in New York when Giuliani was
the U.S. attorney there.
And then we had some issues over there, which was interesting over there because
when he had to appear at the grand jury,
they assembled a lot of the people from Appalachia who were all in the waiting
room for the long grand jury at the same time.
Katina was called in, and he came out to consult with me.
And as he was consulting with me, another attorney had a scuffle right at our feet.
The fight began right then, and the other lawyer tackled got away with a suitcase
that seemed to have an aerial outside and got away.
It seemed like it was an FBI officer who was trying to overhear the conversations
outside that grand jury room.
That resulted in my making an issue out of it. Then Katina got his subpoena
to testify, was withdrawn.
Wow. That was exciting.
That was. That was. That FBI, they were aggressive back then,
and I guess there was really no exact law.
Against technical surveillance, wiretapping, or hidden microphones.
You couldn't use it in court, but until, what, 1968, I think,
at that Omnibus Crime Control Act is when they actually created a law which
had a path to get a hidden microphone or a wiretap.
But before that, there was just no path, but you just couldn't use it.
But it was just embarrassing.
I mean, it happened in Kansas City, too, and all major cities.
Well, it happened in Atlanta, too. Yeah.
Which was also interesting when it came out that they had wiretapped some conversations
between Martin Luther King and Cassius Clay.
And that came out as a result. It all came out at the same time.
So that was an embarrassment to J. Edgar Hoover and to Robert Kennedy. Yeah.
You know, it was one thing to do this to members of the mafia,
but there's another thing to do this to actual political figures, which is what they were.
So that was really a black eye for the FBI as a whole and J.
Edgar Hoover in particular. So I guess you talk about Jimmy Hoffa and Tony Pro
Provenzano, who Tony Provenzano was from New Jersey.
Is that, you know, from this New Jersey connections here with Jep DiCarlo and
Richie the Boot and those guys?
Is that how you got in with Tony Pro Provenzano? Well, Tony Provenzano had been
indicted and convicted of some labor racketeering.
I didn't represent him at that time,
but there were some issues as to whether the previous lawyer for the union was
responsible for taking some of the bribes that had taken place in that conviction.
So the union decided to get rid of that lawyer.
His name was Jacob Friedland, who was a state senator in New Jersey.
There was a very infamous, wonderful, brilliant lawyer, former attorney general
in New Jersey named David Wilentz, who was the prosecutor of the famous kidnapping
case, a Limburg case, which was an international case.
And he knew me. And so when the lawyers who were representing Tony Pro needed
to get a new lawyer to replace Jacob Friedland, they were from New York.
They contacted David T. Wilentz, and he recommended that.
They needed a lawyer to keep that union clean and the pension funds clean.
And so all of a sudden, I was called upon based upon his recommendation.
And I began almost overnight to represent several of the major teamster unions
and a state council of teamsters throughout the state and several bigger pension funds.
And so that's that's how i got to
represent tony pro that's a long story but yeah
no but it's interesting how those i like
those details how those things work now i have
a question i guess maybe personally for you chris i want your
opinion on this and and maybe as a way of an explanation for guys a lot of people
think that because you're a lawyer and you defend the teamsters or tony Provenzano
or Jerry Katina or some of these other big time monsters that somehow you're part of the mob,
that somehow you have this guilty knowledge of what's going on.
And I know Oscar Goodman is off. He really never was.
But I know a lot of FBI agents and people involved in investigation of the mob,
you know, will say, oh, no, he was part of it.
And a lot of lawyers. Now, can you explain the kind of professional relationship
that a lawyer has with a mobster that he doesn't become part of the crime itself?
Number one is that when I was a young man, a teenager, I had known Katina before
he was alleged to be a member of organized crime or Boyardo or the others.
And Zwillman, they lived out here. My father knew some of them.
And I was in a position where I didn't have to worry about that.
I was a young guy, but I was independent.
I came out of the Navy. I got promoted. I came out. I was a lieutenant commander.
I went in as an ensign, retired out of the Navy, and I came out of the U.S.
Attorney's Office. And so, fortunately, I won a little case that had some notoriety
before these things happened, but there weren't that many people that came out of the U.S.
Attorney's Office. Organized Crime was just starting. All of a sudden,
I had a little federal case, and I won that case where the guy was going to be deported.
And there weren't that many lawyers at that time.
There were only five lawyers in the prosecutor's office at that time.
Now there's probably 60 or 70.
So It was a small community and people knew my father and I grew up in that
community. But I could be independent in that sense. Okay.
But in a couple of cases, people come to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you don't have to...
You can easily set a boundary. I'm a lawyer myself and former policeman,
and I had some criminal cases, and it's easy to set a boundary that here's what I do for you.
I just represent you in court, and when we get done, you go on your way,
you pay me or you pay me up front because I'm not taking a chance that he's
going to walk away with whatever he gets and not pay me, of course.
And so you set a boundary. And that's what people really don't understand is
when you walk into those cases that you set a boundary immediately with these guys.
You had to keep a certain distance too, not to get too familiar or whatever.
And that's good. You know, there's certain formalities and that separates the men from the boys.
There you go. That's a good way to put it. Now, historically,
we know that Frank Sinatra was hand in glove with a lot of mob guys.
So tell us about that. Well, on a particular occasion, remember Sinatra grew up in Hoboken.
The original Provenzano Union was there. So before all that, they knew each other.
And as time went on, one time I was out,
Tony Pro, we were at some negotiations in Nevada and Sinatra was performing
at the Sands, and he said to me, would you like to meet Frank Sinatra?
Well, Sinatra didn't mean that much to me. I said, yeah, sure.
So we went to the stage door to see Sinatra. He knocks on the door.
He knew Sinatra quite well, obviously.
Knocks on the door, and Sinatra's right-hand guy, I forget his name as we're
speaking, comes to the door and,
Tony says, tell Mr. Sinatra that Tony Pro is here.
So he said, oh, just wait a minute. He shut the door. He comes back and he said,
I'm sorry, Mr. Provencino, but Mr. Sinatra can't see you.
Tony Pro was so mad. He kicked the door and so forth and so on.
But of course, Sinatra had his own problems because he couldn't be seen out
there with a member of organized crime, which Tony Proe had classified for.
I tried to explain that to him because then he would be ineligible to perform
the license under the Nevada State Gambling Commission. Yeah.
Also talk about Tony Proe and his connection to Hoffa.
What can you tell us about that? Well, they had a most interesting relationship from my observation.
Hoffa was probably one of the most independent people I ever knew,
you know, with no sense of humor.
Oh, really? Tony Pro was a very entertaining guy. I mean, I've seen him.
He could be the most charming and the most difficult person,
depending on the circumstances.
But his personality seemed to really appeal to Hoffa.
And in many respects, he was very independent because Hoffa was very demanding.
But he was almost on a level.
And Hoffa, I got the impression that Hoffa was very dependent because Tony was
a very personable person. and he knew everybody, every place we ever went.
I mean, he could be a charming type rogue.
Interesting. But I never had any problems. He and I always got along very, very well.
What do you remember about the famous quarrel between Hoffa,
the famous quarrel between Hoffa and Tony Pro?
Yeah, I recall that. That was out in Lewisburg in Pennsylvania.
That was interesting. What happened was when Hoffa went to prison,
he didn't lose his pensions.
He had a very substantial pension when he left the unions.
But when Tony Pro was put on the sidelines because he was no longer able to
be a member of labor unions or be an officer of any labor unions,
he forfeited his pension.
Oh, wow. And he always believed when Fitzsimmons took over the Teamsters unions
that Hoffa could influence Fitzsimmons for Tony Pro to get his pension benefits,
that they shouldn't be forfeited. Why should Hoffa have gotten his?
But Hoffa was convicted of a crime that didn't require his forfeiture with Tony
Pro, which under the Taft-Hartley Act and everything was different.
Tony Pro never got through his head that it couldn't be done,
and Hoffa made a couple of remarks, you know, and Tony Pro lost his head,
and he went after Hoffa in the meeting.
It was no big deal. It was, you know, that was very unpleasant.
Yeah, okay. I understand now that Tony Pro's conviction was for crimes in connection
with union activity, while Jimmy Hoffa's conviction was for jury tampering that
didn't have anything to do with union activity.
That's why he got to keep his pension, and Tony Pro didn't. I understand now.
I'd see why Tony Pro was mad, but, you know. He had a hot temper.
So speaking of all that relationship, this hitman that worked for him,
did you know him, Sally Buggs, Brigulio?
Yes, I know him quite well. So tell us about your relationship with him and
tell us, you know, your opinion of him, what you remember about Sally Buggs.
Kind of purportedly the man that killed jimmy hoffa possibly well he was always a target.
Uh he was a target of that and uh as was tony pro as cold as ice and uh he he went
his own way and he was a very independent guy and a nasty kind of guy too i
really never got along that well i was never that friendly with him uh very
frankly he was really like a bodyguard or chauffeur,
but he was a business agent at Local 560, and he was on the board of trustees of the union.
And I had a big argument with him at the Teamsters Pension Fund,
and there's still a guy who was there who witnessed it, who's still alive.
I spoke to him just the other day, named Bob Archibald, who was one of the trucking
company appointees to the board of trustees.
Reason, Greguglio wanted to have the board, the pension fund give a mortgage
that became a big issue to some people from Detroit.
And he outlined it, you know, because the pension funds often made investments.
We had investment advisors.
It was a huge, big pension fund, and I was the attorney, but I was selected
to keep everything on the up and up.
So I said I would not approve. I recommended against it and so forth.
They said, look, you're here for legal advice, not what to do or not to do.
And he threatened me, and we never got along too well after that.
Wow, well, that's... Bob Archibald, who was still alive, was there.
Most of the other guys are gone. Bob Archibald just turned 101 a couple months ago.
Interesting. That was bold of you to not approve a mortgage,
a pension loan that Sally Buggs wanted approved. That was pretty bold of people
who've been killed for less, I think. Well, they went and they did the mortgage, though.
That was the problem. Well, they got it done, okay.
And they put the mortgage on, and some other lawyers handled it. I wouldn't do it.
Yeah, wouldn't judge it. And the guys who got it were later indicted because the deal fell through.
They were tried by a federal judge named Alistair Hastings.
Alistair Hastings then was, after that trial, was impeached by the United States
Senate, and they took his judgeship away for allegedly taking bribes.
So then after he lost his judgeship, he ran Fort Lauderdale to become the U.S.
House of Representatives representative, and he got elected,
and he served in the House of Representatives for 30 years.
Believe it or not. Believe it or not. Only in America, as they say. Yeah.
What seemed to have happened was when Hoffa got out, he was pardoned by Nixon.
He got the pardon, but he was supposed to be pardoned a year earlier.
Hoffa, because as we said before, did not forfeit his right to go back to become a union official.
So he was still eligible. So he was supposed to get a year sooner.
He was thought to get out at Christmas. In those days, if I can remember.
Pardons were really only granted by a president just before Christmas.
In that year, he was promised or thought he was going to get the pardon.
And the last minute it got canceled and he went nuts.
So finally it got put back on the next year.
But when they got it the next year and he got the pardon,
it had been the former international lawyer for the union was a good friend
of mine who I later during some of these days got to meet a friend of a guy
named Edward Bennett Williams. Oh, yeah, I've heard of him.
He was the finest, greatest lawyer I always looked up to.
What happened was he had resigned.
He had some differences, and he resigned, and a new lawyer took over.
And when the pardon was drawn and given to Hoffa, they put in the pardon that
he could not become a union official anymore.
And that was not Hopper's understanding of what the deal was.
So when he got out, he wanted to go back to the union, and he wanted to get the pardon revised.
So he was threatening everybody.
So he was threatening people that if he didn't get back to union office and
didn't get the pardon revised,
feeling that people could influence the president or whatever,
that he would give evidence against others or whatever.
But I never knew anything further until I was heard about his disappearance.
And now, I had this coincidental experience just last year when I knew that
they were looking for Huffa all over the place.
The FBI could never dig up. They must have gotten lots of tips of where Huffa was buried.
And they dug up two or three places
in New Jersey right under the Pulaski Skyway. Yeah, I read about that.
Two or three different times. And one day, I was out playing golf with some friends of mine.
I was introduced to someone there who I'd never met before.
And he was just new, you know, meet so-and-so.
When he heard my name, he said, you know, I've always wanted to meet you.
There's a story I want to tell you.
And he proceeded to tell me exactly where Hoffa was buried.
Oh, really? And why and how he was there to see it and what he described.
And there's some stuff in the book about it.
All right. Well, that's a pretty good teaser by that book. Based upon what he told me.
And he told me that at the time that it happened during the FBI investigation
and they were digging up, he said he called and reported it to the New York
Times, but he never heard anything or anything.
And all these years had gone by. He's now in his middle 70s,
this guy who I met at Mount Ridge Country Club.
But what he described, I absolutely believe that that's exactly where Huff is
buried, within a couple hundred yards of where the FBI had apparently gotten
some tips of where he was buried.
Back in New Jersey, those New Jersey tips. New Jersey, under the Pulaski Skyway,
not far from the Pulaski Skyway.
Yeah, I interviewed that guy that came up with that theory, and he had some
pretty convincing arguments that the people, as he related the people that told
the stories about where he was and how he ended up back east,
that it was a pretty convincing argument enough that the Bureau didn't spend
a bunch of money to go out there. This guy told me he saw it. He saw it.
He's still alive. Well, I tell you what, if you can dig that body up,
you can get a lot of hits on the internet. I know that. That would be a big
deal. That would be huge to dig up Jimmy Hoffa's body.
It's taking on mythical proportions, as you know. So, you know,
there's Tony Provisano and he was taking a lot of money personally out and these
guys were really raiding the Teamsters Pension Fund in a way.
What did you see? Do you have one kind of one last question?
How would you comment on the efficacy of the loans that the Teamsters Pension
Fund made? I get a lot of questions about that.
Did they really, did the mob really hurt the pension fund or did they let some
people would say, oh yeah, all those loans, they got paid back or were there a lot of defaults?
Did you, do you have any comment on that?
I can tell you this. I probably, I can only tell you I was the only pension
funds that I were, where we were here in New Jersey that I was counseled to.
Okay. The only suspicion I ever had was that one I just described to you a little while ago.
We had the best investment advisors
and the pension funds were extremely successful in their investments.
We had the biggest investment advisors on Wall Street. It was very,
very, very carefully monitored.
Okay. So the New Jersey pension fund was different from the one in Chicago.
I think the one in Chicago must have been huge.
It was. We had a big fund here for a size at that time, but the pension fund
here was as clean as a whistle.
Okay. All right. Interesting to know. All right.
Chris Fransblau, named the book as The Last Mob Lawyer, True Stories from the
Man Who Defended Some of the Biggest Names in Organized Crime.
Chris, it's a fascinating book. I got the PDF and I've, I've read some bits
and pieces as much as I could.
I got to get back into it now. Cause you, you've kind of stirred me up where
I want to, I want to learn more out of what you, uh, out of your experiences.
So I really appreciate you coming on the show. Anytime.
Well, that was pretty interesting guys. Uh, a guy, he's, uh,
he's seen a lot of history, man, a lot of history.
So don't forget. I like to ride motorcycles. If you, uh, are out there in your
car and your big 10,000 pound SUV, Watch out for motorcycles when you're out
there because you can squash us like a bug.
If you have a problem with PTSD, be sure and go to the VA website if you have been a vet.
And if you haven't been a vet, well, I figure out some other place to go get
some help because there's help available. And PTSD affects a lot of people.
And hand in glove with PTSD is problems with drugs and alcohol.
You know, they always, you know, get treated for one. You probably got the other.
Uh, our friend, Anthony Ruggiano from the Gambino crime family is a drug and
alcohol counselor down in Florida. And he has a hotline on his,
uh, YouTube channel or his website.
One of the two or both of them, maybe I can't remember.
And if you have a problem with gambling, there's one 800 bets off,
at least here in Missouri, you know, getting ready to do the apps for, for gambling.
And there's a lot more, more and more gambling is out there and more and more
opportunities, you know, uh,
I don't really care for it myself. I lose $20 at a casino and I like,
oh shit, get me out of here.
But you know, it's everybody isn't like that.
Everybody has a different appetite for that kind of risk with their money.
And so if, if you feel like it's causing any trouble, why try to get some help
for that. Don't forget, I've got books and movies out there.
I'll have a link to the last mob lawyer down there at the show notes.
I will have links to my books and my, uh, documentaries that you can stream
for just, I think a buck 99 on Amazon, or I've got them on my website.
I figured out a way you can stream them off my website and I get the whole dollar
99 instead of only 95 cents of it or whatever it is.
Uh, and the books the same way I got them on my website or you can get them
on Amazon, which is a lot easier.
And you get the Kindle books, which is a lot cheaper if you like Kindles.
And so help me out with those books, uh, every, every time.
And, and give me a review on those books. I didn't get many reviews on my New York book.
I didn't really kind of push people on that. I did push them a little bit to
buy it, but I didn't remind them to give me a review.
And I've got, I don't have, I've sold more books than the Chicago books,
but I've got less reviews.
So it helps for me to get reviews on those books.
Why you help out the podcast because you sell more books and then I get more
money. And, you know, I'm more, more enthused about doing the podcast and,
and this is, you know, you got to watch a few ads, but other than that,
it's, it's all free content here. So thanks a lot, guys.