Gangland Wire

In part 2 of this story of fear and horror on Kansas City streets. Gary and newspaper reporter Ian Cummings examines how Bob Gross once escaped any penalty because a rural deputy sheriff thought he could alter evidence to make a stronger case. Gary and Ian tell how a team of Kansas City police detectives finally brought Bob Gross to justice using modern technology. Don’t forget to listen to Aaron...

Authorities could have predicted that a teenager named Robert “Bob” Gross might end up a suspect in sex crimes. They just did not know how far he would take his obsession. As with many sex offenders, he became enamored neighbor girl’s underwear drawer. He liked to creep around and window peep. To some, this may seem like normal boyhood sexual curiosity, but these behaviors often end up as adult ob...

A few days after D-Day in June of 1944, the Prime Minister of the New York Underworld, Frank Costello took a short cab ride. When he exited the cab, he left behind two envelopes containing $27,200.00 in hundreds and fifties. Probably gambling receipts because he was known as the slot machine king of New York City. The honest cabbie was named Edward Waters. He found the envelope and turned it into...

As you know, this podcast runs on donations and purchases of my books, movie and the Kansas City Mob Tour app. I have over 200 free episodes out there with interviews of ex-mobsters, cops and federal agents, all mostly about the mob across the United States. We did a first-person interview with a parachuting skyjacker, a prison interview with the bank robbing Boonie Hat bandit and interviews with...

In this episode, we taped an interview with Jimmy Fratianno expert George Custer at the MobWorld Summit in our Las Vegas hotel room. We learn that Jimmy the Weasel started as a Cleveland mobster, then passed through the Chicago outfit and ended up in southern California by the 1950s. He made his bones by killing two Kansas City mobsters in Los Angeles. this murder was made famous in the popular Ho...

In 1954, the Chicago Outfit found it lucrative to hijack trucks filled with cartons of cigarettes. They had dozens of corner stores who did not question the history of a case of Lucky Strikes if the price was right. In 1954, an alert tobacco distributor named Alfred Koenecke noticed a truck was following his delivery trucks. He called the Chicago PD and they assigned Det. Bernard Kennedy and Det....

In this episode, we interview retired Undercover Detective Reyne Reyes. She worked in the most dangerous job of all the Street Narcotics Units before she arrived to work for your host in the Intelligence Unit and then later in the Major Case Narcotics Unit. One of the fun stories she shares is about the time we sent her into a bar owned by a mob bookie. Jackie Dale Norris was soon attracted to Det...

River Hills In keeping with last months subject about a team of cops running surveillance and catching somebody during a caper, this bonus episode Gary will tell about his first successful surveillance. As they used to say in Dragnet, I was assigned to the day watch out of Central Patrol, The  Field Investigations Unit.  Along with my partner, John Fraise, we responded to Police Headquarters to in...

Larry “Lurch” Newman The FBI waits outside Bertha’s Gifts and Furnishings for the Hole in the Wall Gang In this third and final installment in my report on Tony Spilotro and his Hole in the Wall gang, the reader will learn how the gang plan a big burglary at Bertha’s Gifts and Furnishings. The only problem is they took in a government informant before the score. As they plan a huge score in the bu...

I am adding a new method of supporting the podcast. If you have the venmo app , how about donating an average of fifty cents an episode or just hit me up for a buck every time you think of it. In this second installment, I will talk about the activities of the Hole in the Wall gang as they stole, drank, gambled and ate pizza in Las Vegas. Remember during this time the Chicago outfit and 3 other Mi...

The making of the Hole in the Wall Series I am adding a new method of supporting the podcast. If you have the venmo app , how about donating an average of fifty cents an episode or just hit me up for a buck every time you think of it. Now on with the show. This is the first of a 3 part series telling the story of the Chicago Outfit member Tony Spilotro Hole in the Wall Gang. In this first episode,...

Hole in the Wall Gang Frank Cullotta Frank Cullotta committed many crimes and had long been part of a burglary gang in Chicago. Gangland Wire is releasing a 3 part series on Tony Spilotro and his  Hole in the Wall Gang burglary gang  Our main source of interviews comes from Frank Cullotta, a former gang leader. Frank emerged from the Witness Protection program to author several books with well kno...

Robert Cooley testifies In this 4th and final episode chronicling the life and times of feared Chicago outfit enforcer Harry “The Hook” Aleman, Gary, and David Byrne of the Facebook page The Chicago Outfit Old and Current news and articles ,  discuss the witness Robert Cooley who will testify that the judge in Aleman’s first trial took a bribe. This revelation destroys Aleman’s double jeopardy pro...

Lou Almeida This is the third of a four-part series on one of the most feared enforcers in the history if the Chicago Outfit. In this episode the Gary discusses how Lou Almeida and Harry Aleman murder Billy Logan hit with Chicago Outfit – Old and Current News and Articles Facebook page administrator and Outfit expert Mike Byrne. In 1975, a state trooper arrested Lou Almeida in Ohio en route to a m...

Harry Aleman and Butch Petrocelli Harry Aleman matured into a full-fledged member of the Chicago Outfit. It was like he was born to fill the purpose of stealing, intimidating, and serving Chicago Outfit bosses in many ways. Although he was slightly built, 5 feet 8 inches tall and 145 pounds, Aleman became so feared in underworld circles in the 1970s that small-time hoodlums trying to collect gambl...

Harry Aleman – the early years We talk with Mike Byrne, Administrator of the popular Facebook group The Chicago Outfit – Old and Current News Articles . Harry “The Hook” Aleman was born Harry Peralt Alemen on January 19, 1939 in Chicago. He has been accused of as many as 18 murders by the Chicago Crime Commission and most folks believe that number is way low. He was an important tool in the Outfit...

Carlo Morelli was born in the Italian section of Chicago known as the Patch. While we often tell negative stories about young men who came out of the Patch, this episode and the next episode will tell about a talented young man of Italian descent who overcame the negative influences of the culture and how he overcame and grew up to have a long and successful career in fashion design, the hospitali...

In this podcast, Aaron and I interview our friend who is a former prison guard at the maximum security federal prison at Marion, Illinois. He will talk about the procedures in handling high profile prisoners and special circumstances like dealing with former informants inside the system. Breaking news, a known Springfield, Massachusetts area mob member and others entered the cell of Boston gangste...

Aaron and Gary go into the real story behind the French Connection, a popular film staring Gene Hackman. The French Connection film followed Robin Moore’s true crime book that documented the exploits of famous New York Police narcotics detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso . In this episode Gary and Arron examine the real story behind how these two detectives exposed the largest heroin ring in Ne...

In this second episode, retired FBI agent Bill Ouseley tells abut how the Kansas City Crime family set up a heroin pipeline from Cuba to Tampa to Kansas City and other Midwest metropolitan areas.  Bill tells about an early heroin arrest in Kansas City that uncovered a large cache of heroin and cocaine. This arrest led to the arrest of a future KC mob boss in Kansas City. Bill tells how the first F...

Retired FBI agent Bill Ouseley  discusses the history of heroin use and trafficking in the Untied States. During the mid-1800s, Chinese immigrants arriving in  California  introduced opium smoking to America and soon organized gangs were smuggling and distributing opium throughout the region. Opium dens and the habit of getting high on this drug spread across the United States. The Harrison Act of...

In Part 2, David, Aaron and Gary discuss Sam Momo Giacana and his rise in the ranks and how that leads to his downfall. Momo Giancana would rise to the top of the Chicago Outfit duing the 1960s and 1970s. He will become a high profile gangster who draws the attention of the press and the FBI. Agent Bill Rohmer and other Chicago agents will commence Operation Lockstep and follow Momo everywhere he...

Kenny “Kenji” Gallo was born to a well to do Japanese-American family in ritzy suburban Orange County, California. Kenji started his criminal career as a quiet but hyperactive kid who entered into the drug trafficking world of the cocaine fueled 1980s in Southern California. He became a gun-toting international drug trafficker who owned a nightclub, produced porn movies, and was arrested for the m...

When Aaron and I were at the MobWorld Summit 2018, we had the opportunity to interview Ron Fino. I met him at the previous Las Vegas Mob Con when we were co-presenters in 2104. Ron Fino was born into a Buffalo mob family, the son of a Mafia Capo, Joe Fino. As an adult, Ron would see how the mob boss  Stefano Magaddino , corrupted unions and government officials. Ron joined the corrupt Laborers’ Lo...

For our media on Monday, the Kansas City Mob is the subject of your interview of a retired Kansas City Star reporter who covered the Kansas City Mob extensively in their 1970s heyday. Harry Jones developed sources deep within the mob and federal and state law enforcement. He even shared one professional informant used by the media, the FBI and the Kansas City police Intelligence Unit. Don’t forget...