Gangland Wire

Angelo Lonardo Angelo Lonardo “Big Ange” In the 1980s, the FBI recorded Cleveland Mob Underboss, Joey Gallo, “Angelo Lonardo is probably one of the most respected guys in the whole United States.” Gallo went on to state, “He’s really the kind of guy we needed in this town a long time ago, but you know, nobody ever listened to him because… he don’t express himself… But out of everybody that’s left,...

After the deaths of the Mangano brothers, Costello pushes Anastasia as the new boss of that family. The Commission confirmed Anastasia’s ascension to be boss of the renamed Anastasia family. To take control of the Luciano family, Genovese needed to kill  Frank Costello . However, Genovese could not kill Costello without also eliminating Anastasia. To do that, Genovese needed allies. Frank Costello...

To reward Anastasia’s loyalty, Luciano placed him and  Louis “Lepke” Buchalter , the nation’s leading labor racketeer, in control of the Syndicate’s enforcement arm,  Murder, Inc.   This was a group of  Jewish  and  Italian  killers that operated out of the back room of Midnight Rose’s, a candy store owned by mobster  Louis Capone  in the  Brownsville  neighborhood of Brooklyn. Some experts claim...

Long before Albert Anastasia  forms Murder Incorporated in 1919, he and his brothers arrived in New York City, working on a freighter. Jumping ship, the brothers stayed in the United States, working as longshoremen on the Brooklyn waterfront. It was not long before Anastasia was convicted of murdering a brother longshoreman, George Turino, as the result of a quarrel. Anastasia was sentenced to dea...

William “Red” Wemette was an FBI informant who testified against against the most feared and dangerous Chicago Outfit killers of modern times. I must note that Red was not the usual infomant but more a contract agent. He was not providing information as a trade to get out of a criminal charge, he was gathering information as a public service. He was paid, but this work was so dangerous, the pay wa...

The Investigation and Arrest In Part 2 of this horrifying story, retired detectives, Joe Langer and Tom Robinson tell about the Theresa Brown subsequent man hunt for Grissom. After he escaped arrest in the nearby town of Lawrence, Kansas, Grissom steals a car and drives to Corpus Christi, Texas on the Gulf of Mexico. He was a body builder and attractive man who could be quite charming to young wom...

Prison Break The Department of Justice sentencing guidelines send Mac to the famous maximum security federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas. Here, he has a fateful meeting with another skyjacker named Gordon Trapp Brocknell. And, just when you think it is all over for Martin Joseph McNally, the case takes another unusual twist at the Super Max Penitentiary in Marion Illinois. McNally and his new fr...

Arrest and Trial Of McNally Martin J. McNally in Lineup Shortly after, Mac arrives back home with a new plan. He is going to skyjack another plane and ask for a million dollars this time. As Mac makes contacts with his criminal associates, one of them alerts a Detroit police officer who passes this along to the F.B.I. This contact agrees to work with the Bureau and wears a wire trying to get Mac t...

The Hunt for the Skyjacker Skyjacker Martin J. McNally continues telling how he lands safely in a farm field. He determines he is in Indiana by the license plates. After hiding over night, hearing helicopters come and go, he decides to make his way to the closest town. After a nearly being struck by a passing car, the local sheriff stops to check him out. Mac convinces the sheriff he has been visi...

Skyjacking Interrupted Actual Parachute In Part 4, convicted skyjacker Martin J. McNally (“Mac”) relates how a local St. Louis man is drinking at the Lambert Airport Mariott Inn lobby bar. The bar patrons are watching this skyjacker drama live on a television. A patron abruptly leaves the bar with a comment something like, “hold my drink and keep watching, you’ll see something!”  Mac has taken a l...

The Hijacking Our D. B. Cooper copycat, Martin J. McNally, continues with his fascinating account of a real life skyjacking. He has selected Lambert Field in St. Louis and has arrived at the gate. Mac gets on the plane and takes his seat. This plane is a Boeing 727 arriving from New York and proceeding on to Tulsa Oklahoma. When the Captain announces the descent into Tulsa, Mac takes his attache c...

The Preparation In the first episode, Mac told how he heard about the successful skyjacking of D. B. Cooper and started his own skyjacking plan. In this second episode of our interview with convicted skyjacker, Martin J. McNally, we learn about how Mac selected his target airport and airline. He believed that any airline would come up with the ransom demand. He recruited an old partner in crime, p...

Al Capone was born in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. He was a small time criminal and belonged to several different gangs including the powerful 5-Points Gang in lower Manhattan. He received his scar when he insulted a woman at a bar. Her brother, a gangster named Frank Gallucio , slashed Capone’s face. His boss in the 5-Points gang, Frankie Yale , made Capone apologize to Gallucio. In an...

Several months back, Aaron and I posted an episode telling about a 1972 D.B. Cooper copycat skyjacker named Martin J. McNally. In 1972, D. B. Cooper inspired McNally and several others to skyjack  passenger planes and use parachutes to escape. After posting this story, Martin McNally (“Mac”) was googling his own name and found my podcast episode about his escapade. He reached out by commenting in...

When Ed Tickel was installing F.B.I. wiretaps, he led a secret life as a burglar. He was the son of a respected FBI agent and well-liked by his coworkers. I found a report about this secret life in a book titled The Secrets of the FBI by investigative reporter Ronald Kessler . He was known as a guy who could defeat any lock, crack any safe and make any covert entry required. Many agents attended l...

This show is about F.B.I. Black Bag operations and the men who do this. Without the skill of the “bag men” the important microphones would not have installed and the Mob control over the Tropicana and Stardust Casinos would never have been uncovered. In this episode, I tell about an FBI agent that went bad, Ed Tickel. In the 1970s, this agent made many surreptitious entries inside and outside the...

In this episode, Tropicana Casino Skimming, Aaron and I talk about how KC boss Nick Civella used Joe Agosto to Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal infiltrate the Tropicana casino. I use the below actual wiretap audio to help tell the story. Nick Civella is concerned with the skimmers stealing and Civella wants a moratorium on all Tropicana skimming. The code names are: Carl DeLuna is Deluna Nick Civella is Zi...

In part 2, Aaron and I talk about the crime that our friend Schlecter, aka Joe Sharpino, did to get himself in witness protection.  A woman named Sally Papia came from Chicago to Milwaukee and opened a nice club called Sally’s Steak House. She was the girl friend of a Chicago Outfit guy named Frank Buccieri . She was described as a raven haired firecracker who thought she was the queen bee of Milw...

I met retired F.B.I. Agent Gary Magnesun in Las Vegas- he had been assigned to the Milwaukee Organized Crime Squad and then transferred to Las Vegas. In Milwaukee, he was assigned to the first Organized Crime squad. In Las Vegas, he was assigned to the investigation of Lefty Rosenthal and Tony Spilotro and the Stardust skim. When I went out to Vegas to interview folks for my film, he cooperated an...

In his 30 Illegal Years to the Strip Bill Friedman explains how Al Capone, Frank Nitti, Charles Luciano, John Torrio, Moe Dalitz, Meyer Lansky and Joe Adonis and Frank Costello created the modern criminal gambling Syndicate that ruled organized crime in the United States. He wrote “The seven leaders of the three dominating Prohibition gangs imported the world’s finest liquors on a massive scale. A...

In his 30 Illegal Years to the Strip Bill Friedman explains how the early Mob bosses created illegal gambling empires after prohibition. Some of these men went on to help create modern Las Vegas. Al Capone, Frank Nitti, Charles Luciano, John Torrio, Moe Dalitz, Meyer Lansky and Joe Adonis and Frank Costello created the modern criminal Syndicate that ruled organized crime in the United States. He w...

In Part 3, Paul Scharff tells about his struggle to help clean up the McHenry County Sheriff’s office and elect a new sheriff. Paul runs into reluctance on the part of the sitting sheriff and he embarks on his own investigation into why the McHenry county authorities do not want to verify Frank Culotta’s claim that Larry “Lurch” Neumann killed his father, Ron Scharff. He learns the sitting sheriff...

In Part 2, our special guest, Paul Scharff tells about his first contact with the McHenry County Sheriff’s Investigator. Paul learns they have never looked at Larry “Lurch” Neumann . When Paul first contacts the Sheriff’s investigator, they try to discourage him by intimating he may learn information about his father that he does not want to hear. They had put this off as a killing by a jealous lo...

In 1981, 10 year old Paul Scharff was awakened and told the news that his father, Ron Scharff, was killed by unknown persons at his McHenry County neighborhood tavern. Twenty-eight years later, Paul receives a call telling him who killed his father. In this story, we learn that sometimes the bad guys are the good guys and the good guys are the bad guys. This is the fascinating true story of a mob...

In the second episode, Aaron and I discuss the mystery of what happened to the Marlborough Diamond. The listener will learn about the subsequent investigation and arrest of The Monk and The Brain in another audacious scheme long after the Marlborough Diamond caper. In what may be their last crime outside of prison, the 72 year old dynamic duo plan an armored car robbery. The investigating agents l...