[10:21] And so he had all these Smurfs lined up and these were just other, you know, these professional, semi-professional criminals that he knew from him. He was probably been buying stolen property from a lot of different people, storing coin sets and and burglary stuff who had a lot of criminal contacts so you guys then did you had you started identifying these guys who they were and maybe follow them to watch them do the snakes checks and all that wow that was quite enough that was a helping operation wasn’t it it was unbelievable you know the feds were involved uh irs was involved.

[11:00] Because the reason they got tipped off was that, so there’s a cash reporting requirement, anything over $10,000. So they thought they were being smart by going in with just like a dollar under. But they kept going to the same banks over and over again. And one of the banks alerted the IRS saying, there’s something wrong here. And so IRS, you know, they turned the case over to the FBI. So we had FBI, we had state troopers, we had IRS agents. We had anybody you would want from the federal government. And we worked it for two years, but it was an incredible case, you know. It was an incredible case. Did you ever have to sit on any of those wiretaps and listen? My guys, when I worked as a sergeant, I came back in later as a sergeant, we would loan guys out to sit on those wiretaps. They hated it. They hated it. There’s nothing more boring than sitting on a wire all day long. I know. I know. And then, you know, I don’t know if most people know, you have to minimize, which means if you’re listening to a conversation and it turns personal, you have to shut the machine off. And then, okay, when do I go back in to see if it went back to – it is boring. It is boring. Yeah, yeah, interesting. I had to volunteer for Saturdays because I knew there wouldn’t be much.

[12:20] I would catch up on all my paperwork because Saturdays, not much. And we’d say, when do you want to work on Saturdays? I said, no, I can get a lot of money.

[12:36] But it was a lot more fun to go out and follow those Smurfs around and how they were working and all that. That would be a lot more fun. Yeah, it was. It was. The surveillance were really, you know, like you said, the fun part of it. Yeah, that was a hell of a case. Now, your intelligence unit, I would like to compare intelligence units.

[12:55] We, of course, we paid attention to the local mob, picked up their tag numbers and just followed them around to try to see what businesses they were frequent in and maybe who their girlfriends were and what bars they had a piece of the action in and that kind of a thing. And on the other hand, we also had some guys that if there was, like we had an operation on the Ku Klux Klan one time. And so did you guys have those two operations going or were you just strictly criminal in your intelligence unit?

[13:24] Well, we did gather intelligence. Maybe if I explain this, it’ll make more sense. So within the Rhode Island State Police, obviously, we had the detective division. And Rhode Island, the state police have statewide jurisdiction. Not like a lot of highway patrols out in the West. So anyway, so we would have an auto theft squad. We would have a drug squad. And we would have this intelligence unit, which of all the detective divisions, so to speak, We were the only ones that weren’t required to, our bosses were not required to report to the detective commander. We reported directly to the colonel. Same way here. The commander of the intelligence reports directly to the chief of police. Same way. Yeah. So it was that kind of structure. Yeah. And so there was about six to eight of us. We had a lieutenant who ran it. We had a sergeant and then the rest were the worker bees, you know. And as you know, it’s just long hours. It’s like following somebody and next thing you know, you’re in New York City.

[14:32] It’s just the way it is, you know? But it was the camaraderie amongst the detectives to work together. I mean, we were together more than we were with our families. Of course, we were young at that time. So, you know, this was our lives, you know? Yeah. Oh, yeah. But it was quite an experience. Now, did you go into Federal Hill and try to run any surveillances? I bet that was a booger of a place to run a surveillance, try to watch anybody or follow anybody around and in and out of. It was difficult because it’s one strip. Yeah. And, you know, they hang out on the corner. And they would wave to us. We’d wave to them. And occasionally we’d stop and talk to them. They were respectful, very respectful, I have to say. I never worried about getting hurt by the mob. Organized crime because as you know we were the cost of doing business for them yeah yeah caught them fair and square right if you caught them fair and square they understood yeah but we would and.

[15:36] I recall like someone would come down from maine who was connected was probably paying raymond so we we would follow him and try to get information on him gather that intelligence pass it over to Maine. We did a lot of that. We did a lot of investigations. I recall doing one where Raymond Patriarca Sr. Owned a place called Coin-O-Matic vending machines.

[16:04] So we got a tip that the cigarettes that he was putting in his machines, and of course, when he sent someone in to stop into your restaurant or store and say, we’re going to put a machine here, you’ve got a machine. We want that machine. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So what was happening is there was one salesman of his that would drive down to North Carolina, South Carolina, buy a whole bunch of cigarettes, come back to Rhode Island.

[16:41] Literally, Gary, they had a printing press that printed the Rhode Island state tax stamp. So it might’ve been 17 cents, 18 cents a pack, but it went in his pocket, not in the state’s pocket. Right. Yeah. And so we arrested him. And of course we tried to get him to cooperate. And he said, yeah, listen, no way. I’m going to end up in the back of a trunk if I talk to you guys. Yeah.

[17:10] Yeah. But that’s just like the kind of scams they will run. Yeah. I think what’s going on now is they’ve returned to these basics. That have always made the money and have been under the radar. And I think that’s why, I mean, they’re devastated as far as Rhode Island is concerned with their presence in the crime, but they’re still making money. They’re still out there. Yeah. What we see here is one thing is payday loan places and title loan places and buy here, pay here, car dealerships, because you can charge a huge amount of interest. And, you know, and of course there, I know a guy that’s kind of a reformed mobster that did that. And he’s told me a little bit about it and believe me, he did not, when he wanted to collect on a car loan, he did not use the regular rules of collect loan collection.

[18:04] He liked to use like some pepper spray in a nightclub. Power of persuasion was not anything you worried about, right? Right, right. He did not follow the uniform. Commercial code. Commercial code on collection. Myself, I practiced law for several years after I left the police department. And I sued a lot of these car dealers. And I asked one of my clients, it wasn’t any names I’d ever heard of. And I said, what do you think about this car lab? What was your feel there? He said, well, they feel like the mafia.

[18:41] But of course, once I got involved and filed a suit, you know, there wasn’t any more threats or intimidation or anything. And so I didn’t really get onto that until later on, I became friendly with this guy who had done that and was a mob associate. He told me all the ins and outs. I thought, well, darn. There’s probably a lot more clients for me out there. I couldn’t, there’s car dealers, but they’re afraid, you know, they’re more afraid of them, especially to file a lawsuit against them. They were, they were not going to do it. Anybody would. So anyway, it’s an interesting little crime story. Now, in your books, tell us about some of the real life crimes and related to this book back in the game that you did. So can you tell a bit about what old Gene O. Peterson got into and some of the real-life crimes and how you put them in the book? I think guys will really find that interesting because, guys, I was going through this book, and there’s a lot of stuff that sounded real

[19:39] familiar to me, although it was said in the context of this book. So tell us about that. So back in the game, the way the first book ends is that one of the protected witnesses, Richard Moon Diario, is put in the witness protection program.

[19:56] Gino is trying to work his way back into detectives because he got tossed out in the first book. So now they’re both trying to come back and regain the power. Moon decides he’s in witness protection, and you know this, Gary. Guys hardly are able to do that. I mean, they put him in a nine-to-five job working in a warehouse. They’ve never done that their whole life. They can’t do it. They can’t do it. No, they can’t do it. Yeah. So he decides to come back and try to get back in the mob. And Gino, who’s trying to get back in the intelligence unit, back in detectors. So along the way, we see Moon commit a lot of crimes, identity theft, anything. He steals cars. He gets involved with a hooker, ends up beating up her pimp, setting him up for a crime. And Gino, at the same time, realizes, I’ve got to make arrests to get noticed. So one of the things that is part of my experience is, so Gino stops a car on the highway and it’s typical of a trafficker. You know, it’s usually a lease car and it’s not leased to them. It’s from an out of state place. It’s usually one operator. So it had linear markings of drug trafficking.

[21:16] So at the time we were able to do a consent to search and I don’t, I don’t understand, but almost all of them would consent to the search and sign. And so we found three kilos in the trunk of the car. So we arrested him. And so that became part of the story in the book.

[21:38] And then because, you know, not every character, all characters need to have a flaw, even our heroes. So in this book, Gino has a flaw of he gets hooked on pain pills. And we talk about that struggle. And a couple of people have called me and they said, that was really brave of you to talk about your addiction. And I said, well. It wasn’t your addiction. It was somebody else’s addiction. So I’m a really good writer. Oh, you don’t get the point of fiction. Not to say that doesn’t happen to cops. I worked with a guy once that I know he was, you know, he ended up having, he ended up having to leave early under suspicious circumstances. But there’s no doubt in my mind, he had a bad back and he started on those pain pills. And, and, and you could tell, man, he’d be angry as hell. And then all of a sudden he’d leave and he’d come back and he’d be like a different guy. Yeah. I thought, that’s interesting.

[22:43] Anyhow, go ahead. No, I was just going to say your point’s well taken because we come from a culture where you didn’t say you had a problem. No. You had, it was suck it up, buddy. Suck it up. Yeah. And so what did cops do? They self-medicated either with drink or pills or they got involved in gambling. And so we see at least now there’s some shift towards understanding that office wellness is important, you know? Yeah. And I hope it changes, but you know, there’s.

[23:17] Cops have a lot of demons, and it’s hard for some of them to rid themselves of the demons. And it’s still a really macho culture in which you do not admit any kind of anomaly that might be construed as a weakness about yourself. I understand that. Yeah. When I, at Middletown Police, like many other departments, we set up, you know, you could call a place for counseling, and I never knew about it. We also found what was successful is peer counselors. Yeah. offenses that you can go to. But yeah, the mental health of police officers is really something that we need to pay attention to. Yeah, really. Yeah. All right. We digress a little bit now. I’m sorry. That’s all right.

[23:59] It’s interesting. I think it’s interesting. And so is there any other crimes that you remember, you know, kind of like they were in the news at one time, maybe that you incorporated into this? Sure. In the first book, They Always Win, I talk about the killing of Richard Dickey Calley. Who was a maid member of organized crime.

[24:18] So what we learned from the three witnesses was that Bobo was an up-and-comer. He wasn’t a maid guy yet. And he had this crew, a small crew of three or four people, Frank Montalucci, a protective custody witness, Billy Furley, and Moon DiOrio. And so they told us basically that there was always friction between Callie the maid guy and Marapisi, the associate who was on the cusp of being a maid guy. And so what brought it to a head was that Dickie Cowley’s brother came into Maripisi’s social club on Federal Hill. Bobo treated him with disrespect because he wanted free drinks because his brother was a maid guy. But anyway, it gets back to Cowley and Cowley decides he needs to talk to the underboss, Nicky Bianco, about.

[25:14] Bobo. So they have a meeting, and according to the protective witnesses, Dickie Calley says, you need to put a chain on this guy. Pull him back like he’s a bulldog. So whatever arrangements were made, they parted ways. A couple of weeks later, St. Patrick’s Day in 1976.

[25:38] Calley walks into the social club like two o’clock in the morning, like into the lion’s lair, Doesn’t have any bodyguard or anything like that. And he’s dressed in like a St. Patrick’s Day outfit. Check green suit, green tie, green pants. Today, this isn’t Whitey’s Boulder’s place. Yeah, I know, I know. Come on. I guess everybody’s Irish on that day. And so he goes into the bar. And Bobo’s a little bit shocked. I mean, there’s people in the bar. And Dickie Cowley’s there now. Probably there to taunt him and say, Here I am, you know, I’m a tough guy, whatever. So he sits at the bar, and Bobo sees this as his opportunity. Because unbeknownst to the three witnesses, they found out later that he was given permission to take out Dickie Calley by the underboss or whoever. And so he says to Frank Montalucci, Bobo, go get the gun. So Matalucci goes out to a Cadillac that they use pops a trunk gets a 38.

[26:48] Hands you know surreptitiously hands it to Bobo and Bobo pours Dickie Callie a shot and puts it on the bar and he said this is a sign of respect this is on the house, I hope that you know bygones can be bygones, Dickie takes the drink Bobo comes from around the bar, puts his hand on his shoulder, and shoots him six times in the back. Oh, wow. Yeah. And he flops on the floor. And there were people there. There were some accounting guys playing cards. One of Bobo’s cousins was passed out on a couch. They all scatter, obviously. Yeah. And so now Dickie Callie is lying on the ground. He’s dead.

[27:41] Bobo says, bring the car around. They get Dickie’s Cadillac, pop the trunk, and they throw him in the back of the trunk. And although he’s dying or dead, Bobo comes out with a big butcher knife and stabs him like seven times. He said, wait a minute. He’s not leaving yet. And he just stabs the shit out of him. Then he has Mattelucci and Billy Furley drive up to Rehoboth near an old gulf cross and bury him there.

[28:15] Now, normally, they wouldn’t find the body for years. There was a really sharp patrolman in Rehoboth who went on to be police chief. Dan Skelly, his name was. So he’s patrolling. And the area where they dumped the body had been a place where stolen cars had been left. Sometimes people would park there. And so Dan, driving back and forth, and snow’s coming down. And one time when he passes, he sees tire marks and he said, ah, maybe it’s a stolen car. I’m going to go check it out. He drives down maybe a quarter of a mile, doesn’t see anything, decides to turn around with the cruiser, but the cruiser gets stuck. He’s like trying to make a U-turn, a 360 turn and he gets stuck. So he pops the trunk. He’s going to get something to try to get the tires moving. And he sees a trickle of blood in the snow. And so being the shop guy that he is, he calls it in and he follows the trail and then there’s snow-covered ground, but then there’s an indentation of the snow. Ah, it sunk a little. It sunk down, right. So Dan gets his, like a tire iron, hits it, and it goes right down.

[29:39] So he calls out the troops and they’d dig up Dickie Cowley’s body.

[29:45] But from 1976 to probably 83, nobody came forward. They couldn’t solve it. And what happens is Mundi Orio is sitting in prison in Walpole for a crime he didn’t commit.

[30:05] He was accused of beating up a labor union official in Fall River at Bobo’s behest, him and Frank Modellucci. Well, Moon didn’t go. That was actually another guy, Albie, Albie Foccarelli, who went with him to beat this guy up. But Modellucci, being the Einstein that he was, he drove his own car up there. Someone got the plate. They’re going to pinch him, and the province police say, well, who does he hang around with? Who’s his main guy? Diorio. So they picked them both up. The union guy supposedly identifies both of them. Thank you. And now they’re going on trial, and they’re able to do a plea bargain if they want. Now, Moon’s in his 50s, and he was willing to do like four, five years on a plea. But Matalucci insisted they go to trial, that the lawyers could beat it. And Bobo said, that’s what you’re going to do, because he’s got to do it. So they go through the trial. They’re both found guilty, and he gets like a 15 to 20-year sentence. And so he sits in his cell for two years saying, I’m going to die here. I’m going to die here. So he calls the state police and says, I have information about the Dickie Cowley murder, but you got to get me out of prison. So that’s when he got out of prison. That’s when we started the investigation.

[31:29] Interesting. Yeah. So, so now that’s all real. And you put that all fictionalized into your book. Okay. All right.

[31:41] See, guys, guys, this book is going to suck you in just like I was for that entire story. So this book is, you know, when you base these, you have to fictionalize things sometimes to make it work. Because real life is not as clean as you can then make it work and make it flow a lot smoother and fill in some things that you don’t really know. And nobody will ever know in order to make it make more sense. Otherwise, many times it’s hard to make sense out of some of these mob stories because there’s so much you’ll never know. Nobody will ever know. So, well, that’s a great story, man. You had me pulled in, Anthony.

[32:28] The most amazing thing is Muntiario was so smart. That he had learned, he wasn’t a part of the murder. He wasn’t even there. But he learned so much from them talking about it that he was able to sort of fool us into thinking that he was there. And so it was only until we put pressure on the other two and they said, he wasn’t there. It was me. And so we got the rest of the case. And so he got himself out of jail. Yeah. By taking the facts. And I remember one interesting thing is, so right after the murder, it’s a couple of weeks, and they’re in the social club, and Bobo says to them, from now on, you have to treat me differently. And they said, what do you mean? Well, when we go out, like go to a restaurant or something, there’s no more ass grabbing. You can’t punch me in the arm or swear at me. And so they figured, okay, he’s made. He’s a made guy now, so we have to treat him differently. It’s kind of like getting promoted to captain on the police department.

[33:42] Yeah, but when you’re a captain, nobody listens to you. But you don’t call them by your little pet names and joke around with them and punch them in the arm. Anyhow, go ahead. I’m sorry. I just popped in my head. No, it was kind of an ingenious move, you know, to get a wonder. And that’s why the second book dovetails into him. They can’t use him as a witness because he lied to them. So they bring him to the grand jury. He does his mea culpa. And then they put him in the witness protection. Second book, he’s in witness protection. He’s in Falls Church, Virginia. And this is another true story. So he’s leaving his apartment after working overnight, and he goes to this coffee shop every day, goes to the coffee shop. He sees this young kid, probably 9, 10 years old, talk to his dad, and then head to the men’s room. Then he sees this creepy guy follow him into the men’s room.

[34:48] So he said, this is not right. Something’s going on. Yeah. So he goes into the men’s room and he hears a little kid say, no, no, I can do this myself. And the guy said, no, let me just help you, you know, and I’ll hold it so you don’t spray it all. And so Moon literally grabs him, tells the kid to screw and he beats the shit out of him and he sticks his head in the toilet and keeps flushing it and flushing it and flushing it. And then he walks out and the manager’s like running because of the commotion and manages, is everything all right? He goes, no, no, there’s some shit you need to clean up in the bathroom. And he walks away, you know? So that to me was Moon demonstrating that he had the violence within him to get back into the mob.

[35:44] And it’s kind of like a heroic thing what he did but the point i was trying to make was here’s a guy that is struggling he can’t do the job on night watchman in virginia, he’s trying to make up his mind like 70 30 i’ll go back and try to get back in because that could be a death sentence death sentence yeah i mean i talk about a lot about that in the second book, him trying to get back with the new boss. But it demonstrates to me that.

[36:17] Most of these people are psychopath, psychopath, psychopaths. And, and Bobo Marapisi was kind of like that, where he would, all of a sudden you just snap. Yeah. And they said they could see it in his eyes. So he was the kind of guy that could kill someone, bury him. And this happened. And then go into a restaurant and have veal and peas. Like it was nothing. That’s mob guys. I mean, everyone I’ve met with rare exception have just been charming as hell, you know. But yet you know what they’re capable of, on the other hand. You know, Henry Hill talks about in Goodfellas, that famous scene where they kill this guy, they put him in the trunk, and then they stop off at Joe Petsy’s house and have spaghetti with his mom and then go back in, and then the guy’s beaten on the trunk, and they, like, stab the shit out of him. I mean, it’s, you know, you’re telling the same stories. I mean, cause that’s, these guys are out of the same mold. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s a great scene where they’re looking at the painting. And she goes, look at that. One dog’s looking one way. One dog’s looking. And now he’s just fishing.

[37:31] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

[37:36] Anthony Passare. This has been great. This is a couple of really great books. I’ll have links to his author’s page. so you can go find these books at Amazon. I really appreciate you coming on the show, Anthony. This has been fun. And if I get back to Rhode Island one of these days, I’ve got relatives in Boston. I get some extra time. I’m going to give you a call and we’ll go have lunch or something. Love to show you. I’ve gotten to know a guy on Block Island, too. He’s kind of an erstwhile screenwriter. I met him through a friend of mine here in Kansas City. And I went to Block Island once and met him. I just was back visiting my in-laws, and he’s going to write a screenplay for me. He’s never really sold one, but he’s written a bunch of them. So we’ll see how that works. We’ll go out and put the muscle on. We’ll put a little heat in them.

[38:24] And there’s a lot of, I’ve done these mob tours all around the country, and I used to do them on my motorcycle. Now I might be doing them in a car. Got too old to do that, but I wouldn’t mind maybe hitting some spots there in Rhode Island And, you know, just take my camera and my telephone and use a camera and a mic and just talk about what was going on. This is where Raymond Patriarch’s place was. Maybe we could do something like that, too. Let me show you all that. They actually do have a mob tour that stops. Oh, do they? Yeah. And, of course, because it’s an Italian neighborhood, they stop at about eight restaurants. Oh, yeah. And they go to the next crime scene. Yeah. They go to Raymond’s old business. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I’d love to host you, and I hope we get a chance to do this again. All right. Great. All right. Anthony, thanks a lot for coming on the show. Thank you, Gary. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you.

[39:16] Well, guys, that was a lot of fun. I really like Anthony. I do want to get back there to Rhode Island and do that mob tour of Federal Hill and have coffee or have some Italian food with him. It sounds like it’d be a lot of fun. We have such similar backgrounds. There’s a lot more similarities of our backgrounds we can go into in that intelligence business. There’s a lot of stuff you don’t really want to talk about on the air. And it wasn’t really germane to what we were doing.

[39:43] So anyhow, don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. Although I tell you guys, I’m, I’m, I’m getting old. I don’t, I’m not taking any more motorcycle trips and, and I’m going to put them up for sale. Uh, but I do like motorcycles. I’ll always like motorcycles. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website. They’ve got a hotline number and drugs or alcohol. You know, Anthony Ruggiano has a hotline number and on his website, reformedgangsters.com, I think. And he has a YouTube page. He’s doing a lot of stuff right now. So I’m sure you can figure out. He’s an alcohol counselor, drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida. Boy, if you need treatment, why, that would be cool. Go down to Florida and have him as your treatment guy. If you have a problem with gambling, go to Missouri, 1-800-BETS-OFF. Other states, every state that has gambling will have some kind of a hotline or website or something where you can find some help for your gambling. As I’ve said before, these gambling addicts, those are the guys that the mob just victimizes is shit out of, and Anthony and I talked about that a little bit, you know, bust out your business or beat you up or whatever, threaten your family. There’s just, you know, no good. It’s not a good deal. If you can’t control that gambling, why, you better figure out something else to do.

[40:58] Because anytime you’re in sports gambling, particularly the mob is, you know, the mob is somehow connected to it. You know, not directly, maybe not with your straight bookie, but somehow they’re connected to it.

[41:13] Now, I’ve got stuff for sale. I’ll have a link to Anthony’s author page. I’ll have a link to my author page. I’ve got several books. I’m working on a book now that I’m going to kind of fictionalize, but based on the, Savella-Spero Wars of the 1970s, which I was right in the middle of, so I’ll use a lot of my experiences, but I will make up some names and probably use some fiction to gloss over to connect some sequences and make a little more sense. I think that’s all I got to sell. be sure and like and subscribe if you’re on youtube and subscribe if you’re on the apple app or the podcast app give me a review and and one one last thing i mentioned this before i don’t have many reviews on my new york book on amazon so if you’ve read that thing particularly i like where it says verified purchaser or at least read some pages on your kindle app why go in there and give me a review i like get some more reviews on there so that’s all asking i’ve got to do and help support the podcast. I really appreciate all you guys just by listening each week that that’s sometimes that’s just supporting up. Thanks a lot guys.