In this episode of Gangland Wire, I pull back the veil on one of the most pivotal moments in John Gotti’s rise through the ranks of the Gambino crime family—the 1973 murder of Jimmy McBratney. As a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, I bring a lawman’s eye to the tangled web of revenge, power plays, and myth-making that surrounds this infamous hit.

We start with the murky legend: that Gotti made his bones by taking out McBratney, earning Carlo Gambino’s favor. But like many mob stories, the truth is far more layered. I examine the wave of underworld kidnappings gripping New York in the early ’70s, led by Eddie Maloney and his gang, who impersonated cops to abduct mobsters for ransom. Caught in that chaos was Jimmy McBratney—an Irish tough guy with a soft side, a devoted father who hoped to leave the life behind.

Through Maloney’s own words, I draw a portrait of McBratney as more than a casualty of mob politics. We explore his role in the kidnapping racket, the deadly fallout from a botched grab, and the inevitable spiral toward vengeance that would seal his fate.

This episode also delves into the mysterious death of Manny Gambino, nephew of the boss, and how his murder—whether linked to McBratney or not—helped fuel a narrative that demanded retribution. Was Gotti the hand of that justice? Or was the story reshaped later to burnish his legend?

We follow the footsteps of NYPD Detective Raymond Taylor and the team that tracked Gotti down. Their investigation, pieced together from reluctant witnesses and underworld whispers, ultimately cracked open the case—and helped launch the myth of the “Teflon Don.”

In the end, this story is more than just a mob hit. It’s a study in blurred lines—between law and lore, loyalty and survival. Through wiretaps, memoirs, and police reports, I unravel a tale that speaks to the human cost of life in the shadows—and the power of a story to outlive the truth.
Subscribe to get gangster stories weekly.

Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire
Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee”

To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here

To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here. 

To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here

To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos.

Transcript
[0:00] Well, hey guys, welcome back to the show. This is Gary Jenkins,

[0:02] retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. Well, I have a story about John Gotti and how he made his bones with the murder of Jimmy McBratney and that whole backstory behind that. It seems like with most mob stuff, there’s two or three different stories about it. You know, we just have to go with people’s memories, but yet mob guys will throw out different stories and, you know, in order to maybe throw the cops off or the agents off. And so you never really know exactly, but you just have to go to the sources of each of these stories and work it back from there. So I’m going to tell you these different stories, and you let me know what you think happened here. You know, the story is he made his bones by killing this Jimmy McBratney and got the respect of Carlo Gambino, which, you know, is mob lore now. Now, in the early 1970s, there was a series of kidnappings of New York City wise guys. and there’s a book out there called tough guy the true story of crazy Eddie Maloney and this book Maloney.

[1:05] Discusses in detail some of these kidnappings that he and his gang were involved with and Jimmy McBratney was part of this gang. The two men had met when they were incarcerated at Greenhaven State Prison in New York and they became close friends.

[1:20] Maloney in the book describes McBratney as a devoted family man who stood six foot three, weighed 250 pounds, who was a weightlifter and he claimed that McBratney could bench press 400 pounds. Maloney said that Jimmy McBratney was locked up for armed robbery, said he was quiet, a listener and a learner. Pretty soon they were talking about doing things together whenever they got out. He also said that the guy knew a lot about guns, wanted to collect guns. Really, his heart was in his home life, his family life. He wasn’t a guy that went out and played around. He loved his wife and two children. They had a house on Staten Island, and he wanted to save up enough to own a nightclub. And he said that actually McBratney was kind of prudish that whenever the talk in the yard at the prison was about women in a sexual manner, it upset him. He said his wife visited him regularly and wrote a letter every day. So he was a real family man. Now, after they were both released in October 1972, Maloney and Bratney became part of a kidnapping ring that they said. Now, Maloney claims was a brainchild of two other brothers. There were wise guys from the Gambino crime family, Filippo and Ronnie Miano. They only wanted 10% of the ransoms.

[2:36] And Filippo told Maloney that his real motive for these kidnappings was revenge. He said, the guys I’m setting you up, fuck me around and my people around on many business deals in the past. And I want to see those greedy fucks suffer. That sounds like something somebody like that would say. I mean, He’s got the lingo down, right, doesn’t he? They were convinced that these kidnapping mobsters could be pulled off without the victim’s family or anybody notifying the cops.

[3:03] They believed they could get as much as $100,000 for each wise guy they snatched. Now, it’s pretty dangerous snatching wise guys in New York City, but they’re not going to the cops, but they’re going to send out their own little detectives. They knew if they did get caught, the punishment would be, may probably torture, maybe more than just a bullet in the head, probably torture, and then the bullet in the head. Now, their little kidnapping gang was Maloney and McBratney, a guy named Tommy Genovese, who was a distant relative of Vito Genovese, a guy named Warren Chief Sherman and Richie Chasen. They’d get home addresses from these Miano brothers, and they had a two-team approach. Now, this is how Maloney reported this in his book. The first team would pretend to be police officers and use stolen badges and kidnap the wise guy from his home and then hold him in another location. The second team would then make the arrangements and pick up the ransom money. Now, the first kidnapping was of a Gambino capo named Frankie the Wop. Now, that escapade went off without a hitch, and the gang got away with $150,000.

[4:08] Now, over the next couple of months, they did three more successful kidnappings. They were going along pretty good. The next one after that, their luck changed. Now, McBratney actually planned this one, and they were going to grab a Gambino loan shark. They’d gotten a name and address from the Miano brothers, and they only knew him as Junior. They didn’t know any other name on him, at least Maloney didn’t know any other name on him. So they went by Junior’s house. They found him, stuck a gun in his stomach, put him in a car. When he got in the car, the victim put up a fight and Maloney hit him over the head a couple of times and then shoved him in the back seat. There’s a couple of kids that saw that scuffle around the car and followed them for a little bit and got the license number and turned it over to one of the kid’s uncles who happened to have some mob connections. So now this is in Gambino territory and they have lost a guy and now they’ve got the license number of the car that was used.

[5:08] They traced the car to a friend of maloney’s that’s where they were holding junior in this junior now the gambino guys you know acted just like cops they went to the once they found out who’d done it they went to the guy’s mother started asking questions about what was going on and where he might be when they found out about this mcbratney went into a panic and he realized that they probably had his name as well as maloney’s and the sherman’s they got 21 000 for Junior, and they were going to return the victim. Well, Sherman was supposed to tape Junior’s eyes over before covering those sunglasses. Well, he didn’t get it done right. Maloney claims that after driving a few blocks, McBratney became enraged because he realized Junior’s eyes weren’t taped over very good. Jammed on the brakes, Junior jumped out of the backseat. He knew the shit was about to hit the fan. He jumped out of the backseat, started running for his life. McBratney jumped out and started shooting at him. Sherman jumped out of the car and retreated to another car, to Maloney’s car, who had been following along and they were going to take off. Sherman was pretty sure McBratney would kill him if he ever saw him again for chickening out like that. And Maloney, in his book, readily confirmed that fact. Maloney never would identify this junior as Carlo Gambino’s nephew or say this was that same one. But after this kidnapping, Maloney and his little gang got together, except for Sherman, and Maloney said that he told McBratney that he ought to leave town.

[6:34] McBratney declined to leave town. He said, I’m just going to keep a machine gun in my car all the time.

[6:39] Well, about this time, Maloney was sent back to prison on a parole violation, and he was actually at a bar one night during this time, and he saw two guys talking to the bartender who were actually looking for him. The bartender knew him and played dumb, and he would later identify these two guys, what he described as stone killers, as John Gotti and Angelo Ruggiero were looking for him. Maloney also stated in his book about McBratney, he said, well, after he heard he’d been killed, he said, McBratney’s death saddened me as nothing else in my life ever had. He’s been a good friend. He wasn’t a hardened hoodlum like some of us. He always intended to get out of the life, and I believe he would have as soon as he got his nest egged by that bar. Also felt bad for Jimmy’s wife. She’d been as loyal to him as he was to her. On a personal level, Jimmy would have risked his life for me and I for him, and a person doesn’t make friends like that very often. He did confess in his book that in an effort to get a pass from the underworld for his own kidnapping capers, because he’d kidnapped some other made guys, he laid the weight of everything on McBratney. He sent word out that it was McBratney did this, McBratney did that.

[7:46] It didn’t matter to Jimmy anymore because he was dead. In his book, Maloney never mentions the kidnapping and killing of Manny Gambino. So now what really happened to Manny Gambino? There’s a totally different story out there, and it’s based on a couple of good sources.

[8:00] Depending on whether you believe in FBI agents or not, who may have been a little bit shady, I don’t think he was not as shady as the guy that came along behind him, DeVecchio. But in the book, Rick Agent, former agent Anthony Villano, talked in detail about this kidnapping. He claimed he was tipped off that Manny Gambino, the son of Carlos’ brother Joseph, had been kidnapped. And, you know, possibly and probably his source on this was the infamous FBI informant Greg Scarpa, because he had first talked to Bellano before DeVecchio actually revived him as an informant. If you want to learn more about that, go back to my show on DeVecchio and Scarpa. Bellano claimed that the first attempt by the family to deliver a ransom payment after Manny Gambino had been kidnapped failed because they went to the wrong restaurant to make the drop. Bellano claims that during this time he tried to help the family and at first they didn’t want anything to do with him, But later on, he said that an attorney for the Gambino family called him up and asked him to get involved. Blano reported the kidnappers asked for $200,000, and the Gambino family claimed they could only come up with $50,000.

[9:11] Now, I figured that Joe Gambino’s side of the family was probably the divorce side, more than likely, or another thing is $200,000 in cash would raise a lot of attention from law enforcement, just knowing that they had that money, so they claimed they only had $50,000. I got new ransom instructions, and Tommy Gambino, man, his brother, was told where to drive to pick up the next set of instructions, kind of one of those TV things, you know, go here, answer this pay phone, you got five minutes to get there, there’ll be instructions under the bench, some crap like that. Now, Volano then inserted himself into it, along with another business partner. The guy wasn’t a made guy, but he’s a business partner of Tommy Gambino, You know, and they took the money, and Blano got on the floor of the car that was delivering the ransom. The first stop was a telephone booth, 82nd Madison Avenue in Manhattan. From there, he got instructions to go across the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey and wait at a well-lit gas station on the Palisades Parkway next to a set of payphones. At the payphones, they called with instructions to drop the money over a metal railing about a mile down the road. Somebody’s been watching TV here looking at old movies. A drop was made before the agent’s tailing Villano could get in a position to see the drop. But they did pick up the license number of a van that was seen nearby. I had this happen myself.