Anthony Ruggiano Jr on Being a Hitman for the Gambino Mafia (Full Interview)

okay here we go we have former gambino hitman anthony ruggiano jr welcome to vlad tv it's nice to be here nice to meet you and it's an honor to be on your show thank you thank you well this is our first time here so i want to get into your whole background so first of all your father was anthony ruggiano senior aka fat andy correct okay and he was a former hitman for the gambinos yes okay and and i looked into his background he's got a very interesting background so i guess originally obviously this is before your day but uh him and his partner tony lee used to rob card games right yeah and that's kind of how he kind of got into the whole mafia business right well yeah well i mean his father passed away when he was only six years old and uh and his friends fathers and uncles were all mobbed up uh one of his friends uncles was the murderers incorporated so he was actually raised also by wise guys and his neighbor east new york was like run by the mob so he was raised in it but uh you know he was like a little bit of a renegade and then he went to prison he went to the service he went to prison in the service because he went awol during the war and then when he got out he went back to prison and when he came home from that bid um he hooked up with his partner tony lee and yeah they were robbing crap games and and poker games in in brooklyn and um he robbed this fella charlie wagons poker game when he was about 24. and uh charlie sent for this fella albert maoni who was happy mayonnaise brother who was a member of murders incorporated and uh asked him if he knew who this canandy was and he said yeah and he asked albert if he could get the money back and albert said there's only two things you could do with this kid either you could kill him or give him a job and uh so charlie sent for him and my father went to see him and charlie took a liking to him and actually charlie gave him a job as his driver and that's how my father got introduced to that crime family which at the time wasn't the gambino family yet it was still the megano family because it was in the early 50s okay and your dad fat andy he actually became a maid man in 1953 correct so what happened wasn't when he when he started running around with charlie charlie put him on record with him with with um with albert anastasia who was the boss at the time and uh my father told me the story he said one day um charlie took him outside of the bar and asked them uh they went for a walk and charlie asked him if you if he would be willing to to kill somebody and not ask no questions and you know he was a young kid my father was only 24 at the time and he said yes and uh and uh you know he went on his first hit with charlie um that charlie picked him up at his house at his mother's house because he was still living home with his mother and uh there was another fella in the car and they left and my father told me after the car pulled out uh he whispered into guy's ear and i was young at the time when he told me the story i was about 19 and i said what do you mean you whispered in the guy's ear and he went like this with his finger you know like he shot him in the back and shot him in the head and uh and uh he did a lot of things and albert anastasia took a liking to him and used to call him the kid and he did a lot and he did some work for albert and in 53 the books were closed and him and another fella were special cases and they got they became made members when the books were closed because of the the homicides they committed for albert anastasia who actual nickname was the high executioner and he was the uh boss of murders incorporated well i mean according to my research your dad was involved in at least seven murders that i know of yeah at least seven you know there was one uh there was one incident where um he told me um three people got murdered at the same time they were actually robbing crap games in the in the early 60s uh and they robbed daniel de la croach his crap game uh who was the underboss of the gambino family and uh they were all uh murdered at the same time in a warehouse yeah right uh there was also a florist who got killed in brooklyn that was for carlo gambino there was a florist in broad daylight he shot him in him and another fellow went in and my father shot him in the florist in brooklyn and then he went on the lamb and uh that one and then he committed one with me we committed one together while he was in prison he just located it there was that one yeah about seven that i know of but according to the government there was more but i know of seven right there's also a guy named irish danny i was telling you he wasn't involved in that murder he okayed that murder there was murders that he okayed that guys his crew did there was a guy named mando he okayed his murder and some other fellas that were with him killed him and danny irish danny this guy another fella killed him that also got killed himself and then there was another guy alby that disappeared he got killed so he he delegated some out also okay so you're born into this family and you grew up well you're born in east new york and you moved to ozone park yes so i was born in 1953 that's a matter of fact that's a good question because that's the year my father claimed was the best year of his life because he was 26 years old and um that was the year he got straightened out he became a main member and that was also the year he became a father so he was straightened out in 1953 and i was born in october of 53 and then when when i was five years old we moved from east new york brooklyn across the conduit boulevard into ozone park queens okay so um you're growing up in this family and at what age did you figure out what your dad actually did for a living that's a good question you know when i was a kid i knew things were different you know like when i went to my friend's houses um i would see how their fathers were and you know what was going on am i even with some of my cousins and i knew there was something going on different in my house but i couldn't like put my finger on it even like when i had to go to school and the teacher would ask me what my father did for a living my father told me that he worked in a dry cleaners and at a young age i knew that wasn't true but i didn't know what else he did and i didn't ask him because he was always leaving the house with suits and ties on and it was always a lot of men in and out of my house and he would have me you know it was just a lot of stuff that just didn't make sense to me and uh so i knew that wasn't true but i didn't know what was true and um [Music] when i was about 12 or 13 and i started like um branching out like going out into the neighborhood you know like getting off my block and going like to the local pizzeria and hanging out when i would go there like the older guys would i would hear them whispering going that's fine andy's son that's fat andy's son so that i i really learned who he was from the older kids in the neighborhood at first okay so your dad is starting to take you to some of the clubs he hangs out with and you start to meet john gotti right and some of the other mafia figures right so what happened was so when i started going out into the neighborhood and he knew i was hanging out in the street he actually started taking me then to the social clubs in ozone park because at that time probably every mafia family in new york had a social club in ozone park the genovese's had one the columbo's had one the banana i mean every crew had a club in ozone park and he started taking me to these clubs and that's the first time i was introduced to john gotti and angelo quackwack and jeannie gotti and that whole crew i already knew charlie wagons who was who they were would also because he was the guy that strained out my father so him i knew from you know my whole life but i didn't know them yet and that's how i got introduced to john well at 16 years old you get suspended from high school and i guess that's when your dad actually approached you and asked you you know what you want to do with your life right so what happened was um when i was 16 i got suspended indefinitely from high school and he really he was upset i mean he didn't want me in the street i mean but he didn't know what to do because he never had a father you know he so he didn't really know how to how to uh reprimand me or whatever or put me on the right path because he believed in that life so i called up my uncle who was his older brother my uncle frank and i and i said listen you need to come to my house because my father doesn't want to talk to me i got suspended from school and and i and i and i want to go to work so my uncle frank came over the house and uh we had to sit down in my kitchen my uncle frank and me and my father and my father asked me what i want to do and he says do you want to go to work on construction and i said i don't want to go to work on construction she goes what do you want to do i said i want to work for you and my uncle frank told my father what are you going to do with this kid he's like us put him to work so my father looked at me and he leaned forward and he tapped his finger on the table and he says well if you go to work for me remember one thing going to jail is all part of the job so now i'm 16 you know but i wanted to you know he i was impressed with his lifestyle you know i was impressed with how i was getting treated in the neighborhood so i wanted that life and i and it was fine with me and i said that's fine and he put me to work he put me to work in a this guy named philly the pimp his name was that was his nickname he had a club in in long island on merrick road and they put me to work in there he had a big blackjack game going on and i that was my first illegal job okay so now you're actually working amongst mafia members okay and i guess nypd found out about you pretty quickly and try to arrest you to guess get you out of that life well back then um so now we're talking in the 6970s so yeah i was i started getting arrested and i honestly a few times i got arrested for cases for assaults like i would have fights and because i was now even though i was 16 or 17 i was hanging out in bars because all the bar owners knew i was andy's son so that i would go to bars i didn't need identification and i would go to these bars because i was hanging out then with older fellas and i would go with my father's friends to these bars and i would get into bar fights and i would get arrested for they would arrest me for assault just to shake down my father to get money off him so they would they would put a warrant out on me and he would you know they would come to my house he would give them a few thousand and they would leave and then the next data assault case was dismissed and the few times they did get arrested the first words out of them out were are you going to call your father is he going to come to the precinct because they you know they knew he would disrupt them so yeah i started getting arrested and um but i was making a lot of money you know i was working for him in the in the blackjack game uh he started taking me to mulberry street i met on neil dela croach uh he started taking me to the ravenite um and i started and he started explaining to me um who was who and who did what and and uh that was sort of my education began okay so you start to build up you know in this life and then in 1976 23 years old you get convicted yes i got convicted um so we were we we had we had a thing we we had this uh system we had this thing going on what we were doing is we had this crew put together and we were renting uh empty stores next to uh drug stores or liquor stores or warehouses and we would rent an empty store and then we would go through the walls and we would rob the place and we we tried to do that in long island on a liquor warehouse and i was arrested and i went on trial in 76 i got convicted but i didn't go to prison until 78 i was out on an appeal bill for almost two years and then in march of 78 i surrendered myself that was my first bid okay and how much time did you get i got two zip fives running because you know that's a that's a good question because i i always received the most time on all my cases and i always went to the worst prisons because i was fat andy's son and i you know they had me all mobbed up so i got uh two zip fives running concurrent and i winded up doing two and a half years that time okay so you get out in 1980ish yeah the end of 80. okay did prison change you at all i mean because it didn't make you leave the life and sometimes you go through that honestly that big you know you got on i was 23 i would you know no it didn't even phase me you know i just was part of the game i mean and and you know even though i was in prison i you know i did a good bid you know every prison i went to that people were waiting for me with packages um i got a lot of visits um i was very comfortable in prison and uh no it didn't even faze me you know i i just rolled with it because that was part of the job back then that's that was my belief system you know and uh and i had a i had it as as good as you could have been in prison i had it and i and i got out when i was 26 or 27. i was mad i got married also right before i went in i got married at a young age to my first wife alice and uh my father always visited me all the time and uh i had everything i wanted in there and no it didn't even phase me okay so you get out and then right around the time that you get out your dad fat andy actually moves to miami yeah so what happened was um there was a lot of stuff going on in in new york that i don't know he kept on what happened was there was this d.a out in suffolk county that kept on giving him subpoenas and he kept on going in to do bids for contempt 30 days 60 days and he told me one day listen this guy's going to subpoena me to death i'm going to change the scenery i'm going to go down to florida because he had a crew down here already he had this guy freddie this guy larry baccala so he had some stuff going on down here already and uh and he went to florida and i started going back and forth with him also okay so you guys are in florida doing what you do and then in 1985 paul castellano gets killed yeah and then john gotti takes over as the boss and john of course has a role in that killing how did that change the dynamics with your dad and you and so forth so my father was in prison at the time so when my father before my father went to prison in florida he was doing real well he got uh paul castellano sent this guy down there tommy agro to to help to to do some stuff in my he asked my father to help him and my father did and my father got arrested and he got 40 years my father so tony lee his partner uh and my father were very close with john prior to that um they knew john since he was a little kid so in 85 when paul got clipped um tony lee was involved in the whole planning of it and uh my father was uh pleasant not surprised but he was impressed with the way the whole hit went down and uh it didn't it how it affected us was uh tony lee started doing much better you know he was in a good position um john was the boss now we were all very close to him he was you know i was close to him you know things got better for us as far as financial things and and you know he liked me he he always looked out for me and i remember after the hit my father was dying to know what happened then because he was in prison and tony lee and my and myself went up to visit my father and tony lee told them how the whole hit went down and he was impressed he said you know um he said that was the best way to do it you know daylight you know nobody expected it right out in the open because my father throughout the years always predicted three things because john was a flashy guy so my father always predicted that only three things were going gonna happen to john gotti either he was gonna go to jail for a hundred years he was gonna get shot in the head or he was gonna become the boss so three of those things two of those two out of three things happened he he got became the boss and he died in prison so his prediction partially came true well i guess before your dad got arrested he actually went on the run for a while and like grew his beard out and joined the hell's angels yeah well not the ho so what happened was when they when they came to arrest my father for some crazy reason i don't know why they raided my mother's house in ozone park first they thought he was there and when they raided my mother's house in ozone park she called me and tony lee up right away and i was with tony lee in the club and uh she said the fbi just raided the house so i called up my father in florida and i said listen the fbi just raided mommy's house you better get out of there so he hung up the phone and he left and yeah he went on the lamb and what happened was it wasn't a hells angels club it was a motorcycle gang had a clubhouse right where he was living and he grew a beard and he would go in there and hang out and drink and they sort of knew they didn't nobody bothered him they sort of knew something was going on with him so they would like just leave him alone and he would go in there and sit in a corner and drink and we would go down there sneak down it and we would meet him and he sort of like blended in with them but he you know um and he grew a beard and he grew his hair long and he would wear a hat and they sort of just left them alone so your dad goes to prison he starts a long bid ends up being what 13 years i think yeah he got out he did 13 years right okay so he starts a 13-year bid but then in 1988 a situation happens with your brother-in-law right so what about that so what happened was my sister met this kid um frankie who was a he was a dangerous kid he was uh he was an armored truck bank robber i mean he did a bid for robin armor trucks him and his partner peter cicara they were both two dangerous guys um they did a couple of murders and uh my sister hooked up with him and he introduced my sister to drugs and uh my sister wind up marrying him and uh what happened was even right before my sister married him this captain in the gambino family named danny mourinho who's pretty well known he came to see me and tony lee and he actually told us to tell my sister to stay away from him because he knew the kid was was dangerous and he was just not good for her but my sister wouldn't listen and she married him and she became pregnant and um [Music] so they had a baby shower for my sister and uh he was drinking and he ran up a bar tip of like seven hundred dollars and my mother had paid her ready for the whole party and at the end of the night the the owner brought my mother a 700 tab and um my mother said what's this and she said frankie was buying everybody drinks so when they went home my mother confronted him about it and he uh he started beating my mother up and he's choking him and he threw her on the floor and my my wife because i lived upstairs at the time my wife heard him and my wife ran down the stairs and jumped on him and started scratching his face and he ran out of the house and i at the time was in treatment i had a little issue with cocaine and i was in i was in a treatment center in in vermont addressing my my issue and uh when i called my wife up the next day and she told me what happened um so i got out of the treatment center and i went to see tony lee and i said to him you know this guy beat my mother up and my tony said i know i said well what are we going to do and tony said we're going to kill him we're going to clip them and that was the beginning of it okay and i guess john gotti actually sanctioned the hit right so what happened was tony wanted to make sure that it was that it was done because ironically in the mob you need permission to commit a murder so if you commit a murder that's not on the books you could get killed so there's protocol when it comes to to clipping somebody so we had to put it on record so the first thing we had to do was we had to get permission from my father so my father didn't know yet at the time it was going on so i went to visit my father in prison because we had to get his okay and i sat down and i told him what he did and the first words out of my father's mouth was what does this guy think i'm dead you know um so i said no i said he just doesn't care so i told my father what the plan was and my father located my father sanctioned it i went back to new york um tony lee sent for genie gotti who was a captain at the time and jeannie gotti came to the club cafe liberty and we explained to him what was going on and we explained to him what we were going to do and they particularly liked mama john gotti liked my mother he was always good to my mother because we knew him since he was a kid so genie went back to john and uh genie came back to us and said my brother said you know go ahead and do what you need to do and uh so we started putting the plan in place to to to commit to murder okay and i guess he was invited to uh to the social club yeah so what happened was he was a thief he you know we knew he was a robber and we were so we and we knew he was dangerous so we just couldn't do it out in the street we had a we had a sort of rope a dopamine to come in somewhere so uh i told him that uh tony lee had a score for him we found a safe house a drug safe house that had a lot of money in it in south uh in south ozone park and tony wanted to discuss it with him so i picked him up in the morning got my i picked him up at his house in the morning and i took him to cafe liberty and he was you know thinking that he was uh going to come there and hear about his score and i took him into cafe liberty and uh and that's where he was he was shot okay and the shooter was actually uh dominic pizonia right skinny dom at the time right he he wasn't straightened out yet he was proposed to like me he was a proposed member of the gabino family and we took him in and uh tony lee and i took him out into the garden because tony had a big garden out in the backyard um so we took him out there tony picked some tomato plants and put him in a paper bag from and handed him the paper bag and then as we walked back in tony lee just grabbed him by the arm and said wait i want to talk to you and i kept on walking straight to the front and when i got straight to the club i you know gave dominic the nod and dominic grabbed the pistol and he went back there and he shot him yeah i mean according to reports i guess the dominic shot him in the head a bunch of times right dominick shot actually dominic shot him in the body and uh and he and then he ran out and he said this [ __ ] guy won't die any and he put more bullets in the gun and then he ran back and shot him a few more times and then tony lee came out and i was looking through the door and i saw him laying on the floor and then tony lee walked out and told me all right it's done you could go go because i worked in the number office at the time and he told me to go back to work and you know and that and make out you know and that was it so i said all right fine and and i and i left i left the club and i went to the number office and then that night my sister called me that he never came home right well according according to reports that came out later on uh i guess that his body you know the victim's body was cut open and they put stones inside his body so he would sink no what happened was what happened was they took them they put him in um they put him in skinny doms trunks a skinny dom's car what happened was a couple of days before i went to this place tss and i bought a a sleeping bag and then and i left it in the club and then they they put his body in the sleeping bag and the next day they took him on the sky tommy's boat he had a big boat a fishing boat and they took him out into the atlantic ocean and they you know put the you know the two with the bricks on him and everything and tony lee didn't put rocks and what tony he did was totally punctured his lungs with a knife and they slid open his belly so he wouldn't float to the top and they they threw him in the ocean because your lungs and your stomach you know blow up and you float up and so to prevent that tony lee punctured his lungs and opened up his belly but they didn't put any rocks inside him they put the stuff around them chained them up well ultimately uh frankie's body was never recovered never no it was never recovered and uh and i i didn't get charged with that murder until 2000 it happened in 88 in june of 88 i got charged with that murder in 2005. aha now you're now involved in a murder at that point is this the first time you've ever been involved in a murder well it's not it's the first time i was personally at a murder scene and involved hands-on in the murder but prior to that i knew of upcoming murders and i knew of people that were about to be murdered and um but i i didn't participate in them or have any discussions about um how it was going to take place but i knew like danny irish danny i knew he was going to get killed way before he got killed like actually the week he he got killed we took him for dinner knowing that in three days he was going to get killed so um you know it was just a crazy way to live you know because we we would whine and dine people and knowing that you know their life was going to come to an end in a couple of days i mean that's how that's how it was that's the world we were living in well how did that affect you you know emotionally like okay yeah you knew about other murders but here you are in the vicinity of a guy that you know you don't like obviously because he beat up your mother but boom he's gone and now you're involved in it right at the time honestly it didn't even phase me it was just part of what we did you know like in the mob you could they consider murders work they called it work like my father would tell me hey that guy vlad he did a lot of work so that would that to me meant that he did a lot he did killings or that guy's a good guy that guy's that kid's a real good kid that means that kid did murders so they they think murdering you know if you're capable of doing a hit you're a good guy that's work so at the time when it happened you know when i think back at it it really didn't faze me because first of all i didn't like him and i knew he was dangerous and i felt he was a threat to my family and uh and it didn't even phase me um when i was driving there you know i i cause my job was was really the hard part because i had to get him there so i had to be really calm and collective and cool about it because any little thing he would have known because he was a sharp kid so i had to be very careful with him and not tip our hand so when i picked him up you know i was i wasn't nervous at all i was calm and we were talking we were laughing and i drove him there but when i walked into the door with him that's when i got nervous i got a little nervous at that point when i walked in the door with him and then um then everything transpired and then i was still a little nervous and then when i left and then i got nervous again later on in the night when my sister called me i was a little like you know rattled a little bit when she called me because i knew that i would have to go to her i would have to go to her house and his family was there and then i would have to put on another show and you know stop you know lying about what's going on like i don't know where he is i dropped him off by the phone booth he made a phone call so he was had to go get picked up by somebody and and i had to come up with this whole big scheme uh this whole big plan so uh but it didn't faze me after that it you know it didn't even phase me later on in not today i feel guilty you know it comes and goes comes in waves i feel bad for his family i feel bad for my sister my niece but at the time it was just something we did well years later when your sister finally found out what happened to her husband and you know the father of you know they had one one child together right yes and you know she understands the life that she's in and so forth but ultimately you're involved in the killing of her husband yeah he beat up you know your mom and everything else like that but that's still her husband she was still with him did she ever confront you about that well she never she she really you know she she probably had a feeling it was us but she never really knew for sure it was us but when i um when i decided finally decided to cooperate with the government um what i did was before they took me i made them bring me to my mother's house and i told her and my mother the truth about what happened and then she confronted me that day she started screaming at me and you know like how could you just do this to me and you know and uh yeah she confronted me that day but up to that point i don't know if she she was probably i would say in denial of that me and my father had anything to do with it but uh but then when i did cooperate i went to make an amends to her and i i wanted them to know the truth and i told my mother and how the truth that my mother she just looked at me and she just shook in and she says that tamiya i can't believe that your father you know made you do things like that she was very upset about she goes i can't believe your father made you do things like that and uh and that was it you know and i left yeah well i mean the interesting thing you know when i talk to all the ex-mob guys you know from the uh michael franzis to everyone else i talked to they all say the same thing and that is is that when it comes to hits and the mafia they're never paid for no you know you go you go to like you know you see like the crips and the bloods and you know other gangs someone will put a price on someone's head and someone will collect on that but when it comes to the mafia there's no money that changes hands no it's part of the job that's why they call it work my father told me when he was a kid albert anastasia used to send for him and give him a gun and a pair of gloves and point them in a direction where he should go kill somebody and he never got 10 cents no it's it's not part it's just it's it's it's uh you know the bosses the boss is the boss and whenever he says you do you know that's part of the game there's no i mean you couldn't make money don't get me wrong i mean you know people clip have people clipped and take over their businesses on their companies so there is money to be made but you're not going to get paid for the hit but there is money that could be made if i kill somebody and then i if he has a big [ __ ] business or he has a big number business or whatever and i take over his business i'm going to make money over his debt but i'm not going to get paid for it right if that makes sense yeah yeah well in 1990 uh the movie goodfellas comes out and your dad is is in the movie yeah so that's a good question because i actually have something going on with that that i'll let you talked about later i'm doing this thing called the the mafia master mafia class it's about and it's going to the first episode is going to be on good fellows um yeah so what happened was in the beginning of the movie they when they panned the bamboo lounge um henry mentioned my they mentioned my father's name fat andy and uh pete the killer and all these mikey fancies and all these wise guys that you know that were known by that crew yeah it was a little bit of a surprise when i went to see the movie and and they they said my father's name but in reality my father and myself had uh had pretty strong relationships with a lot of the real characters of that movie right and was your dad involved in the lufthansa heist well he wasn't what happened was he wasn't involved in the heist but he was very good friends with jimmy and vinnie sarah and tommy desimone so what happened was the night of the heist my father stood in his club in cafe liberty and he was waiting he knew of it and he was waiting for them and uh they did the heist and they brought the stuff back to to vinnie osiris cousin's house and they stashed all the money into jewelry and then they went and met my father and they partied till the next day in my father's club celebrating the the the heist and uh years later my father was in the gold and silver business he had a golden silver exchange with tony lee um because gold was very high back then and uh he uh they brought all my father all the lutundra jewelry and he fenced it so he was involved in the aftermath of it more or less yeah right because the the luthanza heist was the largest cash robbery committed on american soil at the time uh five million in cash was stolen and a million of jewelry exactly right five million five to six million in cash and a million dollars in jewelry and then everybody started getting murdered after that but uh yeah and my father a few years later vinnie sarah and jimmy burke brought my father to jewelry and tony and my father they fenced all the jewelry right okay and then 1992 christmas eve uh another murder happens yeah which which one this is the the husband and wife team right bonnie and clyde right i was i well so before i went to prison i was in prison and i was k that happened right before i got out of prison because i got arrested again in uh in 1989 for gambling uh for gambling for uh my we had a big policy uh operation we had a big number business just one right before the lottery so i had gotten arrested and then i got re-arrested for state rico and uh i went to prison but they were heroin addicts and they were robbing social clubs they robbed vinnie asara he was the captain in the gambino family twice they robbed jimmy brown's club in in brooklyn and they also robbed our club skinny dom twice so uh i was in prison right before i went to prison that was happening and then in 92 they actually caught up to them in front of nativity church on in ozone park and murdered them like i believe christmas eve okay and you actually you weren't involved in it yourself but you knew about it yeah i knew all about it and i i know i know who the shooters were i know the people that were there i know most of the people that were there and uh i knew it was gonna happen eventually as soon as they caught up to them because uh you know and and two they were families were like trying to position themselves to do it because like they robbed banana guys they robbed gambino guys so there was two families you know jockeying to do it to get credit for it right this was a husband and wife bonnie and clyde kind of situation yeah you know and and and he knew you know they knew what they were doing i mean you know uh when he robbed once when he robbed dominic dominic was in the back of the club and and and he ran and they came in and there was guys in the front of the club and he even knew dominick by name because he yelled back to dominic don't come out here he told dom don't come out here and uh he robbed everybody in the front of the club and they left um so he knew what he was doing well uh you started dabbling in drugs relatively young yeah you know i i mean you know when i was a kid in the 60s you know i started smoking weed when i was like 13 you know i was doing what kids do back then you know i was taking take a little lsd i would go to concerts you know um i started experimenting a little bit but it was no it was no issue you know it was just you know recreational stuff um then when i was 19 my father was in the music business when i was 19 and uh he had uh he was became friends with uh jay black and the americans who was had was pretty popular back in the 60s he had a couple of hits hit records and uh they took me to uh puerto rico they had to do some concerts in puerto rico in 1972 and uh so jay had a big suite and he would go i would go up there and he would sing opera to warm up his voice and we would drink wine and smoke weed and then the second and third night i went up there and they were all snorting there was had this white powder on the table and i walked up to the table and i said what's that and they choose me and they said it's cocaine you want some and i said yeah because you know and they gave me a straw and i and i took a few hits and you know and then uh 20 years later i had an issue with it you know and then it was the 70s you know studio 54 i went back to new york i started you know hanging out in all the discos you know everybody was blown i mean in this early 70s i mean everybody was blowing coke the clubs everywhere you went to manhattan everybody wise guys everybody was blowing coke so uh you know i just went with it and uh and uh later on it became a problem became an issue right because from what i understand you never got made because of your drug habit no that's not true i never got married i never was proposed back then i never i didn't get propo and when the books opened in the 70s i was in prison when i came out in the 80s my father was was already in prison and uh i got soon as i got proposed right when i got clean but i don't believe i mean nobody ever told me because i was a drug addict i wasn't getting strained out um i just never was proposed and john in the interim while i was using he still looked out for me i mean the guy still helped me all the time a matter of fact i'll tell you a quick story when i got out of treatment i got out of treatment on a wednesday in 1988 on february i got out of a treatment on a wednesday and that saturday i went to see john at his club burger hunting fish club because he had lunch there every saturday and uh i walked in and he took me outside just tim and i just told us and he asked me how i was and i said i'm all right he goes well what do you think you got that beat i said yeah i'm you know i'm done i said i'm finished that was it he says well do you need anything and i said well i i i don't have a car i you know i'm kind of broke so um he went back inside and he called up this guy and he came back and he told me listen go to 84th street in atlantic avenue there's a car lot and ask for the sky anthony and pick take a car so i went there i picked the white bonnieville out i got the car i went back to the club and he handed me two thousand dollars and he told me here's two thousand dollars i want you to come here every saturday with a hundred dollars he said and don't disappoint me i said all right so uh i went the first saturday game 100 i went the second saturday game 100. the third saturday i went he says to me how you doing i said i'm doing good he goes how much you owe me i said i owe you 1700. he goes i keep it as a gift so now here i am i got out of treatment he's the boss of the gambino family he bought gave me a car and he gave me a 1700 gift the guy always looked out for me okay so your dad does this long stretch and then in 1997 he gets out right and during that time i mean you guys are both in prison at the same time and or you're getting out while he's going in and so forth but then in 1999 fat andy dies of a heart attack uh how old was he at the time 72 okay so so he he was up there in age when you heard the news of your dad dying how did you feel i felt terrible you know what happened was i had something going in the courts um to try to get 14 months taken off my sentence and this attorney linda sheffield was handling it for me and the last conversation i had my father i called up my house that day my mother's house and my mother got on the phone and said listen you better talk to your father he's dizzy you don't want to go to the doctor so my father got on the phone and i says mommy says you're dizzy you don't want to go to the doctor you know what are you going to do he said don't worry about that did you talk to the lawyer what's going on with the lawyer he was concerned about me so i told him what was going on with the lawyer and i said to him listen what are you going to do about the doctor he said if i feel dizzy tomorrow i'll go to the doctor right now just worry about your lawyer i said all right and i hung up the phone and i never spoke to him again it was it was uh it was terrible i was in prison i couldn't go to his funeral there was really no closure for me at the time um you know all the wise guys in in in the jail came you know they give me their condolences and uh you know i was on the phone all day all the day uh the warden told me um the warden sent for me and told me that um he would okay me to go to go to the funeral but uh the bop in washington were you know denied me well your dad was really a hardcore gangster uh he wouldn't even testify before grand juries uh you know he evaded arrest uh he never cooperated uh he really was like you know the picture-perfect mafia guy and he really felt very strongly about rats yeah he was uh he he wouldn't even tell them his name but you know so you are you so what you want to know about my situation well well no we're going to get to it we're going to get to i just kind of want to set the stage oh yeah for sure definitely right because because fat andy said you're born a rat you're not made a rat that's what he said yeah you've got you're getting good information from somebody right congratulations i like that i like that right right and he never cooperated uh he never you know wore a wire he never associated with rats he was very much from from the moment that he joined to them you know to his final day he pretty much you know played played the rules the way the mafia wanted them played um so then we get into your situation uh because at one point i'm trying to figure out the timeline here because in 2005 there was a an fbi agent uh jerome sullivan who got indicted on embezzlement right how does that tie into your case he got indicted in and he he when i got no he his he was on my case in 96 when i got indicted with nikki karaza and he was taking the money out of the he was taking uh evidence money on our case so he was tying it to me through that it had nothing to do with my father that was the case i was on with nikki and lenny and all and and uh and robert angle and rafi to fly we were all on a case out of florida and uh he was the fbi agent on the case that was stealing money and he actually got arrested right right uh i mean he's still around 400 000. yeah he stole a lot of money he stole he stole about 8 000 of our money eight or nine thousand of our money he was stealing money from everybody we even tried to get back into court over it but we lost you know nothing ever came about it didn't help us at all okay and that happened in 2005 and then in 2006 you started to cooperate right so what happened was um i got arrested for i i got arrested for for a rico and uh so i mean a lot of you know to just i did cooperate but you know there was a process that led up to that you know things happened in my life that that brought me to that decision because that was actually that was probably the hardest decision i ever made in my life it took me over a year to process that decision to actually finally do it because a lot of things led up to that it started when i was in prison and it actually started when my father died my father died then john gotti died tony lee had been dead before that and the people that were out there the class of wise guys that were out there what they did to my family the money they took every you know just it was a process and then when i got arrested in 05 for the murder um you know it took me over a year and i was trying to fight the case i needed money for lawyers i had no money nobody was looking out for me nobody wanted to help me i was reaching out to people they were telling me you made your own bed now sleeping it you know so-called big wise guy bosses and uh a couple of times i picked up the phone i would hang the phone up i picked up the phone i hanged the phone up i couldn't bring myself to do it and then um things were happening with my co-defendants like i sort of felt like these guys were trying to like i put all the weight on me because i was the last person with them like i picked them up in it and uh and so i was the last person to be seen with him and uh what happened was i went to see some friend of mine a knock around guy and the guy told me you know what are you waiting for call the government i said what are you [ __ ] crazy i can't do that i can't disrespect my father like that he said listen your father's dead you did everything for your father save yourself these guys ain't worth it today and i still couldn't do it then i had something going on in court that might have helped me i had some kind of decision some kind of motion i needed to put in so i spoke to her see they didn't realize that my father did have friends that loved him and we had attorneys that really liked us because we were good to all of them so i called up this attorney to try to help me and um when he went to help me he called me and he goes listen um your co-defendant's lawyers don't want to give me any information they don't want to give me any help he said you know listen they're trying to they're going to throw you under the bus i said throw me under the bus he goes yeah i says well so what am i going to do he goes well if i was you now this is a a lawyer that uh mob lawyer he told me if i was you i i would call the government i said call the government he said yeah he goes because if you don't do that they're going to throw you under the bus so i hung up the phone and i thought about it and i still couldn't make the call the next day i gave i for some reason i saved this fbi guy's card jerry conrad and i never did that but for some reason this guy's car i just had saved from two years ago and uh when my wife was going to work that day i i gave my wife the card and i go listen when you get to work call that number and tell that guy to come and see me so i act i just couldn't make the call myself and she went to work and she made the call and then the fbi came to my house and uh and i cooperated i knew it was over then i knew it was over i i it was i was it was a wrap well before then you had spent about 14 years in prison close to it yeah i started yeah i did i did yeah i've been in and out of prison since i was 23 years old you know and none of it was drug related i mean people said none of when i when i was 23 i did a bid then i got clean in 88 i've been clean over i've been clean almost 33 years now i mean i haven't you know had a drink or a joint or nothing i mean i've been in recovery for 33 years um then i got arrested again in 89 i was clean i and i got arrested again in 90 i went to jail in 91 i got out of 92 i got re-arrested again in 95 i went to jail in 96 while i was in jail in 96 i got indicted by the feds in florida i winded up getting 10 more years so yeah i've been in and out of jail since i was 23 years old you know i i mean i did like i was never i mean i was fat andy's son and and and i did get a lot of perks for being a fat andy son and i loved being a fat andy's son don't my father i loved my father he was a good good father but um you know i was in the street you know i was a criminal i was a violent criminal i became a violent criminal you know i i committed crimes all day i mean there was in the 90s i mean in one day i had two chop shops going i had a vending company with all gambling machines i had a fraudulent credit card business going i mean my whole day revolved around committing crimes so uh yeah i you know that that's who i became right but then by 2006 you were facing a rico yeah another rico and another rico and this was what a life sentence potentially yeah well yeah any any any kind of case i had back then would have been my my guidelines were off the charts i was facing life without parole not well no they had to give me parochials it was an old it was the murder took place when different guidelines were in place so i was facing life yeah i was facing life and uh it was a different world and i cooperated okay so then at that point you start to cooperate right and you end up testifying in the 1988 murder of your brother-in-law yes how did that feel considering the guy kind of deserved it how did it feel me testifying at the trial right i mean you're testifying over something that you were involved in that you probably pushed for yourself it felt um well you know so don't forget now the co-defendants that was sitting there were the guys that were trying to throw me under the bus so i really didn't have no love for them to begin with so uh i felt bad for the people that were sitting in the in i felt bad for the more i felt worse for the people that were sitting in the in the gallery like his family that i felt for the people that were on trial i felt bad for them that they had to hear that and and listen to that i felt worse for them than that than the then my ex-co-defendants because my ex-co-defenders didn't give a [ __ ] about me so you know there i was okay so you go and testify in this trial and uh you know the shooter who actually you know pulled the trigger he got found guilty yeah and he got life no he didn't get found guilty he got 18 years 18 years okay uh when it came down to the sentencing uh your niece actually spoke to the judge and asked for them to give you a life sentence in prison but the judge said well no we can't do that right when i got sentenced when dominic got sentenced he when i got sentenced in um let's see i got sentenced seven years ago i got sentenced in in 2014 when i got sentenced to impact letters uh yeah my niece my niece asked the judge to give me life and my brother-in-law's sister asked the judge to give me life and the judge uh artistically said that uh he said it wasn't it wasn't really what he said was really basically it wasn't my fault it was the mafia's fault the way i was raised and that now i became a tool for the government to to end the mafia he sort of phrased it like that weinstein he was very articulate about how he phrased it right because your niece actually said you know because your niece was a baby she lost her dad yeah and she said the anger you have left me is indescribable i can't tell you what you did to me as a child and the judge said in this case the defendant has become a tool of the government to destroy the remnants of this terrible group of the mafia that has been the cause of your grief and were you if you had been sentenced to life we would actually destroy this tool which they needed in order to take down the mafia right exactly how did it feel to you know to hear your niece say that it felt terrible i i was in tears when i when i read my statement i was in tears i felt my daughter my daughter who's sitting here right now she was in court my ex-wife was in court it was terrible you know i had to confront you know i had a face a face so like that and uh you know i was in tears it was hard it was it was rough it was rough well you also testified for the 1992 murder uh where the the bonnie and clyde husband and wife team that was robbing everyone when they got killed you testified in that as well right that was part of the same indictment i wasn't charged with that murder but that was part of my same indictment with skinny diamond freddie hot it was all part of the same indictment those two murders and the murder of my brother-in-law and some gambling and some other charges were all in in in the rico that we were all charged with right because you testified against uh you know dominic excuse me uh skinny dom like you said uh bobby glasses bobby glasses that was later on another trial right i testified at six trials altogether right you you testified against the gambino hitman charles yes coniglia uh you also testified against bonanno captain vincent asaro correct um so you you had to take the stand a number of times right during this time did you feel like your life was in danger there was a hit out on you or anything of that sort well i mean you know yeah there's always a hit on this i mean there's a probably hit on hit on me still um i i felt i didn't feel like i was in danger because i was you know being watched by the fbi i mean i was in the women's protection program for a while so i was out of sight um i was very careful you know i wasn't you know i was very careful who i associated with where i went but uh yeah i mean i knew my life was in danger but i wasn't living in fear okay and you're actually in witness protection not now i was i signed out you were yeah for how long oh about a year and a half a little over a year i was in the windsor protection program i went in and uh i i stood in for a while and i signed out on good terms you know i didn't get thrown out i didn't get in trouble i just uh some stuff personal stuff happened to me with my family and uh and and i and i and i felt that it was time for me to have a little more freedom and i signed myself out well because your cooperation you end up getting time served which was like three days in prison 12 days 12 days in prison so you basically managed to walk away from a murder and affiliation with other murders as well yeah i walked away with them but you know i still pay the price i still you know i'm still not home you know you know i had to change my whole life i had to start a whole new life i had a you know i all i knew since my whole adult life was about the mob you know my father raised me in that life i was born it wise guys changed my diapers wise guys used to tell me i used to babysit you i changed your diaper so i had no education my father never taught you know my father didn't teach me how to change a flat how to use a tool how to cut a piece of wood i had no skills whatsoever all i knew about was how to commit crimes how to be violent how to swindle lie rob kill start number business i had no no nothing no education i was a high school dropout no i'm not excuse me i got a ged in jail so now i i i was in a whole new world i was like um and i had to learn a whole new life and and i did that you know and i did that i changed my whole life i went back to school i became a counselor in a drug treatment center you know and today my life is about you know i give i don't take no more you know i every day i help people every day i help people save their lives and i and i and i and i made a big change you know uh so yeah i gave up a lot you know i i gave up my children who now thank god back in my life but uh you know um i had to start all over you know here i am in my 50s and i had to be reborn actually you know faith too played a part in it my faith too played a part in it you know and and i moved on well you know this brings me back to your father who hated rats hated anything about him you know there was actually an interview with one of the old guys from ozone park and he said that if fat andy wasn't dead he would probably kill himself you know based on what his son had done okay so i i got an answer for that question so you see this is this is this is this is what i could say to that yeah i did cooperate and the reason why i could look in the mirror today is because in my heart i know for sure for damn sure that if my father was alive or tony lee was alive or john gotti was alive i would have never cooperated you know i know that for a fact and anybody that really really knows me knows that's the truth um i would have never ever cooperated i would have never you know so they were gone um things were different the wise guys that were running the show were different i mean pete gotti who was the boss of the gambino family shook me down for eighteen hundred dollars when i was in prison you know so where did my loyalty lie you know where did my loyalty lie to my father to tony lee and to john and they weren't around and i know for a fact i want to never cooperated so i i could look in the mirror every day and if people want to use slang words and call me a rat a stool pigeon uh you know a snitch i don't really care you know i cooperated um i and and and i did it i mean uh does it bother me at times yeah it does do i miss my old life at times yeah of course i do um but uh but i'm content today you know i wake up in the morning and i'm content and i know my heart well i mean when you look at sort of the structure of an organization like the mafia you know you go through this whole ceremony about you know i'll never tell i'll never rat i'll you know prick my finger and you know the blood and so forth and you know here you are you know growing up in this family where cooperating snitching ratting whatever you want to call it is so frowned upon but when you look at it years later and i've interviewed so many mafia guys you know yes there are certain guys like i guess persico that never never cooperated you know your dad never cooperated but it seems like the majority of the guys even the bosses ultimately end up cooperating you know and do you feel like in a way this whole snitching thing is a bit of a mind [ __ ] where the boss bosses pretty much tell everyone you know don't cooperate so i can continue to make my money but once the bosses get hit a lot of times they do cooperate it could be i mean i can't answer for them i mean i could only talk to you about what led me up to cooperating um yeah i mean look at joe messina he was the boss he cooperated i mean you know uh he he told people to go kill people and then gave them up yeah definitely could be a mind [ __ ] i mean i don't i can't speak for them i can only speak for myself what made me cooperate you know what made me cooperate was what i explained to you plus i didn't want to spend the rest of my life in prison for them i mean why yeah yeah i mean it's it's it's one of those things listen can i tell you a quick story about what one of the issues that made me go cooperate why the people so my f before my father got out of prison um my sister got into a car accident with a limousine so my father called up his partner at the time mikey gal who was a soldier in the gamino family and told them my daughter got into an accident and he tells my father i know me and pete took care of it meaning pigatti who was the official boss of the gabino family so my father goes great two weeks later or three weeks later my father gets out of jail in in in 97 and he's home and he's in the yard and mikey walks in the yard and he tells my father goes what are you doing here you're on my list you can't be here he goes well i had to come pete sent me so my father was pete sent you what does he want he gives my father a piece of paper my father opens it up and it's an invoice for eighteen hundred dollars so my father said what's this for he said that's for the limousine that your daughter hit that was the damage you gotta pay the guy eighteen hundred dollars so my father takes the invoice he closes it up he gives it back to mikey he says to mikey take this back i thought you took you and pete took care of it he goes yeah well you i'm so my father just got out of prison you're not supposed to ask him for money he gives the invoice back to mike he says you bring this back to pete and you tell pete that if he wants this money to meet me tell me which street corner to stand on and i'll wait there for him and if he shows up i'll give him the money mikey says what are you crazy he goes no i want that's what i want you to do so mikey leaves 18 months later my father dies i'm in prison i'm in school kill prison i get a visit from a kid that works for me he comes in the visiting room he goes listen uh i don't know what to how to tell you this but uh pete gotti sent for me i said pete got his set for you for what he goes he told me that you got to give him eighteen hundred dollars that your father owed him eighteen hundred dollars and he wants you to pay him i said what are you [ __ ] kidding me he goes no he goes he wants eighteen hundred dollars out of the vending company i said so what did you do he goes i paid him i said you paid him he goes yeah what am i gonna pete got here i paid him the eight hundred thousand i was flabbergasted i said he i i didn't to this day i'm still flabbergasted i go back into prison i tell the wise guys in the prison they go i can't believe he did that i make a phone call to a guy in new york who's a wise guy and i tell him what is this guy doing i'm in jail how could he do this to me he goes ah he's doing it to everybody so there so in a nutshell here's a guy who's the boss he waited 18 didn't ask my father for not because he knew he would had to kill him and he didn't have the balls to do that so he he took the money off me while i was in prison so where was my loyalty you know i don't you know where when the time came where was my loyalty to myself to my family or to these people yeah well i mean anthony uh i appreciate you sharing your story and i think the the consistent thing that you always hear in these types of interviews is that you know you watch movies like casino or goodfellas and you know the mafia lifestyle gets so glamorized it gets marketed so well by hollywood yeah that that everyone you know not only wants to be in it but you know romanticizes it you know rappers talk about the mafia and songs name themselves after various mafia members and so forth but ultimately when you hear these stories you hear of destruction you hear of you know families not having their fathers uh you know drug abuse uh wives who have to raise kids by themselves and ultimately after going through that you get out and there's really no prize at the end you know you have to start your life over as a middle-aged man yeah you know when i got in it when i was a kid you know it was great the life just like it was all it was it was you know i got lost in it you know the money you know you're never waiting on lines the best tables i mean you know you walk in my house frankie valley sitting at my table eating dinner you know uh louis primo is in my house eating dinner you know uh frank sinatra my father's sitting with frank sinatra and jilly's drink you walking jillies and my father's sitting at a table with frank sinatra drinking um you know and yeah it was great in the beginning and then it wasn't but then at the end of the day i spent 14 years in prison my children my son i was in and out of prison this first 11 years of my son's life my daughter i went to jail she was three i came out she was 11. she's sitting right here she's traumatized by the lifestyle um you know the mothers we made cry uh it's at the end and and where's the success john gotti died chained to a bed my father died miserable lonely and broke um where's the success stories yeah it's you know people see what they want to see you know people see the godfather and you're right all this flesh and glamour but the people like us that live it that were born into it we suffer it's it's it's at the end of the day it's it was suffering yeah yeah and that's the story that we want to put out there well anthony i appreciate you uh sharing your story wish you all the best that's it thank you it was a pleasure thank you thank you

Channel: djvlad

Views: 176,059

Rating: 4.7427821 out of 5

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Id: G3kmrHZ4SRk

Length: 65min 16sec (3916 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/pheoling]

“My fawda”

[u/PAE8791]

Interesting guy for sure . Any one have any idea who he cooperated against?