Genovese Mafia Hitman Anthony Arillotta Tells His Life Story (Full Interview)

all right here we go we have anthony erilata former made man in the genovese crime family welcome to vlad tv thanks for having me vlad well it's your first time here i want to start in the very beginning so you're from springfield massachusetts correct which is actually where i grew up originally oh yeah yeah when my family first emigrated from russia that's actually where we settled in the the projects of springfield massachusetts we're abouts in springfield we're uh north end south end i mean i was five years old i could probably find out but i just remember we lived in the slums that's one thing that i definitely remember okay so you're growing up and uh i guess your family owns uh a produce store yes okay and that's still around today no the property's there but the uh the business is closed my father was a uh fruit and produce vegetables um wine grapes he was the biggest wine grape distributor in all of uh mass probably all the mass definitely western mass every uh wine grape season he'd sell 30 35 trailer loads of wine grapes back then it was the grapes then they came with the uh the buckets the god the juice so he you know he was a hard worker and he had the store since the 70s he had another store prior to that and so i grew up in the store working for him at a young age okay and was your dad mafia related at all no he was um he was a a worker but he was never uh he was just a hard-working man he gambled as the only thing he did was bet sports but nothing to do with uh taking sports or anything like that okay but in the area that you were in there was mafia guys all around growing up absolutely yeah and also at the store uh wise guys used to come into the store frequent that you know we grew up in that area everyone knew who the wise guys were um my family was close with two particular ones adolfo bruno and anthony delevo they were both at the time soldiers bruno became they both became bosses in the area so they were always in the store back in the 80s they used to hold meetings at my father's store without even my father knowing it you know they would just he had a back room where he had he would keep the pasta the olive oil and bruno and sky ball and then would come up they'd have the new york guys come up connecticut guys boston guys and a lot of times they would meet in my father's back room he didn't even know that they were you know we were so busy he was like a costco before costco back in the uh you know just putting pallets of you know potatoes and onions and stuff right on the floor so he was just busy working and these guys would have meetings in the back and i used to see him come in and wonder who they were at a young age and you know got to know you know who they were eventually okay and i guess you got involved with the mafia guys around 16. i don't know if i got involved with them around 16. they were always a presence around like i said coming into the store um around 16 i was always getting in trouble i uh they noticed me at that age always uh in trouble fighting in bars um but actually uh being with them i think it was later later on in life i mean we hung around down the south into springfield so all the italian clubs were down there and so we would always be around them our whole lives and um as far as working for them no i wasn't working for them or having anything affiliation like that i was doing you know bet and games myself booking games i got in trouble actually uh betting you know at a young age 16 years old i ended up blowing close to 70 000 and there was all kinds of sit-downs over that but i mean i was just me gambling you know betting okay so at what point did you actually start getting arrested 15 years old okay that was for what uh salt and battery with a dangerous weapon i ended up being a juvenile delinquent at the time but then i went back to trial and the judge i ended up getting it uh dismissed so 15 was when i started getting arrested you know for fighting you know assaulting batteries mostly at a young age fighting all the time you know it was we had a gang of us we were the you know mostly italians down the south end of springfield and we just went everywhere and fought other groups and we were always fighting all the time and a lot of times i got arrested for that so that was mostly my younger arrest 18 19. i was on probation when i got arrested at 21 you know what you were saying okay so i guess you caught a gun charge at 21 yes yeah all right and why were you carrying around a gun at this point at that particular time i used to carry a gun my later teens uh but but that particular time i was carrying it because we had a beef with another faction of uh amongst us italians and we were getting uh word that we uh you know we we fought this other faction we got the better of them and then we were getting word by one of their friends that they were looking to get us so i was carrying you know a nine millimeter you know just going around living my life but just in case they did be outside waiting when i come out of a restaurant i would have shot them um so that's why i was carrying uh that nine millimeter i actually uh that group right there i actually went and and ended up shooting one of their uh animals you know just to uh give them a message but yeah that's why i was carrying that gun at the time okay now with that gun charge did you go to prison over that i did yeah okay how long did you do i was on probation so i violated my probation and i got five years uh state prison i was 21 and um i got five years with a mandatory one so you you would get the fire now if you mess up in prison you do the whole five but if you don't you can see the parole board after one year which i did i seen the pro board after a year okay you got out after a year i got out after a year um we had somebody on the uh parole board that always was looking out for me and i had the uh a 2-1 vote all the time to uh to get me out um that time wasn't that he was corrupt he knew my family you know so he was uh and he knew other people but you know he was just um a good guy that knew my father so when i went up in front of the parole board he would uh it was always one and one and then he was the deciding vote because i had to go in front of him i think three times okay so then in 1993 there was a home invasion situation tell me about that so when i got out of jail in 91 i uh violated again assault and battery i ended up getting arrested i went in front of a judge who the judge happened to be at my wedding nice guy my father was friends with him also and um i got the case dismissed so i'm back out on parole i went in front of the uh the same uh parole guide i knew my father he let me out so this time we're out and a friend of mine uh um has a fight with his uh girlfriend so i was out talking uh we were i was at the local um bar we used to hang around with in springfield and i was talking with a girl he comes in and said he had a fight with her family her brothers and all this and i'm friends with um all that whole family today as we speak but um when we went we i was also friends with the with the kid that um had the fight with his girlfriend so we all jumped in the car went to the house and we just went in with bats and sticks and and just beat the people up inside the house um one of them was an off-duty police officer that was her brother he was uh he was there and so we we got out of there and i got away with you know we took off we got out of there the cops came but they didn't get us when when uh she she didn't end up pressing charges on them i originally went to uh to get an alibi uh this great man um that owned the hokila restaurant chinese guy i said uh johnny you remember i was here the other night you know he said yeah i remember he said yeah we were uh we had a cognac i was here till about one in the morning he says yeah i remember i wasn't there but he just gave me the alibi he said i remember that night we had two cognacs and you wait and but anyways i had an alibi to get out of it um but we didn't get charged with right away about a few months later he got into another fight with her that's when the warrens came out and they arrested about six of us six or seven of us i was the only one on uh parole so i got held without bail and i had to wait about nine months when it came to the trial they had they had gotten back together they got married or whatever and he ended up pleading guilty the the guy that was uh beefing with the girl and he ended up getting 10 years i got my case to now pros they call it like a dismissal so that was that and i got out with 93 um the last at that point okay so you're basically just getting into various situations in and out of jail um and then at one point you got approached by big al right who was uh associated with the genovese crime family he was a made man with them yeah right made man with the with the geneves so how did that relationship come together so he's he al bruno adolfo bruno is is kind of like cousins with my mother on my mother's side they have the same on so he always referred to me as my cousin when i was in prison in 1990 for the gun charge i was getting letters from anthony delavo's wife uh telling me that you know anthony wants me to be you know not in that way but anthony was i was getting messages that anthony wanted me to be with him when i come out bruno was like i said uh relatives with my mother he wanted me to be with him and they were younger guys at the time this was in the uh 1990 so they had to be maybe in their 40s younger soldiers in the family so uh bruno was the first one to approach me in 91 when i got out of prison he came to my house but i always knew bruno my whole life i known him since my little kid but to officially approach me to have him be with him on record he came to my house when i got out of prison in 1991. um okay and that's how i got on record with him got it and you know the genevieve's crime family is one of the five families uh from new york uh it was originally started by lucky luciano and eventually it was run by vincent the chin gigante uh did you know chinchigante at all was that before your time that was before my i mean it wasn't before my time he was an older man but i never met him um guys that were the my bosses bruno and them guys had dealings with them i had dealings with his family but not chin directly but bruno sky ball all those guys had dealings with fat tony salerno who he had as front as the front boss he went he went away on the commission case they were they had direct dealings with fat tony the chin and all the other bosses in between okay so you're not working with big al with the the genovese right uh mafia but you're not a made man at this point no so what type of things were you doing as an uh i guess you're an associate maybe you could call it an associate i did my own thing i was heavily involved in the marijuana business when al approached me when i went to prison in the 90s i went as like i said 21 years old i was a young kid and i was in a state prison with serious criminals i got around a couple of them i got very close with them and i made a lot of connection boston's about one hour from springfield you know springfield's about an hour from everybody it's an hour from providence an hour from boston an hour from new haven an hour from albany two hours from the city you know if you're driving with a heavy foot so when i met these guys i made a lot of connections in the marijuana business i some cocaine but mostly marijuana so when bruno approached me to be with him i was making big money selling marijuana that had nothing to do with bruno for me to be around bruno when he wanted me to be around them was to get involved with sports gambling which i was a degenerate gambler betting the games but i also booked the games when i booked the games i was my best customer betting my own office i always would um so when it came to his rackets my racket was the marijuana business that bruno had nothing to do with and he didn't want he um he didn't know i was selling him when he came and approached me later on he would hear stories people would go to him and said that i'm a drug dealer anthony's selling drugs and i would always deny it but it was marijuana you know it was uh in our in massachusetts if you got caught with under 50 pounds it was a misdemeanor i mean that's what they classified it as and you could see today it's legal so i was heavily involved in that when i was around him when i first became around him okay so at one point you start associating with arti nigro that happened years later a long time later right okay so what led up to your meeting artie so that that's like a decade of me with bruno so many things going on in my area um i was proposed by bruno to become a maid member a couple of different times it didn't it never mattered to me he always said i'm gonna straighten you out he wanted to strain a few guys out he always said that i didn't take any i didn't um i didn't weigh heavy into that i didn't care about getting straightened out my whole thing was i was just living a great life um making a lot of money and you know he says i'm gonna strain you out sure you know propose me go ahead you know do what you got to do um so that's all leading up until uh 96 96 i end up getting uh my house gets rated i get rated for close to 40 pounds of uh marijuana and some ammunition so bruno now everybody was telling him that i was in the drug business marijuana business but now he i get arrested for it and so that's when he shelved me um he you know shell he chased me away from that life banished me basically from [Music] you know my year in our area we had control of everything you know all the strip clubs restaurants bars i mean they were they were owned by somebody that was affiliated with us or us you know in that area so when he said banished i was like not allowed to associate with which was good for me because i didn't go in my area anywhere i went to connecticut boston i was in new york i was all over the place and so i got shelved there for a couple years when the case came up the case i that ended up uh i ended up beating the case the case ended up getting dismissed in 98. the informant that they had in the case was a rogue informant and uh he he he got caught actually twice after that selling cocaine and and with a gun two different times so when it came to my case it he was exposed as you know a rogue informant you know and the case ended up getting dismissed bruno was in prison he uh he got out of prison in 1998 right around there and he sent for me to come see him at his restaurant he owned caramel restaurant in the south end of springfield so my friend louie come and says bruno wants to see you he said uh you want to come back around me and you know you want to be with me and this and that and i said yeah i don't care he said you will i'll give you 25 percent of the sports and the loan shark i told him i'd do it but i want 50 he asked me if i was all done uh selling the uh the marijuana he said yup i'm all done which i wasn't but i just told him that and so that's how i ended up coming back around bruno around 90 the end of 98 right around there so that's leading up to as i started coming around and we bruno used to send a van full of christmas uh tribute no money but it was like 50 000 worth of high-end liquors wines like i said my father was a big uh wine grape distributor bruno used to have guys making all uh making wine for him so he'd load up gallons of wine send that down all kinds of uh specialty italian meats send that down so that's how i started meeting a lot of uh captains and um you know the gigantes family and those them people by spring you know bringing the van down on christmas time um and i started meeting you know more uh guys in the genovese family i met a lot of guys throughout the whole all those years in different families in the marijuana business made guys captains and families but the genovese family i really didn't um have a lot you know other than when i met him with bruno going down okay and artie nigro he was actually the acting boss of the the genovese crime family i guess the actual boss was uh liberio barney belomo who had been in prison since the 90s so he was essentially running the organization while the other guy was in prison right they had a lot of different bosses i mean barney you know i remember the guys in my area talking when i guess i guess he was like in his late 30s when the chin put him there this was back in the 90s i know that because of the guys in my area talk you know bruno used to come have meetings at my store all the time and i would hear them talking and how they put this young guy in there uh but they had other bosses they had frank serpaco they had other captains that would deal with as street bosses you real you really never knew you know you had quiet dom was there during that stretch so you never really knew who their bosses are i mean you know the story how they put fat tony up as boss and really was the chin that was boss so there's a lot of things that they do that's smart and how they do it but as far as artie there was a different guy there that was a boss um not barney they were uh they were using a panel you would say and there was um there was a boss that was there and that was going to prison for five years and he put artie in that position in his position that's how artie ended up getting the uh arty was a soldier and even guys in my area never uh knew that artie got that position i knew he did because i was i had the guy that was around artie that was the downfall he would you know i was hearing everything from him and artie and uh captains and their family didn't even know that artie was he pat deluca was very close with artie and i always thought it was going to be pat was going to get the position because he knew everybody you know he was a captain he was a little bit older he's been around forever very great reputation and everybody thought that he was going to get that spot but like i said the guy that was going to jail for five years put artie there now the other two bosses that were on the panel with them uh mario and larry they didn't want artie as boss but the other guy uh pushed and said he wanted him there and when so then our that's how already ended up getting the position so he went from you know a soldier to a boss very quickly without even you know with only the top guys that knew it he said that he wanted to explain it to pat deluca himself because they were close and he just didn't want pat to hear from somebody else that he got the position and that's how arty ended up getting the position well artie actually made you a made man in august of 2003. right now i guess he had a he asked you to strip naked to make sure you weren't wearing a wire yeah you had your boxers on your your pants but um there was four of us that got my got made that day and when he went into uh it was like a social club inside you know new york apartments and inside this apartment was like a social club setting and uh yeah you were told to strip to your boxers and put on a bathrobe okay what was the ceremony like ceremony there was captains and already like artie was the boss so he was acting uh boss of the of the genovese family and there was captains that were there gun and a knife on the table um you know you come out the kind of knife is there you sit down they ask you know why you're there you say no i don't know why um but you do know why um and then the ceremony begins they uh you know you you uh you take a oath to um the family comes first before anything if they have uh anything you know anything in life comes second families first the mafia family is always first you burn uh a tissue saint in your hand and you repeat after the boss he asks you if you use the gun in the knife what's your pre your trigger finger he pricks the trigger finger he puts the blood on the uh he burns it and um and you repeat after him it's a it's a 10 minute process very quick um got up uh kiss on the cheek hello friend um and uh you're part of the mafia with them part of that family okay so now you're a maid man in the geneves mafia and at one point artie sends you on a mission uh to deal with a guy named frank de davo yes so what was the issue with frank frank and artie so now at this time again i was uh i was around bruno like i said proposed by him new york really didn't know nothing about me when i was back and i was shelved from 96 to 98. so when i started going down to new york i was meeting with these captains we used to go down there once a week sometimes twice a week we'd always have dinners at nice restaurants and i would meet these other captains and they always thought that i was bruno's nephew that he just had me around for the ride that they never knew who anything about me that i that what i had going on back in my area they didn't know any of i had all the you know the rackets or any my reputation or anything like that so when i started going down to new york there was these other two guys that were from the past bosses before bruno ended up the boss in my area okay bruno ended up having the position as boss but the bosses prior to him in the massachusetts area of the genovese family had these other two guys that they wanted to make uh joey and reno were supposed to get made they were proposed and they were going to get made under babe and anthony delavo those were bosses in my area so when bruno takes over bruno mentions that he wants you know me uh proposed also with them so it would have been the three of us which was okay with me because i didn't really ever think about getting made he you know he told me that in the 90s i never i took it with a grain of salt like i never paid any attention to it but he put me on with those guys with those two so now i already had this guy around him that was that they put me with artie put me with this guy i first met him in new york his name was john bologna they had us go collect the debt in new haven uh i think it was 27 or 37 000 from a guy that had a a scrap metal yard so i met with john and we went and got the money from the guy and then ever since then he he became a messenger for artie you know in a lie asian liaison for in between springfield and new york and that was the worst thing that could have happened for all of us um so so now when this guy starts coming up he starts seeing what's going on in the area he starts seeing the control that we have in the area the crew that we have you know all the businesses all the strip clubs all the restaurants all the the guys the the social clubs he's seen everything you know bruno had him up at his house on sunday dinners and he was up every single weekend after that so he started to really get a know of you know like my crew what i was involved with i had nightclubs and restaurants and all the street stuff and i had the biggest crew and it was like he started to get that and bring that back to new york so when that started going back down to you know at the time captains and bosses you know like i said because artie wasn't boss at that time he became the boss i think it was sometime in all three maybe later too right around right around then so when i was going down there they started recognizing me more that's when artie becomes acting boss and that's when he wants to have me direct with him and that's when the thing with frank didable comes up frank was uh a union guy it was a union beef between uh the lucasi family and the genovese family artie was friends with this this guy frank they had uh some type of beef and uh arty wanted them dead um that was a way for me the kid joey and reno to get made and artie was gonna have us made i think probably them two because i got made in new york probably those two would have got made in new york also maybe i don't know i'm guessing about that but what happened was when it came time to go shoot this guy the guy joey and reno didn't come joey told him to take me off the list he didn't want to get made anymore which was he would that was uh you know very um he could have gotten a lot of uh trouble for that he could get killed over that for you know being on a list and then refusing to go on a hit when the boss tells you to but anyways it didn't matter to me because i have my other two friends that went on the hit with me um and we got it done you know we went to new york and shot the guy and uh that's how i ended up getting made with artie you know um by doing that hit right there that hit happened like in april of 03 and i got made in august of 03. so because of that hit is how i ended up getting made and my two friends that were with me were greek so they couldn't get made in the italian mafia which they didn't care about that anyways none of us really cared about that but i they always pushed me to oh yeah get your button and all that so you know that's how i ended up getting my uh getting made okay well you go and shoot 65 year old frank de davo but you didn't actually kill him no which is a miracle i don't know how he didn't die thank god he didn't die okay how did the shooting actually take place so we went down on a uh on a dry run you know we had to drive all the way to springfield to new york it's about a two and a half hour ride if you if you drive the speed limit and the first time we go down you know they told me where he parks his car where he lives and everything so the first time we go down we leave around he comes out of his apartment every day at 6. so we get there around 5 30 and we post up and we didn't even post up we just happened to be driving by right around six and here he comes right out of his apartment i mean if we had guns on us right there i mean you couldn't ask for a better i mean it was just by chance so the next day we go back we get the guns we had guns with silencers and that's a risk right there because guys with our records like we had we would have got 20 years if we got pulled over on the way down with the silencers or so we end up going down to new york we parked the car right on the uh the street where he comes out and i tell my guys put the guns underneath the car just in case cop pulls up what are you guys doing it was like five in the morning 5 30 in the morning our story was we're waiting for some girls we met some girls and we're going to be waiting for them they told us to meet them on the street but i kept the guns underneath the car just in case they pulled us out of the car but this time he doesn't come out we wait there all day and i mean all day up till like seven he doesn't come out of the house now we gotta drive all the way back to springfield this time that we go two days later i think it was and i tell freddie to go down and get a hotel room with the guns then me and ty drove down the next day um with a different car and there was a lot of planning involved we had to get a you know a car we had to get plates for that car with different plates and magnets on them that we had a steel we had to have we you know we had a spot where we were going to get rid of uh the gloves and the guns and um you know as soon as we did this we had a spot where we were going to pull everything off and throw it into this marsh over a bridge so that day we post up me this time freddy's the driver and he parks down the street me and ty sit on the uh the bench um [Music] and you know diagonally is where the the guy's got to come out of the house so we're sitting there and you know we're always we all always ball busted each other ty took a piss and you know where we go we had the guns over by uh there was a little wooded part on this uh area so we kept the guns right in the wooded part and ty had to go take a piss and uh he's coming back and i you know and just to lighten up the mood i busted his balls i said what are you doing he said you just pissed we're going we're going to kill a guy and you left your dna all over the crime scene you know it's i mean it wasn't the crime scene it was like it was still like 100 feet away 150 feet away where his car was that's where we were going to shoot him so he was like are you serious i was only busting his balls but as we're talking about that the guy frank comes out of his house i said oh there he is let's go so we went over to the thing picked up the guns and just started walking down the sidewalk and as soon as he got into his car we approached the car and just started shooting through the the uh driver's side door that's why i said it's a miracle he's alive because he was in the car when we shot him like you know he's sitting like this and the window's here and the shots are coming through the car i mean it's not they're not hitting him in their foot he's getting hit from his chest up the neck head so i mean thank god he survived well he survives he doesn't actually go to the police either okay and um i guess when you know the boss nigro finds out about it i guess he told you you need to get better at head shots yeah well he well he should get better at giving me better guns he's the one that gave me the guns that didn't kill him you know but anyways yeah he said that he uh i went down to new york and he asked me if i used the guns he gave me you know the silencers i said yeah he said did you leave him there did you get lee pick up though i think he asked me if i pick up the bullets how are we going to pick up the bullet casings you know but uh he says did you get rid of the guns i said yeah i got rid of the guns um but we use those goods you know guns to um the guns that he gave us we actually gave him the bruno i already gave those guns to bruno when um when i used to go down there with bruno but i kept them with me bruno had me keep him that's so that's how i had the guns and um yeah he said he goes yeah you got to get better at head shots i mean the guy was sitting in the car every shot was you know from his chest up well was that the first time you shot somebody yes okay and you thought you killed him so how did it feel to have potentially killed someone at that point you know there was no recognition as far as like if i hated the guy you know i didn't know the guy so you know we go to new york and we shoot this guy we think we kill him and now we come back to springfield and you know usually you get a name for doing something like that on the streets that's like oh these guys just killed some guy you know you get a but no we you know we can't tell anybody no one's gonna know about this so you're not gonna get a name for that because we shot some guy we don't even know in new york and you know if it was somebody that did something to me in my area and i killed him i would feel better because at least i got you know the guy did something to me and i killed somebody that that did somebody to make son of me but uh this guy i didn't know him i mean it's not that i felt bad or anything it's just uh i didn't know the guy and it was like just we did it for i guess i got made because of that which that's why but um yeah i mean i didn't feel anything either way okay well you get made in in 2003 right and you know originally you were with bruno but then i guess after you were made right you know your new boss nigro actually ordered the murder of bruno right and then on november 23rd 2003 he was shot multiple times right uh in a parking lot outside the society of our lady of mount uh caramel club right were you involved in that or no killing bruno yeah well i mean yeah i mean i was and i was involved not like they say i was involved i was around bruno and like i started getting noticed by new york that's when artie wanted me with him directly that's how i got made that's why he had me shoot the guy so when i ended up getting made with artie artie didn't want to have me stayed in it other captains and already didn't want to have me uh um heat on me they wanted me to be under the radar they didn't want me they didn't want me to have anybody in my area know that i was a made guy because it attracts law enforcement it's the you know you have a target on you once you're a made guy you're the leader of the crew so if i i had all the power in my area i got made directly with the boss in new york that alone puts me as the target because now i'm the target i'm the i have the most power and but we know that i have the most power we don't have to tell everybody that so what we're gonna do is they were gonna take bruno um take him down make him a soldier they were gonna get this other guy felix put him up as a captain the only reason they were doing that was because they wanted the greed the greed and control of our area see prior to artie coming over becoming boss everything ran smoothly our area was unbelievable guys used to come in from boston new york other parts of the country and want to move in our area because we got treated so well we owned all the businesses all the like nightclubs restaurants it was so many so we got treated red car treatment treatment every time we went into these places so when we brought people in they saw the way we were treated and we had everything in our area that was really nice when arty took over he had this guy that he brought up like i said john bologna and the two of them wanted to take that area you know there was a guy that was around the maid guy in our area they took his guys he was partners in a strip club they wanted to go and shake down his partner this guy's a made guy he put in work killed people been a soldier his whole life and you're gonna go take a guy away from him that's his partner in actual legitimate business and that's what they started doing so uh so you know i got made so then again i so i got made with artie that was what their goal was they wanted to you know have me direct with them i would have got the power but their whole mission was to take our area and siphon it where it was going to new york they started doing a big thing with um extortions you know they were shaking down they were grabbing like 50 000 a month bruno was giving them 12 of it um that never happened before no money ever went to new york like i said bruno sent tribute 50 000 in a van with cognacs and wines and all kinds of cigars and foods you know meats and but no money we had our own area and it was nice and that uh when artie became boss that was the plan bruno wasn't going to get killed so when you asked me bruno was going to get killed i was part of it he wasn't going to get killed he was just going to get taken down from his position which was boss in our area of the western mass genovese family to a soldier and that was all that was going to happen to him i think if they had pat de luca there instead of ardia's boss bruno would have never got killed um bruno but so bruno ends up getting killed um i could tell you what happened with that if that's how you know you i mean he was uh there was another crew that got arrested in 2000 and they were going to get sentenced 2003. now bruno is the boss of the area when one of the kids emilio fusco goes gets sentenced he was gonna get two and a half years instead he got three and a half years the reason he got three and a half is because a a report came out that said he's a made guy he denied he was a made guy he was a made guy he denied he was a made guy he um he he gets the report and in the report it's got out you know bruno talking to an fbi agent telling the fbi agent that this guy emilia fusco was a maid guy telling them how many active made guys we got in our area telling them um other business about other guys from new york and it's all into this report when this kid emilio gets the report he he gets into a beef with bruno they have an argument of a yelling match at each other now bruno is the boss and emilio's the soldier i happen to get made at this time so i'm you know and bruno doesn't know bruno doesn't know i'm made he has suspicions but we never told him so when emilio gets his paper he goes to felix felix calls the guy john that was around artie already sends for felix and the paperwork felix goes down with the paperwork and shows artie the the paper of bruno talking to an fbi agent now if you ask anybody any guy that was part of that life and you tell them that story prior to 2000 and i don't know if they don't kill anybody no more but prior back in the day everyone will tell you that that's that's a death sentence for bruno every single guy 100 out of 100 guys that know about that life once that paper surface will tell you bruno's a dead man and that's what happened so they give the cut they gave the order to felix kill bruno phil has come back from new york he meets with us me and emilio a couple of other guys and i asked him what happened he says they said to kill him they said they told felix to kill him but felix said we they told us to kill him like we meaning but he felix doesn't know that i don't you know felix does know felix knew i was made but felix don't tell me what to do they told felix to kill bruno not me so that's how it transpired for bruno to hit on bruno to go down that has nothing to do with me the reason bruno got hit was i didn't i was already a made guy he didn't need to take his position i already was made i was already direct with the boss i already told you what they were gonna do they were gonna take him down and put him as a soldier and not kill him which would have been a big punishment to bruno i don't think his ego would have been able to take that so i mean so that's all that was going to happen when this paper comes out of bruno talking to the uh to the um agent that's when john bologna and artie use that especially john bologna they used that as the tool to kill br uh to kill bruno and get rid of them and they gave the order to felix felix wasn't capable of killing him he didn't have a crew around him that could kill and he couldn't do it get it done so i got sent for in new york and that's when artie asked me to get involved on the hit now i'm not even supposed to know about the hit already asked me i gotta like he was telling it to me for the first time but i'm already i already know about it and so does john bologna john bologna wasn't a made man he was not even he was we were told he was an informant so john bologna knows about this hit that's number one um and so when i went down to artie i he he asked me do you know what's going on i pretended i was dumb i didn't know what was going on you know but felix told me felix wasn't supposed to tell me i mean when you get told to kill somebody the last thing you want to do is i mean the people you're going to go kill with yeah that you're going to get your crew or if you're going to go alone you're not going to tell nobody so why would he tell me he told me because he knew he couldn't get it done with his guys and and that's how he ended up getting involved with uh the bruno murder oh okay so here you are a maid man with the genovese and you're doing various things for them uh i guess at one point you got charged uh both federally and state with a loan sharking gambling and you got like three and a half years in prison yeah i i had three kids now i got it well this is after bruno got killed two days later i got arrested so i got i got charged in a state that was a state racketeering case you know with sports gambling loan charging numbers all that stuff then i got out on bail they put me on now they they put me on a bail and they put me on a curfew from 6 a.m to 6 p.m i had to be home after 6 p.m so they were really and that's when they started watching me 24 7. you know they started to uh watch me um you know because there was other violence that happened prior to bruno getting killed there was an um so they were starting to really watch me um and so i got out i had a a bail and a a curfew come 2005 the feds indicted me so i that was for money laundering interstate commerce sports gambling i got bailed for that that was in february of 05 and then i got indicted again in april of 05 for another state racketeering cases so i had three open cases all racketeering cases going on at once those are the three that i had going on in o5 you know i ended up pleading guilty i got three to three and a half in the state and i got 29 months in the fed now that just goes to show you there was no violence on those uh on those indictments so i had three of them the the money that was involved were in the multi-millions i mean i i had three different cases going on i pled guilty to a two million dollar sports gambling hundreds of thousands on the street number business huge huge number business and out of three cases i got only three to three and a half years on a plea deal i had the greatest lawyer in my area he's the best lawyer of anybody was the best so you know i had a great attorney that was behind me but i got three to three and a half in the state and 29 months in the feds so i go to do my time you know for that right there okay and i guess while you're doing time in prison uh the boston family nigro gets indicted for extortion right and so do i not with him though i get indicted too in another case okay um i'm trying to just kind of figure out uh the timeline of all this so 2007 when i'm doing my timeline i'm the time i get indicted for another extortion case for shaking down the vending business that case i went to trial for and beat i got found not guilty me freddie and ty got it got it so you get back out and do you get made a captain at some point when when you say i get back out after the oh five to oh eight well the reason like i said i i got indicted in uh 07 i had to go to trial beat that case once i got found not guilty that i had to go in front of the parole board again i they gave it to me and i got out 108. as far as the captain i was the i was the um uh i was the boss in my area okay you it was a captain in the family but yeah that's the position i had when i got made with arti i had all the the power i had all the um which i didn't need that it wasn't like i you know uh needed it no you know all my rackets were mine all my stuff it was just that they wanted felix as the guy in the area to have that recognition so when all the heat came you know i had guys come up to me made guys and say anthony who do we who do we come see if there's a problem you were felix i go see whoever you want you know they wanted to have me commit because a lot of them were informants they were just trying to get it so they could tell you know the um who the actual guy was in our area to find out and um and that's why that's why he did it to protect me from from law enforcement scrutiny well at one point gary westerman gets killed yes what was the story with that i mean that guy he was gonna get killed like three different times yes he finally did get killed he uh we were actually going to kill him in 96 freddie had a case with him um and then when we went to go kill him my friend louie knocked on the door his girlfriend was there so we had to call it off freddie ended up doing some prison time over that him and gary did some prison time then he they got out of prison around 2001. gary starts dating my wife's my wife at the time sister she was on drugs she was uh she was a mess at the time so gary was selling drugs giving her drugs he was 30 years older than her and i told him i said gary find another girl stay away from her he said he was gonna and then my mother-in-law and father-in-law both are immigrants from italy so they speak greek broken english they own a uh a specialty store with italian meats and olive oils sausage was their specialty they have the best sausage in the area they're busting my balls this guy's 30 years older than my daughter what are you gonna do about it you know this guy's giving her drugs what are you gonna do about it i said i'm gonna talk to him i go talk to him again gary go pick another girl i'm gone i'm gonna i promise i'm gonna now at the time my car had a listening device in it i was driving an expedition and the feds put a uh a bug in it they were listening to me and uh i actually pull up to him at a at a strip club and i said gary we it's on tape i said gary will you stop go get another girlfriend he goes i and it's and it's got him saying on tape uh i'm gone i'm gone i'm gonna so when i went to my mother-in-law's store that was a place where it was a hangout for me it was a place where i met people there was a nice it had an upstairs you could look outside and see it was in italian south end of springfield italian club was across the street italian coffee it was it was a nice spot so i when i used to go there joe finally uh joe was my father-in-law and he says this guy again he busted my balls he won't stop dating my daughter what does that say about you he's got no respect for you and you know he's pointing it at me like that now my mother-in-law is like anthony this guy you know they're basically asking me to to hurt the guy so that's when i i had my friend michael was in the store that day he said michael do me a favor drive me i'm going to shoot this i'm going to shoot this kid tonight so we set it up i had freddie take him to uh dinner and me and michael waited outside i said freddie uh beat me when you're 10 minutes away from eating when you're wanting to walk out the door i said then i'll pull up i might go pull up i'll get out and i'll shoot gary so we did all that i beeped him he beeps me so we get ready but what happened when we were parked on the side it was a big restaurant we didn't see gary drove a porsche the porsche was parked here the parking lots over here so we figured they have to walk this way for sure but what happens is they walk short and they get into the porsche so by the time we pulled up they were in the car i would have had a shoe in the car and maybe have freddy at the same time so we had to call that one off then eventually they welcomed my uh they my mother-in-law welcomes back him they go out to dinner so they start dating and they end up getting married so i called uh i just washed my hands with the whole situation you know i didn't want the guy around me you know that close to me being with me but you know they ended up getting married and but then we find out the guy's an informant um we had some good any and it turns out he definitely was an informant and he wasn't informed and we just set together a plan and we ended up killing him okay and you were involved in that murder yourself yes okay was that the first person you killed yes how did it feel to actually kill someone you had a some level relationship with it didn't feel nothing either way to say i just you know lived my life went home um [Music] they knew right away in my house that because you know don't forget my wife's sister was married to him at this point so when i got home that night right away he didn't come home so she you know she knew right away the sister knew right away that something happened to him so she's calling my and i hear my wife in the other room saying well maybe he just went out somewhere and it's not and i know he's dead and you know and then she comes in and she says uh you know gary didn't come home uh last night i hope you didn't do anything you know and i just told her to get away from me and um she hopes that they're doing it her mother and father were begging me for months to do something you know but that's not why he ended up getting killed but but um yeah i didn't it didn't affect me so if that's what you're asking i feel bad for the family you know he had a daughter and family members i feel bad for them and you know in all of our lives that's the life we pick you know we get killed the families the ones that suffer um so yeah that aspect i feel for the family well then in 2010 you were arrested and charged for the murder of bruno and westerman yes as well as some other crimes and i guess because of all these charges you're either facing life in prison or even the death penalty correct and at that point you begin cooperating with the feds correct how hard of a decision was that i mean you take this oath you know your whole life you're hearing about people talking about rats and and you know people are getting killed over being informants and everything else like that what led you to actually cooperate it's a very hard decision um and you know it's something that it's not easy you have to uh see what was going on prior to that for that for for you to make a decision there's in everybody that's in that position you know you have a death penalty case and it comes to a point where you have to say what's more important your little kids your family or the mafia and then when you see how the uh things transpired with you know it's a death penalty case when you see how things um came to the way they did with this guy john bologna coming up um causing havoc in our area reporting back to artie and for them to uh do the things that they did when we were told by the boss i was in the bronx and i was told that sitting in the car with artie the acting boss of the gambinos sees john bologna in the car and he uh he says what's jb doing here he's no good he's an informant now jb knows about stuff that can give me the rest of my life in prison a murder a shooting all kinds of extortions he wanted they wanted to shake down our whole area i asked him would you do that in your area he said no i get 30 years i said why why would you want us to do it in my area so uh i was in connecticut with the patriarcha family same thing they they come up to us and they say uh this guy john that comes up to your area he's an informant that's two that's a captain in the patriarchal family a boss in the gambinos and then we had a faction in our area that was genevieve's family but in our area that had inside information that was told that this john bologna was no good i approached artie to uh clip them you know have the guy come up you'll never see him again i said the guy knows a lot um first he downplayed it with the gambino guy he said they're just jealous that the guy's around me and then he uh and then he um he said that's good to know you know meaning like if we want to get rid of him that's good to know that we would kill him after that he never sent them up john never came up to our uh to springfield area other than us meeting them in albany or way up in connecticut and already was with him always present but he never came up and i think the reason that he did that vlad was because i never got permission to kill my brother-in-law while we killed my brother-in-law we were trying to kill some other people at the same time one already knew about already gave the okay to kill another guy but when bruno's paper come up we ended up clipping uh bruno but before we clip bruno we clipped my brother-in-law and when we clipped him artie didn't give permission for that we i did that on my own so i already knew that we were wild and we clipped this guy he asked me what happened to your brother and i said he took off to florida i think he went with another girl he left my my wife's sister so um i think he thought that we would clip john on her own and i think that was you know a big mistake by him by putting you know uh made guys together with a guy that was we were told that was an informant when you see the things that happen with like the whitey we call them whitey bulgers greg scarpa with the columbo family when you see these guys that are you know bosses that are informants for years and it finally comes out that's what you you think is happening today with uh wha what happens is you know you're thinking that this guy could be if he's allowing this guy to be an informant this could be another whitey bulger thing you know because that's what they do today instead of them being the informants they put somebody else up to do with the dirty work to go tell the you know fed stuff and and this okay so at one point during the trial bruno's son actually makes a statement to the court and he said this guy i grew up with him i knew him like the back of my hand your middle name shouldn't be jude it should be judas you ran to the government right away because you knew you were dead in the water you became a rat something you knew my father wasn't right well he's saying that because i was in my area i was around bruno and you know i ended up being made in new york but his father he doesn't want to come to terms with first of all he him himself is an informant himself he's always been no good you know that type of a guy but his father what his father did he doesn't want to get it through his head that his father spoke to the fbi and a three or whatever called 302 report was came out that his father told the fbi information when the boss i'm not the boss of the genovese family okay i i didn't order his death when they brought that paper to new york the genovese family bosses ordered his death okay and that's why his father's dead there's kind of like i'm a little bit older than the kid that you're talking about bruno's son and there was always like a little rivalry the father always had me around the father always if there was somebody to go go hit someone or go break someone's head and it was always send me and my crew um you know me and my guy's never his son um and when they talked about proposing and making the guy a made guy it was always me he was talking about so there was a lot of envy with him you know i wrote you know i wrote him letters from prison try to you know tell him if you ever you know i get it it was his father and uh you know like i said that's who suffers the family suffers when uh we get killed but um yeah i mean that's the uh the fact of the story of why his father was dead well arty nigro ends up getting sentenced to life in prison yes uh in 2011 uh first part in the bruno murder uh the feds labeled you as one of the best mafia informants ever how many people did you end up you know based on your testimony ended up going to prison for four people out of the thousands that i did business since the 80s up until 2010 uh four people how did you feel knowing that your testimony put these four people away so that's the hard decision with i tell you the truth it was uh it was mass and new york i'm from mass i got made in new york i didn't like what artie did putting this guy john bologna is with us in mass so my position as me being a leader in my area is to look out for my guys and and that's what i try to do um when i was locked up uh i had all the evidence come to me my lawyers came i had john mitchell from new york that represented you know as a big-time attorney i had my lawyer in my area but then i had john mitchell john mitchell comes up to me and says um well first my lawyer comes up to me and says felix is going to cooperate so and this guy ray rogero he was a captain in the genovese family he's another guy that knows about the murder we were in new york he said when are you going to kill this guy so he's cooperating so now we got four guys with a direct murder that puts us in a direct murder okay so then john mitchell comes up and sees me and says uh first words out of his mouth is new york is uh war weed sick um that already flipped artie was uh in prison being locked up on that case that you were talking about and uh they were worried that he flipped that he was no longer in the system he wasn't in the uh they couldn't find him in the system so my my thing was you know you're they're worried sick i'm second on the indictment you know so what is what should i be you know so i had to make a decision i had to make some sort of decision where i could live with it and my decision was is look out for my guys in my area send word to them before i even made a decision tell them what i'm thinking and what i want to do and what they have against us and let them make a decision for themselves and let them know what i'm going to do well because of your cooperation you got sentenced to 99 months yes now with time served they gave you an additional four years yeah about that almost about that and i guess you also had a two million dollar forfeiture yes as part of the sentencing which is pretty low considering that you were facing life or even the death penalty putting a low sentence yeah i mean compared to life yeah well i'm yeah that was a little sentence now when you're in prison are you hearing that there's a price on your head or a hit or anything of that sort no isn't that standard practice for people who who cooperate against the mafia i mean i guess i just didn't hear it i mean i didn't hear anything like that now you end up getting out what year 2017 april how many how much total time did you serve when you walked out of that prison from february of 2010 till april of uh 2017. seven years now when you get out are you in witness protection at all no did they offer it to you yeah and why did you turn it down i just never wanted it i said from day one um my plan was my decision was for me and my guys to follow suit and um i was coming back to my area from day one i told him that that was always my plan one of the things you said was that you joined the mafia and chose the genovese family over your own flesh and blood right do you regret the decision of joining the mafia 100 percent i regret it [Music] um i regret it if i could go back i don't regret my life prior to all of that you know the the two things i always say is the uh the violence and getting uh made into the uh into the mafia those were the uh two things i would change but as far as living on the street like like i said growing up i was in the uh marijuana business which is legitimate legal today they're legalizing it everywhere and the money that i made selling marijuana is uh you know i i mean you couldn't live a nicer life than what i was living um you know i made my first million i got out of prison in 93 when i was telling you that and i was a millionaire that i could actually look at it by 97. i mean the money that was involved in that was just you know so i didn't need so i you know i would i would just not get made and not get involved with the uh get made and uh the violence the murder the murder well ardy nigro gets life in prison uh in 2015 he tried to file an appeal uh that didn't work out and then on april 24th 2019 he actually dies in prison at the age of 74. did you feel some type of way when you heard about his uh his passing no after you had gotten out had you ever run into anybody from your former life all the time okay anyone who was still active yep and what what happened in those situations well in my area um i mean i i interact with active guys all the time i've been down to uh the uh the italian social club where we killed bruno uh where bruno got killed i've been down there a dozen times i've been all to the uh you know all the the clubs that i used to um frequent back in the day strip clubs um [Music] and i see i live in my house i grew up with i'm gonna bump into uh you know grocery stores or wherever i uh i see people all the time and there's never any altercations or anything of that sort no and why do you think that is i don't know i don't think that uh people um care about that life as much as people think they do now when you look at the mafia in 2021 even though you're no longer involved in it is it a lot different now than it was back then it's a lot different i think that it's everybody said you know like when they were saying that mafia is dead i don't think it's ever going to be dead and i think it's going to be even bigger than what it was it's just going to be different it's going to be um the rackets on the street aren't the same okay so sports is getting legalized everywhere the loan shark is a hard business you're gonna have a little bit of loan sharks here and there but that's not gonna feed a family mafia family so they're gonna get uh they're gonna adapt um drugs is the main uh uh you know source of business but they're not gonna get you know involved with you know them hardcore drugs that give you a lot of time so i think it's they're gonna stay with more legitimate which is what i wanted to do in my area focus on the um the legitimate industries you know put the the garbage the the wholesale foods uh anything that services you know the construction unions you're always going to have interactions with and uh you know i don't think the violence is going to be there and i think that's why they're going to get bigger they're going to make more money and it's that's why it's organized crime well i mean it's quite a story it's quite a story and you know over the years i've interviewed a lot of ex-mafia guys like yourself and the one thing that i always hear over and over again is that essentially everyone cooperates or people that don't cooperate end up getting life in prison or or something of that sort it doesn't seem like anyone really rides off into the sunset with you know a billion dollars in their bank account and gets to live the life uh it always seems like you know with all the murders and and all the violence that occurs at some point somebody's gonna turn especially with the rico laws the way they are they don't want to do their 20 years they'll end up turning and everyone else gets caught up and ultimately just you just don't see a win in this whole thing and although it gets glamorized in movies like goodfellas and casino and so forth and it seems like the italian mafia is the the best marketed organization best marketing criminal organization of all time but the reality of it is very very different absolutely and the streets are loaded with informants well you know you're asking me would anybody say anything to me i mean my whole area is infested with informers and i know new york is too um the guys like i said when this guy came up to our area the genovese family's still in intact in new york and our area is wiped out it's done okay so that's what already accomplished when you said did i feel anything ferrari already brought this guy around that destroyed our area there's nothing and the guys that do exist the guys that own the strip clubs they're all informants i mean it's public on public record their informants the guys that own all the strip clubs even the ones in new york uh the hustler their informants that was part of my case uh with um on money indictment i mean the list that i saw that i had actually seen was over 100 that went to the grand jury that testified at the grand jury that if they needed to call them that they were going to call them i mean the streets are flooded with informants in my area they're infested with them and um and they're the ones that have uh you know uh prominent places of uh of business there's no there's no active guys in my area as far as there's made guys there's really really only one older guy that's made that's really uh a good guy the rest of them every single one of them even the ones that went to prison did something we're gonna we're gonna cooperate if they didn't get their time reduced but they got time reduced so they didn't cooperate they're gonna blame other people for murders you got another guy that did 16 years was writing letters back home saying he was gonna him and bruno had secrets but he was gonna expose those secrets if they kept shaking down his brother i mean these guys are you know that's what you got today um on the streets yeah and if you ever take a look at any of these uh pieces of uh legal paperwork at the very top it'll say the united states of america verses yeah and i don't care how big your organization is how much money you got you don't have more resources than the united states of america and when you become a target like when i was a target they thought i was involved in more murders than i was i mean i i was uh a target once you become like that they're never gonna stop with the uh with that um 24 7 surveillance um you know when you when you talk about informants also you can never talk about you can never know if a guy people say where's the paperwork on the guy you're not going to get a paperwork on a guy that's an informant they don't just you don't have people he didn't testify at a court he didn't uh there's not something written there's no 302s that they're going to pass around that you know when a guy's the informant you know he's he's he's like a a cop he's he's walking around as like a cop but only he's inside the crew so it's like the cops have some one of their own inside the crew that's the informant that's what they have especially in my area guys that i grew up with especially this one that you know walks around in my area since the 90s we were told back in the 90s he's been an informant walking around and uh never spent one day in prison and um and these were guys that were all in my crew you know my crew in my area do you consider yourself a rat i don't consider myself uh no i don't i consider myself um you know when it came down to that making a hard decision that i didn't care about you know already i cared about my three guys in my area so so if i'm gonna make a decision that's gonna be very hard for me um if i was gonna ever do that i would have did it from the streets you know try to work out a deal i knew i was getting indicted a month before they came and got me that's when john bologna got picked up and put into the witness protection program so if i was going to do that i would have thought about doing it from the streets but once you're in there once you get arrested you see what they have against you you know that you're gonna get life in prison okay so it's like you're on a on the titanic and the ship is halfway in the water and you know you're the captain of the ship you wanna jump but you gotta you gotta look out for your crew so you know i want to jump off this ship because i don't want to go to jail for the rest of my life i love my kids more than that so i don't give a [ __ ] what anybody says when you've got a five-year-old a six-year-old and little kids you know you got all kinds of businesses success wife girlfriend all kind you know that's what comes more important but for me to live with it i want to make sure that my crew knows my my three guys like i said three guys know what i'm gonna do before i even do it and i let them know of my decision and now they have a decision of their own to make what decision do they want to make they have you know a hard decision now to make also but but that was before i had any um uh done anything i reached out to them well anthony quite a story and uh you know you've accepted everything you've answered every tough question uh you did what you did and you did your time for it and the cooperation you did you you've owned it you didn't try to dodge it you know a lot of people say well i cooperated but i didn't put anyone in prison like you know you you've accepted everything that they came with your actions and ultimately you have to live with your decisions and you know it's it's interesting that you still live in the area that you grew up in because most guys end up moving away and never coming back you know michael franzis is a regular guest on my show and you know he he doesn't go back to his old area he lives out in la somewhere and you know he still feels like he has to watch his back somewhat so the fact that you're actually living where you used to live kind of says a lot about the reality of the mafia and how many people really cooperate and how you know it's not what they make it out to be in the you know in the movies where everyone just holds their tongue and does life in prison and and so forth um you know and ultimately you know as a man you've uh you know you've made your decisions and you've lived with them and i appreciate you coming in and sharing your story thanks for having me and i wish you the best man i wish you the best until next time thank you vlad take care yeah take care

Channel: djvlad

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Id: uQNxg-AJpEI

Length: 76min 43sec (4603 seconds)

Published: Sun May 30 2021