Gianni Russo on Working for Mob Boss Frank Costello During War with Genovese (Part 5)

okay so what year did you start working for my boss frank costello well i i was 13 so that would be what i went in about 55. okay so that was right around the time that the war was starting right right with uh genovese you know when vito came back he wanted his family and unbeknownst to costello i mean unbeknownst to veto he didn't want the family because he was already talking to maya lansky they were already in the works of creating the syndicate by doing more legitimate business and he didn't want to run a street gang and that stupid thing with chin and in 57 that was i mean it was a favor and i really think chin would rather be with costello the only only reason he would have missed because you know frank always wore those great hats with about a two or three inch band on him and i think chin thought he was shooting him but aimed for the band because he just grazed the top of his head you know i i couldn't i shot him you're talking about is in 1957 genovese ordered vincent the chin uh gigante to kill frank costello right and he ended up not killing him he ended up just wounding him but then at that point that's when costello decided to just retire yeah that's what he wanted to do anyway so that whole thing that that was going on between them it uh and again i'm i had nothing to do with that i knew none of this i saw the headlines like everybody else and i saw him with a bandage on his head but other than that i can't ask this guy anything i was so grateful to be there because you know i had the apartment i live in now you're not going to believe this i walked in when i was 13. and we never used street numbers all we used was the address on the street so 2-2-3 is where i live but i knew where that was the police or anybody else could never know where those were because there was a 2-2-3 on every street why i'm saying that this guy gave me a life early on there was a snow storm i was at the copa and he said you know just go 2-2-3 and we all had keys to the door we didn't ring bells because i was going to pick up envelopes and there was a count room which is my master bedroom that had 20 phone writers with blackboards and i kept all the alexander grain bell boxes on the walls because just as a memory of how this all started for me you know so yeah i mean it's a pretty crazy story i mean after uh the assassination attempt against costello uh then anastasia was killed in the barbershop yeah well they got rid of al because he was getting too crazy see there was two fashions at the time anastasia and and joe pavacci who was the oil king and joe bonanno who was already into drugs and the gambinos and everybody else didn't want to do drugs so they were going to take out anastasia now i don't know how many people know what i'm about to tell you but joe colombo was part of the preface family and he came to have a meeting with gambino and said there's talks of them taking you out and that's why when they got rid of all of them joe but i mean joe balan was the last one and they ruled in sicily you can't take him out because of the amount of heroin he was delivering already so they exiled him to arizona they killed pifaci they killed anastasia and the the good news was that's how the povacci family became the colombo family that's how joe got a family but uh right right and you know later on you know as costello had retired he became known as the prime minister of the underworld yep that's what he was and that's when you started kind of working with him that's when well what we have i remember it well october 57 all of this happened already i met sinatra a month or two before i walk in and he's rehearsing he's performing at the copa that was the first time i saw sinatra and when i walked in julie bodell was in the corner and he looked at him like say who's this kid because i came out of the kitchen and he said that's costello's boy well i felt six feet tall so i sat down and i listened to sinatra do a couple of tunes and then soon as they took a break he put a cigarette in his mind i walked over and i lit it and he says to me what's your name kid i said kid he said what's your name i said the kid he said who gave you that name i said mr c he said i'll never answer that question again ironically that october there was a meeting in new york and how they camouflaged that meeting it was a friday night and they were throwing a big benefit at the copa for toot shaw because he was always broke and everybody like jackie glease and johnny carson everybody that was performing all those shows were coming from new york at that time always hung it tootshore frank gifford was there yogi barra i mean they filled the place but upstairs in the lounge that morning as i always did i would stop and see gambino after i went to see my grandma i went to church down the neighborhood and i would see him he's i know you know about the party tonight but i want you to dress well and meet me at 6 30 up in the lounge so i mean any i do anything they said this is carlo gambino telling me to come i'll be there so i go up there he's sitting with sam gene connor i never met sam giancana i met i met uh cindy koshak the attorney i was introduced briefly to tony acado up to that time now this is 1957 and that whole weekend anybody that was anybody in the mob came to new york and they that's when i started traveling for them and the reason they wanted them all to see me so that they knew this is really the guy that's coming as their messenger so i met carlos masalas corki savella out of cleveland toto's and joe sedaro i met every mob guy there was in the world and i just thought he was introducing me like my nephew to the rest of the family but it was because in the next two or three years i was traveling the world to get the votes all the unions to vote to get him nominated to become president but you know when i hindsight when you think about it i mean i should be doing life support with my associations

Channel: djvlad

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Id: 2nMha2XVWNI

Length: 7min 49sec (469 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020