Mob Hitman interview-John Alite

so i grew up in uh woodhaven queens jamaica avenue it was on the border of east new york brooklyn uh they nicknamed my neighborhood death haven uh because of all the uh violence murders uh people ordained uh drugs you know so it was it was a known neighborhood we had an area called the dome it was up in the park it was something you would see out of kind of the movies i mean to us it was normal because we're young kids growing up in that area but uh as i'm growing up and i'm going in that area you can basically go up to dorman and uh it was like a five and dime store of drugs weapons and uh anything that you wanted to you know buy they had it up there so you know locally to jamaica avenue was kennedy airport so that was used as a hub for all of us to to uh hijack trucks give me up trucks and all that swag would end up in our neighborhood you know sometimes sold in bulk and then other times salt individuals will take it up into the dome and we you know buy it up there or sell it up there eventually as i got older become me selling it up there and putting guys up there at different locations around the neighborhood selling drugs with me but to start off as a kid i was a young boy that came from a family that just came from albania my father was born over in albania and uh it was it was a rough country uh known for being at war since the ottoman days was no money it was a third world country suppressed suppressed uh communism so when i came into you know when i was born and my father came into the united states married my mom uh people really didn't know what albania was it wasn't like saying you're italian or greek or you know another nationality that people really knew because the country was so closed down or locked down you didn't have that many albanians so i grew up where my father believed in violence as a protection not as a use to hurt people he wanted to make sure that i could handle myself and not get bullied in the streets where he grew up in uh riventon and delancey down in manhattan lower east side was a tough neighborhood that's the neighborhood where vito genovese was born and raised and uh guys like that where my father became friends with them but on an outskirts not uh a gangster he wasn't out there killing he was a a gambler he was a street guy he played dice on the street and stickball and box and he knew all the gangsters and he got very friendly with guys like lucky luciano's cousin blackie charlie luciano same name and i became one of his partners over the years so these guys like l greco tough gangsters uh killers al greco was was the norm of people that i started uh seeing as a young boy three or four or five years old i was on their laps in a bronx den card game that my uncle was partners with luciano and uh al greco frequent that was basically the strong arm for him at that time guys like handsome jack and these are some of the nicknames and guys that were my father's friends and partners in business and my uncles so when i'm raised around them i got a good look at a diversity of real serious street guys that without them saying much you start understanding are very powerful you start understanding their control in the city not just that bronx uh card game and so as a kid it was very natural for me to be and see violence whether it was in my streets whether it was around my father's friends whether it was in a boxing gym or whether it was in the basement my father had us in the basement uh me at three my brother at four and he'd put gloves on us and tell us to fight and you know when you look back people would say wow your father you know they they look at him in a hard way i don't i look at him in a loving way because what he taught me was to survive the streets that i ended up living in you know people say well your father was nuts for what he taught you he didn't teach you schooling my father taught me what he understood was the best way to survive he did it out of love he didn't do it out of uh trying to develop me to be into a galaxy he tried to develop me to be a pro ball player and at the same time he developed me into a killing machine without realizing what he was doing to me uh so i i think the aggression started with me just as a simple thing riding a tricycle at three years old and by the time i'm four i wasn't very coordinated i i guess at those ages i was very rough and tumble and my brother was very he was actually very graceful so i would try to stay up with my older brother which was very difficult because he was naturally graceful in sports and boxing and i was very sloppy and i you know if somebody asked me to do something and go around a curve with my bike i'd just go through it i'd go through the bushes i'd fall and people would cringe my aunts my grandmother and they would say johnny stop riding that bicycle and instead i just keep getting up and getting on the bike and i'd be all bruised up i'd be bleeding everywhere and my mother would plead with me just don't ride a bike you don't have to do what jimmy does your brother just do your own thing so i was used to that blood even riding a bicycle i was used to the pain and i started embracing it the more that people said how tough i was the more i i played up to that even as a child the more my father put me in the ring with my brother and he beat me up the more i wanted to go in the ring and get beat up and show how tough i was it wasn't necessarily about winning it was about showing that i could take it and as the years went on uh i just got more aggressive and i started running around the streets and my friends were very very aggressive guys i come from a neighborhood where guys were getting locked up at 11 12 years old and all my friends were killers and they were shooting guys stabbing guys they were in reformed schools they were in juvie uh spa fed drug rehabs at young ages my friends were on a david suskind show at 12 years old for violence and drugs uh i wasn't really to that level at that time so it was surprising for people to see as i kept aging that i was getting more and more violent and i started slowly passing my friends as far as uh becoming that person that people really didn't think i was but what they didn't see was the training that went behind it at three years old my father would have me down the basement doing five push-ups at five years old i was down to push down a basement doing 25 and 30 push-ups a set uh at five years old i was running a couple miles i'd go to the track with my father and i'd have to follow him while he was running because he was a boxer and i started running by 10 years old i'm running 10 miles myself and i was in extremely good shape so i was sitting a boxing ring a lost battalion hall with some famous fighters later on was jerry cooney and different guys like that david sears who fought michael spanx in the old days and i look at these guys and these guys were top-ranked up-and-coming pro fighters that i wanted to be just like them i wanted to be tough like them i wanted to be an al greco as a gangster so everybody that i surrounded myself with were tough guys one way or another and street guys in my eyes and you have my baseball coach who was fat andy ruggiano's sons who fought andy ruggiano was a captain the boss of our neighborhood that was part of murder rank and lucky luciano and albert anastasia was his guy so albert anastasia straightened out fat andy ruggiano made him a made guy in 1954 i believe this is my grandfather figure this is my baseball coach's father and this is a guy that starts really opening my eyes to the next level of uh becoming a killer so by i guess about 12 years old i'm playing baseball and i'm using that bat to hit a ball but then i start using that bat as favors to different gangsters saying hey can you go pick up money for me here or there and it's a slow transition before you realize you're gonna use that bat and put it over someone's head when they don't pay so as a i believe i was 13 i was working at diggs deli and uh louis gaddy was a lucasy guy bookmaker great guy sharp dresser another good role model as a gangster for me because he was successful you know in the street world there's a lot of bumps but the guys i happened to be around they're all successful big money guys tough guys and sharp guys were you know driving beautiful cars back in those days with lincoln and caddy convertibles uh and i started looking every time i turned around the next kid's looking at that baseball player that actor and i'm looking at that next gangster and that next gangster is always opening my eyes to a future in the street not a petty street guy but a guy that understood hey you can get out of this hood but you have to be intelligent you can be a killer or a tough guy but you have to be intelligent any dummy could go put a bat across somebody's head but you got to know when to do it you know you got to know how to get away with it and you have to have the balls to be able to do it alone not with ten guys and five guys so i started understanding going with three and four and five guys that was a cowards move but if you can go by yourself and do things you can be very successful in this life if you have one good friend you can basically control the neighborhood but you need to be very violent you have to be very slick and you have to be very loyal to the guys that you're working for and your bosses and those days it was it became fat andy ruggiano and his children were my you know my mentors i guess in in the next level of the mob so the problem with anything is when you get it when you get used to blood when you get used to pain when you get used to a simple thing of putting a bat across someone's head and there is no there is no uh feeling about it because i'm used to being hurt i'm used to bleeding i'm used to having broken bones i'm used to having a broken arm and taking my cast off and playing baseball because i was trained for this to ignore the pain so when i'm hitting somebody else i'm not i don't think i'm really understanding at that age they're not used to this they didn't sign up for this like i was brought up as a kid to become a killer they were just regular people that went in a little over their head they weren't training for this they didn't expect to get a bat across their head because they're uh degenerate gamblers or there's somebody who doesn't pay or they're a con artist they always think they're not going to be the victim and i was trained to make the next guy the victim so when most people are talking they really aren't going to take it to that level you'll hear a guy say well i'll put a bat across i said it sounds good in front of a group of people but they're not really gonna do it and as a young guy i happen to be around guys like al greco when he said he's gonna put a bat across your head he was doing it ninety percent of these guys aren't about that really people don't understand that they think but you got a handful of these guys like roy demayo's of the gang the gangster world or fat andy with murder inc and albert anastasia these guys were real gangsters these are real killers these guys are guys that were very quiet uh didn't say much but their reaction and their action was violence so as i started adapting to all my teachers because that's really what they are they're uh professors of of a world that uh especially back in the day was was very low key and quiet except for the violent part they taught me at in those days to be very aggressive with your violence and sometimes they taught me to do it publicly so when i hurt somebody a lot of times i did it purposely where crowds would see and they'd understand uh this face remember it that's my wallet this is the way i'm gonna make money this is the way i'm gonna control this neighborhood this is the way i'm gonna control the drug trade and any other thing i wanna control so when somebody did something or disrespected me my organization my guys uh i was very violent i would be swift about it i walk into a nightclub and uh example i walked into a nightclub called kickers on metropolitan avenue back in the 80s and we warned the balances that for now on these you guys are going to be unionized there is no more going to work without going through us if you go to work on friday you're going to get hurt you're going to get shot and i guess you know on their their behalf people talk so they didn't take it serious i guess you know they didn't they don't understand the mob world they didn't understand me they didn't know they didn't know me that the way i know me obviously and they didn't think that i they just thought i was just another gangster i guess talk and then given an order and they believed that their guy would protect them and i warned the guy when i shoot you when i hurt you if you come to work it doesn't matter what your guy says you're already shot you're already hurt you're already killed don't go to work so i get a phone call and i'm home sleeping and i hear they're all at work it's friday night the music's pumping everybody's drinking and i called my buddy and i said to him uh come pick me up he said what are you gonna do i said don't worry just film pick me up he picks me up it's uh midnight about that we get in the car i load up a couple of guns i got two guns i used to like to take a revolver always i didn't like automatics because it automatic jammed on me once before so i always had uh that belief that the automatic uh there could be a problem make sure you carry two guns i actually carried three i would carry an automatic so i had the extra shots i'd carry a revolver and i would carry a two shot derringer in a jock strap in case i run out of anything i have something left that people don't know i have on me and uh we get in the car we pull up i tell them to circle the block there's a gas station around the corner from kickers and and the club changed names several times uh they had a couple different names but the same owners and the people and they were around gangsters also they were mobsters i pull up i tell him just stay in the parking lot and he's a big guy tough guy irish guy and he says to me no no i'm going to come with you guys i don't need you so when we pull up to the bar the one of the head managers is there and as soon as i see him i says come here and he goes john he's trying to talk and my guy without asking me went to swing at him but when he went to swing him i already shot him in the stomach and so he looks at me with like a half smile he goes oh i thought i had him with a right hand and you know people don't understand there's a dry sense of humor we do because we do it all the time this is not something that uh we do once in a while in my case i did it on a regular basis after i shot him one of the bouncers came out to react to the shooting not realizing he's gonna get shot and him i just uh hip shot i believe i shot him in it in the right or left it doesn't matter i hit him in one of his sides of his hip and then he went down i shot him in the lake and then i continued and i went inside the bar and i found two other guys that i warned not to come in one was some sort of manager and he went to hit me and my guy went to hit him and then i shot him and after i finished with him i looked for one of the owners who went up the back and jumped out a side window and then i caught the fourth guy uh by the back door and i shot him i think he got shot up in the chest area somewhere and then i when he went down i shot him again so i shot the four guys and my guy started to run out the door and i said well where you going now the whole club you can imagine is in disarray everybody's running out everybody's screaming the lights come on the dj music stops and i put the gun and i pointed at one of the bartenders i said don't go nowhere and i said make me a a drink at that time i was dream vodka and cranberry and now i switch it up to martinis but at that time it was vodka and cranberry and he looked at me like i was insane and he says relax i said this has nothing to do with you ain't gonna shoot you get me to drink and i told my friend sit down so he's looking at me he didn't understand he goes john we're gonna get pinched let's go i go relax sit down i says i've got to make a statement here and i wanted them to know that i came there and i'm not worried about anybody not even law enforcement and i had that drink and i said okay and i didn't gulp it i sipped it i stayed we walked out the door i put the gun back under my shirt and as we come there the police are all pulling up and you got probably 10 police cars there ambulance fire engines ems everybody's there and as we're walking out we just point inside like the shooters are still inside nobody did nothing to us we walked we went around the corner we got in our car and we went back to our social club in ozone park and i reported back that uh this was taken care of and i think they got the message now that the bouncers work through also they don't work after that when i go into club after club naturally they're all on board so it always takes for some reason it takes these guys to understand they're not in this world and to really get it when they see the guys are getting shot when they see guys are getting killed when someone comes looking for me for revenge and we jump in a car and when we jump in that car when i jump in that car talking i'm telling guys when they jump in that car with me you're the driver you're the backup car i'm gonna go kill this guy i'm not just talking so i tell them set up a car steal a car get me guns and i put things in motion and back in those days larry cucarelli was one of the guys with me he's dead he died of a heart attack but his family's around and uh i said jump in the call with me he goes jonah go just get me the guns so we get in the car and one of the guys who was looking for me for another incident he's driving on the interborough parkway heading towards brooklyn i says when we come around the turn it's a very slick turn coming from uh woodhaven going into brooklyn i believe it's the first exit towards pennsylvania avenue i says get next to him and i start shooting and i hit him in the head he dies a couple weeks later in the hospital the reality of what i do it doesn't really hit these guys because they're not still there they're guys they're friends of mine the guys involved with me but they're not killers but when i tell them afterwards where are we going to go he says let's dump these guns let's dump this car burner and i tell you go burn this car you go dump the guns you know in the ocean and you guys meet me go where are we going to meet i says we'll go meet at the diner we'll go get something to eat that's the reality for them and they understand like this is obviously nothing to me i'm going to kill i'm going to shoot i'm going to do whatever i got to do to be successful on the street and by the more people that i make them understand that i'm on a different level of violence and i'm willing to put my life on a different level and i'm willing to put myself to kill somebody to be killed and you put yourself in those dangerous situations you're also gonna get stabbed up like i did you're also going to get a shot like i did you're also going to be in the hospital for months like i was and you're going to have people that are just as well as you or worse they're going to try to take your life back but that's what you signed up for i was used to this i knew i was going to go to the hospital i knew i'd possibly get killed i knew when someone pointed that gun at me i was going to go towards them i wasn't going to go away and those are the incidents is why i got shot up or stabbed up or batted myself because my father trained me again at three years old you're a fighter you're a killer you're a killing machine when all these guys are telling you they're fighters they're killers and they're shooters i know there's an instinct like any other fighter that gets in a ring or an army vet that goes to war they know what their job is when they get there the guys that are seeing action understand what we're really facing they understand that maybe their guts are going to get torn out maybe they're going to get shot in the body in the head maybe it's going to end right now but you take that adrenaline and you use it in a positive way not in a negative way because you're used to that adrenaline you're used to that fear factor because we all have fear but the people that can't handle that fear it hurts them the people that can handle that fear and that adrenaline rush in a positive way take that and they use it in their benefit and things kind of slow down for you when you're in this mode they don't speed up they're they're very precise they're very calculated moves that i'm making people on the outside say oh this guy's berserk no i'm not berserk there's guys there's friends of mine like angel costelli that went half drunk had cocked up to hurt somebody and he ended up getting killed he pistol-whipped somebody took the gun they shot him in the back they shot him in the head because he's not going in a calculated mindset he's going in a half mindset so these are the guys that fat andy ruggiano al greco told me uh if you want to be that killer if you want to be that guy on the street you want to be that professional you have to use intelligence behind the killing you have to use intelligence behind making money you have to use the toughness that you have and and the ability to be able to get hurt and overcome it or stabbed up a shot with no fear and you have to do it in a very smart way in a very calculating way i started i i was trained for this and as the years went on and i'm killing and i'm shooting and i'm bat and i'm stabbing it's taking a mental effect on me something that i really don't realize because you're in the moment you're like a ball player that's up with bases loaded in in the world series the only difference is when you're hitting that ball because i was a baseball player right i had a scholarship and so when i'm up i'm used to that training with baseball and that zone in a concentration and you're in a zone you can't hear the crowd that was me until everything shuts down and then you realize i can't sleep at night i start seeing somebody's dead bodies all the violence all the shooting all the stabbing starts taking a mental effect on you and then you end up with i have ptsd because there's no way you can kill and shoot and stab the way i did and not having a mental effect somewhere although at the time you're blocking it out at one point in your life it's gonna come out at you so when i put my head on the pillow i can fall asleep i'll sleep an hour 15 minutes 30 minutes even two hours but not more than that and then i'm up i'm down i'm up i'm down and you have these uh anxiety attacks you have these uh control factors of your temperament when someone's trying to needle you a little bit and trying to get a reaction you're trying to control what you couldn't really control over the years even though you thought you were under control you were in control on the incident but overall you look for this you look for the excuse for the violence you look for the reason that someone's getting out of line so you can release what you want to release and what you want to release is to tear these people apart for whatever wrong they did or for whatever job you're taking care of you're back zoned in but you're not realizing one day that you're gonna end up like me and you're gonna end up with therapy for years and if you don't end up in therapy for years you're never gonna help yourself you never get a moment's piece whether it's sleeping or whether it's just getting a burger somewhere you this is going to be a 24 hour seven on your mind and as this became another level of training for me not the violence that i trained for but now this is to have some sort of solitude to be able to enjoy life again to be able to smile laugh and to go back into having some sort of normal life you have to retrain yourself the way i trained myself since i'm three years old i started training myself now with meditation working out therapy dealing with ptsd is difficult but i deal with it by talking to other people that deal with it i'm very involved with veterans that uh friends of mine that were serious uh snipers killers uh war heroes through uh different wars iraq afghanistan and these guys uh we talk about what it feels like to kill we talk about the guys that are perpetrating a fraud and we know they are by the way they talk why they act those actions how we control ourselves not to hurt these type of guys how not to go backwards and kill these guys and you know it's another development stage uh that it's a it's always a work in progress it's no different than somebody who has a drink and a drug problem you just say to yourself i'm gonna get through today and tomorrow i'll work out tomorrow tomorrow but let me just get through the next 24 hours so you take it as a day-to-day thing so when people are pointing or poking at the bear you know what's in you you know that you can take them out like this you know that it's nothing for you to go kill another guy or stab up another guy or track him down and beat him senseless until uh you just tear his body apart these are normal everyday actions of somebody like myself and i know there's not a lot of guys like myself out there and the problem is when they disrespect or talk to you in a certain way you got to be able to control yourself control your ego and say to yourself if i'm ever going to change my life and be a better person i need to work with therapists and i need to work with others that feel the same thing i feel guys that were real guys like guys like my friend brian or jd or some of the guys i talked to stevie uncle steve or guys that i know were legitimate killers whether it was legitimate for the government for armed forces for uh uh police work but the guys that actually were out there uh doing what i was doing to really understand it the frauds we know we can we could see the way they speak the way they talk and we know uh for us it's just a light switch you go to the wall you turn the light on and off it's the same with us you could turn that light on and off and uh i turned my light off a long time ago for 10 years now i work with kids i try to help them uh not to fall into that trap and don't develop into that killer i developed into so it's a good feeling that's my new adrenaline rush this is how i control my past is by saving other kids lives so they don't end up dead they don't end up killing others they don't end up uh trying to get retribution for some of the acts of disrespect of guys on the street and as i work with these kids it strengthens me further and further to continue on my path of saving lives and giving back and at the same time it helps me to uh cure myself of uh the urges to hurt people kill people that are i believe are wrong in me or my family or friends and it helps me in my ptsd and as i continue on the journey um hopefully uh i keep saving lives and this is my my my way of uh saving myself and saving others and i became this johnny elite not uh the old johnny you know people ask me on a regular basis do i regret uh the things that happened in my life and i say you know these things i wish didn't happen but i don't regret him i think saying i regret him is saying that my life was worthless all these years all i did was maybe this was my path this was god's choice for me to go this way so i could save lives so i i can't say that i i really regret him because because of the life i lived it gives me the experience to be able to save these kids and and i think maybe that's what it was meant to be it's as simple as that i was meant for this path uh to save kids and save adults from going down that path maybe i want to believe that and that's how i get through my my uh bad life i mean the violence but i think it's it's something that uh the way i deal with it and uh i learned from it my my lesson from from all this is uh we're all human and i think uh as you go through life you're going to experience things from an extreme and you know so did i learn i learned that violence doesn't solve anything i could kill hurt and stab as many people as i did and the next guy just thinks he's not going to be the victim he'll just keep poking at you and you got to say to yourself control yourself don't do what you used to do if you do you're going to go down that path and it's not going to just be him you're going to go after each guy that is agitating you instigating you and that's not a path of having a good life you got to look in the mirror and say i like myself a lot more than i hate this guy and the more you like yourself the more it'll stop you from going to kill the next guy or hurt the next guy and it gives you the uh strength to say instead of killing this guy hurting this guy let me save this guy here instead let me teach this guy a lesson that i'm learning through life through uh hospitals through murder through morgues through the streets that i grew up with and and turn my life the way i did and don't turn back to the bad ways again so i think that the life experience for all of us uh is just our journey whatever that may be and this uh was my journey and there's no way to take it back so i embrace it and try to work with it and the things that i did that were horrible i try to pass that along to young kids so they don't follow that path and i end up here where i am today all right john thank you so much thank you great talk thanks you

Channel: Soft White Underbelly

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Id: rqNvJd5ORKo

Length: 33min 40sec (2020 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 24 2022