The Mafia, Their Museum + What the Godfather Got Wrong!

Now really.

Really, Hello everybody, welcome back. I'm Jason Alexander sitting here with my best friend.

It's going to age me and dog Lars Peter Tilden.

Yeah, that's right, that's still your name and our show podcast you've come to know and love. Really where what do we talk about on this show?

Can we talk about things that make us say? Really? No? Really?

And that's how we start our show, even here in beautiful Las Vegas where we've come back once again to the Blue Wires studio. You're in fabulous Las Vegas and then plugs for what reason we're paying for this?

Wow? Exactly? Wow? So really no, really is because we were talking. We were talking about it, Carl Jason. See this headline headline, sorry we dissolved your son and Acid Mafia. Boss's tell parents and I go, hey, they got the wrong guy. But be they apologize isn't done in a code? We don't apologize eyes for putting the wrong person in Acid.

Well, I thought part of the code was you never touched somebody else's family.

There was back in the day.

You know, the guy was the guy if you needed to whack the guy, but he didn't do the family.

You left alone. And what I love is they offered they I don't even want to tell you what they did to this person, but the allegedly killed son did something to his teeth and an acid and all that.

Kind of stuff.

But they apologized during the trial, and they said they want to make good for it and give them some money in an apartment. Oh okay, oh oh right, okay, all right.

And by the way, they apologize, anybody can make a mistakeologize.

All right. So that kind is thinking about the mob? Is there a new mob? How prevalent are they and how it's still such a it's still now.

I will say this, I don't hear a ton anymore in the news about you know, the old mob, the old mob. I hear a lot about you know, Russian gangs and gangs and you know, cartels, But I don't hear a lot about the mob. But it is still one of the fixtures of popular entertainment.

By the way, may I say, and this is not any knock to you, because you're preparing a show and stuff. They're still in the news New York. They're flipping there, They're really yeah, they're still going after the New York City in Italy. It's a huge thing because I don't read the internety different. Oh, I read Get Up the Morning, I read six hundred papery. I only read my languages, my local thing, which is tough. I only know what

What do you bet we are talking today with the vice president of Exhibits and Programs for the Mob Museum here in Las Vegas.

He was a wonderful journalist.

Twenty five year career in journalism with at the Las Vegas Sun, Las Vegas City Life, Las Vegas Mercury, Lost Fan, every paper in Las Vegas. He's basically he couldn't hold the Jeff, I couldn't call it a hold of John, the author of Sun, Sin and Suburbia, a History of modern Las Vegas, as well as the book Howard Hughes, Power, Paranoia and Palace Intrigue. Would you please welcome to our program, Jeff Schumacher, Hello, Jeff, Hello Jeff.

You can't here.

Yeah, honestly, they're still clapping, but thank you, Thank Mark for coming in.

So the Mob, I mean, you booked a mom museum, so basically you invested in the fact that the Mob is that popular, which they are. People are fascinated still.

People are absolutely fascinated by the Mob today, even though, as you note, they're not in the news quite as much as they.

Used to be.

See No, but they are new going on the news.

It's kind of like when you know, they're not like they used to be. They're much smart, they're a little more behind the scenes. They're not like John Gottie Watkin.

I was gonna say, I probably couldn't name a mobster, an Italian mobster who should be, and then I probably couldn't name it.

And I'm from Philadelphia, so I'd come from Angelo Bruno, little Nicky Scarfoe. All these guys. And I worked in a factory on Delaware Avenue dellarn Tesk Avenue, and my shop foreman, my union rep was the Irishman. Actually yeah sure, which and I didn't as a kid. He's just a tough guy who's the union rep. And that was it. And those were the days of dealing with Jimmy Hoffa, who, by the way, I think is in Giant Stadium. And

In some ways it was, you know, especially here on the Las Vegas Strip. But I actually bristle a little bit of that idea that the Mob invented Las Vegas, because it was a city for like forty years before the Mob even took an interest, but that's a local talking, right. The reality that you know, Bugsy Siegel arrived in Las Vegas in nineteen forty six and started building the Famingo Hotel.

In Las Vegas.

Can I just say, because I am going to be fairly ignorant about a lot of this the different cities. Was it a dominant family in every city or were all the families represented in all the big cities.

Most of the major cities in America in the mid century of the twentieth century fifties, sixties, seventies had some kind of a mafia group going on, a mafia family, and they often communicated with, you know, the guys in New York or Chicago. There was a bit of a hierarchy there. They had like a border of directors called the Commission. And this commission was created back in the

You know what's amazing about the Mafia? And I want to ask you if the movies are accurate, like The Godfather, how accurate you think they are? But in reading a lot about this, preparing for you, I never realized the psychology behind it that you co opt somebody who comes from a background were underprivileged, necessarily not necessarily embraced by society, like over here at Dallian Irish whatever, we're not immediately embraced.

Someone like the military, and you you are. You devotion is to the boss. And if the boss says, you know, kill your mother, sadly you have to do that. It's not your devotion becomes to the mafia family more than your own family, which is a little bit twisted.

Well. And also the oath, which is the mark that we don't flip, right, it's kind of there's been a lot of flipping.

That I think is a generational thing.

I think that really, you know, as sentences got more severe, you know, drug sentences and the Rico you know Rico cases, these guys were looking at not two years in they can like they used to do back in the twenties and thirties. How I can do two years, there's no problem and not you know, not flip. But now it's like twenty thirty years and these these guys with nowadays are like, oh man, that's I'm not going to say that Giuliani.

Is that when Giuliani did the big correct on in New York, that was really the beginning of this.

I think, yes, roughly the Rico statue was passing nineteen seventy, but federal prosecutors didn't get excited about it until a little.

Bit later in the eighties.

Giuliani and his crew really went after the New York mafia and were very successful in decimating those families.

Is it that are they quieter and less active or are they just publicly quieter and less active?

So this is a huge debate within the little world of mob historians.

But I think you'll find that there.

Are people who will say that the traditional mob is almost gone, that it's really just petty crime at this point by comparison with say the Mexican drug cartels, right or the Russian mafia in the or But people will say, no, these guys are just quieter, they're they're keeping you know, keeping a low profile, and they're still involved in a lot of stuff, and I think that's true.

I think they're still involved in bookmaking.

I think they're involved in smuggling, and they're also getting involved in more sophisticated stuff like on Wall Street, you know, cybercrime, kind of stuffy cryptocurrency.

They're getting involved in some really solaring.

That they're actually so they're in solar.

And Jefferson, when you say you think, is that like a wink? I think, are you saying? I know, but I don't know if you know what I'm saying.

Well, you know, one of the things about about the mob is they don't keep a lot of notes, right, So it's not like you can go look back in their memoirs and find out what they're doing. So there's a lot of guessing that goes on even in law enforcement.

Just to hear something a bartender tells.

An FBI agent, Oh yeah, you know, Vinnie is involved in the mob, and he puts it in his report. Whether it's valid or not. You know, so you really have to sift through airfully as a historian and like, you know, figure out what's real.

You also find that in reading about this and hearing about this that mobsters who do talk and come out publicly tend to exaggerate their role. Is it that pettiness and that exaggeration allant goes on. So it's really hard to peg what a guy did. Anyway.

I think a lot of times today, if it's twenty twenty three and there's a guy on social media talking about how he's a big mob guy, he's probably not a big mob right because everybody's watching. Everybody in law enforcement and everywhere else is keeping an eye on things nowadays more so than ever. And if you're bragging about it publicly, you're probably not a big mob guy.

And was that so like when Henry Hill was on how which turns showing repeatedly telling his stories, was he inflating his stories?

Was or was he kind of a real No?

I think Henry Hill was a real, a real mom Yeah, And what he got involved later, you know, with being very public obviously after Goodfellas and everything, and he he kind of turned that into a personality that was really the forerunner of some of the guys you see today competing with you for podcasting, Sammy the boll Gravano and Michael Francis.

Sammy the Buller is competing with us.

Well, I don't know if he's directing guys, but he's.

You can challenge him ninety but then a guy, yeah, friends Sammy, Sammy, Yeah, you need a little Michael.

He has a very popular podcast, that's all.

And what does he talk does He talk just mom a lot.

He talks a lot about his life, and he talks about the crimes he was involved in. He talks about the people that he was with.

You know, God, Sammy, Sammy turned evidence from what I remember, and then he went protection, right, and he had plastic surgery and now he's doing a podcast. Yes, wow, that's when you Yeah, but then didn't get popped again in witness protection.

So he was a government witness against Gotti and he admitted during the course of that testimony that he was involved in nineteen murders. That's pretty bad. But he got a very light sentence because he was such a good government witness. But after he got out his first stint in prison, he got involved in drug dealing down in Arizona and got busted again, and he went to a jail for I think seventeen years.

He got out and now he is, uh.

Well podcasting, Yeah, only place left. Yeah, well that's right, so we're not laughing out you were laughing with you? You bet you bet? No, no, no, no, wow? How many did be a lot of you? You have a great prime podcast by the way, that it really does deep. And one of the things to blow me away was they blew up a parking garage in Vegas to get

Well, that's a good point, you know.

The buy and large the reputation of Las Vegas mob is if you're going to kill somebody, You take him out in the desert and bury him in the desert. Right, you don't want that publicity to be connected to Las Vegas because tourists come here, But you also don't there's a little bit of a mystique involved, Right, People come to Vegas because it's a little bit dangerous, so they think it is right. I might be back in the day. I mean, you would sit down next to a mobster

Out of town.

And who did they blow up.

It was a guy who owned a retired FBI agent who owned a piece of property downtown that was in dispute. This had to do with Binya's Horseshoe Club downtown, which is still there, not owned by the Binyon family.

Anymore, but Yeah.

Basically, the origins of Las Vegas are all in the downtown area, and that was the original town site. And so there were all these little tiny lots because it was the railroad came through town in nineteen oh five, they sold all these lots. There were these little tiny lots. And so if you build a big casino downtown, you might have fifteen people owning different pieces of the land

Money from that.

But did jet why I'm trying to interrupt, but why if you wanted to take out that FBI guy, why a car bomb as opposed to just you know, the traditional run up and two shots in the head or whatever the hell it was.

Why would you was that to send a message of a different kind?

Well, I will say that if you The nineteen seventies were like a time when, for whatever reason, the mob decided that blowing up cars was the way to go.

It was just a.

Thing like Cleveland became known as Bombcity, USA because it seemed like every week another car was exploding. And famously, a mobster named Danny Green, an Irish mobster in Cleveland was blown up, and interestingly he was I think it's a dentist's office. And it wasn't his car that blew up, it was the one next to it. Somebody parked the car next to him with a bomb in it, and then when they saw him arrive at his car, boom. So if you look at out, he took him out.

It took him out.

He died, and so Las Vegas must have picked up on this popular trend.

But I thought, I guess I'm wrong. I thought that the the.

Old mafia, the traditional mob, frided themselves on not creating collateral damage. That it was very specific, and I was referencing before about if a guy acrossed them, they would whack him, but they wouldn't touch the family.

They wouldn't touch True, not true.

I think there's some truth to that.

I think that you look back at what Buggy Siege famously told del Web. Del Web was a contractor building the Flamingo Hotel for him. Del Web later went on to own the New York Yankees, and he was like a really big, really big developer, casino owner, everything, all the Sun City communities all over the country. Well before that,

Worry, Dell.

We only kill each other. Right, that was the notion that, you know, we only did. We're not going to kill innocent people. Were not going to kill politicians or journalists or whatever. But if you study it as I have, in this kind of depth, you can turn to find out a lot of innocent victims along the way. Kids are killed, people just innocent bystanders are killed. The bombings were a part of this, and it's just a lot of I think, careless people who weren't following those those by laws.

So how did you decide to devote your life and as a journalist into this. Number one, And the second part of that is along the way, any threats or even stern talking to is about you know what, maybe you shouldn't write about that.

I'm not saying, don't not telling you what the right, I'm just saying, maybe you know your family, Yeah, maybe it's a traffic report.

Well, I was a journalist here in Las Vegas and for a stint in Iowa, and I thought journalism would be the thing I did my whole life, and you know that business changed a little bit, and so I was not I was looking for another opportunity to use my skills, and the museum job came along, and it was kind of perfect because I had taken an interest in history in the latter part of my journalism career and wrote a couple of books which you mentioned, about

Nobody, but I would imagine that they would be in some ways rather thrilled to have somebody like you who really knows their history and can tell their stories objectively.

And that's absolutely true.

And in fact, my experience is that now there's been sort of a Sea change, because I think if we had tried to open the Mob Museum, and I don't know, let's say nineteen ninety, when the Mob was still really big, it would have been weird because there would have been so many active members out there who probably didn't want their stories told and might have in fact threatened somebody.

But twenty you.

Know, we opened in twenty twelve, and now we've been open for eleven years, and at this juncture, people were like, love this stuff. Even the people who were in it or were in it you mentioned, used the phrase mob adjason. There's tons of people like that, Oh, you know, my uncle did this or my grandfather did this, and they want to learn more about it. And there's still part members of the family who will say, oh, we don't talk about that, you know, they've just got that tradition ingrained.

It's interesting. I just read an article, I think in New Yorker magazine about a woman whose uncle was a major I forget if it was witch monster, but a major monster, and she said, we used to vacation with him and he was lovely and we never talked about what he did, and they kind of knew what he did, but it was kept real far from the family, and they tried to keep their family out of it. Is that more accurate than the movies portray or did the families all know?

I think the families only knew what the what the guys who were involved wanted them to know. In other words, they were pretty pretty protective of what they were doing.

That said.

Uh, you know the different traditions, right, and you know this is not a not a knock on anybody. But like in the Italian American tradition, a lot of times the sons would would come up within the mafia, right, and they would join the father and be trained in the field, if you will. In the Jewish tradition much more so, no, you need to go to college, you need to go get out of this business. And uh and and so it kind of depended on the family, you know, the boss.

Like, well, you know that was my dad. Peter knows my my dad. You know, my dad was full of stories. He was one of those guys and I'm not always sure which are absolutely true and which you're not. But as a young man going up on the Lower East Side of New York. He claims to have been friendly with and occasionally helped out some of the guys in the Jewish Mob. And the one name that I do remember was a guy named Ko Koenigsberg. Yeah, and he apparently Ko was a friend of his as a young guy.

Get him out.

And I never I never believed him until my Mitzvah and the Son of a Gun. There was a table of killers and my guys that looked like they would kill you at my apart, miss and that was that said, that's my old my old friends.

Don't you don't have to go over what did you get? His gifts?

Money? Money, They give you envelopes, some money. You're a good kid, You're a good kid. And the stay in school, stay in school. But so but going back to the tell you mop. So, if if you were the kid of one of those mops and you wanted nothing to do with the family, could you keep your distance?

I think so. I think you could.

You could make a decision, and sometimes the father would kind of evaluate the kids, right, or may be one of the one of the boys looks like he's not exactly college material, right, so maybe he's a guy who he could bring him into the mob. The other kid is like really smart, or he's really talented. Hey, he wants to be in theater, so okay, let's kind of He's not a guy who's going to go and beat somebody up over twenty dollars, so let's let him do his thing over here.

I think that I think that was possible.

But much like the military would if like, how did the you know the mob? We think of the mob?

How would they have thought of somebody who was gay or queer or perhaps even trans Like in the military, the military I think has made the wise decision of you are willing to serve and put your life on the line to serve your country. We don't care who you are. You are welcome in this person's army. Would the mob feel similarly or did they have because I know there's a religious I think there's a religious element to some of the mob as well.

Yeah, sure, you know, I think in the in the Mafia, the Italian they're very Catholic, and I think historically they would have not been very supportive of of gay people or trans people.

Not at all.

That's true of America though right until intel relatively recently, and so it may be different now, But there was a very man's man kind of tradition in the mafia, and there was not a lot of tolerance for that kind of thing.

And yet, Peter, you were telling me about this interesting little factor I do came upon about the connection to the gay clubs.

Yeah, they the Mafia during I guess it's sickly or whatever, when they saw an opening, especially in New York, to run these gay clubs because nobody else would provide the liquor, et cetera. And they said, you know what, we don't have to treat the place great, We enough to keep it clean, whatever, We're just gonna We're just going to serve this community because good for us. And they actually bought a bar. They did it under the guise of private bottle club so that you didn't have to have

And to go beyond that, they owned a number of gay bars in New York. And that's one of the ironies of it, right, there's money to be made, right sure, But so they found a way to make money. And what they could do is who's going to a lot of these places were not licensed, so they weren't regulated at all, and so they were the you know, the mafia decided everything that you're going to give me fifty percent this week, not forty percent or whatever.

And who are they going to complain to they don't have a license.

It was hunting houses. By the way, talking about younger generation, I also laughed at this headline Old New York Monster's reportedly fear handing over rains to phone obsessed soft millennials.

I thought that.

And one of them, Ralph de Maria, was forced to hand himself on a federal racketeering case that day after the son tweeted a photo of him relaxing in a Florida pool pool. And they're going, I can't retire because I can't. I can't. I got a microunager. They're tweeting, they're texting, they're taking pictures. We're all going to go down because the cell phones. Is that correct?

It is true.

It's also true, and even in the Mexican cartels, it's true. And all these are these younger people that just can't not put themselves out there, right, and so they're doing YouTube cooking videos, they're doing all kinds of stuff and they're getting caught as a result. There was a famously even an older Italian mafia in Italy Sicilian mafia guy had been wanted for like twenty years. He had been in hiding and they found him because he did a YouTube video cooking worked.

Pizza Play to make sure it's for one hundred guys. Mafia boss working as pizza at Pizza Play. Pizza boss. Yeah, and he was around really make a great pizza night drives. Say you're going to jail. It is amazing. It is amazing in this world. So what what is.

That gunfound this is that that's done.

No, we're better than God. Okay, it used to be till I got into the joint. So back to what you were saying, as far as owning the land, do they still own these families? So still own the land under Caesar's Palace, under all these hotels.

I'm mostly referring to to downtown.

Okay, downtown, there's still there's still a lot of really weird land ownership stuff in downtown. And people who've lived out of who haven't lived in Vegas for you know, decades, are just received their monthly lease payment.

They vetted. I know that. I don't know what year it is. You know what year did the commission start coming in and vetting everybody's background if you're going to invest in the casino, to make sure you were not associated.

Well, So Las Vegas regulation of casinos took a while. Uh, you know, we started really having good mobsters come in around the mid forties. We actually got serious about it in the seventies when the movie Casino, if you recognize, there was a thing called the Black Book, and the Black Book was a list of undesirable people who were not allowed to go into casinos, not even step foot in a casino, or you'd be in trouble and the

And are you saying Sinatra had ties to the MOP.

I think it's inevitable that he would, considering his background.

Yeah, I see faces right now, I am. I am gob gobsmacked. Oh I know I have.

I have shot a film in Hoboken, New Jersey, and every corner Frank Sinatra stood here. Frank Sinatra lit a cigarette here.

So Sinatra owned.

This, if I could to tell you this, Sinatra owned this County of Lodge, and Sam g and Conna was hanging around the casino. He was in the Black Book, Sam g and Conna, and so he was witnessed in the lit He was actually involved in a fight, like an argument on the casino floor, and everybody noticed it. This came to the attention of the Las Vegas authorities or the Nevada authorities.

I should say.

And they called Sinatra and said, you can't have this guy in your casino.

He's on the black book.

And Sinatra, being Sinatra, custs a line, you know, over the phone to this gaming control agent, you know, after this, if that in no way leave me alone, I'm you know, blah blah blah. Well this got him in such trouble, such hot water that he had to relinquish his ownership of the County of the Lodge as well as his nine percent ownership of the Sands Hotel, and so there were consequences really starting.

Around then, well what nine percent of the Sands, So he at that time was getting almost ten percent of the revenue net revenue that was coming in.

Yep, and he lost that.

And that was revenue because we know that from Joan Rivers. Tell me Joan, Yeah, John, I think I told this to you, said John Rivers. We were very close. I worked with her, would travel together. She's like a mom to me, and I wish she was still around Theell Stories. But she was in Vegas in the sixties and seventy and she was appearing in the think I'm getting this right, in one of the not the main rooms, but in one of the lounges and the head of one of

Sounds that sounds very plausible to me.

You know, especially in the fifties, sixties, seventies, everything was a loss leader for the casino. So you know, people were they were handing out, you know, free drinks, they're handing out free access to the lounge to see Frank Sinatra play or John Rivers, free rooms and everything else. And because there was so much gambling going on, that's where all the money was, and that was the mo.

When was the last casino owner or involvement with the mob still happening in Vegas?

Roughly about nineteen eighty six. There are two things happened around that time. One was the murder of Tony Spilatro, who was the Chicago Mobs overseer in Las Vegas. That's the Joe Pesci character from Casino, and he was killed along with his brother and buried in an Indiana cornfield. So Chicago Mob's involvement in Las Vegas kind of ended.

So that part of the movie was pretty accurate.

Except for they in the movie they had them buried alive. Yeah, that didn't happen. They killed them in a house in suburban Chicago, in the basement of a house in Bensonville by the airport, and then they took him out in.

Very nice you about that to the gruesomeness of these things, cement shoes. One mobster roasted people and those stories got out.

Sociopath was that?

But was that also branding from the mafia? In other words, they want those stories to perpetuate so that you know, if you do something wrong that could happen to you or with these guys nuts.

I think it's both.

I think a lot of times the Mob was very happy to take a twenty two pistol and pop you in the back of the head a couple of times and allow for a normal funeral, right so you know, you could you could have the casket open. But other times there were some guys who were just crazy and they would do stuff like that, and they would you know, just dispose of the bodies literally in any number of

Well. Philly, they did a lot of ones that were really visible in cars. I mean, I remember the gruesome photos for a period there at Bruno. It was probably a Bruno and Philly to that point too. Andelo Brunner I remember, lived in a row home in South Philadelphia and wasn't didn't show with the money. Right. Gotti was the first one that we saw that had a helicopter and a jet and a mansion and was huge, larger than light.

There were two.

There were two cases that of where history repeats itself and where you know, people don't learn from the past.

Right.

Al Capone was his most famous monster of all time. Right he was in Chicago. He ran the Chicago Mob. He held press conferences. This was a guy who loved to talk to the media. He loved to invite reporters into his you know night, I forget what Floria was on Hotel office and he would just, you know, just open up and tell you everything he wanted to know about what he was doing, pretty unabashed.

Well, what happened to him.

He was a convicted of tax evasion and they sent him to eleven years in prison. End of his career. So you'd think somebody who learned from that, But John Gotti, you know, fifty years later he's like, Oh, I'm going to strut down the street. I'm going to be interviewed by TV cameras. I'm going to put on a fourse of July event. Remember, And he had all those cats, all that stuff, and he was so defiant in court. You know, he did win this first trials, and so

So on the other side of that, I worked at a swim club in Philadelphia and there was a lawyer who did Okay, all of a sudden he became a mob lawyer, and he did next summer Cabana, Rolls Royce, the whole bit. The mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman, good friend of mine, represented some of the biggest mobsters in history.

He did, including Philadelphia mobsterheah so he represented so Oscar Oscar was a lawyer here in Las Vegas for many years. He later became the mayor of Las Vegas. He is in retirement now. But Oscar got involved first with Meyer Lansky defending him in Las Vegas. Then later he was defending the Onis Bilatro whom I mentioned, the Jopeshi character from Casino, and then Lefty Rosenthal, the Robert de Niro character from Casino, and then Oscar played himself in that movie.

So this guy is when do you say mob associate represented them?

He did?

He was.

He would argue that he was not. He was not in the mob. He was not doing the bidding of the mob. He was a defense attorney, you know, defending their constitutional rights. And I think that's true. I think you know, and he would argue, I'm not. It's not my words, it's his. He would argue that the federal agents did a lot of underhanded stuff to try to get these mob guys back in the day, and he proved that in court and then his guys would often get be acquitted.

They would have walked.

And after he was turned up, who became mayor?

So he was the mayor for three terms and he was very successful mayor, and we opened the Mob Museum under his tutelage. And then when he was three terms that he was turned out, limited out, and then his wife became the mayor. Sure, and she's completing her third she's completing her third term.

Now that could have been as a that's a very good, real question about it.

Did the movies get it right? Is that basically often though?

But I would say two movies that really hit home, and probably well three that are the most famous ones are the ones who get very close to getting it right based on everything I know. You know, The Godfather is a completely fictional story. But basically Mario Puzo just looked at all the mob nonfiction literature there was and he picked out the best stuff and he turned it into The Godfather. And there are many many Mob guys from the seventies on who look back at The Godfather

I just read a lot of books.

And but he got it right somehow, and he had Italian heritagy kind of understood some things. Goodfellas is really inaccurate portrayal of Henry Hill, and that that whole scene in the in the seventies and eighties in New York. Nick Polegie was was the writer of that, and Nick who another friend of the museum. He uh, you know, was a reporter during that time and he knew all everything was going on. So that was very authentic. And

Nitpick the heck out of it.

But the look and feel, the Joe Peshi, the Robert DeNiro, the way they acted, the way they struted around, the way the things kind of played out for them, not well.

It's pretty accurate.

I noticed you didn't mention Bronxdale the musical, But okay, all right, that's fine. So you know, I you because I know Peter and Peter knows all kinds of people. I I, we had an acquaintance who you know, had a relationship, and I passed because you mentioned John Gottie. I passed. What he said was a great mafia test. This was the test he gave me, He said, John Gotty gets out of jail and he comes with his guys to your restaurant. They sit down and they ordered

He said.

If if you had said, well you only twenty thousand dollars, they'd pagde you and they'd come.

Back that later that night place. He said, But you gave them the right answer. He was respectful. He said, I can't do it all the time. I'd go out of business.

But you know, and you showed loyalty to your own people, and you showed respect. He said, that was the perfect So I passed the Mafia test.

The only thing I think about from that is two weeks later because he says, you know where everyone christening, it's very special.

You know if you's special, he just does have a special very special guy.

Yeah, yeah, you're very.

I think you're I think you're right. I think that that makes sense.

So I will say though that you know, it's interesting that the connection between the mafia and restaurants.

That's where they do their work, right.

Yeah, that's the office.

Don't have a job, so they.

Sit around restaurants all the time and talk and and and I don't know if that's good for business or bad for business.

It depends. So I went to I had an ad agency in Philadelphia, and I had an older gentleman's part my agency who did store display. So we went to New York to New York together because he had some stores. So we went to visit and he said, you got to come to my favorite restaurant in the village. And we go sit in the restaurant. It's long and how and we're the back table for like twelve people. We just sat down to eat. They had pored the water they brought like Annie pasto, and all of a sudden

I think.

I think the mafia still has its fingers and all kinds of stuff.

It's more peripheral now.

Like in the seventies and eighties, they pretty much controlled the concrete business, right, So if you wanted to build a high rise in New York, the mob was going to get its peace. So if you're you know, Donald Trump or any other developer at that time, if you want to build a building, you've got to deal with the mob. That was a pretty powerful position for them.

Amazing, so when we talked, No, I knew you were coming in and I knew your background. We said, you know, a lot of people know a lot about the Mafia. Hear things and they're fascinating. But he said, there's got to be some O wows that people don't know, maybe don't haven't bubbled to the surface stories that you'd like to tell. Is there anything like that that comes to your mind that is a something that we may not know about the Mafia that was surprising.

Well, I would say one thing, it's kind of popuculture related. I would mention is we mentioned Buggsy Siegel earlier, right, And there's a famous movie Bugsy Warren Bady, which makes it. There's this scene in Bugsy where they're driving to Las Vegas. It's him and Mickey Cohen and Virginia Hill and Neette Benning and they're in the car and they're approaching Las Vegas and Bugsy says, pull off all on the side of the highway.

And so they pull off on the side of the highway.

Siegel walks out into the desert, vast desert, nothing there except mountains and sagebrush.

And they think he's going to, you know.

Take a leak frankly, and he gets out there and he has this vision, right it sits there and he looks and he somehow sees something that nobody else sees. And he comes back to the car and he describes his vision of a casino in Las Vegas that is nicer than any other casino that is going to attract

Runs out of money. So he doesn't have money to finish the Flamingo. What does he do?

He knows them guys, he knows meyer Lansky, he knows Buggsy siegls maybe they'll invest in my casino. So these guys agree that they want to participate. And meyer Lansky, who was the big boss at that time, he sends Bugsy, who had been living in La He sends him to Las Vegas. He says, keep an eye on our investment.

And what did you imperish?

Did he still get He went to Paris for a while, he came back.

He did come back the threat.

Apparently he was over after a while, but Billy just liked Paris, so it was a good escape for him.

Jeah, between your cameras are not ruling nobody's recording the museum that you're right, they got to pay.

They're somebody always says, if you had a great movie, it's a mob museum or the front the.

Movie.

But no, I said, we're a nonprofit. You know, we're cleaning clean as a whistle.

Have have you ever gotten anything from any of the families of the bosses that said we would prefer that you do not do this, or they their hands off, they don't care.

Then, So one little story.

We had a speaker at the museum, a gun named Johnny Light. And Johnny Light is well known, he's has a podcast, I think. And Johnny Light was in the in the Gatti mob back in the day with mostly with Junior Gotti, and then he flipped and became a witness against Junior Gotti. So we had Johnny Light come and speak at the museum, and the Gotti family was very unhappy with this this development, so much so that they requested the return of an item that we had on display in the museum.

So we complied, and I want you to have my dad's that they founded a scene or anything like that, shoe, a birkshoe.

Or nothing like that.

Most I think most of the descendants of mob guys are very happy with us and like to participate.

They donate things to us. They talk about that. Before you go talk about what's in the museum. People come to Vegas, you should see the museum.

Sure, we have hundreds of artifacts on display. They have to do both with law enforcement and the mob, so they're all mob related, but they're also come from the law enforcement side. But we have a pistol that was owned by al Capone. We have the bricks to the wall against which the men were lined up in the Saint Valentine's State Oh Wow, in Chicago, And that's the whole story. But we have those bricks and we reassembled

Oh, there was a guy.

The building was torn down in nineteen sixty seven just on the north side Lincoln Park part of Chicago and the building was torn down, and before it was torn down, this guy named George Patty very cleverly said I want those bricks. And he bought those bricks from the demolition crew and he took them to Vancouver, of all places. He was Clinton Canadian, and he put them in a nightclub that he had there in Vancouver for a while. Well, he died, his niece inherited the bricks she had. She

My mother would have been wrong about that, though, what do you need bricks?

Do?

Some people have vision? She would have thrown them out. She would have thrown them out when I was in college, all thrown out mad magazines and those bricks. What did you do? What did you do?

We could build a whole nother museum with stuff that got thrown out, right, you.

Know, well, thank you for coming, thank you for coming in and thanks for test it's a fantastic thing. And also not to promote another podcast, but your podcast series is brilliant on them.

Mom, than can we do that in partnership with the Las Vegas Review Journal newspaper and they do a great job.

Really amazing stuff in there that we didn't we didn't cover here, but wowie, so fascinating about the mob, Jay. But the interesting thing to me is the romanticizing the mob because you're not still happens. It's not like people aren't making mob moves. So here's my theory. So number one, we read about prohibition that these are the guys who stood up to the government because most people were against it,

Another theory, and I think we we tend to romanticize the monsters among us. These guys that you know, we're unafraid, that had swagger, that had an element of danger, that that flouted the law, that you know, had money in their pocket, and a gun on their belt and did what they needed to do and took care of their families, and that there was a certain romanticism romanticizing these guys that to me has led to.

Violence. Is entertainment, you know.

I just went to see Renfield the other day, which is it's fun movies, but primarily because Nick Cat just having the time of his life so distract and I do understand, and you know, and for me, that's why I go to see those kinds of movies. I would I'm fine seeing a monster movie or a horror movie. I have trouble going to see something like Casino or Goodfellas where the violence is real and depicting, you know, real events.

Those guys were perceived as standing up against the man in their communities. That I'm not saying. And by the way, it's still endures to the point that we got reality shows like Growing Up Gotti. I mean, let's watch a third generation Gotti and see how she lives her day and hold on a second, you bet. And and by the way, this is not a new phenomena.

This I mean we used to get We used to throw Christians to the lions at the coliseum for entertainment violence, and they used.

To lo I'm curious and I don't mean so the coloseum held X amount of seats. Sure, I wonder when tipping or shmearing the guy right, like, did you go and go, hey, I got the guy. He's gonna get me good seats for the lions tonight? Yeah, three seats almost. You don't want to be front rope, right because if the lion goes.

Right, when the when the chariot, when the spokes from the chariot take out the other chariot. I want to be right at ringside, but not so that we get I got a good toke by the way ringside ringside to be in the splash zone or the pristet is a big deal, right.

And speaking of that boxing, not enough, not enough to beat, somebody said in so that they don't know who they are when the rules. Let's do you see UFC, that's your feet you can punch and you know what. Not enough, Let's do slop fighting. Stand there, just stand there and take it. Just you know you're going to get hit. We can we how can we wrap up this podcast? So there's a bit of that element feary. I'll tell

Yes, well, the biggest thing is on corrections is you're supposed to go to me before now, So.

Excuse us. What are you gonna do saying I will know what, David, what happens your mouth? Your mouth? I know. I do want to let you guys know that you might not know it.

But your producer on side of Sicilian, so perhaps I don't know.

She hasn't been in here the whole time. But you know, to your point, as far as entertainment.

And the mafia and the mom you have the current stuff like Monster, the Jeffrey Domler story, which is a serial killer that's made entertainment.

You have looking further back, you have Boys in.

The Hood and Menace to Society, which is glamorizing that sort of violence.

You have Scarface, so you have Narcos, which is more recent.

You have Sons of Anarchy, more cycle gangs and even you know, torturing and whatnot.

You have the squid game, the biggest glial phenomenon evers is that wow? Yeah? And just one final thing. I've always found this one to be very interesting.

The Godfather and Mario Puzo's The Godfather novel made one very noticeable mistake that monsters would would would recognize immediately.

It's about the Don what they called the Brando character? Yes, well they called him. You don't call it. You don't call it Dona don? What are you calling? Lou done? You miss missed?

It is a we fly home to What did they call him? What did what did they call him in the well? What did they call him in the movie? They called him Don Corleon, Don Carleone.

That's incorrect, great accent should be and they made Yeah, I know, thank you Don Vito, it should be done.

Vita the first first name. Yeah, you'll see if his parents had named him Timmy, Don Timmy. That's that doesn't strike fear anybody. By the way, speaking about that real U. Before we go out, Jason, I'm going to give you some mob names and you tell me if they're actually mob names are made up? Mom, Okay, I can do this, I can do it. I got it.

He's prepared completely looking at anything I'm looking at you.

I'm looking at the Israel of the ice pick, Willy Alderman. What Israel the ice pick Willie Alderman? Israel part being part of the name. His first name Israel nickname ice pick Willie Alderman. That's true. Used to put an ice pick in people's ears, into their brain, could take them out. Sure, so somewhat undetectable. Show Louis Louis ha ha had a Nazio Junior. No, that's a real name. Every time he heard a murder, he'd leaf that. He gave him the name.

I how to read you.

I know when someone's been writing butterss anything anything goes. So before we go and say goodbye, did you find it?

Yes, butter Ass it was his nickname. He was a capo in the Gambino family.

And did they talk about how he got the name butter Ass? Yes? Can you share it or is it inappropriate? Yes? It is inappropriate.

But according to real life mafioso and sometime actor Gianni Russo, George butter Ass Desicio, a gaudy era mobster in capo, was so named because his ass was the size of a cow's wow.

And then you're out with that bodies lying in the st and this is, by the way, I think we should get a podcast the word for the kind of work we do, right And by the way, who ever named them that? Yeah? No longer wow? Thank you? Everybody? Funny to you how like a clown? Funny like a butter ass? Yeah? Now really, really really well, that's our show on the Mob. Thank you.

Jeff Schumacher, the vice president of Exhibits.

And Programs for the Mob Museum there in Las Vegas.

To learn more about the museum online, you can go to the Mob Museum dot org. You can also check out their podcast, Mobbed Up the Fight for Las Vegas, which chronicles the rise and fall of the Mob in Las Vegas.

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By Mom