JIMMY THE KING-Gus Garcia-Roberts

your free welcome bonus. That's Chumbuck Casino dot Com and Live the Chumba Lane. No necessary dvoid over hbity I lost the conditions eighty plus.

as a cop. Thus began Burke's unlikely assent to the top of the one of the country's largest law enforcement jurisdictions. He and a crew of like minded allies utilized vengeance. Gangster tactics and political leverage to become the most powerful and feared figures in their suburban empire, until a Pilford bag of sex toys brought it all crashing down. Jimmy the King is the story of the rise, rain, and paranoic fall of a corrupt cop and his regime, a

crime family with badges and guaranteed pensions. Novelistic in detail and piercing in its political insight, this book will leave you questioning who modern policing serves, who it protects, and who it praise upon and abandons. The book that we're featuring this evening is Jimmy the King, Murder, Vice, and the Reign of a Dirty Cop, with my special guest, journalist and author gus Garcia Roberts. Welcome to the program. Thank you for this interview, gus Garcia Roberts, Thanks.

And so you know, the homicide detectives of Suffolk County for decades before this and for years after this, were sort of like a unique tribe, you know, as I learned in reporting the story, I mean this book, and that you know, they relied almost purely on the sort of hunches and instinct and the way that they closed cases with very little exception, was by getting confessions. You know,

they had very little use, for example, for forensics. So from the very beginning, these detectives seized on the idea that this kid had a puma imprint on his face, which to them meant that it had been other kids who had done this, because you know, children wore puma sneakers.

And so the way that they went about trying to solve this case was by essentially at random, dragging teenagers former classmates of John Pious had some and slightly older kids, almost all of them miners, though, dragging them off the street and into interrogation rooms and lying to their parents about where they were, not allowing the kids to have access to lawyers and interrogating and the goal was pretty simple, interrogate them until they confessed. And during one of these

interrogation sessions. One boy did confess. His name was Peter Carterrero and you know, like others, he had been separated from his parents. He and a couple of other friends had been locked in a precinct for hours at end, and the parents were concerned that there had been another killing because they can find their kids, and cops that told them that they didn't know where the kids were.

And at one point Peter Carterreiro, who really was sort of the least likely suspect, one of the least likely suspects among this group in Smithtown, to admitted a murder. He was basically he was literally a boy scout who had never been in trouble before. Eventually, police drive him to the scene of the crime and he confesses in the backseat of their car, and he implicates three of

his friends, his brother and two friends. And the confession is tape recorded, and what he later claimed is that the detectives, before they you know, started the tape recorder, told him exactly what to say, so he implicates himself and three other friends. The and the and the murder of John Pins.

possible sort of came about. And so the prosecutor who handled the case and he went to the precinct the night that these that Peter Carteriro and his friends were being interrogated was a guy named Tom Spoda, and so Spoda sort of, you know, he listened to Peter Carteriro's confession on tape after it was done, and by his own account, he was sort of underwhelmed. One the confession did not really at all match the facts of the crime scene, and in fact, you know, it contradicted it

in pretty key ways. One of them, for example, was Peter Carteriro said in the confession that his brother Mike after during the attack on John Pius, and his brother Mike put Pius's bicycle up against the tree behind the schoolyard.

But the fact of the crime scene was that bike was actually on the ground when when bystanders first discovered the body, and it was later placed up against a tree by one of those bystanders who discovered the body, and then when police arrived, when certain detectives arrived, they saw that the bike was up against the tree. But in fact, you know, the sort of unrefuted court testimony

that it was not. So what you have you had several examples of that were sort of like a hell embedded in the confession and embedded in other statements that come out, and sort of the cast serious doubt and those statements and you know, kind of begged the question was for these facts planted by the tex so anyway, So Botas sort of knew that he had a problem here, and then one you know, there's these contradictions, and you know, even more primarily Peter Cartero was fifteen years old and

he was in a detective's car and being interrogated without lawyer or parent, which was illegal under New York state law. So you know, most likely, as would have eventually end up happening, the confession would be tossed. So what Spota needed was was sort of like his hallmark his style of prosecution, which was witnesses who were later privy to

supposed confessions. So he sort of started putting out feelers among all of the wayward kids of Smithtown, looking for those who might have a story about one of these four kids confessing to them later. And so this process took months, and you know in the book, I sort of compare it to the mobsters, you know, gathering together pretending like nothing is nothing is wrong, where in reality they're they're sort of wondering who's going to snitch on

the other to the fence. You have all the sort of kids of smith Town, typically those who you know or juvenile delite, must have been in some trouble before, and you know they're gathering in that summer following the murder, gathering in bleachers or fields and you know, hanging out. But there's an undertone to it because some of these kids are tempting to get statements implicating the others and bring them to the prosecutor's office. And that's eventually what happens.

And one witness among a crew of burglars and drug users who were the town emerges as the most solid witness in this case. And a guy who sort of you know, outlives the tape confession and outlast the other witnesses in the case. And that guy is the is the main character for lack of a better term, of the book, which is who is Jimmy Burke?

very tough neighborhood home to the Gambi crime family. And you know, my reporting is as a younger kid, he was actually tremely smart and actually quite a good student. I'm in a dutiful student at a Catholic school there. He had moved to Smithtown shortly before the murder, and

that appeared to sort of really change his personality. It was following a divorce between his parents and his mom had remarried, and he sort of me he kind of fell in with this crew of kids that you know, their their peers derided them as pit people because they hung out in an area behind Smithtown High School East that was referred to as the Ping and is typically where people smoked cigarettes and the kids, you know along out there were off intruants and drug users and Jimmy

sort of proudly proclaimed that he was a drug user, and he hung out with a crew of kids who were known to be smith Town's you know, leading burglars, so much so that you know, they tracked the price of gold and they would sort of go through people's unlocked doors because of smith Town, they didn't really lock their doors because they felt so comfortable in suburbia go through people's unlocked doors and rifle through jewelry boxes that

come out with gold and pawn them off. And so that's who James Burke was at the time that he emerged as Quota's sort of key witness. He was fifteen years old. He was very poor student, and there was signs that he was on the police radar and that he was bound for trouble. But he was also a very smart and manipulative kid, and so once he sort

of became Spotah's witness. Unlike his pals who also became as Spota's witnesses in these cases, you know, those guys kind of wanted nothing more to do with cops and prosecutors other than what they had to do, you know, particularly to get out from under some case of their face.

But Jimmy had a fascination with the homicide squad and with the top prosecutors of Suffolk County, and as you mentioned, his father and his grandfather were both YPD and so he starts hanging around the offices and he almost becomes like Tomsta's works this strange sight of this teenager hanging around homicidal and he kind of becomes indispensable to those offices.

made these kids, and it was really interesting watching. And one of them was Jimmy Burke and he comes in and he meets Tom Spoda, and this interaction is filmed by somebody filming on behalf of the DA's office, and it's really interesting watching these interactions, particularly with Jimmy Burke. His story doesn't match what he later says on the stand.

And then you sort of see, you know, in later times when because makes other testimony in the case, sometimes years later the testimony keeps shifting, and so the way that I saw that video was they were still workshopping what he was going to say. And you know, essentially what Burke did say and what he said, you know, in various trials because you know they were there were four defendants, was exactly what the prosecutor's office I needed

him to say. And as I as I write, you know that later was directly rewarded by the prosecutor's office.

in the jail house. They're people that have interactions with the criminal world and are you know, in all like they had criminals themselves, which is why they're in jail, and two they have something to work work out from under you know, they're in jail, they are can directly benefit from prosecutors and police liking their story that they are to tell. But in Suffolk County that's just not

the case, at least around it this time. They you know, jailhouse snitching was so popular that there that again there would be sort of auditions where the inmates would get for a detective and say what is especially in a high profile case where the detectives and prosecutors were seeking informants, they would tell a story about what that inmate told them while in the jailhouse with them, and the detectives would typically pick the person whose story they liked the best,

And so that sort of happened in this case. You know, the stuff that couldn't be covered by the needs, that couldn't be handled by Burke and by other teenage witnesses along with him, were handled by a couple of very dubious jail house witnesses. And you know, I guess the one problem is how do you get a jail house witness to inform on somebody who's not in jail, Which was a problem in this case because these kids. Once they were indicted, they were out on bail quickly and

didn't spend any time in jail. And so you have these cases that popped up where the kids were caught, you know, with low level burglaries which were no doubt done on their part. Like for example, in one of the cases, one of the defendants was caught in having stolen the set of walkie talkies from his high school. And the informants who sort of helped, who sort of set him up in that case, one of them was Jimmy Kirk and the other one was another teenage witness

who was known as an informant and set down. So by those means, they get these kids in the jail houses and then from there sort of sort of open game for arden criminals who kind of first of all, they get the newspapers out there, so they read about the high profile cases and then they know how to spin the facts for the cops. And so, you know, one a pair of these jail house and mad speak became the key witnesses for one of the defendants, and

they you know, the story was again extremely convenient. You know, one of the jail house witnesses said that one of the defendants basically spilled his whole saga exit which which pretty much matched what the police have said about killing John Pious and you know, including complete dialogue from all the players. And this was a witness who had a documented drug addiction problem, and he had received a deal

in return for his testimony. And so you know, basically, through this like patchwork method, typically relying on witnesses who had something to gain from their testimony, the prosecutors build convictions against these four kids. There was no actual physical evidence tying them to the murder of John Pies. Yeah.

new high school bleachers. And then in his testimony against another one of the defendants, he might say that guy said the exact same thing in the exact same place, at the exact the same time of year. And so it was almost like he was just you know, taking stock testimony that was incriminating and it helped get a conviction in one case, putting it in the mouth to the other. So you know, he was a very useful witness,

you know, in the early years of this case. And and he had gotten a d UI had then not shown up a court to address it, and then there had been a bench warrant made out to his for his arrests. This became an issue when he applied to become a police officer with the NYPD, and you know, there was a lot of other reasons why he would have been unqualified, including you know, documented drug use and the fact that you know, his friends were basically your crew of the most troubled kids in spit town, and

by his own word, were also convicted murderers. So he had he had black marks against in applying to become a cop. The main one, you know, from a sort of strictly procedural point of view of the vetting policies of a police department, was the idea that he had not shown up to court to deal with this bench warm. So one of the prosecutors in the pious case at that time wrote on a Suffolk County DA stationery the Senate to NYPD and and said, essentially excuse for having

incurred a bench warn. The reason why was because he was supposed to be in Suffolk County testifying in a major case, and so he couldn't be in the neighboring county, Nasa County to addresses duy, and that's why he had a benchwarn. And the NYPD accepted that. And I don't think that they fact checked it, because you know, I did just using transcripts of the pious case, which clearly the pious prosecutor was implying that those that was the case that Burke was testifying in and there's testify in

court the day that he incurred the bench warn. Not only that, but at one point he was actually asked in court, why did you get this bench warn by a defense attorney and he said, I had a roofing job to do that day, so he you know, he he contradicted the prosecutor's version of events. And you know, I tried to ask the prosecutor, who's now a prominent defense attorney in Suffolk County, about that letter, and he

refused to answer any questions about it. So, you know, I think the only I have no reason to think anything other than the DA's office lied in order to reward Burke for his dubious testimony, and in doing so, they made sure that he was not denied a career as a police officer. And you know, sort of from there, the rest is history as far as Jimmy Burke is concerning.

instead of the Suffolk PD. And so, you know, Suffolk County is a really interesting territory because it's a large amount of cops from all over Long Island and also from New York City live in Suffolk County, and so it's sort of like a cop controlled block, including you know, the political forces are very much behold in secus and so one defense attorney described it as was, for example, homicide de Texas out there with the princes of the

county that they can do anything that they wanted. And so, you know, you sort of see that in the highest case in the way that the detectives behaved, and that wasn't an isolated incident. In basically every homicide case that is what they sought to do is get a confession, and typically it came with allegations that they have brutalized

their suspect, and in often creative ways. You know, one of their favorite methods was using a phone book, putting a phone book on the suspect's head and beating its head with the phone books so that there's no visible marks left enough in a mug. And sometimes this was alleged. Other times, you know, this abuse was was proven. You know. The the issue with the issue with Suffolk County is it's a place where, you know, as I said, the cops, the cops run the polyp. The cops control sort of

every layer of it. And so you had a problem arise when when Burke was a young cop, which was not related to Burke, but was sort of telling about the way that his career went from there, which was a judge started growing suspicious of the testimony in his court. And his name was Stuart ma'ham. And among the among the cases that the hyprobile cases that had come before

his court were two of the pious cases. And in those cases he had, you know, he had sort of he had made clear that he believed that he agreed with the jury when they convicted those defendants, and he

sent us into twenty five to life. But in the following cases, sort of in the next couple of years to come, as he later wrote in a memoir, he kind of his understanding of the nefariousness of Suffer County sort of became more clear to him, and he started to believe is that prosecutors and detectives are perjuring themselves in murder cases. And he complained to the governor and there was a pretty wide ranging state investigation that took

place of Suffolk County. One of the characters who were investigated was Tom Spoda and Tom spot It was investigated for being involved in a alleged scheme in which cops would be paid one hundred dollars to refer tickets or I'm sorry to refer dui clients to a law from private law firm, which which is illegal. He denied doing it.

So you have this kind of wide ranging investigation. You know, when it's actually published years later, it's really scathing and it you know, basically it implicates the top leaders of the Suffolk County DA's office and the PD for overseeing a culture of corruption and competence in which, you know, homicide cases were watched in the narcotics squad, the cops were getting high off of their own supply. There was framing of defendants, just pretty horrible stuff blantly stated by

this very esteemed state commission. And so you sort of think, you know, this might clean up the place, but in fact, you know, Suffer County is resilient, and it didn't clean up the place. And most of the the sort of law enforcement hanchos who were named in the report, including Tom Squota, just continued to become more powerful people. And so that's sort of the environment where Burke was a young cop and that he later sort of learned to navigate those rungs of power very well.

for free at ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. ZipRecruiter uses this powerful technology to find and match the right candidates up with your job. You can easily review these recommended candidates and invite your top choices to apply. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. In fact, the hardest thing you have to do is to remember our special url ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. That's where you can go

to try ZipRecruiter for free. Once again, that's ZipRecruiter dot com slash m r der. Zip recruiter the smartest way to hire. Now we were talking about Jimmy Burke and Thomas Spoda and them eventually avoiding any kind of prosecution. And you detail in the book the punishment for Judge Nam by the police community, basically law enforcement community. Burke and his friends. Well, let's talk about the retrial of these poor four once we're teens, when now we're adults.

What happens with their retrial bids? Parole tell us a little bit about that, all right.

Burke's testimony of convictions, successful appeals reconvictions. And so you know, for example, one in one of the cases, that of Rob Brinswick, after his case was overturned, he was getting ready to go to trial again, and you know, he had some good news in that his case was transferred to Brooklyn from Suffer County. So his lawyer was excited because you know, a Brooklyn jury is a lot was very different from a Suffolk County jury. And he was offered a deal that his lawyer said was would be

malpracticed to turn down. Even though his lawyer maintains and Rob himself maintains that he was wrongfully convicted. It was sort of an unheard of deal if you're familiar with criminal procedure, in which one Brinsick wouldn't have to implicate anybody else. He could testify as to the facts very vaguely, and he would essentially it what was offered what was advertised as as time served. And so he ended up

beating guilty. And you know, another of his co defendants, Tom Ryan, didn't want to do that, and he would and he took it back to trial and he was convicted yet on the word of an ex girlfriend, one of these informants from Smithtown and who said that she had who said that he had made a pseudo confession to her. And then another Michael Carteriro, Peter's brother, was

convicted largely on the testimony of James Burke. And this again was one of these cases of sort of shifting testimony by work, and you know, their their case, and that that saga sort of continued for them, where Ryan, after Ryan's case was again conviction was again overturned, he was offered a similar deal to Brinsic, where it was essentially time served or you can take the chances and

perhaps face another life sentence. And by then and by then Ryan, you got to remember, these guys were teenagers when this happened. The youngest was fourteen, Cortouro, you know, the oldest was sixty, and so by then there, you know, by the time this saga reaches this point, they're middle aged men. And and so Tom Ryan, you know we would already face who would already spend more than two decades in prison, decided that he could risk it, and he he also took a plea deal, and Mike Cortouro

eventually was was paroled. And and so you know, at one point in the saga, that same State Investigative Commission that Judge Nam had had sort of sticked on Stufford County, they opined about the idea that this extremely favorable plea deal was offered to Rob Brenswick with all of these odd trip wires, including even that like John Pius's family couldn't sue him, said, you know, stuff that sort of

mixed them with criminal and this stuff. You don't you don't really see m deals they and they said essentially it was a completely inappropriate use of prosecutor's power, and that it was essentially more concerned with with pr than injustice, and and sort of that's sort of how these cases unraveled, which the suber County DA's office, you know, through various at this point, various das, various prosecutors. Support is always kind of a constant, though they were, you know, clinging

to these convictions. And and no matter if if the you know, the flee deals, the facts of the flee deals, or the in which the defendants sort of stated what happened, if those if those circumstances didn't make sense with each other, that didn't matter. And it and even if they you know, they were basically offering time served these guys, what really mattered was the idea that their convictions were were upheld.

To me, that sort of shows the importance of James Burke and what he wrote, you know, in the beginning of his career was the idea that that he was the glue of these cases and for that reason he was very important.

they started investigating Jimmy Burke. And when they dragged Jimmy Burke into an interrogation room and ask him about it. You know that Burke is accompanied by union lawyers. He says, you know, he says, for one, that he was unaware of Rickenbacker's criminal history even though he was a street cop specializing in narcotics and the same preacinct. But you know, there's a lot that sort of that essentially gets swept

under the rug in that investigation. One was the idea that Burke was doing drugs with Rickenbacker, which she told me he was. That she told DIA B cops, the Internal Affairs bureau pups that he wasn't, and so sort of via that means mostly because he has this Rabbi

and Tom's Boden, who's the various stages. He's a top Detectives Association attorney and at one point the DA, the district attorney a Furcus protected and so you know, his career is he never really faced the serious consequences for major internal affairs investigations, and so he continues his rise un abated. There's always kind of this secret with his career, which is that he had this kind of very embarrassing internal affairs past involving his romance with a sex worker.

Because of New York laws, at the time, all internal affairs records were confidential, so it's sort of like a there's rumors about it, and it's clearly something he's embarrassed, but it doesn't come out until much later.

the largest police departments in the country. He's chief of department and he's been that for less than a year, but he now controls, you know, elite units, and so he has some of these elite cops put on the case of the guy who stole his stuff. And so at one point he joins three of those detectives in the interrogation room and all four of them slap around Chris Low. Work is the most work, gives Low the most vicious beating, and you know, you have a precinct

cops witness that. You also have a bunch of cops at Lobe's house who also witnessed Burke at his house, which which is not protocol. And so from there this sort of massive federal this massive cover up the suits because the Feds learn about the beating and start poking around, and you sort of see like an instinctive reaction by by cops ranging from you know, lowly highway patrol to you know, top tenants. Also in the prosecutor's office, the

DA himself thoms boda. That's top prosecution prosecutor, Chris McPartland and other prosecutors. They all they all sort of join ranks to lie. They lie in grand jury's, they lie in uh, they lie to frontal agents and basically they just cover up the fact that Burke beat up Chris Low.

And it's this long, long cover up that spans years and leaves to this point in the book I sort of described I sort of think of it as like you know, the mom movie Good Fellas, in which all of these characters are you know, kind of breaking down from the from the paranoia. Uh, and yet they keep their stories. It's extremely hard to make these cops of prosecutors move off their lives and sort of and give up Jim's James James Burke and tell the truth about what they saw.

I think pretty compellingly. Well, you know, one of the things they say is child phornographers typically don't label their contraband with you know, a cover that lets you know child pornography either way, for you know, had phornography in his bag. And and yeah, that was one of the most stunning things to me was just how quickly it was not even spoken among the cops who, for example, Lobe's house, you know, one of them sees a pill

jar biag of those in the garbage. Immediately, you know, the dildos they're got, All this stuff sort of vaporizes and it's like just an unspoken cover up with not even covering up a crime, just some or slightly embarrassing, you know, sort of invoice of what was in the Duffel bag that probably would it has been on some police reports that they would have never released publicly anyways, Right, And so to me it said a lot about this this you know, certain corners of police culture where the

cover up is like muscle memory.

handled their Arida Rickenbacker investigation. And as you said, during Burke's interrogation, when Burke said he had a sterling reputation in the police department, Kuff, thinking about some of the more graphic allegations against him, involving load to Ricomack, involving sex and their sector car in his sector guard laughed in his face. And Burke never forgotten that. So you know, that's an example of one of the characters who kind

of never kind of out to work. And another is a top MS thirteen detective named John Olive, who Burke hadn't been detted against, at one point removed him from a task force where he was investigating MS thirteen murders.

Also a couple of detectives who who sent an anonymous letter to top officials in Suffolk County explicitly warning them that Burke was not cut up to be chief of department and listing the allegations against him, most of which turned out to be completely accurate and were ignored by top people in the in the county, including the county executive, who is the top elected official, who read the letter and completely disregarded it because at that point he was

sort of beholden at James Pirk. So what you see, you know, these these cops who are trying to do the right thing and there, and you know, I think they were for the most part, just concerned that the department was going to completely embarrass itself by having this guy at its helm, which you know was traufetic and true.

And and they are kind of, you know, not only ignored, but for the most what their career is getting destroyed by Burke and others others who are sort of in perks role for trying to speak up against them.

and political characters. And they were kind of Burke's a glorified goon squad, and so Kiky becomes the middleman, which is how he later described it in the cover up, where he puts extreme pressure on the detectives who are also involved in a low beating to not talk to the Feds. And initially that works. The Feds, you know, have a lighty investigation. They try to speak to to witnesses, and they like sort of blanket suffer County, it's Penis and everyone. All these cops stick to their lives, and

so the federal investigation is closed. The problem is Burke is sort of drunk on power at this point, and so he orders a wire tap on one of his enemies, John Oliva, and he wanted to see if Oliva was if Oliva was a source for embarrassing stories that were coming out to Newsday and one about burke relationship with Marida Rickenbacker, and he ultimately has Oliva arrested on trumped up charges for trout is. Oliva was, as I said, he was in a federal task force investigating him s

thirteen before Burke sort of removed him from that. And

so the Feds liked the lead. The federal government liked the leader, and so when they learned that that was happening, that there was this tromped up wire tab where Burke was listening to conversations that Oliva was having, including with federal agents, that seemed to be the last straw, and they basically, you know, seemed to finally take notice that the real notice that the you know, this county was essentially county law enforcement was essentially being run by organized criminals.

And so they started using methods that were more serious than they had before, including and promising people immunity if they were to testify. So you ultimately have detectives who start to get pulled over to the federal side, and it's you know, like any mom with really right. Once you lose one, then the others are all sort of scrambling because they because they know they're either going down

or they got it on the Fed side. And so the guy who really became you know, the Samy, the oul Gravano in this case was was Jim Hicky, who was Burke's right hand and so he had been in all these rooms for Burke and the DA and top top corruption prosecutors explicitly discussing how they were going to cover up this crime, you know, with full knowledge that they were obstructing justice. And Hickey, who suffers multiple sort of like breakdowns you know, in the narrative book, including

one where he sees giant lizards driving catalog. So he's suffering this going through these crazy mental episodes. He he ultimately becomes the chief witness, and the federal unraveling leads to Burke mentor Tom Spoda also being convicted of federal crimes, to going to federal prison, as does Burke himself.

records of the DA's office concerning the case. They at least looked into it, but I think they were always looking into it. Basically, don't understand Bunk relationship to Spota.

I don't think that they actually examined the case unfortunately, and so you know, you have these three of them are still technically convicted murderers, and you know, the Suffer County has recently, in recent years sort of had a reckoning in which the DA's office has re examined some convictions that were very similar made by the on the side squad around the same time, often involving you know,

people separated from their from their lawyers and families. There's one where a guy was he was exonerated and his you know, he was around the same age as these four boys. So to me, you know, this is the case that I think cries out for for re examination. And so in you know, in my reporting, I found multiple sort of you know, for lack of a better word, suspects or at least people of interest that were completely disregarded.

But just because they had at that point seized on these four boys, and it would be after getting a profession out of one of them, you know, they weren't eager to look at another suspect. And so I did a lot of reporting on the pious case. And but I you know, there's a limit that for example, works fellow witnesses wouldn't speak to me, to to a man, you know, multiple around six people who were involved in this prosecution, none of them was saying anything even though

decades later, which to me seemed notable. You know, as a reporter, typically you'll you'll get one or two people that are willing to talk. And it made me wonder, why why don't any of them want to talk about their testimony in this case, and so people like that, who I think the DA's office, it probably gets to Taco a lot easier than I could. And so, you know, I would love to see the Suffolk County law enforcement establishment sort of acknowledge, Hey, this this case was built

on a tainted foundation. And you know, these guys may be out of prison, but you know they deserve to at least have a reexamine. Heck, John Tias heard it in nineteen seventy nine. Deserves to have an actual, you know, investigation as much as can be done at this point as to as do who killed them. So that's what I'm to say with this book.

might have been interiorated. So yeah, I think that that, you know, one of the goals that sort of developed as writing it was a hope that the authorities in Suffolk County might sort of take the findings in the book and use them to re examine what happened to the posse.

But you know, I came across cases where Jimmy Burke was the main witness and there are allegations that he lied in the during court, but the court records are sealed because it resulted in an acquittal. So you sort of have this kind of very black box of a of a justice system and and and the guys who run it. So you know, that was difficult. It was

also difficult to get people to talk initially. But I think once, once, once it was probably similar to what the FEDS felt right on, one sort of key player in this one of the detectives spoke to me. I think words spread that, hey, I'm not gonna be the only one talking to this guy, and so I ended up getting a lot more interviews than I would have

would have thought. But you know, I think it's a it's a it's everything that occurred in this book only occurred because of the secrecy that surrounds this culture of policing, and so that was definitely took some time to pearce.