InFocus featuring the history of the Italian mafia in Springfield

From the 22 News Plus Studio, this is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Barry. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this edition of In Focus. I'm your host, Patrick Barry. Today is, it's a good, long, fascinating conversation. If you've ever seen any one of the three Godfather movies, Goodfellas, you know, read books on the Chicago mob, the Italian mob, then this will fascinate you because this is a, we're going to take a look back on the history of the Italian mafia right here in the greater Springfield area. Joining me across the desk today for this conversation is author and mafia historian, Justin Cascio. Justin, thank you so much for joining me today. Glad to be here. It's funny, this is a conversation I've wanted to have for a while just because the mafia intrigues me, you know? I don't know why. Maybe because I grew up watching all those movies and, you know, like I said, the Godfather, Goodfellas, and, you know, all that fun stuff. And, you know, what is it? Geraldo Rivera's big reveal of, what's his name's vault? Capone's vault. Yeah, Capone's vault, right, which was just a bust. But it's, the whole mob thing is, excites people, you know, in an interesting kind of way. So I'm glad to have this conversation. But I must ask you, how did you get into it? Why did you start to study the Italian mafia and really make it your life's work? It's not something that I was interested in growing up. I didn't watch the movies. I didn't idolize gangsters. I got into it because of a midlife crisis that led me down a rabbit hole of studying history. I was having back problems. I was getting ready to have surgery. This is about 13 years ago. I was really kind of helpless. I was flat on my back. I was being taken care of for everything that I needed. And in that state of total humility, I wanted to know, who else do I rely upon? Who else had gotten to where I am today? Because I love my life, and I wanted to know who else helped make it possible. Kind of digging into your ancestors a little bit. Absolutely. It started with studying world history. I wanted to understand some of the currents of world history, what leads some people to subjugate others. And so studying the history of colonization and the history of slavery. And then I got into my family history, because that is more obviously the people who, if they hadn't lived, I wouldn't be here. Right, right. On the Cassio line, which is my last name, and on my paternal line in my genealogy, it goes back to the town of Corleone, Sicily, which is where the godfather is set. That's where Vito Genovese, Vito Corleone, who was a fake person, a fictional person, came from the real place, Corleone. And Corleone is really a stronghold of the mafia and always has been. What I found out when I did my family history is that I have a whole lot of cousins who were involved in the mafia at a very high level. Oh, wow. But that was all back in Sicily. That's not here in the States, is it? It was both. Okay. They were involved very much in the mafia in Corleone, and then they were also involved in different cities here. I have extended cousins who were involved in the mafia in New York City, in Dallas, Texas, in Los Angeles, in Chicago. Okay. I know on your website, MafiaGenealogy.com, you list, there's gotta be a dozen different cities and areas across the country. So it's not just Springfield that you've researched. You've looked into a dozen places or more around the country. Yes, I'm really interested in how the mafia got started in all these different places. I'm finding that it's not always exactly the same story. Oh, really? So how does it differ from Springfield to Dallas, for example, or any of the communities, really? Sometimes the people come from different places. For instance- And it was all Italian, right? Yes. It's a Southern Italian phenomenon. Different places in Southern Italy developed homegrown small M mafias. So you can describe, so like the Sicilian mafia is one of those mafias, but another one is the Camorra of Naples. Another one is the Andrangheta of Calabria. And so they operate similarly, but they're separate, sort of like different leagues of football, for instance. Right, so were they like gangs or- They were more than gangs. There were associations of multiple gangs. So each town might have one gang that predominated and they had relationships with the gangs of the other towns around them. Okay, and I'm sure turf wars started. Sort of, you know, it wasn't as big of a deal in Italy because you already have an established boundary of what a town is. And if one person is the gangster in charge of one town, that's his territory and nobody's, there's not a lot of- Like a gentleman's agreement not to encroach on somebody else. Sort of, yeah. Okay. I think it became more of an issue in the United States where there were a lot of open territories. So there were places to fight for and markets to dominate. So in my head, I feel the Italian mafia came through Ellis Island and originated in New York City. Is that a good belief or am I way off base? I would say that the mafia more like came through New Orleans than New York. I mean, they sort of came in through every port, but New Orleans is where the mafia first took hold in the United States. And what year was that? Right around or just after the Civil War. So around 1865. By then, you've already got the beginnings of what would become the mafia in New Orleans, fighting for dominance of the docks. Okay. And then from there, it spread with immigration or migration or- It took root independently in different places with migration of Italians. Wherever Italians were settling in any number. So if they were the coal mines in Pennsylvania or they were on the steel line, making steel, you know, up in the northern cities, wherever they were, there were padroni, who were patrons, who had a very complicated role in their community. And they were the originators of the mafias in those places. And is a padroni a male or a female? It's a man. Okay. So they were sort of the local godfather? Yes. The word is the same in Italian. A patron is your godfather. Oh, okay. And so, yes, it's like your godfather. It's somebody that you go to for permission for certain things. For instance, one tradition that I heard about was that if you were a new immigrant to an American city from Italy, you would find the padroni in town and you would introduce yourself to him, make sure he knew who you were. To set you up for a life of indentured service to that padroni. That possible? Well, that's a little extreme. And that is, I mean, you could get in very deep with a padroni, that's true. But initially, it was just to make sure, because he was somebody who felt like he had an interest, a concern for everybody in his territory. All the Italians who lived in his area were sort of his citizens in a way. So I'm thinking more sinister, that you come to America from Italy and you gotta meet the padroni, right? And from there, he sets you up with a job, housing, whatever it might be, with the agreement or belief that, okay, I've set you up, you now owe me. But that may not have been the case. This may, correct me if I'm wrong, this may have just been part of that person's outreach to new immigrants, to help them. Or was it that, okay, I've set you up, you owe me? Yeah, that outreach sounds like something a nonprofit would do, doesn't it? Like volunteer work? He's a businessman, a padroni owns businesses, he owns a store often, a lot of times he owns real estate, he'll be one of the first Italians in his community to own property. And so a lot of the things that you're talking about are true, that you would get from a padroni. If you were a new immigrant in town and you needed a job or a place to stay, or somebody to help you with the court system, maybe you got in some kind of legal trouble, you would go to that padroni and he would be able to help you out because he was somebody who had been in the country for a long time. He sometimes was already a naturalized citizen. He spoke English and he knew how to conduct business and how to get things done. And he knew a lot of people who were employers. And if he didn't also own an apartment to put you in, he might know somebody. And yeah, so he would make money off of you a lot of different ways. He would let you run a tab in his grocery store so that you were always beholden to him. And he might rent out to you where you live so he's also your landlord. He might also be involved in getting you a job. So you would rely on him in a lot of different ways. The relationship wasn't a tit for tat, it was like a godfather relationship in that it was, you can consider it a lifelong bond that you have with somebody. And you help one another in the ways that you can be in your class. There's always somebody who is the high guy and the low guy. Right, right, right. Very interesting. We still got plenty more to talk about, so stay with us. We're coming up on our first commercial break. We're back after this. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Barry. Welcome back, everyone, to this conversation on In Focus. We're here in the 20th News Plus studios. Justin Cascio sitting across the desk from me. He is an author and a mafia historian. So earlier in our conversation, we talked really about the history of the Italian mafia coming from areas and regions of Southern Italy and coming here to America. And you said really through New Orleans, and then they've sort of set up camp wherever, you know, in all the major industrial cities. And you're talking late 1800s, early 1900s, when that sort of evolved. So let's bring it down a little closer to the Northeast. So, you know, I think most people who are watching this have heard of, you know, the New York crime families and the Boston crime families. Did those crime families predate Springfield or did they all come about sort of at the same time? That is a good question. Without really like sitting down and writing it all out, I'm gonna have to say that it's running, it's happening at approximately the same time. Springfield is developing a mafia presence of its own that is a separate distinct entity from what's going on in New York City. Oh, really? Okay. Yes. So, but it's all related, right, to what's happening in New York or, and maybe this is just making an assumption on my end that, you know, because of Springfield, we're either, you know, going to Boston or going to New York for that sort of criminal leads, but not really, right? Sort of kind of evolved on our own. Yes. Each one of the places where the mafia developed was able to flourish where it was because there was a wealthy enough Italian community for them to make money off of. And you don't have to be that wealthy. You could have just a lot of coal miners who are barely scraping by, but if you're grabbing a penny off of each one of them, it adds up. Right. So wherever there's a community, you can create a mafia. And the one in Springfield was developing just on its own, independently of what's going on in New York City. There were a lot of people all coming from the same two places or a cluster of towns, really, in Naples, but very close to one another. So from the same region. And this is really common about, of immigration throughout the United States. Wherever Italians were settling, it was really common that people from the same place would often wind up in the same place in United States. You know, it's interesting you say that because I think about the Italian, excuse me, the Irish immigrants here in the Springfield area all pretty much came from the same area of Ireland, Southwest Ireland. Puerto Ricans, you know, immigration, all came from the very same, roughly the same area of the island of Puerto Rico. So that makes sense. You know, when people come here, because you know people, you're going to go where you know people. Exactly. It's just human nature. I'm pretty sure we've always moved that way, as long as we've been people. Right. So the folks here in Springfield all, you know, for the most part came from a small region in the Naples area of Italy. And again, Naples, the Southern part of Italy, which had its own criminal activity there, and they just morphed it into criminal activity here. Correct? Pretty much. There was already a culture of Camorra in Naples, and there were people who were practicing it there. They were criminals and part of that community. And so when they immigrated, they were looking for new criminal opportunities here. They were part of a huge wave of immigration. Most of the people come from Italy, and they were looking for work, for legitimate, honest work. But there were criminals coming at the same time as them, and what they were looking for were better pickings to be a more successful criminal. Okay. So how did the Springfield sect of the Italian community get tied in with the New York sect and not Boston? Was there a reason for that? Was there marriages or familial connections? I want to say it's infrastructure. Infrastructure? Yes. That's not a word on my list. If you look at how New England was settled, it starts on the coast where ships are landing, but they don't spread straight west across Massachusetts. Came up the Connecticut River. Exactly. Okay. And they continue to do that. Bootleggers were not really bringing booze from Boston so much, as far as I can tell, they were bringing it up the Connecticut River. Okay. Or producing it here. Okay, that makes sense. So that means the connection of Springfield to New York seems like a greater possibility than the connection of Springfield to Boston. Yes, and when I look at personal networks, who people know, there are some connections going to Boston from Springfield, sure, and I find some criminal connections too, people who move back and forth between Springfield and Boston. But the vast majority of the personal connections that people had seems to have been in New York City. If you were a Neapolitan living in Springfield, you probably had a lot of friends in New York City who were also Neapolitan, people you knew from back home. Coming back to that connection, you gravitate to the people you know regionally. Absolutely. And they would have spoken different dialects, almost, they would have had a very hard time understanding Sicilians, for instance. Interesting. So it was a language thing too. So the Italian language is that different from Sicily to Naples to Milan and across the Italian Peninsula? It used to be like that all over Europe. Oh, okay. But each time a nation formed, and Italy did the same thing, they would decide, well, we need to have one national language and we're going to pick a part of Italy that is going to be representative, and it was Piedmont. Okay. So that was the variety of Italian that became the Italian version of Italy, of Italian. But before that, people spoke dialects all over the country, sure. Okay. So now Springfield's connected to New York through the Genovese family. It is now, and there's a story behind that. Okay, good. Tell me about it. Well, it starts with Pasqualina. Okay. And Pasqualina's story starts with her uncle. Okay. Do we have time? Yeah, all right. So Pasqualina Albano is the subject of my book, but I want to start by talking to you about her uncle, John. John Albano was one of those padroni who I was telling you about. And he was based in Springfield. He was credited with bringing hundreds of immigrants here. He was one of those people who had an interest in every Italian who lived in his area. He wanted to know what was going on. And the other advantage of knowing everybody and knowing what's going on is you can become a broker of that information. And as a middleman, it's advantageous to you. You know, somebody who needs a job, somebody who needs a worker, you can put them together and both of them might pay you, you know? Okay. And there's all kinds of situations like that where you can place yourself in the middle of two people who need things and you mediate that relationship. And you get paid for it. And you get paid, exactly. And so when you know everybody in town, you know who the violent people are too. And so if you need somebody to commit a crime for you, you know who to call on as well. It's not just for the up and up stuff. Right, right. Well, it all initially sounds all nice. You know, hey, I'm helping you out. You're helping me out. I'm getting a buck out of it. But there's also the other side of it where, hey, you need a crime to take place. You know who to call. Exactly. Okay, so when did the mafia sort of take a foothold here in the Springfield area? Well, I guess it depends on how you define mafia because I would start calling it mafia as soon as you have that padrone in place and you have gang of toughs who answer to him in any way. And you start to see that before Prohibition. So by the 1910s, there is already a violent gang who are all Neapolitan and who I would call them recognizably mafia. They're not a part of the American mafia yet, but they are a small-M mafia gang. Okay, all right. And Pasqualina comes into play in what year? She marries Carlo in 1912, Carlo Siniscalci. I think I say his name wrong. I've been saying it Siniscalci for years, but I think the Italian pronunciation is Sinischalci. Sinischalci? But I've been saying Siniscalci, so we'll go with that. So she married him. He was a Brooklyn saloon keeper who was starting to get too much heat in Brooklyn. He needed to leave town. So he married Pasqualina, who was the daughter of a grocer from Springfield, and he set up shop here. He got some pool tables, and that became his headquarters, that pool hall that he had. And you start to hear about his violent crimes within a few years of him arriving in Springfield. Really? So that soon after he arrives, he's already got a violent streak. He's already a bad guy. Wow. Okay. All right, so I'm going to, actually, we're up on our second commercial break. So before I pull up that picture, let's go to break because plenty more to come. Folks, stay with us. We're back after this. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Barry. Welcome back, everyone, to In Focus. Sitting across from me today is Justin Cascio. He is an author and mafia historian. We've covered a lot of ground so far about the Italian mafia here in the greater Springfield area, and really how they started in the United States. Yeah, I should have asked you this question very early on. Is the word mafia, is it solely depicting Italian people, or is there a Portuguese mafia and a Spanish mafia and a German mafia? I don't know. The word mafia is Sicilian. Okay. It originally describes the mafia of Sicily. Okay. The origin of the word means something like handsome or proud. Okay. And we use the word in the lowercase mafia to mean any ethnic gang. Got it. That outlives its original founder. Oh, all right. All right. So before we went to break, we were talking about, I believe it's this gentleman. All right, tell me more. This is Carlos Nascucci, and he was a bad guy. He was married to Pasqualina Albano, who was the daughter of a grocer in Springfield. Carlo came from the next town over in Italy, from where Pasqualina was born. So he was a saloon keeper, and I think that he was probably introduced- He was a saloon keeper here or back in Italy? Or both? In Brooklyn. Oh, okay. In Brooklyn, he had a saloon. That's what he said was his legitimate job anyway. He might've actually worked in that saloon for all I know. I do know that he was getting hounded by police. He was getting in trouble for, I think, weapons violations by that time, and he had some cousins in town who had also been in trouble with the law. Okay. So he was eager to get out of town and make a new start. So he married Pasqualina, whose uncle was the padrone of Springfield. And so that would have given Carlo all kinds of opportunities to succeed and thrive in Springfield. Probably the first of them was where he put his pool tables on Water Street. I think that that pool room he got was a room that already belonged to John Albano, Pasqualina's uncle. All right. So this next picture that we're pulling up, who are these two? Is that Pasqualina? That is. That's Pasqualina with her second husband. Oh, her second husband. Carlo's bad guy, not long for this world. He scammed a fellow bootlegger. So this guy ended up dying early because he scammed a bootlegger? Yes. All right. Got killed in 1921. And then in 1924, she married Antonio Mirandos, the gentleman seated in this next picture. He is the brother of Michael Miranda. And Michael Miranda was a very close associate of Vito Genovese from back in their bootlegging days. So Costello and Genovese and Lucky Luciano, these guys were all running around together in the early years of prohibition as bootleggers before they became very, very successful and wealthy and their gang became such a powerhouse. And Antonio Miranda, Mike's brother, was a gangster as well. And he was active in New York City until he married Pasqualina and moved to Springfield. They had a quiet little wedding and the whole time that he lived in Springfield, people just thought of him as a respectable businessman, a real estate agent. Okay. But then when he died in 1930 of natural causes, the funeral was huge. There was literally a plane rented out to drop flowers over the funeral procession. 1930, this is the second year of the Great Depression. Right. And this is the kind of money that they're spending on flowers, people came in from all over the country to be at this funeral. In the newspapers, they talk about the reporters approaching these guys and trying to find out more about them, where are they from and so forth, but they don't want to answer any questions. Can't say that I blame them, right? They don't want to be outed. Of course not. So this is the crowd that shows up to see Tony Miranda to his final rest. And that is the first time that anybody in Springfield, it seems, has an inkling that Tony Miranda was any sort of a big shot in the underworld. Okay. So then what happens after his death? So from the time that Carla dies, Pasqualina is running his operation. She's running his gang. His gang is, her gang is chasing other gangs and robbing them of their booze. They're getting into highway drive-by shootings. They're running gunfights on the highway with their adversaries from West Springfield in Connecticut. She's fighting this whole war against the gang whose leader killed her first husband, Carlos Anascalchi. So that finally all gets resolved. The killer goes to prison and she marries Tony Miranda, which creates a new level of peace in her gang because now they have the backing of his very powerful friends back in New York City, who I think at this time are still called the Luciano crime family. Gotcha. But that crime family will eventually pass over to the hands of Vito Genovese. And that's what we call it today. It's the Genovese crime family. And that is the marriage in 1924 is what creates that union between the Genovese crime family and the Springfield. And that's this marriage right here? Yes. Okay. So now we've got that connection between Springfield and the New Jersey Genovese family. Yeah. Okay. And it lasted for a hundred years. Okay. So we're at a hundred years now from that marriage. Yes. It's not happening now? Well, recent events seem to have severed that tie. Okay. Or severely strained it. From the talk it's severed, but I think that things could possibly get resolved. I don't know. Okay. After Anthony Arilotta had his mentor killed, Al Bruno, in 2003, there was fallout from that event that led to the severing of ties between the Genovese family in New York and the Springfield crew. Okay. I don't want to jump too far ahead because we got a lot to talk about between the twenties and today. So Pasqualina, she's now gone through two husbands, right? So does she get married again or she just remains a widow for the rest of her life? She lives for three more years after Tony dies. She continues to run her gang and an old boyfriend perhaps shows up and is definitely her boyfriend in the early thirties and is helping her run the crew in the last months of her life. In November, 1933, she and this guy, Michael Fury, were visiting one of her employees who managed one of her stills and they came out of the house late at night and another car came up the road and opened fire. Like they pulled right up to her car and just unloaded into the car and killed her. So she died the way her first husband died, pretty much. In a drive-by gang shooting? In a gang shooting. And we don't really know who killed her or why. There are theories- Still to this day? There are theories and I discuss them in my book, but we don't know for sure because there are multiple really good valid reasons why somebody might have wanted her dead. Right, so you mentioned your book about her and here it is. Why a book? I mean, was she that big a figure here in the Springfield mafia scene that she warrants a book or was she just somebody's wife and so forth? I've been presenting about her life and talking about her for years now and that story has been evolving over time. I first heard about it as an anecdote about Carlos Nascoche and how he died and the fact that she took over his gang interested me because it's an unusual story. You don't often hear about a woman running a gang. Right. And there are very few women that have been active in the mafia at this level. It's a male fraternity. You can't, a woman cannot join the mafia. So just her life and her role in it is more than most women throughout history would have played a bigger role than women would have played throughout history in the mafia, right? Yes, so as a woman, she's very unusual. And then if you add to that, the fact that her marriage created this union with the Genovese family, she is instrumental in a part of mafia history. Okay, very good. We are up on our next commercial break. So we've still got plenty more to talk about. We've got to get up to the modern day. So stay with us. We're back in a minute. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. I noticed in the chyron with that. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. Welcome back everyone. We're continuing our conversation on the history of the mafia here in the greater Western Mass Springfield area. So, and Justin Cascio, author and mafia historian joins me across the desk. Justin, again, thank you for giving me some, a lot of your time this afternoon. It's a fascinating conversation. The mafia has always intrigued me, as I said, growing up watching the movies and whatnot. But, all right, so we kind of got up, we went through Pasqualina, and now we're into kind of the 40s and 50s, World War II and so forth. What's going on with the mafia in those years? So after Pasqualina died in 1933, one of her brothers-in-law took over. As far as we know, Carlos Sarno. And then at some point, Sam Kufari takes over from him. Sam Kufari had been active in Pasqualina's gang from his early adult years. So late teens, early 20s. He was stealing cars, racing them over the state line, running booze. Old school. Yes. So, now what makes him such a popular figure, or is he like a violent guy? I mean, why is he the head of the family, the local contingent? I honestly couldn't tell you. I really don't know. I need to study Sam Kufari a little more to try and understand that myself. I know he's well-liked. He's got a restaurant where the mafia hangs out. He was a well-liked figure. So did he, and here's a picture of him, if I understand correctly. Did he work his way up like a lot of people do? I mean, if you think about the mafia, it's an organization. You work your way up. So did Kufari work his way up from like a hitman? I don't even know the roles, but. I've read about some of his early exploits and written about them. And yes, he was capable of violence. There's at least one occasion on which that was documented. He was stealing cars. I believe he was probably a profitable member of the gang. So he was valued. Okay. So now he, but he runs the local outfit for a long time. He does. For a couple, like 20 years or more? Like 20 or 30 years, something like that. Yeah. And it's interesting because in that world, that's unique that you have one person in control for that many years. Because usually there's, you know, there's a fight to be at the top and somebody gets killed and somebody moves up. So how did he stay in power for so long? Was it just because he was liked and he had a restaurant? I think that he probably enabled the criminals under him to also succeed. In order to be a good boss, you have to allow your underlings to do well. And they were, they were thriving. The Shabellies, Bruno, the people that were coming up after him. So he created an environment where those below him became successful. So, and again, I don't know this, it seems as if they were respectful of the opportunities given to him, given to them. So they kind of kept the process going. I mean, everybody's all, you know, a high tide rises all boats. So if everybody's doing well, why shake it up a little, right? Right. Okay. So anything remarkable happened during Khafari's tenure at the top, you know, or did it sort of run itself? I think the secret to his success is that he wasn't getting in a lot of trouble. He was getting busted every once in a while for gambling rigs, big ones. But he wasn't involved in a lot of violent crime. And I think that is probably part of his, the secret to his success as well. So staying out of prison, kind of keeping a low profile from the violent side, you know, kind of kept him going and... Yeah, violence isn't good for anybody. It suppresses business. So as we're having this conversation, I'm thinking the Khafari years, was there corruption within the city of Springfield to sort of say, okay, listen, Sam, you tone it down, we'll leave you alone. Was this like, I don't know whether that's true or not. I'm asking you, you're the historian. Right. And you know, I'm more of an early history guy. Okay. So I really couldn't say exactly what was going on during the Khafari years, but corruption is usually how a boss is able to create an environment in which... People look the other way and things just, things happen, continue to happen, you know, on and on because there's corruption and they tend to look the other way. Now, as we fast forward through the Khafari years, what happens to him? Does his life come to an end in a violent fashion? Does he die of old age? What happens? Is there a transition after him? He dies of old age, and the Shebeles were getting powerful for quite a while before that. Okay. Building up their gambling, the same gambling ring that Khafari was part of, and also the vending machine business, which is an important part of them. Vending machine business. Is a really big part of Springfield organized crime, yes. There are territories very, very fiercely defended. And the companies that rent and lease and sell these machines are highly coveted properties of high-ranking members of the Mafia in Springfield. So they had a corner on the market. Yes. And you think back, what years is that? This is for a really long time. I start to see more of it maybe in the 60s, but it's going on forever. Like they're still fighting over them in the 2000s. So it's interesting. You think of vending machines. I mean, we have a vending machine here. It's a soda chip machine. But back then, vending machines were everywhere. Cigarettes. So we laugh about vending machines now, but back there was a time where vending machines, they were in high schools, they were everywhere. So I can certainly see how that was an extremely lucrative business to be in and to control. It's a lucrative business. And there are a few ways in which it is especially appealing to members of organized crime. It's a big cash business. So you can launder money like crazy. Nobody's going to be able to know how much money you actually make out of a cigarette machine. Also, there's this way that the mafia succeeds in business, which is by fusing their mafia methods to legitimate business practices. So they're not nicely coming to a bar owner and saying, gee, would you consider possibly stocking our pool table and vending machine and so forth in your business? We'd sure be appreciative. Here's my card. That's not how they do business. They threaten to break your leg. Yeah, they strong arm. Yes. Everybody in the region who has any kind of a business that's a restaurant, a nightclub, a bar, any place where you're going to find a lot of vending machines like that is going to get strong armed into it. They all have to carry it from this one company. They're the only guy doing that business in town. Or you shut your business down. Yeah, that's part of the cost of doing business. I'm just making it up. A bowling alley, which, you know, there's vending machines for everything, and they come in and they say, you either put our vending machines in or we're going to break your legs. You do that because you don't want to shut your business down, your income for your family. Yeah. And that's the stick. There's a carrot, too. You could have poker machines in your business. You could have illegal gambling machines in your bowling alley or your bar or whatever. And the same vending company puts those in for you. And you split the proceeds. All right. So there's a financial benefit. Right. Albeit illegal. It's illegal. And now you're really into the mafia because now you're doing something illegal with them. Can you get out of that? So this is where they have a stranglehold and you can't get out of that relationship, can you? Right. In Sicily, they describe it as an octopus. It's got all these different tentacles. It's got its little fingers in every bit of business. And they've got you from every direction. Yeah. So until you die or close your business, you're indebted to them. You have to keep going with the plan that they've set up because that's how you'll both make money, even though it's all illegal. All right. So we get on through the Khafari years. What happens after Sam dies? Khafari dies. The Shabellies take over. It's Frank Shabelli for many years. He's involved in big gambling rings, interstate rings. His brothers, Albert, I believe, is the one who owns the vending machine business. He eventually passes it down to his brother-in-law and then another gangster come along and extorts it from him. So this is going on for generations and decades that these businesses are subject to this. Wow. All right. We are up on our next commercial break. We got to stop, but there's plenty more to come. Stay with us. All right, everybody. I hope you're having as much fun as I am talking about the history of the mafia here in Springfield. Sitting across the desk from me today, he's been kind enough to come in and spend a lot of time with me. Justin Cascio. He's an author and a historian of the mafia, not just here in Springfield, but all over the country. And really, Italy as well. Justin, thank you. Thank you for coming in. I appreciate it. We've really covered a lot of ground, but we're up on the Al Bruno years. So tell me how he comes into power and what happens during his tenure. Al Bruno was a late arrival relative to the others. The Ciabellis, Cuffari, Escalino Albano, they all grew up in Springfield. But he came after World War I, when he was still a boy. And he did grow up in Springfield after that, but he's from the same part of Naples as these other folks. So his ties to the mafia and to the local mafia community, he would have familial ties to all these people and would have been welcomed in as an insider. Right. So did he grow up in the world? Again, like I said earlier, you start in the low ranks, doing some menial tasks, and then you work your way up. But you said he came into it late, though. Yeah, because I guess he's the next generation. And his parents didn't grow up here, like the Ciabellis brought up their family here. He came a little later. What was I going to tell you about Al Bruno, though? I don't know a lot about his origins in the gang early on, just that it would have been natural for him to fall in with those people socially. Right. So let's talk more about... So he comes into power locally in the 90s, right? 1990s? The 80s. Oh, 80s, okay. But his demise is probably the biggest story everybody thinks about, the shooting in the South End of Springfield. 2003, I think it was, something like that. So what happens within that time period? So Al kind of, he takes control. And that's the period I grew up in this area. And I always look at the downtown Springfield in the 70s and 80s as being a safe place. And that may have been the case throughout time, going back to the 20s, because I look at it as a safe place because the mafia ran everything. So you didn't really go... There were no other gangs, no other crime being committed. And their crime wasn't, correct me if I'm wrong, it wasn't everyday murders, everyday robberies. It was intentional for the business. So you could walk downtown Springfield without fear of crime per se, right? You raise your eyebrows a little bit. It's just, it's something that I hear about all the time, that people who grew up in mafia neighborhoods tell me that they felt very safe there. And I don't know what to attribute that to. Is it childhood nostalgia? Because children have a softer, rosier view of the world. They don't really know what's going on. I mean, a lot of gang violence is not involving innocent bystanders, it's involving one another. But then there's always people that are getting victimized by the mobs and gangs who are not part of that, like a store owner who gets held up. True, true, true, true. But I think that sort of ancillary crime never happened, or rarely happened in the downtown Springfield area because the mob had it... They had such a tight grip on... So if something like that did happen, the shop owner is going to say, hey, these guys robbed me, and they take care of it, and it doesn't happen again. Am I off base with that thinking? I don't know. It just doesn't match up with what I read in the papers about what these guys do. So like Anthony Arrolada coming up under Al Bruno, some of the things that he was doing was going over to his girlfriend's house to beat somebody up with a baseball bat. These kinds of stories show up. Actually, I'm not remembering that one exactly correctly. It might have been his friend's girlfriend who they went over... It was a baseball bat, Bob. Somebody got hurt. So they would do these kinds of things. And the guys who are coming up in the gang, that's how they prove themselves to one another and to the higher ups, that they're worth something, is by being violent. And how violent can you get? And if you don't want to be on the wrong side of one of those guys, and all you have to do is live there and be involved in the community somehow for that to possibly happen to you. What if you were dating that girl, you know? Oh, absolutely. You had no idea. Right. You're not inviting a baseball bat into your life. So let's talk about the end of Al Bruno's life. Tell me what happened there. He took Arrolada in as a mentee. So he was grooming him for leadership. And then Arrolada started to have a relationship with Artie Nigro, who was the acting boss of the Genovese Crime Family. So he was going up to New York a lot, hanging out with the guys there. And Nigro was starting to see Springfield as a place where he should be making more money. And why wasn't he? He wanted more money to be coming to him from, for instance, the Mardi Gras, which was the gentleman's club. Oh, right. The exotic dance club. Yeah. And for a long time, it was owned by Jimmy Santanello. And he was owning it in partnership with at least one gangster that I know of, Delivo, and his wife, in the 80s and so. And Artie Nigro wanted them to be paying tribute. And he thought that it should be coming up through Bruno, because he's in charge here. And Bruno was pushing back, and Nigro wanted Bruno out of the way. And since Arrolada was so accommodating, he would have been happy to see Bruno gone, and Arrolada moved up into his place. So when it came out that Bruno had said something to an FBI agent at a social event, they had ran into each other and been chatting, and said something that was considered sensitive enough information that made it into a memo in the FBI. And so that information then got into somebody's court records, somebody in the gang, that is. And then they brought that information back to Arrolada and his friends and were like, look at this, Bruno's been talking to the FBI. Which, of course, you know you can't do that. Right, exactly. And that was what allowed Nigro to put a hit out on Bruno. He gave the job to Arrolada, Arrolada farmed it out to the Gaius brothers, they gave the job to Frankie Roche, he shot Bruno in that parking lot, as he was coming out of a card game on his birthday, I want to say. Yeah, he was there celebrating. And so that's how Bruno was killed. And the idea was that Arrolada wasn't going to take his place, and he did. Okay, so Bruno's out of the way, he gets killed, as you see there, in November 2003, Arrolada takes over. And I have to say, in the last 20 something years, it seems as if the mafia, maybe because the FBI came to town and arrested all of these people, that it's just not a faction anymore. Am I right with that? Or are they still here? Well, it's not a faction anymore, but I don't know if it's because of the FBI. The prosecution of the murder helped, but Arrolada was just getting himself into trouble, because he was sending all of his guys out to extort people in town, and people in town were fighting back. They were going to the police about it. All right, so here we stand in the mid-2020s, I don't hear anything of this anymore. It seems as if it's gone away, I guess the public has fought back, people have gone to jail. Is there still organized crime here in Springfield? There is. There are still remnants of that Springfield crew, there are still made men. And the thing about being made is you're never unmade. Somebody might say you're on the shelf now, but you're still a soldier. Right, right, right. So what organizations are still here? Is it just Italian mafia? No, because they've been weakened so much, other gangs have seen an opportunity to move in. Fascinating, fascinating. Justin, I can't thank you enough for joining me today. This has been a wonderful conversation, something I've been looking to have for a long time, just understanding the history of the Italian mafia here in the greater Springfield area. Justin, thank you again so very much for joining me. It's been a wonderful time. It's been an honor. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you.