January 29, 2021 – Ground penetrating radar has detected a series of steel drums on the former site of the PJP Landfill underneath the Pulaski Skyway in Jersey City, New Jersey at a 12-by-15 foot patch of property veteran true-crime author and investigative journalist Dan Moldea and Fox News Channel’s Eric Shawn believe the remains of slain Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa reside. A tipster pointed Moldea and Shawn to the location, telling them Hoffa was buried on the property under steel-drum markers.

Hoffa, 62, famously disappeared on the afternoon of July 30, 1975 in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan on his way to meet Detroit mob street boss Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and New Jersey mob capo Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano. Hoffa’s body has never been found and nobody has ever been arrested for causing his death.

The case of the missing labor union titan has since been steeped in pop-culture mythology and is still considered an open investigation by the FBI. Hoffa and his former benefactors in the mafia were at odds over the firebrand labor boss’ desire to reclaim the Teamster presidency following a prison sentence for bribery.

FNC’s Fox Nation streaming service is releasing Part 3 of its ongoing investigative series, Riddle: The Search For James R. Hoffa this week. Shawn is the show’s host. Moldea’s crack reporting brought Shawn and the GPR imaging equipment to the potential dig site based on tips provided by Tony Pro’s former partner in the trash business Paul Cappola and Cappola’s son Frank.

When Hoffa vanished in the summer of 1975, Paul Cappola and a Tony Pro lieutenant named Philip (Brother) Moscato co-owned PJP Landfill. Moscato was one of the biggest loan sharks on the east coast and along with Tony Pro was a member of New York’s Genovese crime family. Moldea is the world’s foremost expert on the iconic Hoffa disappearance and murder, having written the seminal book on the subject, The Hoffa Wars.

Paul Cappola was not a “made man” in the Genovese crime family. His son, Frank Cappola, also never reached “made” status in the mob, but was a one-time right hand man to another Provenzano lieutenant named, Vinnie Ravo. Frank Cappola claims he was present at the PJP Landfill as a teenager when Hoffa’s body arrived for disposal at Tony Pro and “Brother” Moscato’s behest.

Moldea developed “Brother Moscato” as a source in the final years of Moscato’s life. Moscato admitted to having Hoffa buried on the property, but wouldn’t divulge the exact location. The FBI searched the dump shortly after Hoffa went missing and didn’t find anything.

Moscato, who died of cancer in 2014, told Moldea that Hoffa was kidnapped in a Bloomfield Twp., Michigan restaurant parking lot by Detroit and New Jersey mob hitmen, killed at a nearby residence and then his body driven to the Moscato landfill in Jersey City in a Gateway Transportation truck. Gateway Transportation was owned by notorious Teamster goon Rolland (Big Mac) McMaster, a Hoffa confidant-turned-rival from Detroit. The feds searched McMaster’s Hidden Dreams Ranch in Commerce Township, Michigan looking for Hoffa’s remains back in 2006, but came up empty.

The men Hoffa was going to meet the afternoon he disappeared, Tony Pro and Tony Jack, died of natural causes in 1988 and 2001, respectively. Tony Pro was in prison for an unrelated gangland murder. McMaster passed in 2007. Paul Cappola died of cancer in 2008.

Right before he died, Cappola gave his son, Frank, the particulars on Hoffa’s burial.

In October 2019, Frabk Cappola took Moldea on a tour of what used to be the PJP Landfill. The land is now a state park and wildlife preserve. While they were there, Cappola pointed out to Moldea where his father told him Hoffa was laid to rest.

Cappola executed an affidavit on October 7, 2019 and stated the following:

A limousine showed up the day after Hoffa went missing at the PJP Landfill carrying an unidentified number of men and was met by Moscato and Paul Cappola. Frank Cappola was working a summer job at PJP at the time and saw limo pull in and witnessed the ensuing interaction.

Moscato approached the vehicle and had a conversation with the men inside.

During the conversation, Moscato pointed to a part of the property he wanted Hoffa buried at, resulting in Cappola becoming worried due to the constant FBI surveillance of the landfill and exclaiming, “Great, now the whole fucking world is going to know.”

Brother Moscato had business to attend to off the property and assigned Paul Cappola to take care of the burial at a pre-excavated spot in the northeast part of the landfill.

Later that night, Paul Cappola dug a second hole without telling Moscato in an effort to disguise the burial in case anyone was watching the previous conversation where Moscato pointed to a pre-dug hole in the ground.

Hoffa’s body was placed head first into a 55-gallon industrial steel drum and dropped into the second hole by Paul Cappola using a front-loader machine.

Before filling in the hole, Cappola used the front loader to place 15 to 20 chemical drums on top of the steel drum containing Hoffa and left a marker on surface of grave site.

The post Author Inches Closer To Confirmation That Hoffa’s Body Is At Former Site Of Mobbed-Up Jersey City Landfill appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 29, 2021 – The murder of the Gangster Disciples Northside Chicago territory boss Earnest (Smokey) Wilson on May 18, 2018 proved the end of a power struggle at the top of the Gangster Disciples organization. Wilson, 65, was an “OG” and dated back decades as a player in the Windy City underworld. The men the government alleges killed him are said to be blessed by GD Godfather Larry Hoover.

Reputed Gangster Disciples street bosses and “Board Members” Anthony (Crazy Tony) Dobbins and Warren (Big Head G) Griffin were the lead defendants in a federal drug, racketeering and murder case filed in the Southern District of Illinois earlier this week. Smokey Wilson’s slaying was one of the homicides included in the indictment.

The Gangster Disciples are centered in Chicago, with GD sets peppered throughout the U.S. acting as offshoot satellite crews. Authorities place GD membership at more than 25,000 across 21 states.

Hoover, who has been in prison since the 1973 and is considered one of the most influential crime lords in the world, runs GD Nation from behind bars.  According to Monday’s indictment, the 70-year old Hoover being held in the BOP Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado, chose Dobbins and Griffin as GD street bosses and Board Members in the fall of 2014 and passed word to them through a messenger at a Labor Day picnic.

Dobbins, 53, is from East St. Louis, near the Missouri border. Griffin, 51, comes from Lancaster, Kentucky, just outside of Lexington. Per FBI documents, Dobbins and Griffin backed Chicago Southside Territory boss Frank (Little Red Beard) Smith in a feud against Northside OG, Smokey Wilson. Smith and Wilson were battling for final say in Windy City affairs Because they feared they couldn’t control him, Dobbins and Griffin called Wilson to a meeting and shot him dead, per their indictment.

Smokey Wilson was the GD’s longtime shot caller in the Cabrini-Green Projects on the city’s Northside. Wilson was convicted of ordering a 1981 gang-related murder in Stateville prison in Cress Hill, Illinois while he was an inmate in the facility. Returning to town in 1998, Smokey Wilson reassumed the throne in his Cabrini-Green kingdom until he was arrested again for gun possession in 2001 and taken off the streets. His absence sent the city’s Northside into chaos and four murders occurred in the weeks after he was locked up.

Upon the Cabrini-Green Projects being torn down in 2011, Wilson’s power in the area waned and was supplanted by gentrification, opening the door for his downfall.

The post Up In Smoke In Chicago: “Smokey” Wilson’s Slaying Was Changing Of Guard In Gangster Disciples With The New Taking Out The Old appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 30, 2021 – Slain old-school Gangster Disciples leader, Earnest (Smokey) Wilson ordered the murder of a rival gang member in an Illinois state prison 40 years ago this week. Smokey Wilson was the GD’s boss of Chicago’s Northside turf.

Black Disciples soldier George (Bed Bug) Bailey was beaten to death with an aluminum baseball bat inside his cell at Stateville Prison in Crest Hill, Illinois on January 29, 1981 after refusing Wilson’s order that he resign his post as a cellblock porter. Bed Bug Bailey defied Smokey Wilson’s edict, tried to lead a revolt against Smokey’s hold on prison contraband and paid for it with his life.

Smokey Wilson himself was gunned down in Chicago on May 18, 2018 at age 65. His murder was included in this week’s bust of over a half-dozen Gangster Disciples on federal drug and racketeering counts. Gangster Disciples street bosses Anthony (Crazy Tony) Dobbins and Warren (Big Head G) Griffin are charged with summoning Wilson to a meeting to discuss GD business and shooting him to death instead.

The Gangster Disciples and the Black Disciples used to be under the same gangland umbrella, but the union began to fray following the death of Black Disciples boss David Barksdale (kidney disorder) in 1974. GD founder and boss Larry Hoover (incarcerated for the last 48 years) is alleged to have chosen Dobbins and Griffin as GD street bosses in 2014, per this week’s indictment.

Smokey Wilson was serving time in Stateville for a 1976 manslaughter conviction when he green-lit the Bed Bug Bailey hit. Bed Bug Bailey was one of the highest-ranking Black Disciples members housed in the facility’s Unit B West and him and Smokey Wilson jostled for power in the prison wing they shared.

On January 15, 1981, per court records, Wilson convened a meeting of the unit and announced that any Black Disciples that held jobs as prison porters, allowing them free roam in the unit, were either to resign or renounce BD Nation for GD Nation. Three Black Disciples resigned immediately. Bed Bug Bailey refused.

In fact, days later, Bed Bug Bailey convinced the three BDs that had resigned to reclaim their porter jobs and began organizing nightly “BD power” chants in the unit that commenced at 8:00 p.m. every evening, according to ATF files. Gangster Disciples enforcer Freddy (Bobo) Collins physically attacked Bed Bug Bailey in the prison yard on the afternoon of January 21, 1981 and got sent to the “Hole” for a week, per prison discipline logs.

During that week, Smokey Wilson met with Stateville’s Black Disciples boss, Dirk (The Don) Acklin, and tried to get Bailey in-check through proper channels to no avail, jailhouse informants told investigators. The emboldened Bed Bug Bailey was living on borrowed time.

On the night of January 29, Smokey Wilson decided to act: per court filings, he had a powwow in his cell with several of his Gangster Disciples lieutenants, including Bobo Collins — who just got back from a week’s worth of solitary confinement — and as the group smoked marijuana and discussed killing Bed Bug Bailey with a baseball bat or a knife shank, he proclaimed “it was time to get Triple B (Bailey).”

At 9:52, Collins, wielding a bat and another high-ranking Gangster Disciple named Charles (Sundown) Harris, brandishing a shank, entered Bailey’s cell and attacked him. Collins clubbed him multiple times over the head with his aluminum bat. Bailey died a week later on February 5. Wilson, Collins and Harris were convicted of murdering Bailey in 1983.

Wilson was paroled in 1998 and came back to Chicago where he returned to his headquarters in the Cabrini Green Projects. His jailing in the summer of 2001 on a gun possession charge sent him back to prison and Cabrini Green’s drug terrain into turmoil. At least a half-dozen gangland killings in the coming months and years were traced to Smokey’s absence, CPD narcotics officers speculated.

After Cabrini Green was torn down and Smokey Wilson came back to Chicago in 2016 from his second stint behind bars, he bumped heads with the new GD administrators, per court records. Crazy Tony Dobbins, who lived in East St. Louis, Illinois, was given GD street boss duties for the entire region in September 2014 and “OG” Smokey Wilson didn’t take kindly to taking orders from a newer shot-caller like Crazy Tony, according to FBI documents. Wilson couldn’t get along with Dobbin’s main lieutenant in Chicago, Fred (Little Red Beard) Smith, either which further cemented his fate.

The post The Stateville Prison Baseball Bat Murder: Black Disciple “Bed Bug” Bailey Beaten To Death By GDs appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 31, 2021 — It’s been 11 years since Grosse Pointe Woods resident JoAnn Matouk Romain disappeared and was eventually found dead floating in the Detroit River. At first glance, it appears that nobody, outside the Matouk Romain family, really cares about what transpired and/or how it actually happened. At second and third glance, same thing.

The lack of empathy, urgency and professional due diligence in determining the true facts surrounding one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in Metro Detroit history, is astounding. Apathetic isn’t strong enough a word to describe the negligent, very possibly downright criminal behavior from the powers that be in law enforcement and multiple municipalities in this matter.

If one percent of the effort and resources put forth by the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ Office in Southeastern Michigan the past 45 years to crack the Jimmy Hoffa case was expended to find out the truth in the Matouk Romain case, I’m quite certain we would already have the answers the Matouk Romain family has been looking for feverishly the last decade-plus. And in a puzzling and sad irony, some of the same people that may be on the outskirts of involvement in the Matouk Romain case were most likely tangentially connected to the world-famous Hoffa kidnapping and assassination 35 years prior.

Matouk Romain, 55, went missing after an early-evening church service at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Lakeshore Drive in Grosse Pointe Farms on January 12, 2010.

Here’s what we know for sure:

Even though there wouldn’t be a body discovered for another two and a half months, the Grosse Pointe Farms Police immediately ruled the situation a suicide by drowning, claiming Matouk-Romain, a mother of three with no history of mental illness or suicidal tendencies, walked from the church service to the banks of Lake St. Clair and jumped into the half-frozen body of water in below-freezing temperature with the intention of killing herself. A private autopsy conducted at the University of Michigan, discovered that JoAnn’s death was a “dry drowning,” meaning there was no water in her lungs and that she was probably dead before she ever hit the water.

We know that Matouk-Romain was in a failing marriage and part of a long-running intra-family feud over a wine store and real estate fortune with her older brother, sister and cousins. We know she openly expressed to almost a dozen different people in the weeks leading up to her disappearance that she feared for her personal safety because of a tiff with first cousin, Tim Matouk, a highly-decorated detective and Wayne County Investigator, over the treatment of her troubled baby brother, John Matouk, a former millionaire businessman who had fallen on hard financial times and owed an alleged bookmaker with reputed ties to local mob figures tens of thousands of dollars in sports gambling losses.

Matouk Romian’s children believe firmly Tim Matouk murdered their mom and the Grosse Pointe Farms and Grosse Pointe Woods Police Departments helped him cover it up. The investigative timeline provided from the police and U.S. Coast Guard when compared to time-stamped computer logs and testimony under oath at depositions, makes very little to virtually no sense at all and to an objective observer would make it seem as if the timeline had been doctored with to at least some degree. Although U.S. District Court Judge Linda Parker ultimately dismissed the Matouk Romain estate’s $100,000,000 wrongful death lawsuit against Tim Matouk and 16 Grosse Pointe Farms and Woods police officers and their departments in 2018, she noted the facts presented to her were “disturbing” and “suspicious,” however lacked the responsibility- threshold merit to warrant a verdict in its favor.

Disturbing and suspicious is quite the understatement. Whether Tim Matouk had anything to do with his cousin’s death?, I honestly don’t know. Did the cops conspire in a cover-up? I can’t say they did, but I can say with conviction, at the very least, it was shoddy, sloppy and lazy police work and way more needed to be done to try and provide closure to this woman’s family.

Suicide? Come, on, don’t kid yourself. The fact that we are going off the premise that she killed herself in the first place is ridiculous. No mentally-fit middle-aged female – especially one with both lucrative divorce and civil litigation proceeding paydays on the horizon – decides to off themselves by an impromptu dive into an icy lake. Oh, and that minor detail about no water being in her lungs, that seems like a red flag on the suicide angle, don’t you think?

Three years have passed since Judge Parker tossed the civil suit and made her parting comments on the case and nothing has changed. No grand juries, no arrests, no active investigations.

Three months have passed since Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries ran an episode on the Matouk Romain case and I personally penned a three-part investigative series on the case for The Grosse Pointe News via as part of a Google News local journalism initiative and again, nothing. No grand juries, no arrests, no active investigations.

I reported of a meeting between JoAnn Matouk Romain and the FBI in the days preceding her going missing and a run-in at her family’s liquor store days earlier that send her running to a priest and eventually to the feds. Still, nothing.

No movement. Nobody cares. And frankly it all reeks of corruption.

Brick wall after brick wall. And I’ve got to tell you it doesn’t fell like all those brick walls are popping up by accident. Eleven years have gone by and the way things are trending, they’ll be another 11 gone before you know it and nobody will have lifted a finger. The complacency is maddening.

It’s up to the woke masses to bring this into a proper perspective for politicians and police to understand. That means making people accountable. Shining a light on injustice and forcing action. This will not stand. This issue needs to be addressed. American citizens can’t just vanish into the water and when they’re found with suspicious body damage or lack thereof, their deaths can’t just be discarded as suicides because we’re too lazy or compromised to get to the bottom of what really happened. That’s not America. That’s third-world country crap.

Eleven years and a whole lot of nothing. Law enforcement and legislators alike should be ashamed of this apathy and dereliction of duty.

Where’s the outrage?

OP-ED written by:

Scott M. Burnstein

Founder & Editor & Chief of The Gangster Report

True-crime author, investigative journalist, historian

The post Unresolved Issues, Facts Surrounding Matouk Romain Case Should Make Every American Citizen Shutter With Fear appeared first on The Gangster Report.

February 1, 2021 – Gangster Disciples boss Larry Hoover was alleged to have led the 1978 Pontiac Prison Riot in Illinois that left three correctional officers dead and dozens hospitalized and further cementing his reputation as one of the most powerful crime lords in America. It’s a reputation the 70-year old Hoover carries to this very day in the U.S. Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado.

Ever since he was thrown behind bars in 1973 for a gangland murder on the Southside of Chicago of a rival he believed robbed him, Hoover has called shots for the Gangster Disciples from his prison cell. The Gangster Disciples have close to 30,000 members spread across 18 states.

Hoover was the No. 1 defendant in what was dubbed the “Pontiac 17 Case,” due to it being a total of 17 inmates that wound up being charged with three counts of first-degree capital murder in the fallout from the riot. The state wanted the death penalty. They all beat the rap.

At around 9:45 in the morning on July 22, 1978, a group of inmates at the front of a heard of 600 being brought from the yard into the cellhouse, overran the guards and took control of the prison property’s north-end buildings. Prison guards William Thomas, 49, Robert Conkle, 22, and Stanley Cole, 47 were killed in the uprising.

The prisoners were at odds with Warden Thaddeus Pinkney over living conditions. The night before had seen a gang-related stabbing death stemming from a drug ripoff. Combine that with the unrelenting heat of a scorching July, and tensions reached a boiling point.

By the end of the day, the state police had restored order and quelled the unrest. The riot lasted five hours. A combined 75 guards and inmates were sent to the hospital as a result of the violence.

State prosecutors put the blame on 17 high-ranking street gang bosses being housed at the Pontiac facility. The gang diversity in the indictment was the most impressive aspect of the case from a socio-academic point of view.

The Pontiac 17

1 Larry “The Chief” Hoover (Gangster Disciples)

2 Benneth “Little Benny” Lee (Vice Lords)

3 John “Big Bay” Bailey (Black Gangster Disciples)

4 Isaac “King Ike” Taylor (Black Gangster Disciple)

5 Mike “Bosco” Evans (Black Soul Gang)

6 Anthony “Tony Hop” Gilberry (Vice Lords)

7 Robert “Wheaty” Harris (Black Gangster)

8 Jesse Hill (Gangster Disicple)

9 Albert “Omega” Jackson (Black P Stone Ranger)

10 Earnest “Smokey” Jackson (EL RUKN)

11 Steven “Tuffy” Mars (Vice Lords)

12 David “Dinky” McConnell (Vice Lords)

13 Ronnie Newby (Black Gangsters)

14 William “Gaylord” Ozzie (Mickey Cobras, Vice Lords)

15 Kevin “Wolf” Tolbert (Black Soul Gang)

16 Angelo Robinson (Black Soul Gang)

17 Joe Smith (Black Soul Gang)

Angelo Robinson turned state’s evidence and the first 10 of the Pontiac 17 were put on trial in the spring of 1981. Little Benny Lee, Tuffy Mars, Dinky McConnell, Smokey and Omega Jackson, Bosco Evans, Jesse Hill, Joe Smith, Wolf Tolbert and Ronnie Newby were all found not guilty after a laborious 11-month trial. Later that summer, the Illinois Attorney General’s Office announced it was dropping the charges against remaining co-defendants Larry Hoover, Wheaty Harris, Big Bay Bailey, King Ike Taylor, Tony Hop Gilberry and Gaylord Ozzie and wouldn’t be proceeding to a second trial.

The post Larry Hoover & The Pontiac 17: Gangster Disciples Godfather Reputed To Have Organized Deadly ’78 Prison Riot appeared first on The Gangster Report.

February 2, 2021 – In the weeks after he lost his bid to be the Democratic nominee in the 1988 U.S. Presidential race, the reverend Jesse Jackson’s once lofty political hopes were on the ropes. Those hopes were rocked by the indictment of his half-brother Noah (Loc) Robinson, Jr. on murder charges out of South Carolina related to Chicago street gang activity. It proved a deathblow.

While Jackson was in the thick of the race that summer, Robinson, Jr., previously perceived as a millionaire businessman with goodwill in the community, was arrested for engaging in a conspiracy to kill a witness in a gangland murder he would eventually be charged and convicted for. Jackson and Robinson share a father.

Black P Stone Rangers street gang affiliate Leroy (Hambone) Barber was gunned down on January 2, 1986 in a small commercial business complex Robinson owned in Greenville, South Carolina by a Chicago hit team. Months prior, Robinson had gotten into a fist fight. Robinson was found guilty of ordering the hit and aiding and abetting a gang member who stabbed a witness to the hit.

Boasting an MBA from the uber prestigious Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, Robinson was an “advisor” for the leadership of the Black P Stone Rangers street gang, specifically the gang’s legendary founder and boss Jeff Fort. By the time Robinson was arrested and Jackson was making a run for the White House, Fort had rebranded the Black P Stone Nation as El Rukn, trying to give the impression that the gang was now a Muslim-based community activism forum .

Fort was busted for drug trafficking and sent away to prison in 1983. He communicated with his soldiers and lieutenants through people like Robinson, who he nicknamed “Loc” or “Local.” Soon, Fort was found to be planning domestic terrorist attacks in tandem with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in exchange for funding for El Rukn. 

According to prosecutors at his trial, Robinson paraded as a legitimate businessman in Chicago and Greenville, owning several fast-food restaurants and a construction company, but in reality, acted as Fort’s unofficial “consigliere.” The September 21, 1988 indictment alleged Robinson complained to Fort about a beef with Hambone Barber and Fort green-lit the murder contract, dispatching a five-man hit team to Greenville to handle the matter.

On the night of December 20, 1985, Robinson and Barber got into a fist fight at Bridges Lounge located in a strip mall owned by Robinson as part of a robust real estate portfolio he used to launder drug and extortion money. Both men lived in Chicago, but did business in South Carolina. Barber was a longtime friend of Robinson’s and worked for him as an enforcer.

The pair fell out over a bad drug deal, per DEA records, and during a meeting at Robinson’s luxury downtown Chicago high-rise apartment, kicked Barber off the payroll of one of his companies and fired him as his personal muscle. Barber, according to these records, followed Robinson to Greenville to confront him, leading to the fisticuffs at Bridges Lounge.

Robinson immediately took off for a holiday trip with his family to New Mexico and Arizona. Fort assigned his half-brother Henry (Toomba) Harris to put a hit crew together and go to Greenville to execute Hambone Barber. Harris became a government witness and admitted to luring the 46-year old Barber to Bridges Lounge on January 2, 1985 and then to a phone both where he was killed in a hail of automatic weapon fire.

The Jackson family traces its roots to Greenville and migrated north to Illinois in the 1960s as Jesse’s star was on the rise in the Civil Rights movement under Dr. Martin Luther King. Jackson was with Dr. King on the balcony of a Memphis motel that fateful day in April 1968 when the civil rights icon was slain by a sniper’s bullet.

At the time of his Presidential aspirations growing into full-blown candidacy in the 1980s (he ran in ’84 and ’88), Jackson kept his distance from his half-brother because he knew Robinson was being investigated by the FBI and DEA, per an internal DOJ memo circulated in 1987.

As Jackson’s 1988 Presidential campaign wound to a close in the early days of summer, he was given a knockout blow when Robinson was arrested for trying to kill Janice Rosemond, a witness to the Hambone Barber murder. Robinson was freed on a $500,000 bond and waited until the other shoe dropped and he was indicted for the Barber hit itself.

Jackson’s campaign was dead. On July 21, 1988 in Atlanta, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis accepted the nomination to run against Vice President George H. W. Bush. Jackson, 79, never ran for office again. He was the first African-American to get traction in a campaign for the U.S. Presidency.

Robinson’s legal woes continued. The feds dropped a racketeering and tax fraud case at his doorstep, accusing him of skimming $650,000 from the half-dozen Wendy’s franchises he owned.

Today, at age 77, Robinson is doing life in prison after being found guilty twice (1990, 1996) for the Hambone Barber homicide. An appellate court threw out the first guilty verdict because the prosecutors withheld discovery evidence. Fort, 73, is serving his time in the federal SUPERMAX facility in Florence, Colorado.

The post Chicago To Greenville With A Bullet: Jesse Jackson, The Black P Stone Nation & The Murder Of Hambone Barber appeared first on The Gangster Report.

February 3, 2021 – Eager, young mob associate Pete (Peter Pan) Tuccio originally met Philadelphia mafia don Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino on Instagram and then finally in-person through Tuccio’s uncle, New York mob captain Joseph (Joe Café) Desena, sometime in 2016 at C.J.’s Bar & Lounge in Ozone Park, Queens pub, according to a new podcast. The 28-year old Tuccio, who recently pleaded guilty to extortion charges, has ties to both the Lucchese and Gambino crime families in New York and is Merlino’s driver and bodyguard whenever Skinny Joey is in the Big Apple.

The question of how the brash, babyfaced New Yorker hooked up with the even brasher Merlino and his fast-living fashionista Philly crew has been on the lips of mob watchers everywhere since the Queens-bred Tuccio emerged as a Skinny Joey companion four years ago. Last week, Lucchese crime family soldier-turned-witness-turned-blogger John Pennisi (Sitdownnews.com) shed some light on the issue as part of the first episode of his new podcast, The MBA & The Button Man.

Tuccio direct messaged Merlino on Instagram in 2016, according to Pennisi, and when Tuccio’s name came up in dinner conversation at a meal shared between Pennisi, Merlino and Tuccio’s uncle, Joe Cafe, Merlino asked to meet him, impressed by stories he was hearing of his cowboy behavior (getting banned from Matteo’s – an Italian restaurant in his Howard Beach neighborhood for beating down a bartender). The meeting took place after the dinner in Ozone Park at CJ’s Bar & Lounge when Desena summoned his nephew at Merlino’s request. The notoriously slick and media conscious Merlino, while no longer active on social media, was previously, and that led him to be nicknamed “The Instagram Don.”

Joe Cafe Desena is the Lucchese’s capo in Manhattan’s Little Italy. Desena put Tuccio under Pennisi’s wing after Tuccio got into a beef with members of the Bonanno crime family. Tuccio’s current legal problems stem from a 2015 incident where torched the car of a pizza parlor owner refusing to cough up shakedown money to the Gambino crime family.

Pennisi, 51, was made into the Lucchese crime family in 2013, placed in the borgata’s Staten Island-based “Bronx crew.” In his capacity as a button man for the Bronx crew, he was introduced to the 58-year old Merlino via Merlino’s contact in the Lucchese clan, Joseph (Little Joe) Perna. Pennisi began cooperating in 2018 out of fear that the Lucchese bosses were aiming to kill him. His job as a star witness has helped dismantle the crime family’s hierachy.

The post Greetings On The Gram: Tuccio Met Philly’s “Instagram Don” Merlino On Social Media Claims New Podcast appeared first on The Gangster Report.

February 4, 2021 – Reputed Philadelphia mob captain Domenic (Baby Dom) Grande got his uncle back in the good graces of the Bruno-Scarfo crime family following a lengthy prison sentence and talk of revolt, per federal records. As a result, today, Joe Grande is back on his feet in North Jersey, sources claim, and reporting to his baby nephew, “Baby Dom,” in the family’s power structure.

The 41-year old Grande, a rising star the likes of the South Philly centered family hasn’t seen since the emergence of mafia don Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino in the 1990s, was indicted late last year on racketeering and drug charges. He’s pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial on home confinement.

Joe Grande was on the outs with Merlino and his acting boss Joseph (Uncle Joe) Ligambi in the late 2000s until Joe G’s nephew, Baby Dom, stepped to the plate and squashed the beef, per internal federal law enforcement briefings. The Grandes have a rich history in the rackets.

Baby Dom Grande’s dad is Salvatore (John Wayne) Grande, the Philly mob hit man turned federal informant after a drug bust in prison. In the 1980s, “Waynie” Grande was one of then boss Nicodemo (Little Nicky) Scarfo’s top enforcers. His uncle Joe and his grandfather, John (Coo Coo) Grande, also worked for the maniacal and malicious Little Nicky, who’s bloodlust led to a near complete decimation of an organization build on a foundation of diplomacy.

Scarfo was sentenced to life in prison in 1989. That sentenced was eventually overturned, but he still had a 55-year bid included that meant he would never see the light of day again as a free man. That didn’t mean that he didn’t still live and breathe “La Cosa Nostra.”

But Scarfo’s former errand boy Skinny Joey Merlino, who had won a shooting war for power in the family in the years after Little Nicky was taken off the street, didn’t want anything to do with him – he allegedly tried to murder Scarfo’s son, “Nicky Jr.” over the belief that Scarfo had placed a murder contract on his head following a beef Little Nicky had with Skinny Joey’s dad, Chucky, Little Nicky’s one-time underboss. Little Nicky got Nicky Jr. transferred to the Lucchese crime family in New York and made a capo for a brief period of time in the 2000s.

A decade ago, Joe Grande, 60, was finishing up a 24-year prison stint for racketeering and backing an ultimately futile attempt by Little Nicky Scarfo to take back the crime family for himself from behind bars, per government informant files. The deranged Scarfo planned to run the family through his son, but never got the chance because Nicky Jr. got nailed for racketeering and ripping off a bank for millions of dollars and sent to prison.

Grande got into a physical altercation with fellow Philly mob soldier Joseph (Joey Punge) Pungitore in a prison yard over Grande’s allegiance to Scarfo in 2008, per FBI memos. Pungitore allegedly told Grande that he better get with the program and get into the modern age, that Merlino and Uncle Joe Ligambi had the keys to the kingdom, now, not Little Nicky.

On the heels of serving his own 12-year prison term for racketeering, Merlino, 58, relocated to South Florida in the 2010s. Ligambi, 81, had the final say-so in South Philly and North Jersey mob affairs for two decades, only deferring to Merlino for occasional special projects and policy decisions, per informants. He allegedly retired on his 80th birthday in 2019.

As Grande approached his outdate in March of 2011, his nephew Baby Dom and the Bruno-Scarfo crime family’s North Jersey capo Joseph (Joe Scoops) Licata convinced Grande to have a change of heart and “come in” under Merlino and Ligambi’s regime, per one of the FBI memos. Baby Dom Grande and Joe Licata greased the wheels with Ligambi on Joe Grande’s behalf, per sources, “getting in Uncle Joe’s ear” about giving Joe Grande a “pass” for his subversive behavior.

Ligambi agreed and when Joe Grande went to pay his respects to his new boss at a backyard barbeque in New Jersey in the spring of 2011, he asked Uncle Joe for permission to put his nephew up for a button, according to FBI informants. Uncle Joe, just weeks away from being jailed himself on a racketeering case he would beat at a pair of trials, told Grande that had already been nominated for made man status by other members of the crime family. The FBI believes Joe Grande troubleshoots for Philly mob administrators in North Jersey with members of the New York crime families operating in the territory, per sources.

The topic of Joe Grande and Scarfo era generation wiseguys coming out of prison after serving long sentences was discussed in a recorded conversation between Scoops Licata and New York mob soldier Nick (Nicky Skins) Stefanelli, who was wired for sound by the feds. Below is an excerpt from the chat held in a Belleville, New Jersey restaurant in October 2010.

Stefanelli: There’s problems with this Scarfo shit now.

Licata: Fuck him, this is bullshit.

Stefanelli: Let’s just hope this Joe Grande comes in line, he backed Nicky in that whole thing. He told Joe Punge, “You’re on the wrong side of this. Your guys (Merlino, Ligambi) aren’t recognized (by New York),” trying to stir up all the old shit.

Licata: If he sends word to me, I’m going to say, ‘Go see our friend (Ligambi) and check in.” If he’s worried about it, I’ll go with him. Joey Punge tried to fucking kill him in there. He pummeled him in the yard, fucking buried him.

Stefanelli: What about the kid?

Licata: Three days after Joe G’s out of the can, the nephew comes and wants a meeting. Guy literally just checked into the halfway house and the kid says he wants to see me.

Stefanelli; Joe Punge took Merlino’s side. He don’t want no trouble.

Licata: Yeah, he was never a problem.

Stefanelli: Right.

Licata: The kid Domenic, the nephew, he’s already in the guy’s ear (Ligambi’s) ear, telling him the uncle wants to pay his respects, that Joe G wants to meet him. Couple days later, I took Dom aside at a wedding and I gave him a hug and a kiss and I said give a hug and a kiss to your uncle and tell him I love him. Tell him, don’t worry about it. Go see Joe (Ligambi). Tell him as long as I’m here, ain’t nothing going to happen to him.

This next excerpt is from a conversation between Nicky Skins and Joe Scoops two months later:

Stefanelli; Joe G is back around. He’s acting like he ain’t afraid of nothing no more.

Licata; He didn’t know Joe (Ligambi) was going to save him (give him a pass). It doesn’t hurt that everybody loves the kid, Dom. We saved his life. Joe says Joe G wants Dom to get down, wants to propose him. Joe told him, he’s got two people who already got his name on the pad.

The post Watching His Uncle’s Back With Uncle Joe: Philly Mafia Up-&-Comer Convinced Ligambi To Give Joe G A Pass appeared first on The Gangster Report.

February 8, 2021 – Philadelphia mob associate Anthony (Tony Meatballs) Gifoli pleaded guilty to bookmaking charges last week. Gifoli, 73, was indicted along with reputed Bruno-Scarfo crime family underboss Steven (Handsome Stevie) Mazzone and several other Philly wiseguys back in November in a federal racketeering case.

Dave Schratwieser’s Mob Talk Sitdown blog broke the news of Tony Meatballs’ plea deal on Friday. Tony Meatballs is the first co-defendant in the case to cop a plea. Handsome Stevie Mazzone, 57, has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial on home confinement in South Philly.

Gifoli faces a maximum five-year prison sentence, but might get as a little as three months of house arrest and probation. According to the indictment, Tony Meatballs was co-running a sports gambling business from 2017 through 2019 that took in $2,000 per day in wagers. Court files paint him as a right-hand man to Philly mob figure Lou (Louie Sheep) Barretta, a longtime associate of Handsome Stevie Mazzone. Like Mazzone, Barretta, 56, is out on bail and looking to fight the case in court.

The FBI had a cell phone Barretta and Gifoli shared to take sports wagers bugged and intercepted Tony Meatballs booking bets on the 2017 Super Bowl and 2017 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, as well as discussing “settling up” with debtors on their losses. Mazzone was taped at a 2015 mafia induction ceremony and post-ceremony celebratory dinner ordering his new initiates to grab power back in Atlantic City and acknowledging he was a “gangster.”

The post Feds Get First Co-Defendant In Philly Mob Case To Cop Plea, Tony Meatballs Admits Booking Bets appeared first on The Gangster Report.

February 9, 2021 – The characters “Scatter” and “Priest” in the classic Blaxploitation flick, Superfly, were both inspired by infamous Cleveland Black crime boss and restaurateur Herman (Scatter) Stephens. Superfly, the story of pimp and drug dealer Priest trying to make one last score before going straight, came out in 1972 and set off an entire genre of filmmaking.

The movie’s budget was less than $100,000 and the returns at the box office reached over $30,000,000, resulting in a string of similar-themed African-American anti-hero characters popping up as the tentpoles of the Blaxploitation cinema movement in the years to come. In the film Superfly, Scatter was portrayed by actor Julius Harris (Live & Let Die, Black Caesar) and depicted as Priest’s old-school mentor in the Harlem drug game.

Scatter Stephens was murdered gangland style on September 10, 1967, gunned down in front of flabbergasted patrons inside his iconic Scatter’s Barbeque joint in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood on E. 125^th Street, after running afoul of the local Italian mafia. Superfly scribe Phillip Fenty grew up in Glenville and was familiar with Stephens from his childhood.

Fenty connected actor Ron ‘O’Neal, who would go on to play Priest, with Superfly director Gordan Parks, Sr. The Scatter character in the film owned a restaurant and lounge that hosted musical performances, much like Scatter did in real life at his BBQ spot. Scatter’s Barbeque attracted a celebrity clientele, including regular patrons like entertainers Sammy Davis, Jr. and Count Basie and athletes such as world-champion boxers Sugar Ray Robinson and Joe Louis, who each considered Stephens a friend.

Leveraging his ties in the entertainment industry, Stephens handled booking duties (pocketing giant personal commissions) for the Café Tia Juana, Cleveland’s preeminent jazz club of his era. He was known to go on tour with jazz masters Count Basie and Miles Davis. According to his FBI file, Stephens accompanied Basie to Europe for a month-long tour in the summer of 1967.

It was in 1960s when Scatter Stephens began expanding his BBQ and drug empire into real estate, construction and the vending machine business. The vending machine in Ohio had always been controlled by the Italians, specifically Cleveland mob boss John Scalish at Buckeye Vending. Per Cleveland Police Department records, Stephens had decided to move in on Scalish’s territory and replaced Buckeye Vending machines with his own at a number of locations around Glenville.

The decision to head to Europe with the Count Basie Orchestra in July 1967 was a way to lay low during his takeover play, according to informants within Stephens’ inner circle. Stephens had bought up the entire block that his BBQ joint was on and made it an encampment where he felt safe and kept most of his business interests.

He was wrong to feel safe. A masked gunmen shot him on the night of September 10, 1967 as he entered his Stephens Vending Co. office, down the street from Scatter’s Barbeque. Woozy and wounded, the always immaculately dressed 47-year old Scatter stumbled towards his restaurant, collapsing in the doorway. As onlookers stood frozen in shock, the gunman finished Stephens off with three execution-style taps to the back of the head.

Two days later, on September 12, some five thousand people attended his funeral. The wake had drawn more than ten thousand mourners in the days prior. His funeral procession featured 65 Cadillac El Dorados, a white dove release and a $10,000 gold-plated casket.

The character Scatter in Superfly met a different, yet equally fatal demise; he is killed by corrupt police in an intentional overdose of heroin.

John Scalish died on the operating room table undergoing heart surgery in 1976. The Cleveland mafia turned to shambles in the wake of Scalish’s passing and today is a mere fraction of its former self in the Scalish heyday of national prominence.

Scatter’s Barbeque shuttered in 1983. Columbia Pictures produced a remake of Superfly in 2018, moving the location of the story from Harlem to Atlanta. Fantastic character actor Michael K. Williams (The Wire, Boardwalk Empire) played Scatter in the remake.

The post Who Needs Ron’O Neal?: “Scatter” Stephens Was A Cleveland Street Legend & The Real Superfly appeared first on The Gangster Report.

February 10, 2021 – Long incarcerated Chicago gangland legend Larry (The Chief) Hoover passed messages in a dictionary to his Gangster Disciples street boss, according to federal prosecutors. U.S. Attorneys in the Windy City are looking to block Hoover’s bid for release.

Hoover founded the Gangster Disciples street gang on Chicago’s Southside in the late 1960s. He’s been in prison since 1973. The FBI and DEA believe he still runs the 30,000-strong GD Nation from his cell in the 23-hour lockdown Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado.

For the past several months, Hoover has been seeking relief from a life prison sentence under the First Step Act, federal legislation enacted three years ago to provide sentence reduction opportunities for non-violent offenders. Three of Hoover’s top lieutenants from the 1990s were let out of the fed joint in the past year and a half on First Step Act filings (“Too Short” Edwards, “Crusher” Jackson and “King” Yates).

If Hoover is granted First Step Act status, he would be placed back in the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections, where he would need to be paroled from his murder conviction (1973 slaying of William “Pookie” Young), in order to taste freedom again. In 1996, Hoover was convicted by the feds in Operation Headache, a racketeering and drug case arising from his shot-calling in GD affairs from his prison cell in “Downstate” Vienna, Illinois.

According to court filings in Hoover’s current fight for release, Hoover communicated with “board member” and “street boss,” Anthony (Crazy Tony) Dobbins during a stay at the same federal correctional facility in 2015 via an elaborate code using a pocket dictionary as the decoder. Crazy Tony Dobbins was indicted last month for racketeering and murder.

Dobbins, 53, was tapped as a GD board member and new Illinois street boss by Hoover through messenger at a 2014 Labor Day picnic in Chicago, per Dobbins’ January indictment. The indictment shows Dobbins bragging on FBI wiretaps of becoming the first GD from East St. Louis, Illinois, to rise to a national shot-calling post. GD Nation encompasses more than a dozen U.S. states, with home base always being in Illinois.

A transcript of intercepted “dictionary communication” between Dobbins and Hoover was made public this week in filings related to the Hoover case.

“Chief, this code is very important,” Dobbins wrote Hoover. “Remember, only we know this code. We can communicate in plain sight. I am ready to handle your business.”

Dobbins murdered fellow GD board member and territory boss Earnest (Smokey) Wilson in 2018 in a power struggle, according to prosecutors. The 65-year old Wilson served as Hoover’s Northside Chicago boss for decades, ruling over what once was the Cabrini-Green housing projects.

The post The Gangster Disciples Dictionary Dilemma: GD “Chief” Hoover Had Secret Code, Used Dictionary As Transport Device appeared first on The Gangster Report.

February 11, 2021 – As alleged Hawaiian crime boss Michael (Brother Mike) Miske sits behind bars awaiting trial on federal racketeering, drugs, kidnapping, robbery, bank fraud, murder and attempted murder charges, his inner circle is cracking. First, his No. 1 enforcer, Jacob (Ji-Jitsu Jake) Smith made a deal with the government back in November and will be a star witness in court. Shortly thereafter, two of his main drug lieutenants, Jonah Ortiz and Wayne Miller, did the same. All three went down in a 2018 drug case.

The 46-year old Brother Mike Miske runs the rackets in Honolulu these days, according to the feds. Miske was arrested last July. Prosecutors believe Smith can tie Miske into a pair of murder conspiracies, including the 2016 disappearance of Jonathan Fraser, who Miske blamed for the death of his 16-year old son, Caleb, in a car accident months before.

Smith, 28, is a martial arts expert and collected $2,000 per enforcement assignment from Miske by way of Miske’s brother-in-law and right-hand man, John (Flattop) Stancil, per his plea deal. The muscle work Ji-Jitsu Jake did for Miske ranged from beating up rival club owners and helping stage a chemical attack on a club in March 2017 to robbing and kidnapping drug dealers and Miske associates, he says in his FBI proffer statement.

Miske’s M Nightclub had closed in the months prior. He was headquartering out of his Kamaaina Termite & Pest Control business when he was busted in 2020.

Smith introduced Miske to hired gun Lance (Hammah) Bermudez in a meeting held at a Kalihi shopping mall in June 2017. Hours after the meeting, Flattop Stancil offered Smith and Bermudez $250,000 to kill Jonathan Fraser. Smith refused.

Miske also wanted to murder Lindsey Kinney, a labor union figure and local thug. Smith claims Kinney also refused to accept a contract to kill the 23-year old Fraser, who was living with Miske at the time in adjacent penthouse apartments near the ocean.

Kinney survived a hit near the set of the big-budget studio movie Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom where he was working a Teamsters job as a rigging grip, a February 2017 drive-by shooting Smith admits taking part in. In the aftermath of the attempt on his life, Kinney erupted like a volcano on social media, pointing the finger at Brother Mike, Flattop Stancil and Ji-Jitsu Jake in a flurry of incendiary posts.

Brother Mike is hooked up with the Teamsters as well and found work on Hawaii movie sets. Miske was assigned to be a driver and bodyguard for actor John Goodman while he was in town shooting Kong: Skull Island.

Jonathan Fraser went missing on July 31, 2016. His body has never been found. Fraser was close friends with Miske’s son and in the car with him when he died in a fatal crash the previous fall. Miske’s boat, The Painkiller, has been seized by authorities under the belief that The Painkiller was used to dispose of Fraser’s body at sea.

The post Walls Closing In On Honolulu Mob Boss “Brother Mike” Miske, Strong Arm “Ji-Jitsu Jake” Joins Team USA appeared first on The Gangster Report.

February 12, 2021 – Black Mafia Family boss Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory had his appeal for COVID-19-related relief rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati Thursday. The iconic drug lord is a non-violent offender serving 30 years from the historic 2005 Operation Motor City Mafia bust. Back in the summer, U.S. District Court Judge David Lawson denied Flenory’s motion for a compassionate release due to health concerns tied to the pandemic.

Flenory and his brother, Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, founded BMF in Detroit in 1990 and soon grew it into a national powerhouse in the drug world with outlets established in some 20 different states. Their fame in the dope game brought friendships with celebrities, rappers and actors, many of whom have publicly campaigned for Big Meech’s freedom. Terry Flenory, 50, was granted a compassionate release in May 2020 because of COVID-19 concerns and ordered to finish the rest of his sentence on home confinement in Detroit.

Both Flenory brothers pleaded guilty in 2007 on the eve of trial and accepted 30-year stretches for heading a continuing criminal enterprise. Barring judicial relief, the 52-year old Big Meech Flenory won’t see daylight as a free man until October 2031.

Flenory lived between Detroit and Atlanta during his days as a kingpin and was rumored to have romanced actresses Vivica A. Fox and Meagan Good. St. Louis rapper Nelly threw Big Meech a lavish 35th birthday party in Atlanta, a decadent and debaucherous 24-hour affair staged at multiple locations which drew the attention of the DEA and FBI.

The Starz Network and hip-hop mogul 50 Cent are currently filming the first season of the highly-anticipated Black Mafia Family scripted drama television show starring Demetrius (Lil’ Meech) Flenory, Jr. as his dad. Lil’ Meech, 21, is an aspiring hip hop artist. The writing team behind the Starz smash hit Power, led by Detroiter Randy Huggins, are penning the first batch of episodes expected to premiere in early 2022.

The post Federal Court Of Appeals Tells BMF’s Big Meech Its A No-Go For Early Release, Upholds Decision Of U.S. District Judge In Detroit appeared first on The Gangster Report.

February 13, 2021 – Bodyguards for porn king and celebrated free-speech advocate Larry Flynt killed a New York film financier over a beef related to Academy Award-winning Hollywood producer and former studio chief Robert Evans and a glitzy, big-budget movie he was looking to get off the ground with shady money. The film did get off the ground and to the screen and Evans never faced any charges in the homicide.

Flynt died of a heart attack this week at 78. He founded Hustler Magazine in Ohio in the summer of 1974 and built the Hustler brand name into a juggernaut in the world of adult entertainment. Actor Woody Harrelson portrayed Flynt on the silver screen in 1996’s The People Vs. Larry Flynt, collecting an Oscar nominee for Best Actor for his performance. Flynt was famously paralyzed in an assassination attempt outside a Georgia courthouse in 1978 by a deranged white supremacist upset by Hustler’s interracial photo spreads.

Evans, known for producing iconic films like Rosemary’s Baby, The Godfather, The Godfather Pt. II, Love Story and Chinatown, passed in 2019. He headed Paramount Pictures in the late 1960s and first half of the 1970s. It was Evans’ attempt to recreate his Godfather magic in the 1980s with the film The Cotton Club starring Richard Gere, that led to the murder of potential angel investor Roy Radin, a New York music and variety show promoter with connections on Broadway and the wholesale cocaine scene.

Raidin was shot to death by Larry Flynt’s bodyguards Billy Mentzer and Alex Marti on May 13, 1983. Mentzer and his girlfriend, Karen “Lanie Jacobs” Greenberger, a female drug kingpin, kidnapped Radin from a Beverly Hills hotel and murdered him for the belief that he was trying to edge Jacobs out of a finder’s fee for introducing him to hot shot Hollywood producer Evans, who she was dating at the time as well.

Evans met Radin in 1982 through Jacobs with the knowledge that Radin was looking to get into the movie business and knew how to raise capital. Jacobs supplied Radin drugs in bulk for the musicians at his rock concerts. Radin and Evans were co-financing The Cotton Club and had gotten a commitment from Sylvester Stallone to star in the film. Stallone was eventually replaced by Richard Gere as the movie’s protagonist, “Dixie Dwyer,” a trumpet player-turned-tough-guy-actor.

At some point in early 1983, Jacobs and Radin had a falling out. Jacobs thought Radin was angling to edge her out of the deal with Evans and suspected him of orchestrating a robbery of her Beverly Hills mansion in which millions of dollars of cash, drugs, diamonds and furs were taken out of a walk-in safe in her basement.

According to court documents, Evans tried to mediate the dispute at an April 1983 dinner meeting he hosted at his townhouse in Manhattan, however, the meal quickly degenerating into a screaming match between Jacobs and Radin and resulted in Jacobs running out of Evans’ townhouse in tears. Less than three weeks later, Radin was rubbed out gangland style.

On the evening of May 13, 1983, Jacobs, Mentzer, Marti and another Flynt bodyguard named Bobby Lowe, picked up the 33-year old Radin from the Hollywood Regency Hotel in Jacob’s signature black-colored Cadillac stretch limo, drove him an hour north of L.A. to Gorman, California and executed him. Menzter and Marti shot him 13 times and dumped his body in a desolate canyon where it would not be found for weeks. After he was shot, Mentzer exploded a stick of dynamite in his mouth. Lowe drove the limo and Jacobs called shots from the backseat.

Then, in 1987, Larry Flynt’s brother-in-law and head of security, Billy Rider, came forward and told LAPD detectives that he heard Mentzer and Marti bragging about murdering Radin during a late-night poker game at Flynt’s Hustler Mansion. He agreed to wear a wire. That was all she wrote.

In October 1988, Lanie Jacobs, Mentzer, Marti and Lowe were arrested for the Radin homicide. They were all convicted at trial in 1991.

Evans skated in the case and pleaded the Fifth Amendment when called to testify at a pretrial hearing. He had pleaded guilty to a cocaine conspiracy in 1980.

Testifying in her own defense at her trial, Jacobs absolved Evans of having any knowledge of the murder conspiracy. Bobby Lowe, on the other hand, directly implicated Evans in being aware of the murder plot beforehand and detectives found a record of a call placed from Jacobs to Evans in the hours after Radin was slain.

Jacobs, 73 today, ran in some pretty major doper circles back in the 1970s and 1980s. She married Florida “kilo dealer” Larry Greenberger, one of Colombian narco baron Carlos Lehder’s top smuggling lieutenants in the United States. Greenberger popped up dead under suspicious circumstances on September 14, 1988, a month before Jacobs was indicted in the Radin case.

Radin’s murder spooked Evans, according to court documents, leading him to believe that he would be killed next. He sought protection from the well-known Hollywood attorney and mob fixer Sidney Korshsk. In turn, Korshak put him in touch with Eddie and Freddie Doumani, two brothers with alleged ties to mob figures in Chicago and Kansas City.

The Doumani brothers owned the K.C. mafia-controlled Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas as well as other properties on the Strip. Evans got the Doumanis’ to shell out $50 million dollars of The Cotton Club’s $60-million dollar budget.

Chicago mobster Tony (The Ant) Spilotro is alleged to have bought a piece of the production and was present on set. Spilotro watched the Chicago Outfit’s interests on the West Coast and headquartered out of Las Vegas. Per FBI records, Spilotro, a man federal authorities believed was responsible for dozens of mob-related murders, got into a physical altercation on the set with one of Coppola’s assistant directors.

Tony the Ant met a gruesome end, beaten and strangled to death inside a south suburban Chicago basement in June 1986. Martin Scorsese dramatized Spilotro’s rise and fall in the 1995 film Casino with Oscar winner Joe Pesci playing a character inspired by Tony the Ant to perfection.

The Cotton Club was finally released to theatres on Christmas Eve 1984 to positive reviews, but disappointing profits. The gangster movie-musical hybrid brought in roughly $25 million in box-office receipts, less than half it’s estimated budget. Evans and Coppola never worked with each other again.

The post Hustler’s Ambition Gone Awry: Larry Flynt’s Bodyguards Bumped Off Producer Robert Evans’ Business Partner appeared first on The Gangster Report.

February 13, 2021 – Detroit rap star and street gang member Phillip (Peezy) Peaks was released from federal prison this week after serving 18 months for a racketeering conspiracy. Peezy is one of the Motor City’s most popular underground rappers and part of the 6 Mile Chedda Grove Gang.

Hip Hop luminaries Little Yachty and E-40 sent their welcome home regards on their social media accounts. Peezy, 33, was indicted in his case in 2016. Although the case included four gangland slayings, Peezy wasn’t implicated in any violence. He was shot in a 2018 gas station robbery.

Peezy’s rap crew is called “Team Eastside.” Rapper and Team Eastside member Aaron (Jizzle P) Mays was killed in a shooting back in the fall.

Chedda Grove boss Edwin (Eddie Boy) Mills is doing his prison time in Milan, Michigan. Peezy was the No. 11 co-defendant in the case, while Mills was listed as No. 1 defendant in the indictment. Mills, 30, appeared in many of Peezy’s rap videos.

Prosecutors cited Peezy’s 2015 rap video for “Young Nigga World,” where he is seen on YouTube bragging of drug dealing and participating in revenge violence, as evidence of the Chedda Grove racketeering conspiracy. Eddie Boy Mills is in the “Young Nigga World” video.

Peezy was found in possession of the cocaine, marijuana and ecstasy pills by police in January 2016 in Warren, Michigan, just North of the Detroit city border on the eastside. At a traffic stop in Ohio in March of that same year, police found codeine and marijuana.

DEA agents suspected Peezy was traveling to West Virginia on Chedda Grove Gang business during his March run-in with the law. The 6 Mile Chedda Grovers keep a wing of their gang operating in Huntington, West Virginia, according to authorities.

The post Team Eastside Party Time: Motown Welcomes Home Rapper Peezy, Chedda Grove Gang Figure Gets Out Of Prison appeared first on The Gangster Report.

February 17, 2021 – The Wimp was anything but wimpy. And his goodbye was anything but small.

Chicago rackets prince William (Willie the Wimp) Stokes, Jr. was killed in a drug deal gone bad on February 24, 1984 at the iconic Roberts Motel on the Windy City’s South Side, ending the life of a rising star in the underworld right as he was coming into his own as a gangster. Stokes’ burial proceedings made national news and inspired a song made famous by guitar legend Stevie Ray Vaughan.

The Roberts Motel, a sprawling complex on E. 63rd — with a restaurant, lounge, nightclub, performance venue, ballroom, banquet hall and swimming pool –, was the epicenter of African-American culture at the time in Chicago. According to the police report, Willie the Wimp was ambushed as he approached one of the motel’s suites for what he thought was going to be a quality-check on a shipment of heroin he was negotiating the purchase of on behalf of him and his father.

Willie the Wimp, 28, was buried in a $10,000 custom-made Cadillac coffin with $10,000 of cash in his hands and lap. Stokes was dressed in a pink-colored three-piece suit and fedora and wore a diamond pinky ring on his right hand. The coffin featured a vanity Illinois license plate with the letters W.I.M.P. on it.

Willie the Wimp’s dad, the flamboyant Willie (Flukey) Stokes, Sr., ran the South Side Chicago dope and pimp game of the 1970s and first half of the 1980s. He was well known in the Windy City media for quippy banter, high-living and a loud fashion style. His ritzy January 1985 30th wedding anniversary party was written up in Jet Magazine and had musical performances by The Chi-Lites and The Staples Singers.

“I’m off to Las Vegas to shoot dice, I’ll see you all when I get back,” Stokes told the press corps gathered outside the Cook County Criminal Court in August 1986 following charges in a first-degree homicide case against him getting tossed.

State prosecutors had charged Flukey Stokes with putting out a murder contract on South Side pharmacist Robert Ciralski because Ciralski discontinued his black-market quinine business. Quinine was purchased in bulk by Stokes and other drug bosses in Chicago and used to cut their powder narcotics. Chicago Police believed Stokes and another South Side drug lord named Charles (King Arthur) Ashley issued the contract on Ciralski’s life. Ciralski was gunned down outside his home on August 1, 1984.

Flukey Stokes’ days were numbered himself though and the plotters were from within. The debonair 49-year old kingpin was murdered in a power play orchestrated by his own bodyguards, shot to death in the backseat of his Cadillac limousine on November 19, 1986.

Just three days earlier, Epic Records released rock god Stevie Ray Vaughan’s album Live Alive with his version of Bill Carter’s Willie the Wimp, written after Carter and his wife read a news story chronicling his killing and funeral. Vaughan’s brother, Jimmy, got a co-writing credit on the song. Stevie Ray Vaughan died in an August 1990 airplane crash.

The post Going Out In Style: Chicago’s “Willie The Wimp” Lived Large, Buried In Caddy, Immortalized By Rock God appeared first on The Gangster Report.

February 18, 2021 – The once-grand Roberts Motel complex hosted Chicago crime boss Willie (Flukey) Stokes’ 30^th wedding anniversary party in the winter of 1985 and was the sight of Flukey’s son, Willie the Wimp’s highly-publicized gangland slaying, a year earlier.

Hotelier Herman Roberts, a pioneering figure in the African-American business community, died this month at age 97. His once large and encompassing Roberts Motel compound on the South Side of Chicago served as the “county seat” for the Windy City’s African-American community, where the jazz was legendary, the bubbly flowed freely and Black entertainers, athletes and celebrities from all around the country came to play and perform.

The local gangsters flocked to The Roberts Motel as well, for a variety of reasons, both nefarious and social. Flukey Stokes, the South Side’s biggest pimp, numbers boss and drug kingpin, was a regular at The 500 Room, the nightclub and performance venue on the property. His organization was also known to use rooms at the motel for drug world meetings, multiple-kilo narcotics transactions and for stash spot purposes, per Stokes DEA file.  

Flukey Stokes had his January 1985 anniversary party at The 500 Room. The party with the $500,000 price tag was a glitzy and widely celebrated event, written up in Chicago gossip columns and chronicled in Jet Magazine. William (Willie the Wimp) Stokes, Jr.’s February 1984 murder at the Roberts Motel made national headlines and his burial served as the premise of a Stevie Ray Vaughan song.

Herman Roberts came to Chicago from Oklahoma as a boy with his family in the 1930s. As a young man and fledgling entrepreneur, he owned a taxi cab company, which he soon took the profits from and invested into his own hotel chain. Roberts opened nightclubs and bought real estate while expanding his “Best Roberts Motel” brand around Chicago and into out-of-state locales like Indiana, Iowa, Missouri and Oklahoma.

In 1952, he opened The Lucky Spot, a jazz club and juke joint on Chicago’s South Side. Two years later, Roberts took over a storefront down the street and debuted The Roberts Show Club, hosting the top Black performers of the day, icons such as Sammy Davis, Jr. Redd Foxx, Nat King Cole, Count Basie and Richard Pryor.

Roberts purchased the property adjoining the nightclubs and opened his first Roberts Motel in 1960. Five more Roberts Motel outlets followed over the next decade, culminating in 1970 when Roberts, after buying up the entire block, unveiled Roberts Motel No. 6, a palatial complex including 250 state-of-the-art rooms, 15 suites, a fine-dining restaurant, lounge, nightclub, beauty salon, ball room and travel agency. The nightclub on the premises was the fabled 500 Room.

Roberts himself eventually retired to Oklahoma where he bought a plot of land and struck oil. At the time of his death on February 1 of this year, his estimated worth stood at anywhere between $20,000,000 and $25,000,000.

Twenty-eight year old “Willie the Wimp” Stokes, Jr. was killed in a drug deal gone bad on February 21, 1984, gunned down as he entered a room at The Roberts Motel for what he thought was going to be a quality-of-goods tests in a pending bulk heroin purchase. Stokes, Jr. was buried in a $10,000 custom-made Cadillac coffin with $10,000 of cash in his hands and lap. Stevie Ray Vaughan’s version of his brother Jimmy and Bill Carter’s song, Willie the Wimp — inspired by a newspaper article penned about Stokes, Jr.’s funeral –, appeared on Double Trouble’s Live Alive album, released by Epic Records in the fall of 1986.

Less than a week after the Live Alive hit the market, Flukey Stokes was murdered inside his Cadillac limo in a power-play set-up by his bodyguard. Stokes, 49, was blown away with automatic weapon fire outside his girlfriend’s house on the late evening of November 19, 1986.

On January 9, 1985, Flukey had thrown his wife Jean an extravagant 30th wedding anniversary party at The 500 Room in The Roberts Motel, hiring The Staples Singers and The Chi-Lites, as the party’s entertainment. The couple re-made their marriage vows and exchanged 40-carat diamond rings.

The post To Live & Die In The Chi: The Stokes Drug Gang & The Roberts Motel Forever Intertwined In South Side Street Lore appeared first on The Gangster Report.

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February 19, 2021 – Chicago mafia don Michael (Fat Mike) Sarno is quite skinny these days, his weight trimmed down by a multitude of health maladies. Because of a need for a double knee replacement, he’s confined to a wheelchair. But an unsympathetic federal judge won’t let him off early from a 25-year prison sentence tied to a Chicago Outfit-related racketeering and extortion conviction on medical grounds, at least partially, because he has already received his COVID-19 vaccination shots.

United States District Court Judge Ronald Guzman rejected Sarno’s motion for compassionate release back in September and then denied a renewed motion seeking to have Sarno serve the remainder of his sentence (11 more years) on home confinement Wednesday on a video-conference hearing. Guzman leaned on the fact that Sarno got the second of his two COVID-19 vaccination shots last week at his prison medical facility in Springfield, Missouri, as reason for not granting immediate relief. Further hearings on the matter are scheduled for this spring.

“Mr. Sarno’s health is severely deteriorating and he’s not receiving proper care or proper treatment in the custody of the Bureau Of Prisons,” Sarno’s attorney John Chwarzynski said.

According to the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys Office , Sarno ran the Chicago mob from the spring of 2005 until late 2010, when he was found guilty at trial for fire-bombing a rival video-poker machine company in suburban Berwyn, Illinois. His motion for compassionate release listed chronic obesity, diabetes, lung, liver, prostate, gallbladder and high blood pressure issues for health concerns. Chwarzynski says Fat Mike, once tipping the scales at nearly 400 pounds, weighs less than 200 pounds right now.

Sarno, 63, was mentored in the mob by deceased Outfit capo Ernest (Rocky) Infelise. A young Fat Mike was busted with Infelise’s “Good Ship Lollipop” crew in 1990 and did seven years behind bars for racketeering. He took command of the Cicero regime in the year 2000.

Chicago Crime Commission records describe Sarno as a longtime liaison to the Windy City’s biker gang world. The fire-bombing he ordered in Berwyn was done in tandem with a biker gang figure from The Outlaws Motorcycle Club.

According to court filings and FBI documents, Sarno was given the job of the Outfit’s “acting boss” or “street boss,” duties in the spring of 2005. With no judicial interference, Sarno won’t come home until 2032.

The post Even With Rapidly Deteriorating Health, Chicago Outfit Boss Fat Mike Sarno Still Can’t Find Compassion From Federal Judge appeared first on The Gangster Report.

February 20, 2021 – Three more Latin Kings in Massachusetts have pleaded guilty to federal drug and racketeering charges related to 2019’s Operation Throne Down while another one was sentenced. The landmark case, ensnaring over 60 Latin Kings in all, has been a home run for prosecutors, effectively dismantling practically the Latin Kings’ entire east coast hierarchy.

This past week, The Latin Kings boss inside the Massachusetts prison system, Frutoso (King Tutti Fruity) Barros, pleaded guilty in the case, as did New Bedford chapter members, Roberto (King Royalty) Vargas and Shelton (King Shell Casings) Johnson, bringing the total of guilty pleas already racked up in Operation Throne Down to 36, which makes up more than half of the co-defendants indicted 14 months ago.

Dante (King Nasty) Lara, 29, from Boston’s Devon Street Latin Kings chapter, was given two years in prison after a November plea deal back on Monday. The Latin Kings’ “North Shore” chapter boss in Massachusetts, Israel (King Imperial) Rodriguez, pleaded guilty in the case earlier this month.

The No. 1 defendant in the case, Springfield’s Michael (King Merlin) Cecchetelli, is the Latin Kings east coast region shot caller, according to the indictment. Cecchetelli has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

Even though the Latin Kings are mainly a Hispanic criminal organization, Cecchetelli has risen through the ranks as an Italian. Per court documents, the 41-year old King Merlin reports directly to Latin Kings national administration council in Chicago and is connected to the Genovese crime family out of New York via the Genovese syndicate’s Western Massachusetts wing.

In other Latin Kings news from the region, Hartford chapter Latin King Jason (King Hood) Figueroa received a seven-year prison term for a separate 2020 federal drugs and gun case out of Connecticut. Figueroa, 31, copped his plea back in the days before last Thanksgiving.

The post Operation Throne Down Keeps Bearing Fruit, More Massachusetts Latin Kings Cop Pleas appeared first on The Gangster Report.