Serial Killer Israel Keyes, Scott Peterson, Sammy the Bull - Megyn's "True Crime" Mega-Episode

Hey everyone on Megan Kelly welcome to the Megan Kelly show and today's true crime mega episode.

We're going back to the very first time Mark Garagos was on this show.

Now he's one of our hosts on the MK True Crime Show in the well. But a couple of years ago we dug into some of his biggest cases like Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson. He's done everything. Then there is another MK Media star her name is Moring Callahan. She swung by the set to discuss the serial killer is real keys.

She actually wrote a whole book about this guy fascinating. And finally we are closing things out with our feature interview of Sammy the bull. This is the guy right who like the crime family guy the hitman. There was a question in this interview that was like after your 19th murder.

I mean that's something I've never asked anybody before.

Since this guy was fascinating and has an incredible life story about like the time he moved to the suburbs like the really nice suburbs. They more affluent suburbs and what happened when his children tried to make friends. I've never forgotten this exchange out of all the interviews I've done his stands out. I hope you enjoy. We'll see you Monday. My guest today for the full show is someone I have long admired Mark Garagos.

He's one of the most fascinating accomplished legit lawyers trial lawyers in the country. He has defended some of the biggest names in the most famous and infamous cases over the past few decades, including several cases several making big headlines right now and even today. Here's just a few of his most famous clients Michael Jackson actress Winona Ryder. Actor Josie Smollett. Oh yes Colin Kaepernack and Scott Peterson.

“Do you know that there's news in the Scott Peterson case?”

This is one of the first cases I covered when I was at Fox News.

I was a young cub reporter. I didn't know what I was doing. I was much closer to being a lawyer than I was to being a journalist at that point in time. And so I love this case because it had all the elements and the whole country was riveted by it. Scott Peterson was convicted of killing his wife and their unborn child back in 2004. Well, he was in court yesterday being resettanced. He was given a death sentence at the time.

Well, he received a new sentence for those 2004 murders. But Peterson might be getting a new trial as well. So it's not just that his sentence has been effectively reduced. He may be getting a new trial. So we're going to get into why that is. And Mark Garagos believes to this day that Scott Peterson is innocent.

Going to get into Jesse Smollett. Talk about that. And new testimonies underway right now in the trial of Minnesota police officer Kim Potter, who's on trial for having shot Dante Wright with a gun, which she believed was a taser. So lots to discuss. Mark Garagos is a trial lawyer and managing partner of Garagos and Garagos. And co-host of the podcast reasonable doubt with Adam Corolla.

“Thank you so much for being here, Mark. How are you?”

Thank you. I'm wonderful because it's I guess kind of come full circle. I remember you covering the Peterson case and thought you had a bright future and see. I could prognosticate things then and now. Oh my god. I would. I would have been so honored if I had known that at the time. I just watched you in your such a skill trial attorney.

You're such confidence and you're at that the peak of all these massive cases. A lot of pressure. So that does mean a lot to me. Thank you for saying that. It was quite a was quite a different time. I mean, the you were just starting out Kimberly Goofoyle was just starting out. Then married to the the mayor and Nancy Grace and just kind of blown up.

So to speak and court TV was was really in its heyday at that point. I'll tell you the I'll tell you though that the I was thinking about a lot of those things yesterday, because as you just mentioned Scott was just pre-sentence then by the way.

“I think that's a little bit of Kabuki theater because the same judge who has this and you”

had mentioned that the California Supreme Court had reversed the death penalty unanimously by the way, because we had complained in real time the judge was using the absolute wrong standard for excusing jurors. If somebody didn't have a kind of a preference for the death penalty or not, he was just excusing anybody who was against the death penalty, which is not the standard. I was bitterly complaining at the time.

Yes, he should have followed up and said, but can you still be fair, could you still do it?

And the California Supreme Court is not only the poor judge to Deluke is now dead, but not only

“reversed it but kind of excoriated the prosecution. Why did you allow this to happen?”

You know, this was basically a year long proceeding and what a waste of time.

My position has been well, if you get kind of pro death penalty jurors, you're getting pro law enforcement jurors, and that should have tainted the guilt phase as well. What they did instead of going that far, what they did is they issued right after the reversal an OSC ordered to show cause saying to the trial judge, look, there's this woman who was a juror, strawberry shortcake is the way she was dubbed by the media.

And just to jump in, just to hold on Mark, because I just want to make sure that our audience is with us.

We're shifting gears a little. He got a new trial instead of a death sentence, because the judge shouldn't have been disqualifying jurors who had doubts about the death penalty.

“So that's why he got a different sentence.”

But he wants a new trial. He wants to redo on the guilt or innocence phase based on something else. Involving jurors, yes, but it's a different issue and it revolves around this as you say strawberry shortcake. Okay, go ahead. Exactly. And so what they've done is they had a they issued the Supreme Court issued in order to show cause. So now there's they're back in the trial court, the same judge who resents him to life yesterday has now set a hearing for next year. And the kind of an interesting twist that hasn't been reported on, she filed a declaration denying that she had lied or denying that she hadn't been truthful.

But now she's got a new lawyer and she's invoking the Fifth Amendment. Oh, and so anyway, so again, let's set it up because people are not as neck deep in it as you are. So this juror, the alleged misconduct is when you guys were going through because you were Scott's lawyer.

“I mean, I guess we should remember that again, you were his trialer.”

So when you were volunteering the jurors and figuring out who you guys wanted on the jury, you and the prosecution had to agree. This woman failed out a form and did not disclose that she had been the victim of domestic abuse while pregnant, which of course was the situation being alleged right here. And she needed to give it a pause, right? Yes, of course. And as a defense lawyer, you can either bounce somebody for cause saying there's no way this person can be fair. You can use your preparatory challenge of saying, I don't have to tell you why, I don't want her. You weren't given that opportunity because you didn't know you didn't know that this woman had been abused while pregnant.

She kept it a secret, orally in writing, I guess it came up a couple times she never disclosed.

And so I'll bounce it back to you and watch. So now she's pleading the fifth. Yeah, she filed a declaration presumably at the behest of the prosecution because it was attached, it was attached as an exhibit. And then she gets a new lawyer, now she's been now she's asking for immunity, which is shocking to me, which if you read between the lines, the prosecutor got her to say something presumably that she no longer thinks is true or didn't think was true at the time. If they don't give her immunity, then as you know, they'll strike the declaration and Scott's got a better than even chance of getting a new trial.

What did she say in the declaration? Because she, she, like, as I understood, it's his defense counsel saying, we came to understand that she had this thing and she didn't disclose it. Therefore, we're entitled to a new trial because he's entitled to, you know, a jury that doesn't have any sort of unfair bias against him. Why was she submitting an affidavit or a declaration, the juror? Because they were trying to say the of the appellate lawyers were saying for Scott that the she had not disclose this that she knew that it was relevant.

One of the reasons that this was a hot issue, I had caught two other jurors who had lied, prospective jurors who had lied about their background in having domestic violence and caught them in real time. And they had fooled me. I mean, one juror gone back, I mean, we're going back 17 years back then they had chat rooms and somebody had maxed me a chat room conversation that one of these prospective jurors had where she had was bragging that she fooled the dumb shit defense lawyer me. And it was going to get on this jury and fry his client and I confronted her with that after I got that I was a little ticked at my PI for not finding it, but that was the kind of stuff we were dealing with.

That's where we coined the term stealth jurors, jurors who want to get on a jury for, you know, some other agenda other than to do justice. So now this court, I guess February 20th, I think is what the February 25th, the hearing on whether he should get a new trial on guilt or innocence will begin.

And then half of them say legal analysts say he has a very good chance of getting it.

Now the we're in the state court, so the California Supreme Court as I indicated had unanimously referred this back to the state trial court.

“It's an awful heavy lift for a trial court judge in a case like this, remember at the time you probably have a pretty good memory of it.”

This was the most hated man in America since Amber Frey came on the scene that was all she wrote in terms of the kind of pre trial prejudice and animosity and animus towards Scott.

So if I, I hate to be a cynic, but it is a heavy lift.

However, if strawberry shortcake does not get it in get immunity and will not testify, that declaration of hers gets struck and they're left with no evidence to rebut they being the prosecution. To rebut the OSC and so the presumably the he would get a reversal.

“Now if I if you're asking me to prognosticate, I'm always more confident that that would happen in federal court and state court, but we'll see.”

It let's go back through it because his sister Scott's sister Janey has been a tireless sister and law has been a tireless advocate for him. I watched a 48 hours piece not long ago that got into it in depth with her and she and his supporters maintain he didn't do it. I'm not just like the prosecution didn't meet its burden that he is innocent of this crime and the theory isn't just to remind the viewers. What happened was it was December it was it was December 24th. It was Christmas Eve right 2002 and I'll let you tell him mark what was the the theory of the prosecution was what happened.

The prosecution was that he had at least in the opening statements they had taken the position that he killed her on the 23rd that he transported her in the back of a boat up to the bay that he dumped her on the 24th and then came home and had made conflicting statements golfing or fishing blah blah blah. I'm trying on by closings. We had I thought demonstrably prove that she was alive on the morning of the 24th and the way we had done that is they had a forensic computer expert who was on the stand and during cross examination I got him to admit that it appeared that the activity on the morning of the 24th was consistent with the websites at Lacey would go to that she had logged in and had all the signatures of Lacey so.

In the hamper that the clothes that were there would have been the dirty clothes that she had won on the 23rd. The prosecutor Rick Distassos now a judge, by the way. Got up in closing a bundle and said, well, really doesn't matter. Yeah, we may have been wrong. We don't know when she was dead. We don't know how she's dead. We don't know where but the fact is his alibi was in the bay that's where she was found for or so months later.

“Therefore, you must convict and a couple of the jurors in real time back then said, but for her being found in the bay, they never would have convicted.”

I always thought and I publicly before I took the case said, you know, there's guys in in state prison on a lot less evidence that the body washes up in the same location.

Where your alibi was, but the problem was it was the four month hiatus. Everybody in the world knew where he had been and so that kind of takes away, if you will, the the causal connection. And number two, that area where the bay was searched repeatedly by a four or five different agencies and they found nothing until after this huge storm. And that's when they found Lacy's body and Connor's body as well. Because Lacy was eight months pregnant with their son Connor and the theory of the prosecution was that he killed her because he was having an affair with Amber Fry and he didn't want a child.

And he didn't want to be with Lacy anymore. He wanted to be with Amber Fry. You know, very beautiful blonde who, you know, she was the glory. All read moment, you know, that we see an virtually every case. And that was the bombshell because when Lacy was missing the whole country was saying, where is she, where is she is this beautiful eight month pregnant woman. I'm sorry mother Sharon Rochelle, you should see her everywhere. Scott Peterson is a good looking guy. It's like, oh, they seem like this all American couple. My God. It's Christmas Eve. What happened to Lacy and Connor the unborn baby. And then things turned when Amber Fry came forward. Amber had been told by Scott. This is one of the things that led people to hate him and believe he did it.

And then Sharon turned on him, Lacy's family turned on him. And then you tell me, Mark, because I know you don't like it when your clients give interviews to the press. I've listened to you for years. And I know you, you'll dump a client for that. But he sat down with Diane Sawyer and spewed a bunch of nonsense that we all knew wasn't true. We actually pulled a clip because I wanted to ask you about how you the lawyer felt about this. But here he is 17 plus years ago talking to Diane Sawyer on GMA.

Did your wife find out about it?

“I told my wife when early December. Did it cause a rupture in the marriage?”

It was not a positive obviously, you know, inappropriate. But it was not something we weren't dealing with. A lot of arguing? No. No. No. I can't say that even, you know, she was okay with the idea. But it wasn't anything that would break us apart. There wasn't a lot of anger? No. The Diane Sawyer confused face speaks for us all.

I used to say during this case that the absolute worst demographic for Scott and for me was professional white women.

I had never seen, I could go to the gym in the morning during this trial.

And there would be because there were no cameras in the courtroom, which, by the way, was probably my biggest mistake because things were being reported from New York. And there were all these urban myths. And I could explain or just abuse somebody about any of the pieces of evidence. But ultimately, they would say, what about this? What about this? And I would debunk it debunk it debunk it. And then it would always default to, yeah, well, I had an ex-boyfriend just like him. And I could see where he would have done this. And you can't, you know, there's a, there's a visceral quality to that where you just can't get over it.

And this interview, I mean, you've captured my sentiment exactly. I tell people, funny, I suppose we may talk about out Baldwin.

“The idea that somehow you need to go out and do an interview and you need to curate your image, so to speak, when you're in the eye at the storm is I can't think of worst advice consistently.”

The only guy who ever did it with any success ultimately was Robert Blake.

And other than that, I can't give you an example where it worked out well for somebody to go do an interview while they're pre-charging or while the prosecutors making decisions. It just makes no sense whatsoever. And he, I always say it's so obvious that he's lying. He did not tell Lacy about his affair and there, there was no tension because she didn't know there may have been tension for him. And then the other thing he did, you know, apart from I believe murdering his wife and unborn child. But the other thing he did was, while he was at Lacy's vigil, you know, they're having the visuals like where is she, where's Connor because their body didn't come up as you say until April at the marina.

He's on the phone. We now know Amber Fry. She went to the cops when she realized the guy she was dating was the guy married to this Lacy Peterson, who everybody's looking for. So to her credit, she went to the cops and said, I think I'm dating this man, they had her due 29 hours worth of tapes with him.

“And one of them I will never forget is she's talking to him. He's like, I'm at the eye full tower Paris. It's so beautiful. He was at the vigil for Lacy Mark. He is guilty as the day is long.”

Well, you know what I, the, the counter to that is I'm what I look. I'm with you. The first time I heard it, I said, how are we ever going to get over this? But then in talking with him, he said, look, I understood that the minute Amber surface, that the minute she came out, all bets were off there. We're going to stop looking for Lacy. I had to do something. I had to keep her on ice hoping that we would find Lacy and then that would solve the problem. And I, you know, I often said people say, well, how can you, you're drinking the cool later and say, you know, you're psychotic, how could you believe this? Look, I've represented over the almost 40 years.

Probably, I don't know, 500 homicide cases over the 40 years, maybe less, but I, I know when somebody's good for something. I know when they're capable of it. I figured that out. I can tell.

And I'll tell you, based on the evidence, the evidence, I know that people say will circumstantial. He didn't act right. He, you know, the, the tapes you mentioned. Always are thrown back in my face. And so, yeah, but the problem is nobody can explain where this happened, how this happened, how this guy who gets on an interview and does not equip himself well was able to not leave a forensic trace anywhere anyhow of this crime. How was it the perfect crime.

“Why couldn't you have, like, smothered her or strangled her, which wouldn't lead to, you know, blood evidence, her DNA would already be all over the house. And then he got her body out of the house.”

Yeah, but there wasn't anything that was consistent with that. I mean, they went through, if you saw kinds of the, and we went extensively over the forensic, they couldn't even find anything. There would be excretions, there would be evidence or tell tell signs trace evidence that would have.

I got another one for you. I got another one for you. I got another one for you. Why wouldn't, why wouldn't you take a polygraph and the night cops came over the, the first issue was reported missing.

And they said we, we take a polygraph and he refused. Only because it's not a miscible call for me. Oh, but this is at the point where she's missing. He's supposed to be the grieving terrified husband where is she, oh, my God. Right, like, if I go missing for a day and they say, Doug, we take a polygraph Doug says, yes, of course, whatever, whatever you need, but he didn't. Well, the pens, I don't know if Doug was playing around on the side, but he didn't tell himself. He did that. What do you know? What? No.

I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to ruin what appears to be a very happy marriage.

“I, you never know. But look, I, I always advise clients if you want to take a polygraph, I'm going to do with my guy first. I mean, polygraphs are notoriously,”

um, uh, slip shot. There's a reason there's a code section that doesn't allow them in. And there's people who know how to pass them and people who would never pass them even if you are telling the truth. So to me, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I still come back to our circle back. There is no evidence. There's absolutely no evidence of anything that shows where how or when. Well, he, the evidence was all circumstantial about his affair about him, saying she was dead about him on Christmas Eve. We're literally going fishing in his boat.

He couldn't remember what bait he used when the cops asked him. He went fishing in the very same place. Her body and Conner's body washed up four months later. He was researching the currents.

Um, like that was basically the case. They never were able to say how he allegedly killed her or even as he went out when exactly when.

And by the way, we did a, um, a demonstration in that boat of trying to toss a body over it. He would have capsized every, every time. The judge would not allow that demonstration to be admitted in evidence. I thought it was outrageous because he allowed it a prosecution demonstration that did not replicate it. Also, um, the fishing on Christmas Eve. It came out in trial. I never knew this.

That, um, Lacy's, uh, stepfather was fishing on New on Christmas Eve as well. He had never disclosed that even though people were saying, who goes fishing on Christmas Eve.

Um, so, you know, there's a lot of things. You could not always weave together things that don't look right. But at the end of the day, uh, this is not, this is a guy who's got absolutely nothing of complete pristine background. If you think you just committed cold-rotted murder, especially if it's unborn son, which nobody will tell you that he wasn't excited about having a son.

“And I think that's what he wanted to say yesterday in the sentencing hearing, but the judge would let him out look you.”

Right. I'll, I'll make just a couple of points for you. Uh, the, the, the affect his weird affect. He was weirdly aloof. He was smiling at the memorial caught on camera with big smiles and people were like, that is not a grieving husband looking for his wife. That's a, that's a sociopath. But we recently had on a man denox and she was talking about, you know, obviously she was wrongly prosecuted by this crazy Italian prosecutor. And she, her affect, too, was a little off-seeming at the time. And it was used against her in a very unfair way. You really can't go by that.

Uh, as it turns out. And then the other thing is what the theory seems to be from, from Janey and others is that there were robbers. There were burglars in there. In their Modesto California neighborhood that they were seen that previously we were told that the robbery or the burglary they committed was on the 26, but they have evidence that it actually happened on the 24th and that lazy may have been walking her dog may have seen them and may have been kidnapped by them. The dog was later found by itself with its leash still on. Some believe Scott did that to make it look like somebody grabbed her and others, you know, his side will say the burglars got her.

It's just got too many salacious, interesting elements. Okay. So much more with Mark Garagos. He's represented everybody. Everybody including Jesse Smollett including Michael Jackson.

“You're going to ask me about Kim Potter, Galine Maxwell, and much much more don't go away. Okay, Mark. So let's talk about Kim Potter. Kim Potter is the police officer who's now on trial for having shot Dante right to death.”

Where she clearly mistook her her taser for her gun or I guess her gun for her taser. And you can hear her on the tape saying, I'm going to taser taser taser taser and then she shoots with her firearm and he dies. And it's obviously a tragic accident, but the prosecutor there has decided to treat it as a crime. She charged with first and second degree manslaughter and boy there in a battle there in that courtroom. I mean, both sides are fighting it out. This is the case in which the prosecution had, I'm sorry, the judge had some lunatic show up at her house trying to videotape her.

She spoke to that just the other day saying it was an effort to intimidate me. Good luck.

And the guy who did it was arrested. But anyway, a new piece of videotape now showing Kim Potter after the shooting. We've all seen the taser taser taser taser. His new piece of videotape showing her right after that upset and hear how her fellow officer officer Johnson tries to console her. Listen, there's a lot of crying and then we'll get to the dialogue. Just for you.

“There you have it. I mean, I don't know Mark. I think the average person looks at that and says, "Why are we charging her again?"”

And she just screwed up. But like, how is it criminal? You know, there's, I've been on obviously the criminal defense side. I also do a probably half of my practice are suing police agencies and situations where people have been wrongly killed. And I've watched police officers almost uniformly get acquitted or have the judge dismissed and a probable cause for a seating. It's very, very difficult to ever convict a police officer.

“In this case, I think is very tough for the prosecution. And this tape, and I'm glad you played it, certainly gives, you know, people often say, well, they didn't show remorse or they didn't understand or they, there wasn't, they didn't act right.”

You know, I've spent a career defending people who didn't act right. I mean, clearly here, this is somebody's in the throes of a great deal of angst. And I think that that is going to probably carry the day for it. Because remember, other than people who are famous police officers at the only other category of people that truly get a presumption of innocence. And interesting, you know, to me, it boils down to the, what are the instructions going to be to the jury?

Because if the judge tells the jury that she can't have behaved recklessly, which is required to prove first or second degree.

She, if she can't have to behave recklessly, without knowing she was taking a dangerous risk, you know what I mean? If she, if it was a true accident, she didn't realize she was pulling out a firearm and shooting. Then I don't see how she gets convicted and her bronca who's been amazing. He's great. He writes over at legalinsurrection.com. They were amazing during the written house trial and everything and just said was right. It is follows. I was like, this is exactly it. He says the critical question is this, is the state required to prove that Kimberly Potter was aware that she was holding a firearm in her hand in order to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that her conduct in handling it was reckless and manslaughter.

To, they have to prove she was aware that she was holding a firearm. The defense is, their position is that you cannot be engaged in reckless conduct that you do not know you are engaged in, right? Like you don't, you don't know you're firing a gun. And the judge hasn't, hasn't instructed the jury and hasn't, and she hasn't given either side guidance on how this is going to come down. I kind of wonder, like, it all comes down to which way she really has, how she informs on recklessness. Well, one of the problems is, and we've been arguing this in California state court for years, the difference between the state of mind for what's called an implied malice murder, the difference in homicide between murder and manslaughter is whether there's malice.

I've often argued, and there's, I'm not alone here, that sometimes the state of mind when the jury gets the instruction on one of these manslaughter charges is very misleading and, and jury doesn't know what to do with it.

And here you've got, I can understand why the judge is not giving guidance, so to speak, because they have what are called pattern instructions.

They've got instructions that had been either affirmed or blessed, if you will, by the appellate courts. But she probably, in this case, wants to hear out the evidence comes out and then tailor it's in that, and tailor the instruction of that, but it's a horrific job for jurors, for lay people, to have to kind of parse through the language,

“which never is very clear. And then put that in context of, what am I going to do with a police officer who didn't go out there with the intention to do the killing?”

And so that's a, you know, God forbid that you're one of those jurors. It's interesting, because the defense seems to be hedging its bets. They're going to argue that she didn't have a state of mind at all, intending to kill anybody. Obviously, she didn't intend to fire her, her gun. I think we can all give her that, based on what we've seen, although some people aren't. But they also seem to be kind of hedging by saying, even if she didn't intend to fire the gun, she had cause, because the, the guy Dante right was was driving away with an officer in the car half in the car.

So what, what the prosecution did was they put on officer lucky, who was a three year officer, who she, she, Kim Potter was supposed to be training that day. And he was a prosecution witness sort of talking about his experience in what he saw. And then the defense attorney got up there and in like 20 minutes, seamless little boom, boom, boom, boom.

Cross examination got out the following testimony. Let's listen to it.

There's a voice that appears and says, Kim, that guy was trying to take off with me in the car. Remember hearing that? Yes. Who's voice was that? Sergeant Johnson's voice.

This is a high crime area for guns as well. Yes. Infra-grugs. Yes. If your intuition is formulated by a number of things, but among them is that you've been in this area all your life.

Yes. And know the streets as well as anybody. Yes. And you ran the plates, found the taps were stale, and then you had a reason to stop the car. Is that right?

Yes. You wanted to find out what was going on. Yes.

“Did you had an intuition that something else was going on inside the taps?”

Yes. You didn't quite know, but you're a curious. Yes. And there was nothing wrong with you stopping the car for the reasons you said you stopped. Correct.

No.

So he basically was trying to set up.

It was a proper stop. You were following order. And that there was an area that was known for problematic crimes and criminals and so on. And you know, you also get out the fact that the one officer was half in the car when he tried to take off. It's a technique that was used by the defense lawyer that he's probably been gored by that countless times by prosecutors who go through that same litany when they're trying to convict one of his clients.

I mean, I've heard that kind of, this is a high crime area. This is why you had an intuition. This is why you did it, blah, blah, blah. That's that's normally what the prosecutor would do here because you have a cop who's on trial. They, the other cop is going to support your theory.

You're being the defense lawyer and it's going to give you what you want, which is exactly what he just did right there. And by the way, you're absolutely correct. And again, because what this does is even if you think that she, that she isn't being truthful when she says she had a gun. That even with a gun, there is, you know, she had a reasonable dial as to what was happening there. Whether or not she could use the force that she used.

What do you think?

“I mean, if you had to place a bat and I realized the trials in the middle, but like, what would you guess a jury would do with this?”

Because I realized the prosecution is like it was irresponsible. You know, the, a man's dead. She needs to be held accountable. But it's like you watch this distraught woman. She's been on the force 26, six years.

She's not like shoving. She doesn't have a litany of complaints against her. She's a mom. You can hear her distress. They're really going to throw this woman in jail for upwards of 15 years that Keith Ellison there.

He wants to jack up the sentence and guidelines on her.

Well, I'll tell you, I'm during, I'll give you an example during the written house trial. One of the reasons I was kind of leery of predicting, even though I thought that it looked to me like it was a self defense was you can't look or I can't see the jurors. I mean, a jury selection, I've said this for years is everything. Most cases are over by the time you've sworn the panel because you, you understand. I don't care how good you are as a lawyer.

You're never going to change people's view or their prison for what they look through and who they are.

“So you have to basically pick a jury or deselect a jury that will give you your best shot.”

So I haven't seen their jury, but I will tell you that so far the way the evidence is unfolding. It sure is a compelling argument for a not guilty. And that I think is probably where it's headed. Like I said, I'll circle back to what I told you before. Cops get a presumption of innocence and said a lot of other people don't get.

That's true. And they don't always deserve it. But I feel like in this case, come on. The woman did it. She made a terrible mistake.

She didn't have a history of negligence on the force.

Oh, this is like a hot head or she's never had any business having the badge.

Not only did she resign right after this happened, but the chief of police was forced out. It was like, okay. By the way, the New York Times is reporting that there was a lawsuit against Dante Wright's family. Raising questions about whether Dante Wright in May of 2019, the woman filing a lawsuit claims that Dante Wright shot her son in the head in Minneapolis, leaving him severely disabled.

I mean, I don't know that the jury's going to hear anything about that. But, you know, it's the cops walk up to these defendants, not known as what they're dealing with. But they always have to presume the guy's got a gun and is willing to use it. Well, the I saw that today and we most probably that will not come in evidence. Because unless the cop knew or had some indication that they knew about that incident,

the judge would probably rule that that's an admissible, but having seen that, it's certainly.

“I think would give pause to a prosecutor if they knew about that when they were filing the case and what charges they were filing.”

I mean, that's that's when you get back to prosecutorial discretion and. Part of the argument you've kind of implicitly made here, Megan, is why why are they exercising their discretion in this way on this case? What is the motivation for that? Is it because they want to see justice or, you know, are they pandering? So that's a question. He's a political hack.

I mean, he is he's a political hack and he's the AG there and he's the one who insisted on jacking up the charges. And now he wants to push for a jack-up sentence if she's found guilty. It happened in the wake of George Floyd and it was in Minnesota. So all that, you know, temperatures are already up and the nation is stressed and that was reflected. I think in her reaction to what she did, but we still need to, you know, laws the law and not everything's a crime just because it's awful.

“And she and the city will be sued. I think they are ready sued and they'll get millions of dollars.”

That's to me, the remedy here is civil lawsuit, which is going to go the way of the family. But more with Mark Gargos, we're going to pick up Jesse Somelet right after this break, who is represented by his firm. Oh, that's exciting. So Mark, Jesse Somelet, the trial is in deliberations right now. The jury has had the case for about five hours as by my count to two hours yesterday after closing arguments.

And now they began this morning right after nine central time. So five hours, they're deliberating and just FYI, the racial makeup of the jury is, let's see. They're white, the majority white, middle aged, one black man, one black woman is an alternate. And they are now kicking around whether they believe Jesse Somelet was the victim of a hate crime or made the whole thing up for favorable publicity. So I didn't realize until preparing for this that you, your firm had a role in this case.

Well, I handled the case originally the first time it was dismissed. And I violated one of my standard rules, which is, I generally will not do a state court case criminal case out of state out of California.

I just, I think, I'll do federal anywhere, but state court criminal, I always think is kind of a weird creature, so to speak.

But we did it there, got it dismissed, I thought that was the end of it. And then, lo and behold, the case was once again resurrected. And I am kind of dancing on the head of a pin here because my New York partner Tina is trying it with local council.

That he's issued an informal gag order, and even though I'm not on the trial team this time around my partner is so I'm trying to dance around that. I will tell you that that I thought it was resolved fairly last time. I have my own theories as to what's going on right now, but since there's an informal gag order, I'm gagging myself, but I have a lot to say.

“And after a a verdict or a resolution here, I'm happy to fill you in as to what I really think is going on.”

I accept you mean with the with the lengthy deliberation or with the fact that charge. So with the why this was resurrected, why the case was resurrected and kind of the players involved in everything that has transpired. I think I think frankly, it's outrageous that he's on trial again for the very same thing. That it was already resolved on.

And what punishment did he face the first time around?

Well, the punishment was he was the case was dismissed. He forfeited $10,000, which was the basically the 10% of the bail and had performs some community service. So that was all the things. I that's nothing he deserves. I don't think he belongs to jail for a long time, but he deserves to be punished.

He made this whole thing up. He undermined legitimate claims of racial attacks. He did more to damage, you know, black people who genuinely get attacked by racist than anybody's done in a long long time. And he should face trial and be punished. Okay, so you and I can agree to disagree. I like it when you can't argue.

Yeah, I was just going to say when I'm not muscled, I'm happy to respond to all of that. Including the fact that he's maintained his innocence testified that it didn't happen. So it is OJ.

OJ, I always say the jury got it right. Both cases in OJ.

I understand that the proof argument in the OJ case, but that man killed his wife and her friend Ron Goldman. And there's absolutely zero doubt in my mind. And the civil jury did their job. That's right, exactly right. All right, so we'll table Jesse Smollett and we will accept your invitation to come back and discuss it.

I do think it's five hours is actually not that long because they have a lot to go through. And I don't think it's too early to be drawing conclusions one way or the other.

“You know, people who think it's clear or like, why didn't they come back two hours?”

You know, but I think at a respect for the process a lot of juries. Just want to go through the evidence, go through the testimonies. And you never know. There's a whole lot of evidence. That's I've had jurors say that in high profile cases.

I remember in a case I tried to say an amount of 20 years ago that I asked them why they were out. They came back and they equated the client across the board. They said, well, what were you hung up on? They said, we really, really weren't hung up. It's just it's a high profile case.

We didn't want people to think that we were just going to come back not guilty immediately. All are OJ. So they jurors are aware of that. They get that. Yep.

There is a question of interesting piece over on national review today about whether Jesse Smollett should face a judge of the judge's charges because to people on, you know, my side of the aisle who think he's clearly lying and have been listening to the, you know, police chief and everybody all along. They, they, they conclude what he said in that stand was so patently false that he should be facing charges for it. I mean, there's no question either he was lying or those two brothers were lying. They're both cannot be true.

“So I think that you're going to keep torturing me with this when I can't respond.”

Well, let me ask it this way. Let me ask it this way. Is it for partner and trouble who's doing their usual is it now I won't forget Jesse how unusual would it be to if there's an acquittal in a criminal case for the prosecutor to then come back and charge the man acquitted with having purgered himself. Well, let me give you a more an example that happens more often in federal court where you have sentencing guidelines. You get on the stand and testify and lose you get your sentence enhanced.

I mean, that's that because you did not accept responsibility, you basically obstructed justice, you lose three levels of acceptance.

So it happens in the reverse all the time and it shouldn't be that way, but it is because you've got an absolute right to go to trial force the prosecution approved their case. You shouldn't get punished when you go to trial and try to prove that you're not by taking the stand, which is waiting your fifth amendment rights. So I take the opposite. In fact, it reminds me of when people say, how do you sleep at night knowing that your client is guilty? And I said, I don't lose sleep over that. I lose sleep over going away when I got a client who I believe is innocent.

That's when I lose sleep and engage in alcohol therapy. Right, a hundred percent, you know, when I went to law school, I used to be that person. I wanted to be a prosecutor and there was a very well known defense.

It's a very well known defense attorney who came in and started talking with and the young idealistic me actually asked that question, how do you sleep at night?

You know, knowing that you're getting guilty murderers and so on and he answered it the same way you did. I come around. I'm definitely more prosecuted prosecution oriented still, but I love the role that criminal defense attorneys play and it is critical to to do process to the to the nations standing on the stills upon which it was built originally and I hate that it's being eroded, you know, more and more

“And various settings and sort of you get railroad or ideology if without a defense lawyer.”

You know, it's interesting flip that has taken place, you know, I made my career basically in the 90s defending Susan McDougall who was Bill and Hillary Clinton's erstwhile business partner in white line and I tried her case in Santa Monica tried against the offs of independent counsel for an obstruction of justice. We wanted little rock against Ken Star. And all the arguments that we used to make and that the Democrats used to make in the 90s about an office of independent counsel and a prosecutor who had political motives will now you see that those are the same arguments that President Trump was.

Yeah, it's all the most identical and the Democrats were all the sudden embracing law.

“I'm standing you by there. There's much, much more to discuss including Alec Baldwin Michael Jackson will do it right after this quick break.”

All right, let's talk Alec Baldwin because I did listen to your reasonable doubt podcast with Adam where you talked about that and as usual you're fascinating on it and had some very strong thoughts on Alex decision to come out and fight the PR war before the legal war, which is the far more important war.

Has been settled. You can't stop these huge egos, you know, from going out there and doing what they believe they is best for them and the brand.

Now when a play for the audience, the section I heard you taking particular issue with on the question of whether he feels guilty listen. No, no, I feel that there is, I feel that that someone is responsible for what happened and I can't say who that is, but I know it's not me. I mean, I honest to God, if I felt that I was responsible, I might have killed myself if I thought I was responsible. So why did you not like that? I look, there was an easy way to thread this needle if you're insistent on throwing yourself on the grenade is obviously he is.

You say do I feel guilty? Yes, I feel horrible guilt in a moral sense, but legally do I feel responsible? No, I would never have done this blah blah blah. I mean, there's a way to thread that needle. This response he is going to get, you know, I don't wish a criminal prosecution on anybody in the world.

“I mean, it's the worst thing in the world, but to go through, but he's going to have this thing at a very baseline level jammed right back up at him in civil lawsuit deposition.”

All kinds of ways and it's a horrible horrible look and by the way, you mentioned Scott Peterson in the GMA as we're talking right now as we speak the judge in in Mr. Smallet's case is reappearantly reconsidering the GMA interview there. And I mentioned Susan McDougal, one of her kind of betn wars in her prosecutions was the GMA interview. So God knows if you're a criminal defendant, that's the access of evil is to ever get on the GMA, I'll tell you. I'm not through the GMA interview. You know, GMA is like, their big ABC in general is very big on crime, so that's why they get all these exclusives because they've made that part of their beat.

What would you do with that? Like if you had Alc Baldwin on this stand and you were representing Helena's family, you know, she was a cinematographer who got killed or some of the other guys at filed lawsuits who witnessed it for emotional distress. I don't have a lawyer. Yeah, there's a lawyer whose co-counts, like I think with Gloria on one of these lawsuits and I know exactly what they're going to do with it. They're going to take that. They're going to jam it right back up. What do you mean you don't feel guilty? Who do you know that was responsible if it wasn't you? Why are you saying that? Why are you shaking your responsibility? By the way, every actor from John Schneider on the right to George Clooney on the left has already said this is an impossibility.

If you were careful, blah, blah, blah, they're going to do a tap dance on him and by the way, he's going to walk himself into, you know, they've only got a tower apparently if you believe what's being reported a $5 million insurance.

I don't know why they think that image control is job number one. Job number one is to keep you out of harm's way criminally. Job number two is to deal with the civil liability.

Job number three is to make a men's morally and ethically for, you know, your role in this horrible, horrible situation, which I don't think it was intentional noise. I don't buy any of the conspiracy theories. But at the same time, how do you, you know, he could have said the obvious solution is it's very difficult for me getting up in the morning because I was the last person who cocked that gun, whether I pulled the trigger or not.

“I feel an enormous, enormous amount of guilt in a non legal sense over that.”

Right, right, and the more he blames himself, the more our instinct would be to let him off the hook, right, like if you see him really being himself. Right, but he keeps saying the opposite. I explain this to clients all the time, remorse is you can't fake remorse. You can't, you can't get up and people can sense that, whether it's a jury or a judge or a fact finder, either you're authentic and you have remorse or you're a phony and you don't. I mean, remorse by the way that tape you played earlier of the officer who shot their tape.

That to me is real authentic remorse and immediate aches. Yeah, so, Alec, he didn't have to do this. He's been speaking with the police, right? And so, in trying to stay off legal charges, that's the avenue. Talk to the sheriff, have your lawyer there, make sure you're giving them all the information. He appears to have ticked off the sheriff with that stuff and awful as interview because let me play the sound by that Alec said that that seems to be getting him in hot water because the sheriff has now responded.

Publicly, which is not what you want. Here's Baldwin on whether he actually fired the gun. So I take the gun and I start to cock the gun. I'm not going to pull the trigger. I said, do you see that you will just cheat it down and tilt it down a little bit like that. And I cock the gun and go, can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that? And she says, and I like go with the hammer or the gun and the gun goes off. I like go with the hammer or the gun, the gun goes on. At the moment, the sights were the moment the gun went off. Yeah, that was the moment the gun went off.

Well, the trigger wasn't pulled. I didn't pull the trigger.

Do you never pull the trigger? No, no, no, no, no. I would never point to gun anybody to pull the trigger at them. Never.

All right, because that really will get me sued. Well, now the Santa Fe sheriff has responded saying, and I quote, guns don't just go off. So whatever needs to happen to manipulate the firearm, he did that, and it was in his hands.

“What would you have thought if you saw that as Alex lawyer?”

I would have said, I told you so. And I would have probably pulled a Harlan Braun and resigned. Like he did in Robert Blake's case. I mean, you can't go out there. This is not a public relations issue. This is a criminal investigation. You can't go out there and then inflame the very person who is investigating you. You, as you said, you cooperate. You try to show that you are anything but trying to provoke them. But he's repeatedly done everything that he shouldn't do. It's almost a textbook case of what you shouldn't do when you're in arms.

Yeah, it's he's not campaigning for an Oscar. He's trying to keep himself out of jail. And that of bankruptcy court.

Well, you know, he said the other day. I don't know if you saw this. You've got the clip. He said somebody told me, basically, I'm not in the arms way.

I don't know who that somebody was, unless they're baiting you into being stupid. So I mean, it's mind-blowing to me. If somebody's telling you that, I hope it isn't your lawyer. Yeah, we haven't heard that from the sheriff. Okay. So let's talk about speaking of famous clients with huge egos who believe they know better when it comes to dealing with the press and how to handle law enforcement. Michael Jackson, while you were dealing with the Scott Peterson case,

you are representing Michael Jackson on the child molestation criminal case. And I realized that ended because you had to focus on Scott Peterson and Michael was like, oh, they weren't person who represented me. But that was crazy.

“I'll give you a back story there. The originally before that case was filed, I had had repeated conversations with the DA and his name was Tom Sned and I believe.”

Yeah, I kept telling him this case is a loser. I don't know what you're doing. This fan, this are these old family, I've investigated. I have figured out and I did it in real time for Michael because I represented Michael for years at that point.

And so I advised them the Jackson team, they needed to kind of extricate themselves from this and sure enough they did.

“And then the Arvizo family went to the same lawyer that had previously represented the accuser from 1993 that Howard whitesman wouldn't power.”

Can I just clarify something, Mark? I just got a little lost there. You told Michael to extricate himself from what really like when he was friends with the boy and the family prior to the accuser.

These are grifters. Do not offend them. That was basically your take.

Yeah, I won't reveal the attorney client, but that's a pretty good, pretty good synapses. And so then what happened was is the Santa Barbara GA ended up in dating him so that they wouldn't go the way probable cause preliminary hearing in California almost all criminal felony cases are prosecuted by way of a preliminary hearing. They wouldn't want the witnesses on the stand cause they knew what we would do to him so they didn't end run. They indicted. Well, when they indicted him on a conspiracy. That was the first come. Well, I took a look at that. And I remember saying to Michael to time I said, hey, this conspiracy has nothing to do with you. This was my investigation of the Arvizo family.

I'm going to end up having to testify in this case. You need another lawyer, which is when we brought in Johnny Cochran brought in Ben brothman by good buddy Ben. Because I, you testified, I remember that you testified not once for twice that I was the one who did the investigation. I was, you couldn't blame Michael for that. I was the one who was any so called conspiracy, which was kind of manufactured by the prosecutor was at my best. I see because they were like, Michael, you've been investigating this poor family, this poor young child and you were like, it wasn't him. It was me. So you couldn't represent him. You were a witness.

“I was a witness. And like I say, I didn't testify just once in front of Judge Melville in the jury. I testified twice and I'll never forget the second time saying something which that jury found to be very humorous.”

I think I was mocking the prosecutor. And I turned to Pat Harris who was then with me. And I said, this jury's never going to convict him. This is a laughing jury is an acquitting jury.

That's an interesting rule. So and you were right, they did not convict him. But of course. These stories about him would contact. Well, yeah, because as you point out, the family had to like, they'd suit other people. Like, when you see these vexatious litigants who sue over and over and over again, it's like, Okay. But the accusations against him would never stop. And I've been dying to ask you about this. And I use, you know, a lot of our listeners are just listeners. They're not watching this on YouTube. So I'm using air quotes.

The documentary about Michael, that was on HBO and what you thought of those two accusers, Jim, safe chuck and Mark Robbs. I'll tell you what I thought about that documentary. I came very, very sweet.

“I came very close to suing in that case because I remember Adam actually on our podcast had played a clip from the documentary.”

They made it seem like I was saying, I'm going to land like a ton of bricks on top of these accusers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That isn't what happened. What the documentary filmmaker had done was he cut to splice a press conference. I had done. The press conference was because when I picked up Michael from Vegas and took him to Santa Barbara to surrender, the air carrier, the private charter had installed a pinhole camera that had spied on my attorney client conversations with Michael. Yes. So I, you know, I found out about that.

And it's a guy who's shopping a lawyer who's shopping your conversation on the jet with Michael.

For a million bucks and I she gave me the name I called the lawyer I said, are you out of your mind? You can't you can't shop. This is was attorney client.

And he said my client thinks he's won the lottery. So I went to court. I got a restraining order came outside and said I'm going to land like a ton of bricks on you when you violate the attorney client privilege. The documentary maker cut and pasted that to make it seem like I was talking about the accusers, which I wasn't by the way that guy who we got the restraining order against was later prosecuted federally convicted. And I got a twenty five million dollar judge or twenty two million dollar judgment against him.

I'm sure the guy doesn't have twenty two million dollars anyway, but it's a moral victory.

“I can't believe your life is so fascinating. You've done everything you represented every one.”

So I saw that documentary and I was like, okay, it's not doesn't look good for Michael. That's for sure. But because I am a lawyer at heart like you, I needed to know more. So I started digging and digging and digging and then I found all this stuff in particular about weighed. About the lies he's told in his civil litigation against the Jackson estate about how he denied having shopped written and shopped a book about Michael with auditory things in it. And then it turned out they found it. They got it from like random house or one of the publishers. So he lied. He got caught lying under oath at his deposition.

Then they demanded copies of said book from his computer. He said he didn't have any or so he basically lied at every step. And then they proved that he had copies on his computer that he tried to write over. I mean, he was lying all along. And the other guy leaves saying. Every single point and that documentary maker should be ashamed of himself. He didn't mention any of it exactly was completely sanitized.

It was a complete rewrite of history, but you know, that's I hate to say that that's emblematic, but it certainly seems to be emblematic of what's happening in America right now.

“And with the when I think people on the right, like to call mainstream media, but it's really kind of up for it is what's happened with journalism and so called journalism and the docu journalism.”

Well, then you get the impromptu of Oprah at the end, like interviewing the documentary and like, oh, tell us all, just as truthful as we think you are, are you even more truthful. New brilliant shines. It was this bullshit. I don't know what happened between Michael and either one of these men when they were younger. I don't know no one knows we weren't there, but well, they know. But the documentary and again, air quotes had an obligation to include that information about those two accusers because the other guy's safe chuck had just been hit.

I think with a $500,000 lawsuit two weeks before he came out as an accuser. You know, it's like, now, maybe that doesn't make him a liar, but we deserve his an audience to know. We deserve to know. And I go on this terrible lot, Mark, because I hate the absence of due process and trial by media, even though I'm in the media. And what I hear from everybody is though, yeah, but he was a molester. Yeah, but he did it. Yeah, but he was a long line of boys that he molested.

And I don't, I don't know whether that's true or not. I actually, I don't know whether it's true.

“I heard, I heard the same things every day. People would say, would you take your son?”

Because when I was representing Michael, my son was 10 years old. They used to say, would you take your son Jake to never land?

And I said, well, actually, I did several occasions. Yeah, but could you let him stay overnight? I don't know. I don't know anything about the other accusations. I do know that the accusations when it involved the case I was dealing with were ludicrous. But what about that, right? Because I would not allow my son to spend an overnight with any parent with any grown-up. You know, I were like, that's weird. And you shouldn't allow it.

And Michael was a large child. I mean, I've read you say that too. But still, you just don't let your six-year-old spend an overnight with a grown-up under any circumstances. But what do you think? Like, when you think about him? Do you, but if you said you have an S6 sense, do you have a S6 sense, and he was capable of it? No, I really didn't. I mean, he just there. It was a child like knife at a, on his part.

And by the time I got to him, he had been, you know, you're talking in the 2000s. This was not the same Michael Jackson that was in the 90s. And at least, as reported to me, and I represented him for a couple of years. Every encounter I had with him, he was just, I thought, he'd just been pilloried. He'd been beat up basically. And it was, I thought, awful.

I mean, it really, it really kind of made you sad. I mean, I was a huge fan of the 80s. And, and I just, I just didn't think he had kind of become trapped, so to speak. And it was an awful thing to watch. It's putting tableling for now the allegations against him since we don't, we're not going to resolve those here.

Do you think that there is his situation and what happened to him personally was analogous to what happened to Elvis, you know, like that level of fame, attention, grifters? I think it's, I think that's exactly it. I see this play out. You know, one of the, I represented Chris Brown for about 10 years.

Chris, I was always worried that would happen to him and it did not.

And you, you worry when somebody reaches fame so early and on such a magnitude that what it does to you.

“And so I, you know, they, I think that, I think that's a, an apt comparison by you.”

And I think that it's interesting that he had that relationship with Elvis's daughter as well. Yeah, that's right. There's just certain people who've reached this bizarre level of fame that is in no way healthy. I would put Tom Cruise in that same category, too.

I don't think his, his weird Scientology rants are totally unconnected to his incredible fame and success.

And just what it does to a person. I would not wish that on, on my, for my children for anybody I care about. I've walked down the street with various clients. I'll give you a couple of examples. I've walked down the street represent in my Tyson for a period of time.

And I've walked from my office with Mike down to another building to do a mediation. And I've seen what people do and I've walked down the street with Michael. I've walked down the street with Colin Kaepernick. I would be the level of fame and what happens. And the fact that you really can't go out your outside without stopping traffic literally and people kind of decision you.

I mean, it's, it's on a level that it's really hard to capture and make people understand for certain people and they get to a certain level of fame and and kind of notoriety. Would you, would you say that probably the most famous person you've represented and seen that with his Adam Corolla? I feel like that's. You know that. I will tell you something about Adam.

“I, I often say Adam always says to do things about me when he sees anything legal.”

I'm in the last six or seven years that we've done the podcast together. I've learned more about human nature. He's a great sociologist and really kind of social or cultural anthropologist. His observations are so spot on. He's got such a way of viewing the world that is just, you know, that you've, you rarely come across somebody like that.

It's true. He's one of those people you just want to shut up and listen to. It's just like, go on. Just keep going because he has a way of capturing what's happening in the nation. That's very unique.

But jumping back because I know you didn't represent him. He's just your friend and co-host. But I do, can I just ask about Michael Jackson? I did represent him, but we won't talk. What do you do? That's a whole different sentence.

I have represented Adam so. I'm going to get him. I'm going to do a. Now you get him in here. Join us.

I'll see you. I'll, I'll test your chops and see what you got. I still got it. I do. I have to buy and raise the boys.

You got it, right? That's right. Oh, my god. 100% although my daughter's just a formidable way.

I always say like, they could, they could, they could send her down to Guantanamo.

She could get anything out of anybody down there. She, so when you were with Michael Jackson since you spent so much time with him. Like, what was he like? Would you mind just describing it? So he was, he was child.

Like, but like, can you expand on it? Because I'm genuinely curious what that would be like. By the time I got to him in the, like I say in the 2000s, we spent, I spent multiple times or multiple days at Neverland.

So watched him there. I watched him in when he was camped out in Vegas as well. The, he was struggling.

“I mean, I think that's the best way to put it.”

He was struggling with all the things that were happening with the accusations. He was frustrated by it. And I, I kind of, there was a lot of empathy I had for him. I, I, I, one of the things that's hardest about doing the kind of work that we do is when you've got people who are in the eye of a storm,

it's, it's very hard to try to get them centered because out there, they, they, it's kind of an existential threat. The, the criminal prosecution is, there's, I often tell clients, at least with a death, a sudden death of a, a loved one. You have the ability to mourn to have a funeral or some kind of a ceremony

or a wake, and then you get to move on. You get some kind of closure.

You never really get that in a criminal case.

And so that's, that's what I witnessed in it. And it was awful to watch. It's just, it's a, it's a strain. It's a drain. It's just a, it's a, it's a real, real painful thing to watch somebody

who is so creative, who is so brilliant, who's such a genius in one area. That the deal was something that is so far into them. Right. And so ugly.

So much more to go over with Mark.

There, I, I could do this all day. I could keep you here for 10 hours and I'd still have more to talk about. We're going to pick it up after the break. I want to ask Mark about CNN, where he worked for a while.

“What do you think about how they, how they are today?”

Okay. So Mark, I used to watch you for years on CNN. Back when CNN was watchable. And you'd give your legal analysis on everything. And then you were gone one day.

And I was like, somehow you were linked to Michael Avanadi. And I was like, okay, he must have been temporarily insane.

Because Mark Garagos is way too smart to associate his brand with that lunatic.

So what happened? Why, well, you don't work there anymore. What happened? Why, why would you ever have associated with that, not case? Well, I represented Michael.

So as a client, I mean, he had a DV case. And I represented him. And I had known him for a number of months. And then the cases you mentioned happened in New York. CNN in their infinite wisdom decided to cut and run.

“In fact, I think I famously called him the cut and run now.”

But they were already kind of descending into this polemic that they've decided the path. They decided to go down. And I think there was some kind of irony that you would see Anderson sitting with Tuban next to And as there are announcing that Cuomo would be suspended. And now I'm seeing where Mr. Zucker is being pilloried for his handling of the situation.

And I think it the writings on the wall. There's going to be a shake up and the largest stockholder in their merger. There has already said they need to get back to what they used to do, which is Melona the Discovery Channel. So I think within the next six weeks, you'll see a reboot there. They've given what's happened over there and the ratings and everything else.

They're not more on for this world than their present kind of composition. Are you shocked? I said publicly, I used to watch CNN when I was getting ready for the Kelly file. I used to have in my office. I had CNN on not Fox because it was like a Riley before me.

And who I think is enormously talented.

“But he's not, you know, if you want to get facts, at least back then, you would put on CNN.”

You would put on Anderson Cooper. And that's gone. Even Anderson gone. They went the hard partisan during Trump. And it was way more opinion from the anchors than I ever wanted.

And it was all uniformly anti-Trump and Republican. And it remains us to this day. I wonder having come from the belly of the beast. What you think when you watch it? Well, I have things to say.

I thought there was some kind of hate to psychoanalyze. But, you know, Zucker as people tend to forget was at NBC when Donald Trump was kind of anointed with the apprentice series. And I think that there was something going on where he just decided to go all in on the anti-Trump network and turn it into that. And, you know, at this point, like you, I have to go search for BBC sometimes out to zero to try to get any kind of a factual or what's going on in the world. You just can't find what it used to be 20 years ago.

I mean, it used to be that you had Larry King on there for many years.

And I always thought that was a fascinating show, which is why I did it.

Because it was long-form people would talk kind of like what you're doing now. And you would get to at least hear things that weren't just like a Twitter bite of 140 characters. You get people to talk, you'd have a given take. They could have different viewpoints. And you would hear that. That to me is more interesting than somebody just going on a polemic with two other people who are kind of their cheerleaders.

Yeah, you might learn something. You might be intellectually stimulated instead of just outraged all the time. How about that? What, what did you make of? I mean, right. So CNN cut and run because you were sort of with Avonati when he got caught up in that thing to extort.

I was there and had was trying to mind you. I had a relationship with Nike. I knew Michael and tried to kind of mediate a situation that I thought would turn out bad. I mean, I've got to we could do a whole hour on what happened there. But like I say, Michael was also a client. I don't want to denigrate him in any way.

Yeah, I mean, you, yeah, you will do it. And I'll sit and just listen to you. Well, so he got, he wound up getting charged criminally. We had many legal problems. This is just one of them. But it's funny because it's a CNN cut run in this trial.

He went pro-per or pro-say federal court in Orange County.

It's actually up in front of the night circuit now is to whether that's once in jeopardy because normally if you get a mistrial and you request it as a defendant, you don't get a once in jeopardy meeting that you can't be tried to get. But there is a kind of a sliver of the law that says, if you're go did in the asking for a mistrial by the prosecution,

that can be the one instance where the prosecution can't try you again. Well, whatever it is, he's a bad man. But you're not. And CNN did cut and big because just because you were in a meeting with him, that's the end of your relationship after what a decade they've been making money out of you. Closer to 20 years.

I mean, I will tell you, it was really.

And I had always resisted being a contributor because I was felt that being a contributor

meant that I would have an issue with kind of advocating for clients because some clients do not belong on CNN in years past. I would want them even on a morning show or I would want them somewhere else in terms of where I thought they were best. But finally, they were kind of relentless. And I did, I did take a contributor ship with the caveat that I was able to do other things.

And if it was client related, they had no input whatsoever. And they just cut and run like nobody's business.

“I think because they felt that they, you know, there was a lot of people who were second guessing”

themselves about Michael when that happened. And well, that was smart of them to do because they expressed no skepticism about him and his ridiculous claims about Trump and so on. I mean, I was at NBC at the time. And I had him on and he was expecting to get the same treatment for me that he got from the mainstream media.

And I really felt like a simple Google search would have served him very well in misunderstanding me.

You know, getting over his misunderstanding of me, and I gave it to him pretty tough. And this fine, I gave it to the other guy who was on the opposite side of him tough, too. This is the stormy Daniel's case. But it was very clear that he was, this is not an honest lawyer. And what he did to Kevin, I was unforgivable.

But I think the fact that CNN promoted him and so on, they felt so guilty. They didn't need to take it on you just because it was your client. You were in this one meeting with him. And to me, they now, it's like, they won't cut ties with Master Bader on the air Jeffrey Tuben. How much did Chris Cuomo have to do?

Don Lemon, incredibly accused by a guy of done allegedly fondling his own genitals. And then rubbing his hands all over this poor guy's face in a bar. I had him on the show, there's an eyewitness.

“And I feel like, what is the moral handbook that they are following over there?”

Like I say, I think that everything that I've been hearing, I still have friends there that I've known, like I say for decades. And everything that I'm hearing is that Zucker's not long for the job. And that people are not happy with what's happened to it. And you know, it's not exactly unpredictable.

They kind of went all in on the Trump media. And obviously once Trump was gone, what are you going to do? So the ratings have cratered. It's really, you know, I'm old enough to remember when they would get a ten share. And now you're talking about below one share.

So I mean, that's astonishing. I would the other day were Chris's nine o'clock show. Sometimes I was getting 900,000 people. I mean, there was a time when CNN, you could just have the color bars on there. You get 9,000 people.

Oh, yeah. I mean, when I launched America's newsroom with hammer in 2007, we created that show from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. We get around 1.3 million. And we were thrilled.

And the company was thrilled with that at 9 in the morning when everybody's at work. It was like great. And now, I mean, all this time later for the 9 p.m. on CNN to not even be cracking a million. It's embarrassing.

I mean, they're always like in the wake of his downfall.

They're like the highest rated anchor on CNN.

“I'm like, you should not be bragging about that.”

You shouldn't have the, don't call attention. And when you have to resort to talking about the demo, then you really know your desperate son. Well, the demo actually is relevant because that's what they basically advertised on. That's like, that's like a paid. The demo, the demo numbers are embarrassing when you take it.

Oh, my god. There terms. I mean, Fox is demo numbers, meaning under 25 to 54 year olds are higher than CNN's overall number. The number of overall households in the nation that are watching on many hours. So yeah, they're going in the wrong direction.

And I hope it's true that they're going to get back to news because we need a channel. That's a little bit more centrist. I think people are crying out for that. People want that. People want that kind of that just give me the news.

I can watch and understand what's happening in the world.

“And by the way, not everything is America centric.”

I like something in the context of the world. Hmm. Well, forget it. You're not going to get that on cable news. The foreign news doesn't rate, which is why you rarely see it.

Okay. I want to ask you about another avenue of cases that you've been filing when it comes to these COVID restrictions. You're in the people's Republic of California where the restrictions have been. I mean, I don't know how you're dealing. And so in addition to being a lawyer, you're a restaurant tour.

And tell us about what you've been trying to do and how it's been going in the courts.

“Well, it's frustrating because I, um, we won a victory at the trial court level in Los Angeles.”

We got a judge back when back I'm going to say in November when we have an unelected county health officer named Barbara Flar without any evidence whatsoever without any data whatsoever. We're talking a year ago. She shut down outdoor dining. No mind you, um, I can sustain it as a restaurant but most restaurant tours can't. I mean, there's 30,000 somewhat restaurants in LA County.

And they, a number of them were not a business due to the COVID shutdowns. Well, then we went to and we moved to the outdoor dining. And that was working. You know, it was working. Well, people were able to survive, um, not the least of which because of some of the funding that took place.

But then she just decreed there, there was going to be no more outdoor dining.

And we sued and sure enough, we got a judge in the writ court ruled after basically issuing three orders to show cause and the county could not respond.

They couldn't point to a single piece of data, a single study that showed that COVID was being transmitted outdoors by dining. So he enjoyed them. Well, we ended up going, they got to stay at the court of appeal, they had that was reverse. I've been up at the US Supreme Court in just within the last five days. They denied the US Supreme Court denied the petition.

But the one of the things that's happened is just this gorsage has basically called out this case. This hundred year old, hundred, twenty-year-old case. They've Jacobson and said that it's been given a towering presence. And I couldn't agree more.

And that's the fight that we've been fighting that basically unelected bureaucrats from health departments are decreeing what what people can do or not do.

And that all of that is predicated on this state of emergency that our governor has announced. I think going on twenty months ago, we're still in a state of emergency in California, which is the only base to support in which the county health directors can do. It's so crazy because we're here out there in California up until recently. I've been living in New York for twenty years almost. And you know, the mayor of New York just on his own decided that five to 11 year olds must have mandatory vaccinations in order to eat inside any restaurant there.

“You have to double jab your five year old to eat in a restaurant to go see the rock hats to go to a movie theater to go to the gym.”

Whatever goes to the next. It's ridiculous. They've been going. They've been going to all of these events and the rates didn't spike. The spikes coming in the northeast now because it's winter, right? That's the way it goes. But the children are not to blame. The children aren't a major factor in any of this. So we have these local legislatures who are drunk on their own power. Like no dining outside. That's think about that. You just kind of. It's like, no, that's insane. That's insane.

Oh, it's not spread outside in any mean. The only thing. I mean, if you saw the stacks and paper that that we filed back and forth in the briefing. The only thing that was ever cited by the county in defense of this outdoor dining band was a. What I would characterize as an anecdotal example of a person in Wuhan who had said he got it. And he thought he got it outside. That is what. That is different. He was eating a bat.

That's not the same. I just feel like it's gotten so out of control. I love to see the lawsuits because they're they're drunk on their own power. The belazio is at here at the end of this month. His reign. Thank God is ending. And what they say is he. I mean, talk about delusions. He thinks he's going to run for governor. Hello, earth to bill.

And that he want to shore up his support with his far left liberals by imposing all sort of draconian orders on the people right before he left. And he's doing it. And now all these people think about the people come from Europe with their kids. You know, they come to see New York the way we go to London, the way we go to Florence. And now where they can do they can take their kids anywhere. They can't do any of their trips are off for nothing for an Amacron, which yes, it's more contagious apparently, but it's it's not killing anybody.

Well, and the problem is is when you ask for any kind of data when you ask for any kind of anything just show me something.

They can't answer you and that's that's a first very frustrating situation to be in both as a lawyer and as a restaurant tour as you call there. It's, you know, restaurants are on a very thin margin to begin with and you can't just continue to destroy restaurants and destroy the the small businesses and that's unfortunately what we've got and it's only a matter of time before this catches up to us. I, I've said before it's not going to, this is not going to end well.

All right, last line of inquiry before I let you go, you've been so generous with your time.

“I think when we saw, what we saw on the written house case was what happens, I said this on the air when social justice meets courtroom justice, you know,”

that to me, the courts are still the one place that haven't been totally co-opted by the far left social justice warriors who just want identity to matter and not facts, not evidence and it's a comfort to me, you know, as somebody who did practice law for a long time, it's a comfort to me, but when I see what they're teaching in law schools, there was just some case, oh my gosh, what was it, one of the universe, one of the law schools now is requiring people to have an affirmative statement of how they're going to be anti-racist and, you know,

the person and it's like, what, wait, does any of your business, what their political persuasions are, where they stand on these social issues, just teach them the law, I worry about the up and coming generation of lawyers and whether we're going to be able to keep that

“divide between social justice and courtroom justice, what do you make of it?”

Look, I'll go back and we'll come full circle to make doodle again in the 90s. I was complaining then that that was kind of at least by the opposite of independent counsel, a political shunt trial and guess what happened, then the script flipped and sure enough, the same thing happened 20 years later, except now it was the aimed at republicans is opposed to Democrats and so there's plenty of blame to go around, but the lesson to take away from this is the worst place in the world to try to test out your social or cultural issues is in a criminal courtroom, that's where that should be the one sacrosanct place where we, first of all, we have the prosecutors who are making decisions that are based on just this as opposed to some other kind of

calculation and it should not be a political calculation, it should be a criminal justice calculation, so I'm with you, I share that, we've got young lawyers, I've got some great young lawyers and I've experienced other young lawyers who I think, you know, could use a dose of, you know, my father who was my partner for many years used to say that one of the things he thought that the criminal justice system could use is a dose of the military justice system and I'd say what do you mean? And he said, well, the military justice system, you can be a prosecutor one day in a defense lawyer the next day and that's a great way to kind of weed out the ideological agendas if you have to understand what it is to prosecute somebody and you have to understand what it is to actually defend a human being.

“I like that and conversely, any plaintiff's lawyer or prosecutor should be sued at least once in their life right beyond the other side of it, feel the stress of what that can do exactly right, it should be a prerequisite.”

All right, so now I'll let you go, but are you going to, are you going to give me a prediction on how just a small let's going to come out, hungry, conviction equipment. No, but I'll call you, I'll call you, I'll call into your what is it 1 800 Megan line. Yeah, 1 83344 Megan. I mean, you why it. I'll call you after. All right, good. I'm going to hold you to that. Thank you, Megan. I enjoyed this same such a pleasure. Come back, please. Okay, thank you. Today, we are examining a serial killer that some in law enforcement have called unlike any other in a modern American history, a predator who was meticulous methodical unpredictable and for years completely undetected.

His name is Real Keys. Keys had no victim type, no geographic pattern, and an M.O., the FBI described to be as, quote, unique as a fingerprint. Are very own marine calahan host of the nerve spent years uncovering how keys operated her investigation led her to write the best selling book American predator, the hunt for the most meticulous serial killer of the 21st century.

I mean, also appears in the ABC true crime documentary wild crime 11 skulls on Hulu, which traces the disappearance of Samantha Conek, the crime that finally exposed Keys's double life watch.

So 11 skulls strine using a finger in blood. All of these victims sold belong to him. They're mine. This guy is evil genius. I'm more sane than most Americans. He's the best serial killer that ever existed. Marine is one of the foremost experts on keys, and she joins me now. Hi. Hi.

I've always known that you've written this book, but I had never read it, and I'd never known who Israel Keys was.

“Why is his name so like not on the list of all the big serial killers?”

It's really wild, isn't it? Isn't it? Yeah. I mean, my theory about it is that, you know, not long after Keys was apprehended. I'm going to say about nine months in. I don't want to spoil how this sort of ends for anybody. The FBI announced that they had this guy in custody. Nobody had ever heard of him. Nobody knew he'd been operating all over the United States for at least 14 years, probably more. And they asked the public for help in identifying other victims, in locating and identifying other victims. And then they just as quickly pulled this case back from public view.

And I could never understand why. So I began the book with the full cooperation of the FBI.

And in fact, one of the agents on the case said to me that he was really surprised because he'd never seen the Bureau in his like 26 years there, give a journalist such unfettered access to them. And then about halfway through, I got back from one trip to Alaska. He was based up in Alaska Keys, and the FBI just shut down. What year was this when they shut down with me? Well, the book came out in 2019. So let me say like 2017. Wow. Yeah. All right. So let's start. Let's not exactly the beginning, but let's start with the murder of Samantha because this this would be the tripping wire for him.

“Yeah. She was in what state Alaska. She was in Alaska and she was in one of those little kiosk type things where you buy coffee from, right?”

Like, it could cause some light food. Yeah. And she was working late at night, which honestly like no woman should ever do. She shouldn't work alone in a little box that anyone can come up to with a gun and get into because that's exactly what happened to her. And we actually had that moment where Samantha was working in this little coffee hut.

This is from the ABC documentary Wild Crime 11 skulls and he jumps in. First he pulls a gun on her. You can see her back away and then all the lights go out and he jumps in watch.

In the video, you can see Samantha is closing up for the night in the coffee stand cleaning and wiping things down. It's late at night, so there aren't many coffee drinkers that are driving up to the stand. And then you can see somebody walking up. You don't see a lot of people just walk out of the people are driving a vehicle. Samantha goes to the window. So she starts making coffee and she appears to be engaging with the person. That's one point she turns towards the window and she reacts.

They vividly remember Samantha doing this and putting her hands up. She then walks across the coffee stand in terms of the lights off. Samantha took the money from the cash register. Then Samantha goes for a coat on. And then this individual just jumped three into the coffee hut.

That moment more means she saw the face of evil and she knew it.

“I'll tell you, when I was working on the book, I think I watched that tape, the abduction tape.”

I mean, I watched it many, many, many times, but I would go through it frame by frame. Partly because the initial working theory Samantha was 18 at the time. So she had just turned 18. She was legally an adult, right? But they decided to treat it like a missing child. Her boyfriend was supposed to pick her up. He was ten minutes late.

He would have been there. I don't know that it would have mattered because keys like taking people in pairs. And that also distinguished him from many, many other serial killers. They, their original theory was that Samantha was in on it. That that was the most staged abduction.

So she could get like the $200 that we're in the till.

“And part of this also goes to the ways in which so many assumptions are made about victims of violent crimes.”

Samantha's father was like, "Hell's angel, hell's angel, adjacent." Had his own brushes with the law. She was from the wrong side of the tracks. She had overcome her own drug issues. And so the theory was, she's out partying.

And that's her accomplice. But when you go frame by frame through that and you stop right there. When keys jumps in and he is a big guy. He's like at least six four very rangey. He jumps like a predator.

There's something that's almost like a panther. The way he, because those kiosks are up off the ground, they're on the side of the road in Alaska.

Until Samantha's abduction, always stuff by a staff rather by attractive young girls, often alone.

In the summer they used to make them wear bikinis. Oh my god, that's crazy. I know. Girls do not do this. And those were very coveted jobs in Alaska.

It was something of a, of a veneration. It was something of a validation. You got a job that made you were an attractive young woman who could lure customers in. I used to worry even my own brother who, you know, he was, he's five years older than I am. But he used to work in one of those gas station kiosks for his high school job after hours,

you know, up until like 11 o'clock at night or whenever they closed. And he was alone. And I used to worry about him just being in there alone. And just never know who's going to come through.

It's literally everybody comes through a gas station.

And a female, a young female in Alaska, which, like, a lot of bad stuff happens in Alaska. It's so isolated. Like, bad people go there to get lost. One hundred percent, you know, the thing to about that is it doesn't even matter.

“I think the time was like close to eight o'clock or nine o'clock.”

You know, and I was, I was sure to go to Alaska in two distinct times. Once in the dead of summer and once in the dead of winter. Because I wanted to experience with those extremes. Really do to your mind and your body and we're such animals, you know, like you go in the winter. I mean, you get like two hours of sunlight if you're lucky.

Two hours of real sunlight. And it has a depressive feeling, but it also, there's a lot of, it's a lot of darkness. It's a lot of spiritual darkness. It's a lot of psychological darkness.

Most people don't know this, but Alaska more people come from the lower 48 than our natives up there. And they're all people who are running away from something. Yeah, sorry Alaska, but it's, I mean, you're the most beautiful state in the union, but you've got a lot of misfits there.

Every other date line is about something in Alaska. All these crime series, like Alaska, wild Alaska, you know, all the, anyway. So it's no accident is real keys found to Alaska. But he was from Washington State, right, or he was, he had been living there. He was raised.

Yeah. And it's, you're the one to turn me on to the Bundy book. Oh, the stranger beside me. There's a lot of parallels there. Yeah.

He was also from Washington State and prayed on women, EY in Washington State. Like the juxtaposition, both in Alaska and Washington State for that matter, I'm like immense beauty and zen and calmness and nature and almost like God, like territory and evil roaming among it all. And you know, the thing about Bundy, which when he was apprehended,

he did say that was one of the serial killers that he had studied. He did, he did sort of, it's quote unquote admire. Bundy also was interstate. He, most serial killer, like if you think of the Gilgobe each killer, you know, they, they, they tend to operate in one location, the zodiac killer.

He, he was interstate also, but his last major, major spree, Bundy's was in Florida. And I, I know we'll probably get to it later. There is a very famous unsolved cold case involving multiple victims in Florida that I firmly believe is the work of Israel case.

So although unlike Ted Bundy, Israel case was not an attractive man. Depends on how you look.

“Like, honestly, there are other church images where I was like,”

this guy is kind of attractive. Like we see it. Yeah. In the interrogation video. Oh, he looks like nothing in the interrogation video.

Oh, yeah, no, he's, he's, all of his power, he did have power. He was the most powerful person in that room.

They were never going to solve another case without him to a point.

Once the interrogation gets to five months, six months, Jeff Bell, who is one of the leads, began putting some stuff together, which was remarkable, remarkable detective work. But, you know, the Samantha case when they caught him and that was an interstate chase. That was an interstate, like he made the mistake of, we let's say we before we get there.

Okay, so Samantha gets kidnapped from this coffee kiosk thing late at night. And they're not treating it quite with the urgency.

And days go by and then a ransom note appears on like a park bulletin board.

“Yep, and it shows a picture of her holding a newspaper that is dated post the date of her abduction.”

So they know actually this is legit. This is from a person who really has her and then what happens. And then they go to Samantha's father. The kidnapper is demanding like $50,000, $60,000. He's already started what would be considered now like a go fund me.

The community is donating money. James doesn't, is not a man of means. And James is frantic. But they say, okay, now is the time to wire the money into this account. And James says, I don't want to.

And then the FBI gets a tip from someone who knows James and says he's acting strangely. He yelled at my daughter or friend of my daughter's because she was, she made some t-shirts. Find Samantha and she's selling them and James is very upset that we're making money out of that. So now the FBI's and and Anchorage police are really confused because when they door knocks James, he wouldn't let them in the house after Samantha went missing.

So now he's looking suspicious. So now they're they're looking at him and they're looking at the boyfriend who has been living with Samantha and James. And they don't know which end is up.

But they've never encountered a parent who is resistant to giving the reward money to the kidnappa who's promising a return.

Right. Yeah. Well, then they do get money deposited into her account. And the kidnappa starts making withdrawals with her ATM card, which is by the way, how he gets caught. But who made the deposit into her account?

James eventually relented and they said he's going to ask he's asking for this much. We only deposit this much because now we have them were in contact and now it's a negotiation. So that's conversation. He doesn't seem to realize that using this ATM card. They're like five minutes behind him every time he withdraws.

Every time he withdraws are like five minutes behind him and he knows what he's doing. Because he knows where all the surveillance cameras are in any given place he's going. He's covered up. You cannot see. It looks like it's a man.

You can't really see. Then it stops working an anchorage. The card stops being there. And then it starts pinging in New Mexico. And these very tiny towns in New Mexico.

And up in Alaska, it's like a movie. It's like these FBI agents get word that her card's pinging down there and they jump out of bed. And they rush to their war room at the FBI Field office and they're calling bank managers.

“In Lawrenceburg, New Mexico saying, can you get there?”

Can you get there?

And the first one they called was like, sorry.

I'm sleeping. I'm not getting out of bed for this. Oh my. No. It's a serial killer.

Well, I guess that that was just a suspicion at the time. They knew they had someone who abducted this young woman. They still didn't know whether she was in on it or not. It was very suspicious. A guy that's sophisticated.

If this is a true stranger abduction, they're very rare. So it's easy to see why the theorizing was such that it's the boyfriend. It's the father. She's in on it. Whatever.

They they. They couldn't figure out why he would be using it. It's such an emotive detection. It's so bold because it's so easy. Right.

To see how I got her her ATM just pinged again. Yeah. Where? And it is sort of how he got caught because they. He made the mistake of letting his car.

It gets caught on camera at one of the locations. Right. And so they saw what kind of make model, etc. Of car. And maybe even the license plate.

I'm trying to remember. But they they track that car. And that's how they found him.

This was also incredible police work.

And this is where the Texas Rangers come in. And these guys are such bad asses. They are just like Jeff Bell, who is one of the main guys in Alaska.

“He's a he's I think he's from the Northeast.”

Maybe originally. I don't know. But he was like when he went down to Texas and met the Texas Ranger who led that manhunt that caught keys, which was a very cinematic event. Because keys was driving the most commonly rented vehicle in the United States of America.

So it really was needle in a haystock. He was like, oh my god, this is a Texas Ranger just like in the movies. Like a real badass, you know. Right. Yeah.

So they track him down. They arrested him and they found. Incriminating materials in his car, like it was kind of Bob's your uncle once they found him. He was not baking on cops pulling him over. And so then they bring him in for this interrogation. Now who does the interrogation?

Well first it's Steve, Ranger Steve Rayburns, since retired, and an FBI agent named Deb Gannaway, who was looped in very quickly as all of this was unfolding in a very kinetic moment by moment fashion.

“And Steve Rayburn told me that they were so caught off guard that they didn't even have like a two-way audio system set up in their interrogation room.”

So they had to go to Target and by a baby monitor.

Oh no, so people could listen to it outside of the room. Yes, oh my god. Like this is how Magyverish and like they had no idea who they were dealing with. They really didn't. They knew he was dangerous. They knew he had this woman. The lead agent on the case, Steve Payne, even in that moment, he's up in Alaska sitting at a car at one of these coffee kiosks.

And he's the one agent on this case who has been holding out hope that Samantha is alive.

“Jeff Bell, Jeff Bell took one look at that ransom note with the proof of life photo of Samantha.”

She's looking at the camera dead center with the print paper.

And he took one look at that and said she's dead. How did he know that? I don't know if he was just more dialed into the realities of what he factually was seeing. Or if there was something unnatural that he picked up on, you know, a Steve by his own admission did not want to believe it. He knew he was in denial about it.

And even even the search of his car was like a, it was a multi state mess because he's up there worried that if they go into that car without the proper.

“I mean, what's the word for what thank you or they have probable costs then everything they find even if Samantha's body is in there is thrown out like it can't can't get in.”

But Deb says to Steve down here in Texas, we have a much looser interpretation of this and if we've got bad guy. Good old text and we think he's got bad shit going on in his car. We can go into his car. Here we have some of this. This is from the ABC doc wild crime and it's dash cam footage from the moment that investigators decided to do a warrantless search on keys is car here it is. And we open the trunk and my answer started going through things in the trunk of the car.

We found a gray hoodie that appeared to be the same hoodie that broke which radar had been wearing in the ATM videos and in the pocket of that was this gray piece of cloth that looked like a mask. We also found the ambush shooting glasses. So you're under way. After he was put under arrest, he was transported to the lock and police department.

The Ranger and I do a third search on Israel's wallet and found Samantha's ATM card.

Samantha's cell phone was in the car. I mean, that's just devastating from a criminal standpoint. That's everything you need. You've got the victim's cell phone. We've got our license and you've got his disguise that he was wearing all the times and he was making the withdrawals with her ATM card. Really strong. Very strong, but they don't have a body.

And they don't know whether she's dead and they don't even know whether she's dead or alive. So they need a confession from him. He is taken to Lovekin PD down in Texas again, small town these small towns he's operating in and they try to talk to him and he says, "I can't help you." So then they call up to Alaska and Jeff Bell and his partner is then partner on this case, Mickey doll, who was the sort of very glamorous, young, beautiful detective who had just joined homicide. She spent like 10 years doing drugs as a police officer.

Oh, sorry, pretty sad. Yeah, undercover on narcotics. So they jump on a plane and they go down there and they're so wired and they're so like dying to talk to this guy and they get in there and he's kind of lights up a bit because now he's got the attentions of this beautiful young detective. And it becomes this sort of almost like a, I talk about it in the book is like a Clarice Starling Hannibal Lecter kind of dynamic, you know. But he won't talk to them either and so they have to extradite him up to Alaska.

Like this guy was such a predator and so dangerous, such a genius completely self-taught, this guy did not have formal schooling at all at all.

“And he taught himself how to hunt and kill and so they get him back up to Alaska and that's when it really starts clicking in because they know Samantha's dead.”

They've gone to the house he shares with his living girlfriend, a travel nurse and his 10 year old daughter by all accounts he's an incredible father is crazy.

And they tossed the house and they're looking, they're looking for Samantha, they can't find her. He's a shed on the property. This is before after he's confessed, he hasn't confessed to any president. Okay, so they're just doing a search of his property because he's under arrest. And there's a, there are two sheds on his property and they, they physically remove a shed from the property and they bring it to the FBI field office. Where they, they leave it and then, so the, the fight begins now as to who's going to lead this interrogation.

Because they all know this is a big, big case and this, this is a career maker. This is a star maker. If you have your eyes on becoming like a legal analyst on CNN or like, you know, they're going to make a movie out of this case who's going to play you. The ego start coming into play.

And Steve and Jeff, Steve, pain and Jeff Bell are the most experienced and they're gaming out how they're going to talk to this guy. They have zero, they really don't have much evidence.

They don't have the, that footage of him he's unrecognizable in that surveillance clip of him abducting Samantha. Sure, a couple of items are in his car, but he says she gave him to me. I was her dealer, she owed me money, prove it, prove I took her. You don't have anything. He was an expert at leaving no physical evidence behind.

“So you have to have very experienced detectives go in there or agents go in there who can say like Steve's favorite tactic.”

He would say some people like to go in with like boxes full of paper. It's all blank paper. Oh, we have all this shit on you. We've got all these photos and you may as well just give it to us now before we like release, you know, throw you away forever. And Steve, his whole thing was like less is more like one photo. That's, that's just the tip of what we've got on you. You know, it's a whole mind game. And then the federal prosecutor on this case comes in and he sees what this case could be and he says to them, I'm leading this investigation now.

I'm questioning this. What? That's so right. I'm in charge. He's white collar Meghan.

He's never dealt with murder.

“Do they usually have the investigation be the prosecutor?”

You can't, right? Because if this goes to trial, now the prosecutor's also a witness. You've got to testify. Yeah, can't happen. But this is, this is how wild it is up there. It's, it's so funny. The twin poles of this case are Alaska in Texas, like two states with this psyche, which is like, don't tell me what to do and do in my way. You know, fine, to a point, not when you've got like what will become the most high value. Like, suspect in federal custody, like only Jeffrey Epstein exceeds this guy in terms of like.

The threat he posed even behind bars. Oh. So he does confess. We have video of. It's what we've only titled it FBI interview. So I don't know who which interrogators these are, but you'll tell us after we watch,

53 in which he does admit to killing Samantha Coneg. Here it is. He directed his north out of Anchorage towards the Matt News Cavali. And he pointed to, on the lathe. And what did they look for specifically? Ice fish and spot. It was in a hole that you cut or was the hole there. No, it was a hole like a. You'll see it. You'll see where the hole is probably. I don't imagine. There's not very much salt there.

And Israel keys sent that is where we would find Samantha Coneg. She's not wrapped up or anything, but there'll still be some plot of ice. They got to find anything else out there. Oh, you'll find your DNA. You'll probably, you'll find her, my DNA, because she doesn't really matter how it happened.

So you told, yes.

Hmm. Okay, several things about that clip.

We are looking at Jeff Bell, who is one of the lead guys. And then that voice in there that says, I need you to tell me why you killed her. That's Kevin Feldus. That's the prosecutor who bigfooted this case. That's not a question you ever asked us to suspect like that. It doesn't matter what you need.

“I need to know. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I think these little things were tells. Now, that's key is telling them where he put her remains.”

He had her in his shed after he murdered her. Steps away from home in which his daughter was living. Yes, and girlfriend was packing for their trip the next day. They were going on vacation for two weeks. So she's out in the shed for two weeks. We left her there. Good. And when they asked him about it, they said, weren't you worried?

And he said, was I worried? Like it's like 10 degrees in Alaska. No, the body's going to freeze. It'll be fine. But they took the wrong shed when they arrested him. They took another shed that he just used as a shed. He was a contractor. They didn't look in shed.

And there were a lot of mistakes on this case. A lot, a lot of big ones. The confession, which is in American Predator, the text of the entire confession.

The FBI has never made that public. I had to get that through someone very, very close to the case.

But it's another records that have been made public. The audio of it doesn't exist. They've tried to bury it. It's a confession in two parts. And it's broken up because one it went on so long. But two felt this was in real danger of tipping their hand that they had nothing. They had no evidence. And once you lose that power, you can't get it back.

Third, keys originally spoke to them on the promise that he would not get the death penalty. They broke midday, came back to finish the confession. And he said he would only finish the confession if they promised to give him the death penalty. That's so strange. We don't know what explained the flip, the switch.

“I think his mother spoke to me for the book. She's never spoken before, since.”

She said when she saw the footage of keys getting arrested in Texas, she knew that he knew his life was over. That that was it. Yeah, she knew he was a killer, by the way. What? Oh, she knew he was a killer.

How? From the cat and the cat and the animals. She and her husband kicked him out of the home. He was about 14. He was breaking and entering. He was gun running. He had this habit of he would break into people's homes and move their furniture around.

Oh. And then he would go outside and like keep and wait for them to come home and look through the windows and watch how freaked out they were. You know, he was he was a budding, budding, budding serial killer.

She told me she said, oh, the FBI thinks is real first killed in this date.

And I know his first kill was much earlier. Whoa. Okay. Okay. Great.

Could you be more specific? Why don't you call the FBI without information? Well, and he said something like it became apparent to me at a young age that the things I thought were okay. No one else thought was okay. And like I was different from the others. And it really does go to like, is the serial killer born? Is it, you know, nature and nurture right? Do you arrive here in the crib as a little psychopath?

And no matter what happens, that's what you're going to be.

“Or do you have to subject be subjected to some amount of torture and neglect and so on as an infant in order to get there?”

Do we know the answer to that in his case? It's it's the tantalizing philosophical neurological behavioral question that hangs over the book. And I spoke to a guy named Roy Hazelwood who has since died. He was like the godfather of criminal profiling in the FBI. Godfather.

And I asked him that and he laughed and he said I was waiting for how long it was going to take for you to ask me everyone wants to know. And he said we don't know. He said the youngest incidence of psychopathy I've ever encountered was in a two year old. Oh gosh. Who was self-harming in a sort of psychosexual way?

But he said we don't know, you know, he's was one of 10 siblings. They all suffered abuse and neglect at the hands of the parents. All of them. Oh boy, only one turned out like this. So I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know either. I wish we did. Okay, so let's keep going. So he gives that confession about, do we know how many days he had Samantha before he killed her? Oh, he only had her for hours.

How do you get the paper that was post the abduction in the photo?

She was dead in the photo and he made that.

“Jeff was right. She was dead in that photo.”

Oh my gosh. So he took, he was an avid outdoorsman, also an ultra marathoner who was hunting in national parks and the like. But he took fishing wire and sewed her eyes open. Like, and then put makeup on her. He took his girlfriends makeup. This is a very big up on her.

This is a very big up on her. And that was the proof of life photo. Okay. So at what point did the cops start to glean? There's more than one.

Oh, once he starts talking about Samantha, they know. The detail, the the affect, the flat matter of fact way of communicating this. We're negotiating now. We're demanding the death penalty. We're demanding it's off the table on the table. This is someone who's very interested in power and control.

And it's not the first time he's done it.

And in fact, Jeff told me that when he and Mickey doll first walked into that police station in Lothkin into that interrogation room. He said the hairs on the back of his neck stood up before they even said a word to him. They know. They know.

I think that's right.

“I do think when you're in the presence of true evil,”

you know, it's a different energy. It's just a vibe shift as the kids say. But it's real. I mean, you'd like to believe that. You'd like to know that when you're around somebody's truly evil,

you'd have that response with the hair. You know? Well, now that totally tracked to me because he's in custody. They know he took Samantha. Jeff knows she's dead in his bones.

He knows it.

But he was very, very, very good at wearing a mask in real life.

I mean, the irony is that where he and his girlfriend lived, it was, it's in a suburb called Turn again in Anchorage. And it is a neighborhood heavily populated with judges, federal, prosecutors, and lawyers. And he was the contractor on all of their homes.

And so many of the people they interviewed after they apprehended him were like, he had the keys to my house when we went away. We'd be like, go in and do all the renovations. We trusted him. Oh, my gosh.

Can you imagine finding out that a serial killer had been in your house regularly to work on your kitchen? So the next murders that he confessed to, right? Are really the only other murders that he owned. Correct?

Well, the husband and wife, fully owned. Yeah. Across the country in Vermont. So tell us about that couple. This is so wild.

And it's also interesting how they got this confession. Because they know he's a serial now. They know it. So they're like, OK, you want the death penalty. You got to give us something else.

We can't go to the feds and say, you're getting it for one. You have to give us more. And he says, OK, he says, I'll give you two bodies and a name. And he says, I need you to get a map. And I need you to pull it up for me.

So now we're in Vermont. And he begins with where he dug up his kill kit. So he's got these kill kits buried all over the country. And they're still out there. They're five gallon home depot buckets that he filled with cash.

He was a bank robber. Only his cash when he was committing crimes. Zip ties, guns, ammo, and drainout to accelerate human decomposition. Oh, my. So then what he would do is he would start walking around and looking for people to take.

It's what he called it, taking people. And he was out this night in Vermont. He was, he was on a family trip. Was this after? No, it must've been before he had a man before.

She was his last.

“She's his last known victim, which is very important.”

Not as definitely not as last one. So he, it's, it's a rainy night. This is his own self report. He's staying in like a holiday and or something. He goes out and he's looking for someone to take.

And he comes upon this apartment complex and this car is pulling in. This little like VW bug. And he likes this. And this guy gets out and puts, it's raining. He puts his newspaper over his head.

And he's trying to rush into his apartment complex. And keys is right behind him. Unbeknownst to the guy. And the way he's described it. His arm went like this behind the guy.

Like that. Like he just missed him. He was just about to take like reaching forward and missing. And he said that guy has no idea. Because if he had been like one second slower, he would have gotten it that night.

He would have been the one. I mean, he had no victim profile. He would take anybody. And when I say take, he would abduct rape torture and murder. And so he was bisexual.

He was always like, like they call it practicing.

Um.

“Anyway, so he goes, he goes back to his hotel.”

For the rain stopped, then it's like midnight he goes back out his own self report.

He comes upon this house. It's a suburban. It's like a flat single story. He sees in the yard. There is no indication of dogs or kids.

He says I won't go near kids since having my daughter. Now, he now you sort of see where he's beginning to realize he's going to be in the pantheon. You know, he says he doesn't want anybody to know he exists, but he does. This is the kind of thing the fictional character dexter would say. Like I'm a serial killer with a code.

Uh-huh. You know. Yep. I don't touch kids. Give me a gold star.

He did touch kids. Um, so he decides he's going to cut the phone line to see if an alarm goes off, which it does not.

Um, he smashes his way in as a contractor.

He's pretty confident. He knows the layout.

“Uh, there's an, there's an older couple living there named Bill and Lorraine Courier.”

They are older. They're overweight. They are sickly. They have medication. They have a bird in the house. And this was one of the more chilling details that law enforcement told me when he goes in. They have this huge bird. I forget whether it was a power or something, but the bird cage, which was like six feet had the, had the cover over it.

So it could sleep at night. So it's almost like a shroud of death is already there. Um, and he said he from breaking the window paint on the back door to gain access to the house and tying the two of them up. Like hog tied on the bed. Six seconds.

And, and the FBI did it and, and they figured out he did it in six seconds. He did well. You took them from the house. Took them from the house and they're in charge. They're in charge. Because yeah, I saw how they look. And yes, tracks exactly with what you said.

And they look to me helpless. Yeah, like even, you know, in their nice, you know, picture predating this terrible event. They looked completely helpless, completely harmless. So that he still got a Jones from that. Like he got a Jones from capturing and killing people who posed absolutely no threat or conquest to him.

“I think in his mind, it was a, it was a conquest because it was a strange house.”

He didn't know how many people would be in. He could guess it would be to probably a married couple. But he's, he's breaking into their house in the middle of the night as a stranger. And he's not just going to kill them in their home. He's going to abduct them.

And he's going to move them to a second location that he had staked out like a date prior.

And nobody saw any of it. Nobody saw thing to the dead of night. We don't know if they were screaming. I mean, he probably had them gagged. Okay.

So he gets them in the car. He moves them to some dilapidated looking like dinner. He's a farmhouse, falling apart and then he kills them both. He, the husband tried to fight for his wife. He did. He separated them both.

He put the husband in the basement tied up. And then he brought the wife to the second floor. And he raped her up there. And then older woman, older woman. He had an issue. He had a lot of rage at his mother, a lot of rage.

And this goes into his taking of people in pairs and mothers and children. And then he brought Lorraine. No, no, no, then he hears from upstairs. Bill, career in the basement is making a lot of noise. He's a big guy. He's a former army veteran.

He's an army veteran. And he's, he's trying to break free. And he's, he's like shouting for his wife and leave my wife alone. And blah, blah, blah, blah. He goes down there and he shoots him dead.

Shoot some dead. And he, this anger's him because that was not in the plan. He wanted to strangle Bill. He wanted it to be personal. He wanted to get that violent.

And it takes a long time to strangle somebody to death. It's not like in the movies. It takes a long time. It takes a lot of force. So then he's infuriated.

But Lorraine has begun to run. She's gotten out of the house. And she's running towards the highway. It gets like three or four in the morning. It's desolate out there.

And he catches her. He catches her. And he brings her down to the basement where he shows her her husband. And then he strangle her to death. And then he leaves him in the basement.

He leaves the bodies in the basement. He's running out of time. But normally what he would do would be to move the bodies across state lines. So you make it multi state. You make it very difficult to track.

But he's got to go. And he figures. This house is a tear down. So anybody who buys this property. It's going to be a developer.

They're going to tear it down the house. And the animals will get to the bodies before any of this even happens.

He was right. Well, I don't know about the animals.

“But they show that the house gets torn down.”

It gets dumped in a landfill. No one's walked through and seen two corpses or skeletons. Nope. They went to the landfill. The police and searched it.

Trying to find any remnants. Didn't.

So there remains have never been found.

They're not even classified as murdered. They're classified as missing. Even after a confession. Speaking of which, let's play some of it. Here is keys admitting to killing Bill and Lorraine Courier.

Sorry for. We're just on the basement and I'm shooting with that. I pulled his house as I could until he magazine was empty. After he killed Bill, he tells us that he raped Lorraine Courier. He raped her multiple times.

“And he said, "Took Lorraine downstairs."”

And Bill's obviously deceased on the floor. He describes killing her. And then using contractor bags to put their bodies in in the basement of that house. The bodies will work completely covered. And they'll render needs a lot of people.

I don't know if I'm talking about it. Like would and crash. I mean, just like the callousness is shocking. Nothing you expect a killer to like respectfully dispose of the remains. But in garbage bags underneath a bunch of garbage left for the animals.

Just like zero humanity in him. Nothing. And you know, with recovering Samantha's remains, he just remembered her. And he just put the limbs and the head in the water. And I spoke to the lead on the dive team who led that recovery.

Oh, God. And the two divers who recovered Samantha's remains. And the lead diver, the lead Bobby Chikhan. You know, he's retired now. He is PTSD. And he has a therapy dog.

And he talks about this case because it's instructive for members of law enforcement. They should know about it. But that recovery, he said, was among the most brutal. And they see a lot of things no one should ever see. And in fact, what they do, these tough, tough guys.

Bobby sent me these drawings they did. And especially after recovering children, the divers will often, their beautiful drawings will draw images of themselves. And they have their, all their dive gear on and their helmets on. But they have angel wings on.

And they're always holding the victim in time.

Well, bringing them up. But while they're always bringing them out of water, it's also sort of an ascension into heavenly place of rest.

“You know, and more, that's how they manage the special,”

special people who do this work. You could, like, you think about them, right? It's like, when you're, you're doing your job and you have a bad day. And I think, oh, this is tough. Oh, my gosh. And you remember how tough actual hard working people with really difficult jobs

have to spend their days. And I think about it all the time with child sexual abuse material. Like, there are, and that really does change people. It changes them men in particular who have to spend their days. Chasing the most vile among us, having to look, and they have to look at the images

because they've got to go after. They got to make a case against these people. And I've heard so many on different podcasts and so on. Just talking about what it does to you. Like, it deadens your soul.

Most don't last that long. Is it just, how can you spend your day doing that? No, I know. Oh, to expose that level of darkness and things that most people

would never even think of.

Yeah. So he's admits to this double murder of Bill on the ring. They know he killed Samantha. Mm-hmm. And but then a weird thing happens in the interrogation

where they want him to say more. But he's suddenly coy. Mm-hmm. And now he doesn't want to like give it up. And there's a moment in the investigation.

This is from July of 2012 where he kind of objects to giving them any more. And it's sort of odd. Please explain this to me.

I just think at this point,

“I am kind of feeling like I'm in the position”

where I do certain amount of information. None of it has her, I shouldn't think of it. About half of what I thought we even had an understanding on, you know, from a very beginning, has it worked out in my favor,

granted, you know, something's kind of worked out in your favor. But I just think at this point, I just don't see what incentive I have to tell you anything at all. What does he mean? It hasn't worked out in my favor.

He wanted the death penalty and he wanted it really fast. Well, how long was the series of interviews? So they started March, April, and they went till about. He really began shutting down.

I'm going to say right around there. July, August, he tried to kill himself in prison. And it wasn't successful. And so there's so much secrecy surrounding this case. And I have theories as to why it's not just about a federal prosecutor

who is too big for his British. It's not that. But Jeff Bell, he would go over every day to the prison, the jail, rather, just see. They didn't have anything remotely secure enough for a guy like this.

He never should have been up there.

He should have been in a super max. Yeah. He went over there every day to see if Israel wanted to talk every day. And he went, so Israel almost escaped from court. Very Ted Bundy like, remember when Ted Bundy?

Yes. Okay. This footage has been scrubbed from the internet. Fox had the footage from inside the courtroom. Keys shackled, ankles, wrists.

Samantha's father is in the courtroom. Everyone's in the courtroom. Keys suddenly in the middle of the hearing. Leaps up out of his chair. He's out of his shackles.

And he's jumping. Like, what do you call those rows?

“I think of them as puze from church, but in a court house.”

He's jumping from, like, benches. Top to top to top to top before, like, he's taste. He's jumped. And he's taste. He almost got away.

He was taste. He seemed to very much enjoy the tasting. But how, how did he do it? How did he do it? Well, he took, he would get a little baggy lunch.

Every day before going over to court. And he took the cellophane that wrapped the sandwich. And he fashioned little keys out of that thing. And he used it to come on. Yes.

Yes. And so Jeff would go over there and he would be like, stop giving this guy anything. Take away his shoelaces. Why does he have subscriptions to magazines like outside adventure? What's going on in here?

They could never get an answer.

They could never get an answer. He was just so clever. He fooled everybody. That's, that's an advantage, right? When you're a killer who's very smart and you're smarter than your jailers.

Yeah. Maybe then the cops would have them. Yeah. So notwithstanding his lamentation that he wasn't getting put to death fast enough. He hadn't had a trial or anything.

It was, I don't know how he felt the system worked. They were figuring out that he was responsible for more than just those three murders. Absolutely. Absolutely. Go ahead.

“I think that is a, I'm remembering now that was stalling him up.”

This, this is like the, the lawyer and you will appreciate. So he, his defender, his public defender, is this guy named Rich Kertner, who is a great lawyer. Great lawyer. He's also very anti-death penalty. So there's a man who enters this story named Rich Kertner.

Rich Kertner. What's his story? So he's assigned to keys. The moment keys is arrested. He is, he's his public defender.

Okay. The lawyer. So he says, because all of his cash is tied up in kill kits all over the United States. You know, so anyway, Rich takes this case and rich is way into this case. And I, I talked to Rich at his office in Anchorage and he was like, I really liked his real.

Oh my gosh. I know. Rich. You gotta get out more. Seriously.

He's like, I liked him. But he, he, he would not, the minute keys said, I want the death penalty. Rich was like, well, I'm not arguing for that because I'm anti-death penalty. And I won't do it. And so now he's got a court appointed lawyer that he can't get out from under

who won't advocate for what he wants. And the FBI is trying to get, get, get in what he wants. But it's not moving that quickly. And they can't get any traction anywhere. Okay.

But they do figure out it's more than these three. Oh, yeah. So how did they do that? They asked him. They said, how many people did you kill?

They just asked him.

And Steve P and I always thought that was a weird number.

Yeah.

“Because most people go by five's intense, right?”

Like he round up to a five or ten. What does that even mean? Like less than 12. That's a great point, right? Like what does that mean?

But Steve took it to mean 12. Hmm. Like 11 or 12. Hmm. And, but I, I talked to people on the case who think it was way more than that.

And I definitely think it was way more than that. Hmm. And do we know who they are? Like you mentioned something in Florida. We know some of them.

We know some of them. There are some cold cases I lay out in the book that I definitely believe for the work of keys. Absolutely. A 12 year old power limpian in Colville, Washington,

where keys lived. Very, very small town.

Went missing when keys was a very young man.

Hmm. He was like 14. And this girl was well. Okay. 19.

Her body was later found with her feet. Her prosthetic feet were far away from her remains. But um, she was seen. She knew him. She knew him.

Um, so it's not true that he didn't kill children to your point. Absolutely. And there was another 12 year old girl who, uh, was murdered with her mother.

“Uh, and I, I think that was keys as well in Colville as well.”

Um, he, there's a man named Jimmy Tedwell who went missing in Texas. After Samantha was taken. While keys was still on the loose. Um, I go into all of the evidence as to Jeff Bell knows it's to Jimmy too. He won't say it publicly, but we talked about it.

Um, after the book came out after American Predator came out, I got an email from a woman who said, "Your book came to me through a secured circuitous route. Um, I am Jimmy Tedwell's niece. We have never been able to get an answer from either local law enforcement or the FBI,

but now we know what happened to him. So thank you. Wow. There is a very famous case of obsessed with in Florida called the Boca murders. There was a man in Boca Ratone who was targeting women at the mall.

Upscale luxury mall. Bro, daylight first victim. She is going to her vehicle with her toddler son. And she's loading up the back of the car. Honestly, Megan, after writing the book,

I don't move through the world the same way at all. Like, I will never, my head is on a swivel in like a garage. He comes up to her and he's got a gun and he's like getting the back of the car. Get your kid in the back of the car. Takes the car.

Starts driving them all. Never. Never do it.

By the way, the listening audience never let them take you to a second location.

And that would qualify as a second location. Like, from the parking lot into your car to go someplace. Run, run, run, run. You have much better chance of surviving. He's probably not going to shoot you.

He's probably not screaming. The difficult victims. They just kind of let him go. But I'd rather somebody take a shot at me while I'm serpentining away. Then have me in the car.

You know, though, what the thing is. And he understood the psychology of this. If you are like the home invasion with the couriers, you know, when you're a woken startled in the middle of the night. And it takes you a minute to be like my awake.

Yes. You know, like he's capitalizing on those five seconds of like orienting yourself. Yeah.

“And so then who's going to believe a stranger's in your house on top, you know?”

I know. So he's this woman with her little child. Don't comply. He's got his gun in her back. He's like getting the car.

It's like she probably couldn't even take that minute. Total. You know? Oh, I don't judge her. Oh, I know you're not.

For the people listening. Yeah. No. Don't comply. You're absolutely right.

You're absolutely right. And you do it, especially if you have a child with you. You're like, I'll do anything to protect my child. That thing is to run away. Yeah.

That's what that thing is. Yeah. Yeah. So, so they get in the car. And he starts driving out and all around.

Boko Ruzhan. And she is terrified and her child begins to cry. And she's worried that the crying is going to just infuriate him further. And she just keeps talking him. She just keeps talking Samantha tried this too.

It was really smart. Humanize yourself. You don't want to be doing this, right? Like we can end this. Like, you know, he does let them go.

He lets them go. He drives them back and he lets them go. The other victims weren't so lucky. Another mother and daughter were found in that mall. Tie up in their car, zip ties.

That there was a woman who was also. The witnesses saw this happen. This is how she was discovered. She was driving a cheap. Well, a very well-to-do woman married middle-aged.

And the cheap just starts going. Just erratically. It's like slowing down. It's going erratically. And then the driver's side door opens.

And she falls out. So that means there's someone in the passenger side who pushed her out of the car.

So, when the police and FBI arrived at the scene at the mall with the woman and.

“And her eight-year-old daughter who were tied up and murdered.”

They were like, this is as unique as a fingerprint. This M.O. and it matches keys. Now Jane Doe, the woman who survived with her toddler. Spoke to date line. She has never.

We can have her real identity. We have a little bit of that and subt 55. Let's watch. I put my son in for our safe drop in his car seat. He's in back.

Yeah, in the back. Then I go to the back of the truck. But this girl ran shut the gate and start walking to the front. Mama, mama. And I could tell her he's worried or scared.

That's when I look in to see if he's okay. And there's a guy sitting there. A guy in a floppy hat, wraparound shades. Sitting in her SUV right next to her two-year-old. That moment, how terrifying is that?

I wasn't shocked at that moment. And I just stood there. And I said, "Get in the car." And I was frozen. And when he said, "Get in the car."

For the second time, that's when I noticed the body.

The gun is pointed at her son. I see him pull out a pair of handcuffs. He handcuffs my wrist behind my back. And he pulls out a bag of zip ties. And he zip ties my ankles together.

And then zip ties my neck to the headrest. And he takes out a pair of darkened sunglasses with duct tape, I'm guessing. And puts them on my eyes. So no blindfolded.

Speak to me of terror. I started losing it. And I started choking myself. Because the zip tie was so tight. It couldn't breathe and gagging and crying.

And it's just hysterical. Zip tight her neck to the headrest. That is disconcerting. I mean, I can't imagine being able to function with anything like your full brain power when you're in that position.

No, and actually, I had that detail wrong. He was in the car. He got in the car before she knew. And her kid was crying and going mommy and mommy. But that, that was, that was keys is MO.

And the sketch that she worked up, they showed a little bit of the police sketch that she worked out of her doctor. And her child's a doctor. It's a dead ringer for Israel keys.

It's amazing he let her go.

Why would he show empathy in that case? And none other. It's such a great question. I don't know. I don't know what it was.

I don't know if it was the crying child. I don't know if it's somehow sparked something in him about his own daughter. But it makes no sense because a couple of months later, another woman with her eight-year-old daughter being key murders.

So it doesn't make any sense. This is after he has his own daughter or no. Yeah. Is she around his biological daughter? Yes.

What's her story? She was raised by her mother on a reservation way up in a nearby in Washington state. It's a very, very remote place. And keys lived there for quite some time.

It's real poverty up there. It's real real poverty. People know who she is. And she just lives her own life.

You know, she's never sought.

Publicity or anything. I remember I reached out to her mom. Right before the book came out.

“And I said, you should know that it's coming out.”

Like you might want to remove photos. You've got it for her on your social media. You know, it'll be easy for people to find her. She's probably mid-20s now. Yeah.

Yeah. It steps on, by the way, who killed himself. That's been emitted completely from the FBI narrative. Killed himself after keys was caught. So what, what happens?

Because now they're starting to get what they think is a, is a toll, you know, a number. And then it all comes to an end one day. It all comes to an end one day. Jeff Bell is getting ready to, um, barge into a house and makes them arrests and he gets a phone call.

It's very early in the morning that Israel keys has successfully committed suicide in his cell. And he has left in blood. Drawings of 11 skulls with the words we are one. What the FBI did not make public was that he also wrote on the wall of his cell.

And I went there. I went to the jail and I went to the cell and I saw exactly where it was. And this was a plexiglass cell.

“So if you want to tell anybody that he did it in secret.”

Nobody would ever have known. It's impossible. So they knew he was killing himself. Yes. There was video of blood pulling out from under his door for hours.

He used a laser blade. Yeah. The laser blade from his razor.

his door that said, do not give this prisoner a razor blade. Wow. And they don't follow that. It's keystone cops. How did they ever get past that?

Did they ever get past that? Dictat. I don't know. But I got. Well, I after the book came out.

I spoke to somebody who was impacted. Wait, wait. You were going to say something of that. There was on the wall. Oh, on the wall.

He's in his own blood. He wrote beliefs. The nation. Why? Well, I asked his mom about that.

And she said he went to Belize on vacation. And he was really struck by the poverty in Belize. And it really. It made him hate America even more. And he ate the federal government even more.

And, you know, he had planned to. He had in his planning. You know, at one point this case in the middle of it. It was reclassified. It went from serial murder to domestic terrorism.

And the FBI has never said why.

“Well, does that reclass do anything for the FBI's ability to hide the case?”

I think they're doing exactly what they want to do. You know, there's like 50,000 pages. Why would they get to the point where they don't want to disclose it? Just because they look bad. Because if the numbers climb too high, they look like they.

They're doing or no nothings. I don't know because I think they're as discussed like with just a few of those. There are others in the book. There are there are plenty of cases. I believe could easily be ascribed to him.

You know, you could say we could close this out with a fair degree of certainty, right? Give survivor surviving family members some piece of mind. Yeah. He was allowed to join as a volunteer. A volunteer recruit the United States Army despite not existing on paper.

He was raised off the grid by these cultists who belonged to a church, a white supremacist church. The situation where they were friends with keys was very good friends with Chevy and Shane Keyhoe. Who grew up to be on the FBI's 10 most wanted list of domestic terrorists. Potential ties to Timothy McVe, Oklahoma City bombing. Keys mentions McVe in his interrogations with the FBI.

And he says a lot of people I know, regard that guy as a hero. Well, he was a super soldier in the Army. His special forces training. He asked for his Army records. I got like three pages. And one of those two of those pages that interesting things, one is his father died.

They have no idea how or what happened to the body. Oh, boy. And they were interrogating the discovery of a skull, a human skull, on the base where Keys had trained for quite some time. Well, it's no accident. He drew skulls with his own blood as his final. His final thing here on earth. And he drew 11, which is less than 12.

And now we only know officially of three.

“So yeah, that's the big mystery. Who are the other nine?”

We just don't know yet. I mean, we have suspicions, but we don't know.

And we're probably never going to know given that you're saying the FBI is kind of clammed up on it.

What did his mom say after the fact that for all this was done? So his mother is a member of a cult called the Church of Wealth. Last I heard in Texas. And she said to me, these interviews were really difficult because there was a lot of proselytizing to get to the point. Oh, boy.

I must have loved that. It was hard. But she said, one day they were driving somewhere in his Jeep. And she knew something was wrong with him. And she said, he turned to her and said, you know, mom, not everyone wants to live the way you do.

Not all of us want to live the way you do. And then she said, she knew her son was guilty of these things. Like when the FBI showed up at her door and they were like, we have your son arrested and connection with the disappearance of this young girl. She was like, yeah, that sounds about right. And Jeff Bell saw Heidi at the courthouse and he said she looked like someone out of little house on the prairie.

Like the long dress and like the handmade thing and like the long braid and he went up to her and he said, please, can you help us or someone talk? There's a missing girl. They didn't know if she was dead yet. I mean they knew.

But and she said to Jeff, if the Lord wants that girl to be found, that girl will be found and turned her back and walked away. Okay. This is what we're dealing with. This is what we're dealing with. So as you look back in the case, now it's been a couple years since you wrote the book.

Like where does he fall in the pantheon of American serial killers?

Well, you know, the FBI said they'd never seen one like him before.

“And I think that's why his case remains so little known.”

They know more than they're telling, but not nearly as much as I think we think they do. They have something called the Evil Minds Research Museum, the FBI does. What? Yeah, I tried to get in there, they really wouldn't let me in.

Who is this pest who keeps subpoena?

No, no, no. They have the brains of serial killers. They have artifacts.

“They have a lot of keys of stuff like his journals, his own self reports.”

They have also when they were going to let me in, they were like, don't publicize this, but screw them. They have like a big stuffed Hannibal Lecter in like a prison cell, like you know, in the middle of the movie. Like for us, Senator comes in. Yeah, that's like that's their idea of kicks. Oh my God.

Yeah, this is like at where? Quantico Jason. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's a special highway, like it's an unmarked building, but it's a real thing. So like agents are supposed to go there to learn.

Or like the academics, I guess, the Quantico, or they are in there trying to figure out the origins of psychopathy to this degree. Well, I'm glad they're studying it. I mean, sounds like to me, they'd be better off reading your book. But yeah, they should give it a shot. Yeah, that's helpful.

Well, I can't believe I didn't know. I mean, I am obsessed with true crime. I feel like I listened to all of them.

And I've never heard his name before.

And my dear friend wrote the book on him. So it's like, I mean, I'm, I was going to say thrill to know, but that's not the right word. I'm fascinated because they're all so different. And in this guy's so bizarre where there's not an M.O. There's not like a typical victim.

There's not a geographic tie, just so bizarre.

“I don't, I, it doesn't make, it's not somewhat unsettling, right?”

Because you want to believe they'll always be that. And that'll make them easier to catch. But the thing is, is like the more we learn from this one. You know, Kees said, he was asked who is your favorite serial killer. I thought they would get something, right?

And he said, it's the one who hasn't been caught. Because he knew that there was someone better at being undetected, right behind him. And I'll tell you this, Megan, when the Idaho College murder story broke. And before we knew who did it, I was convinced that whoever did it had studied the case of his real keys. Definitely could be.

I mean, he was a criminologist. He was a criminologist.

He was, it was like, he had Washington State connection.

Yeah. But he crossed state line. A lot of them do. Washington State is another one. He is.

So is Iowa. So is Long Island. Yes. Just I know. Yeah.

“As much as you think it would be like New York or Chicago or Baltimore.”

They have different kinds of murders. But they, it's not really serial killer central. They're much more dispersed than that. Yeah, the serial killer thing. Although I will say just a note of comfort for the audience since it's the holidays.

Um, C.C. more. The great genetic genealogist woman who like catches everybody, speaking of Brian Goldberger. She told me she doesn't believe you can have a serial killer in 2025 America. She's like, we've gotten too good touch the touch DNA that they, like, it's no longer. They don't need a fingerprint.

They don't need blood or semen or bodily fluids. It's like, touch DNA. Look how coalburger kind of got caught. Right. Touch DNA on the knife sheath, which, yes, then he left behind.

But like that touch DNA 10, 15, 20 years ago would have been meaningless. They wouldn't have been able to find that right out of nothing. If it wasn't like a bodily fluid that you could see in, like, bag. Okay. Now they know to look for it.

And that touch DNA, they didn't have a hit. They had to be the genetic genealogy. They went, they got, like, some hit to somebody. Some distant relative of coalburger, which they then traced back to the dad of coalburger. And then they start using her skills to figure out who's around this dad, who could be potentially in

Idaho on this night. And then they quickly got to Brian. But anyway, she doesn't think that you can have a serial killer in 2025 America, which makes me feel better. The only, I would say, my caveat to that would be if you look at the Gilgile Go Beach killer, who was active for many, many, many years. It's the victim.

It's just as important, right? He was, he was targeting sex workers. And they don't stay on sex worker cases for very long. You know? So I guess if you're, if you're a predator and you know you're prey.

That's that would be my one thing where I'd maybe push back on that. Yeah, you're going to, like, the victims don't care as about. Exactly. That society regards this kind of disposal. Well, I was trying to leave it up.

No, but then I'm sorry. We're going to be able to now. Oh, no, no, no. The book is fun to read. And there's, oh, and they're great.

I didn't see the 11 skulls, but I hear it's great. Yeah. The key's case is fascinating. I was amazed you found the date line. Yeah.

But it's because I was trying to find it while doing the book. And I couldn't find the footage. Yeah, I don't know my, my crack team found that. But so good. It was, I mean, the whole case is dark, but fascinating.

You know, it's like sometimes the serial killer stuff is too much for me. Like I don't, I can't take any torture stories. But we think we did a good job today of giving over some of the more disturbed parts of the sky. Because you can go deep and you can go way darker on him. Even then we did.

I like it.

It could have gone were it could have been worse.

We say nothing says Christmas like true crime. Um, so.

“Look, the, I think the reason so many people are drawn to true crime is because it takes your mind off of your own problems.”

You cannot be thinking about whatever thing is stressing you when you are thinking about something like this. There's something soothing about solving it. You know, like justice. I think there's a good contingent of us who that really feels validated when justice comes to bad guys. It makes you believe again in the world, you know, like people aren't all going to get away with it.

Mother efforts. And that will conclude the things of positive things. I have to say the list. I love you. I love you.

Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. All of it, lady.

Great to see you. Great to see you.

“We have a fascinating program for you today.”

One filled with crime, murder, money, and betrayal. Today we're talking to one of the most infamous mobsters in American history. Salvador Gravano, otherwise known as Sammy the bull. To understand his story, we have to take a step back in time. To the early 1970s when the godfather hit the big screen and changed the perception of the mafia in America.

You spent time with your family? Sure, I do. Good. Because a man that doesn't spend time with his family, because that would be a real man. You look powerful.

Once a day, once you're the rest of the world and the much more novice, I would make shots going to give you what you want. It's too late, they started shooting in the week. I want to make them an awfully game of views. At about that same time, Gravano, a kid who grew up without mob connections in his family,

slowly eased into Acosta Nostra, and made his first kill.

Over the course of the next two decades, Sammy the bull would rise up the ranks of New York's notorious Gambino crime family, breaking in millions upon millions of dollars and repeatedly, killing. He has admitted to 19 murders in all, including his own brother-in-law, his best friend, and the Gambino family mob boss, Paul Castellano, in 1985. Deadly messages from organized crime to organized crime and the rest of society.

The murder of Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano, yesterday, or the 1979 assassination of Cosa Nostra Dawn, Carman Galente, unsolved very public executions by an underworld that plays by their own rules, and their own code of justice. The Castellano murder particularly brazen and defiant, since Castellano was gunned down a day before, he was to resume standing trial for auto theft and murder.

Organized crime had served up its own sentence. By the late 1980s, the new Dawn, John Gotti, had named Sammy the bull his right hand man. Gotti himself was a ruthless mobster and media darling, who dressed in expensive suits and enjoyed the finer things in life,

earning him the nickname The Dapper Dawn. He also repeatedly escaped conviction with, as it would turn out, Sammy's help, which we'll get to, earning him another nickname, The Teflon Dawn.

“Remember how they used that about Donald Trump while it was first about John Gotti.”

But in 1991, everything changed. John Gotti and Sammy, the bull were behind bars facing a slew of charges when Sammy decided to flip and do the unthinkable, cooperate with the feds. At the time he was the highest ranking gangster to break his blood oath,

earning him the eyeer of mob officials who dubbed him a rat. Not since Jovellachi in the '60s has such a high ranking member of the mob turn traitor. Sammy the bull, Garvano, now joins the ranks of those who have broken the cardinal rule of the mafia. Oh, Marta, the code of silence. Hmm, Sammy's testimony helped San John Gotti away, or good.

The Teflon is gone. John is covered with Velcro and every charge in the indictment stuck. And resulted in dozens of other mobsters going to prison as well. One top FBI agent says that testimony by Sammy led to the demise of organized crime in New York. Since then, there have been numerous books and movies made about the Gambino crime family,

and while some may still consider Sammy equal rat, hundreds of thousands of people, are curious fans of his, subscribing to his podcast, launched, right around the time our own did, called Our Thing, which is what Kozenostra means.

In fact, his YouTube channel alone has more than 77 million views.

Thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure.

“So let me start with this after that background, how are you still upright?”

Like how are you still walking around on two feet? Well, the mafia changed quite a bit. It doesn't do certain things. And people understand the story, what happened? That word rat, I mean, they use that.

They do that all the time. But in my case, I was offered that position to cooperate a bunch of times.

I was arrested all my life, I never cooperated.

I was facing life in a number of different cases. But when it came to John Gotti, I was arrested in 1991 with him. And after 11 months, the worst 11 months I've ever done in prison, I've been in prison 22 years of my life. But he wanted to be to take the weight so he can go free.

He was going to back up to tapes that the government had. And most of those tapes were all lies about me killing union people and taking over, or killing my partners and taking over. None of that was true. But he thought that he would have the lawyers back up those tapes and turn around in a way

to say, well, you hear John complaining about him. It's not a John. Paul would be set free and I would go to prison. He had the bolts to actually tell me this to my face. And that's when I walked away from him, the mafia.

And whatever would happen would happen. I wasn't afraid of it. No, let me just jump in because we'll get to that in detail in just a bit.

And what you're basically saying is that you felt he was going to sell you out of the river

and you sold him up the river first.

“But is that why you don't think anybody has tried to seek retribution?”

I understand there's been at least one attempt on your life since your testimony against him, allegedly by a family member of John Goddys. But is that it? Because you did witness protection. You did all that.

Can't imagine nobody else has tried to come get you. Well, there was a team that came down when John Goddys was away. Peter Goddys his brother became the boss. He put together a team to come down and kill me. They found me.

They were afraid to even come near me. And they were. They devised all kinds of plans. A bomb. Then this thing that spins around and shoots shotgun shells.

That didn't work. Nothing worked. And I got arrested again in 2000. February of 2000. And it didn't get done.

When I got arrested, I had in my apartment. I had five guns. Four guns planted in different places. In my kitchen and my bathroom. My living room.

I expected them to come down. And I had one on me all the time. I was actually waiting for it to happen. And they worked with meetings with people. Some of the people were my crew.

One of them was my brother with Eddie Garafola. And they knew me. And they knew I wouldn't run from it. And they were cowards. They didn't make the move.

They were afraid to make the move. And I went, once I went in prison again, that part of it was over. So there wasn't attempt. They, excuse me. They found me.

But it didn't work out for them. And you worked out for me. As I said, you're doing a podcast now and so on. Are you at all in hiding?

“I mean, is it something that do you need to keep your whereabouts unknown?”

No. I think the whole country knows where I am. I'm not in hiding. I said, I went into the witness protection program. I didn't want to go into the program.

I had money. I didn't want to go in.

I did only five years on my first hit.

My first pinch.

If I refused, they didn't go in.

“And we had meetings and they said, you know, you got a great sentence.”

Give us something, come into the program. I agreed to go into the program for a year. I did eight months in the program. Something came up with women recognized me. And they wanted me to start over again.

I said, no, I'm not starting over again. I promised a year. I'll give you a year. It's four more months. It didn't.

They wanted to start over. And I quit and walked away. I went to Phoenix where my family was. And I stayed there for about another four and a half years before I got busted again. Since I got out, I got out in 2017.

This all started by wife. My daughter did a book. I did a book when I got out in 1996. Yeah. And she wanted to do a book.

We couldn't sell the book.

“And then somebody came to her about a podcast.”

And she said, would you work for me? And because we're divorced. And give me the right to use you to do a podcast. And I said, of course, I'll help you. And I started.

That's how I started. A year after that. Maybe a little bit more than a year, two years after that. My son put me on Facebook. A little while after that, he put me on YouTube.

Mine be known to me. I didn't even know it. My phone. I was getting all kinds of calls. And my son left one day.

It said, I'd put you on Facebook. I put you on YouTube. And that's what the calls are about. So I just stayed on that. And I continued the podcast on that.

And it grew to big numbers.

“I'm almost out of half a million subscribers.”

And I got 77, 78 million views. And now I'm doing a whole bunch of other things. And a lot of, I was reading and preparing for this. A lot of men and women in law enforcement in particular FBI agents watch and listen to the podcast and the YouTube show. Because they say it's fascinating.

They've never been able to get this sort of an insight into a real-life mobsters thinking.

And you talk openly about the crimes that were committed by yourself, by others. A lot of these guys who were covering you are on you back then are listening. Thinking, oh my god, this is helping me put things together. So it's just the whole, all around you. Obviously you have immunity now for those crimes given the deal you struck with the government.

But it's a fascinating thing to think about the FBI agents who once tracked you and guys you worked with. Now listening to you and our fans of the show. I mean, actually fans of the show. Let me let me pause you there and let's go back. Let's start with you as a kid.

Because as I mentioned in the intro, you were not raised in a family where your dad was in the mob and your granddad was in the mob. This was not foretold. As I understand it, your dad was fairly successful. You had a nice family and it wasn't, you had some difficulties as a child.

But it wasn't related to anything in terms of crime or the mob. No, my mother and father were totally legitimate. My mother was the seamstress. My father was a painter. He got back then they used to use lead and paint.

He got lead poisoning. He had a stay away from painting. My mother got an offer from a Jewish contract. She would go and make the clothes, women's clothes. And the guy told the Katy.

You're great. Open up a little factory and I'll get you work. If you could produce the quality of work that you do, we'll give you our work. And that's exactly what she did.

My father jumped in with her to help her. And they worked together. They had a dress factory. And that's what they did. I had two sisters.

Neither wanted him. Had anything to do with the mafia. Boyfriends or anything. I was an engineer. The other brother-in-law was a plumbing contract.

Later on he came in the mafia. What made me became a maid member. But before that, before I was in the mafia. I had no relation to the mafia whatsoever. But in Benson House Brooklyn,

it was saturated with the mafia. So it was on every street corner. It was around. As a kid growing up, I was dyslexic. I didn't do good in school.

I got left back in the fourth grade. The seventh grade. I had nothing. My problems in school. I got thrown out.

I never got past the eighth grade.

And I was in a gang.

We knew who they were. We knew they would dangerous. So we stayed away from them. It was us against the world. And we didn't want to do it the mafia.

And at 19 years old, I got drafted. And I went into the military during the Vietnam War. I spent two years there. And when you were drafted, you got two years. If you joined, you had to do three.

I did two. I came out. And went right back into a gang. And it says that why. Why?

Because I would think I would like to think that a couple of years in the army would instill a moral code in you that would give you some pause about going back into a life of crime. Well, it wasn't into a life of crime. It was back into being in the gang.

I mean, that's what I know.

“The only thing I know, I was taught how to kill.”

And how to do things in the military. And I would kill people to protect the country. They was gave us that bullshit. That it was communism was coming here. They could rape your mother, your sisters.

And so I was brainwashed a little bit by the government.

I mean, I never met a bad Vietnamese person.

You only people I know who Vietnamese do my nails or my toenails. And it just seemed to be nice people. I've never met Vietnamese people in prison. So maybe they're good crooks. So I think the whole thing was bullshit.

So I went right back into a gang. But I'm being known to me while the two years I was gone. Most of my friends hooked up with different mafia families. And they were hooked up with somebody. One of my friends Tommy Spiro said my uncle wants to talk to you.

His name was Shorty Spiro. He was in notorious crook. Carmine Percico.

“There was a war going on at that time between the gallows and the prophache.”

And there was different sides. The war stopped for a while. So when I got hooked up with them, there was no war going on. I knew sooner or later they killed people that I would be cold. That's where I did my first murder.

It's a long story. I would tell you if you want to hear it. But I did my first piece of work there. And then Shorty, after that, told me Sammy, give it your clothes.

Joe Gallo came out of prison. He said, "Go get your clothes. We're going to hit the mattress." I didn't even know what that meant back then.

It wasn't a million movies.

And he said, "There are pack of wolves. Wear a pack of wolves. We're going to live together. If you have a girlfriend, get rid of her. If you got a job, stop.

You're going to live with us 24 hours a day. Seven days a week. And we're going to hunt them. They're going to hunt us.

“And that's what you have to do from this point on.”

And that's the beginnings of your time in organized crime. That wasn't just the gang. That was one of the five New York crime families. Yes. It became the Columba.

It was a profatey family. Profatey died. They made Joe Colombo the boss. So when I got in Joe Colombo was the boss.

My first hit was ordered from Joe Colombo to Carmine Persico to Shorty to me.

And it was somebody in our crew who was plotting to kill Shorty and me. And his wife was having a fair with Shorty's nephew. And he devised a plot to kill Shorty and me to cause confusion. A couple of months later, six months later, he would kill Tommy Spiro. And he went to somebody Frankie who was in the crew and asked for his help.

Frankie instead of helping him went to Shorty and told him about the plot. That's how the whole thing happened. Now just to take a step back, you mentioned you had dyslexia as a kid. And you didn't make it past the eighth grade. And I know that there were some bullies in your life as well.

And one of those incidents led to your nickname, Sammy the bull. They tried to steal your bike. You didn't go, let it go peacefully. You were scrappy. And these mobsters saw you fighting and said, look at this kid.

And they nicknamed you, Sammy the bull. Now jumping forward now to this point. You may have stood up to bullies, but you didn't go to Vietnam when you were serving in 1964. So you hadn't killed anybody whether in military uniform or otherwise at this point. So when they say to you, you're going to kill this guy.

Is it, you know, is it scary? Is it frightening? Is it daunting?

Well, it was scary.

I had a couple of incidents that were scary that I was going to would have used the gun.

I never did. But when that came, I knew it would come sooner or later. So the story, I heard the story, what it was, I thought I was being bullshitted a little bit. You know, that the guy wanted to kill me. I couldn't understand why he wanted to kill me.

I had nothing to do with his wife and a fair. But he had this stupid little plot, like I just said. And when they gave me the order, they said, who do you want to come with you? And they said, you're nothing. Tommy Spiro.

He created this monster. And then I wanted the guy Frankie, because I couldn't understand why he didn't tell me. And I wanted to be able to talk to him about that. So they put those two people on the head with me. And, you know, I watched a movie one time and it's a person who was about to kill.

And he was sweating and scared. And all of this stuff.

“I thought that's what happens to you before you commit this kind of a crime.”

Because I never thought about killing people.

But I went through it. We did it. One night, we went out to F.A.L. clubs. We got in the car about four o'clock in the morning. And as we drove away, I shot him in the back of the head twice.

You were in the back of the car. I was in the back seat. Where was he? He was in the front seat, the passenger seat. And when we went to a spot, we went out of the neighborhood.

We pulled into a nice community. It was miles away from Brooklyn. And they had nice homes, lawns, and quiet. We drove over there. I took my pick them up out of the car.

And I put them on the street, the sidewalk. I got in the car. I opened the window. I put the gun out. And I shot him three more times.

We got back. We went to the neighborhood. We cleaned the car. We got rid of the gun.

“And we were living together a bunch of guys.”

I wanted to take a shower. I stayed in the shower quite a little time. The water running on me. And it was waiting for this thing to happen. Being nervous and sweating.

It couldn't happen. Nothing happened. And I went to bed. I slept like a baby. I got up the next morning.

I was confused. Some girls who stood with us. Oh my God. They killed Joe Colucci in Rockaway. And I remember asking one of the girls.

Did they know who did it? Did they find out who did it? She said, no. It wasn't. It's in the papers already.

But it's not in the papers. I don't know if they they caught the people a lot.

“And I remember we all went to the corner where we stay.”

And I hadn't like an out of body experience. That I felt like I was above somewhere. Looking down and listening to all that I'm talking. And I felt absolutely nothing. And then shorty came with his nephew Tommy Spiro.

And I came back to reality. And they said, "Come on. Come on, persecutor wants to talk to you." So we got in the car when we went down there. But I think that that he asked.

Excuse me? Carmine persecutor at that point was that family's boss. No. He was a captain.

But a very, very powerful captain.

He was leading the war against the gallows. And so I went down and met that with him. I was told not to talk. I didn't talk. Tommy Spiro explained the whole situation. What happened in detail?

He grabbed me, hugged me, kissed me under cheek. And he told me, "Great job." So, and I didn't feel anything. I went to the funeral. And I didn't feel any remorse.

I didn't feel anything. And I thought that was peculiar. I thought, "In the sun, there's wrong with me. Or I'm just a stone cold killer." And I'm going to fit in the mouth for your perfect.

And I guess what I became. Not a stone cold killer. I was good at what I did.

In construction, running unions.

“But I was also becoming a professional head guy.”

Have you ever used it?

I've never been a man of faith prior to that.

Had you ever gone to church? Did you have any relationship with God? No, of course. I still, I believe in God. I don't.

I went to church as a kid. I stopped going to church. I believe in prison. I joined the Indians because I wanted a smoke. And you'd have to join that religion.

They allowed that in prison in the federal prison. So I joined them. I went in to get tobacco. You weren't allowed to smoke from 2004. I went in really wanting smoke.

And steal something tobacco and bring it to myself.

But I got to understand their religion. The way they believe in God.

“I also, at one point, a friend of mine grabbed me.”

It says, "Sam, you're not an Indian. We do wicker." Why don't you join our group? And I did. I joined that group as well.

So I started to understand different religions. And everybody seems to believe in God. They're just a path. What path do you want to take to get to God? Indians have it.

Wicker has it. Muslims have it. Jews have it. Catholics have it. Christians have it.

It's just a path.

And I believe in the most of them.

There are moments back then. You know, when you're talking about being in the shower and no remorse. I wonder whether there was any moment of, no matter what I feel, I recognize I've crossed over. I've done something.

I've sinned in the most profound way possible. And at some point, there will be a price to pay. No. No, I don't look at it that way. I never felt that way.

I still don't think that way. I think that God makes people. Creates people and he creates lions and he creates lamps. I think I'm a lion.

“And whatever you have to pay if you have to pay anything,”

why would he create a lion? If there was a God and he was interested in what was going on, why do little kids get cancer and die? Why a little kids get raped? Why do so many things happen?

I'm talking about religions. I mean, I was a Catholic brought up that way. Baptized, Communion, Confirmation. Till I found out what priests do. And I had no intention of committing,

or my crimes to talk to him. I was asked that once by a priest. Then I told him, "Yeah, you want me to tell you what I do? Tell me what you do." And then I'll talk to you about what I do.

So I don't believe in religion. I believe in God. But I think religion is bullshit. I think it's all about money. It's all about different things.

They commit evil things to good people. So I'm away from religions. I respected the Indian religion. The wicked religion is stunning. It's the only religion that they put a woman above God.

The goddess of the moon, the water and the earth. God is the goddess of the forests and the mountains. Why do they put, I asked, a woman above God? Because she creates life. She needs a man's seat, but she, in her womb, takes care of life.

And then gives birth and creates life. I understand that. I'm somebody with common sense. If you make sense to me in a certain way, I understand that. So I understood that religion now.

A lot of people will not be happy with me saying this. Because they call it a pagan religion and they call it all kinds of things. It was before the Christian even. And I understand that part about a woman giving birth and creating life. Well, I've read that unlike some in the mob, you were very, you were a family man.

In the midst of all this, you went home and had dinner with your wife and your two kids. Each night, your daughter Karen has talked about that publicly many times. And so there has been this respect for your family members, for your wife, for your daughter, in a way that even the people who were in the mob said, you know, for example, John Gotti would go out currowsing with other women after hours and you would go home to your family.

Despite what was happening on the other front.

“And I know that you don't see these as real as murders.”

You know, in the same way a soldier doesn't commit a murder when he kills somebody. This is how an FBI agent explained it in one public interview that a soldier would not be murdering. You don't see your kills as murders. Because there was a code behind them because you say the people you killed had sort of agreed to live by this code and die by this code. And on that note, that heavy note, let me pause it.

Okay, because I want to get into that next and that's a whole other chapter for us. So stand by. Let me squeeze in a commercial break and much, much more, with Sammy the bold Ravano as he stays with us for the whole show, fascinating story to tell. So Sammy, it was actually a quote that I was reading, not from an FBI agent. It was from Terrence Winter, who the audience may know as the executive producer of the soprano's and he also did Boardwalk Empire.

And he was he took part in a documentary about you and said the following many mobsters consider what they do almost military in nature. They consider themselves soldiers. So they rationalize a lot of really bad behavior. You wouldn't think about calling a soldier at war a murderer. So therefore, if they're a soldier and they're at war, they're not murderers either.

“They're just doing their job. Does that capture the mentality?”

I believe so. I 100%, you know, I watched a program one time during World War II. We dropped an atom bomb, an atomic bomb, an atom bomb twice, not once twice. But I saw the guy who was in the plane and over Hiroshima or somewhere, any press to button.

And it killed 100,000 people, men, women and children in a split second.

And they were patting him on the back that he did a great job. The war was ended early because of those things. And if I was talking to the guy I would say, listen, you did a great job. A great military guy, you fought for the country. You did what you was supposed to do.

How do you feel now knowing you just killed 100,000 people, men, women and children? Does that bother you at all? And I'm sure he would tell me no, because he was fighting for the country. He was fighting for what he thought was right. In the mafia, it's part of it.

It's not a gang no more. It's part of my heritage. It came from Italy. Sicily. It started in Sicily.

And it came to this country. So it's part of my heritage. So it's not just a gang. A gang is, you know, killing in a gang or doing certain things for a drug supply is a different thing. But this is a soldier.

“It was explained to me I was involved in the Johnny Key's hit, was a major major hit.”

And it was, he was a guy who had 50 hits under his belt. And me and him were going to go out each other. And it was explained to me that we were like two summarized. And I understand it's summarized a different thing than us. They're actually more violent than us.

But I really felt that way that we would two summarized who met on the battlefield. What about can I say, let me ask you a couple of followups on that. So obviously, when we brought the bomb at the end of World War II, they asked me that we saved

somewhere upwards of 25, 30 million lives by putting an end to World War II.

And the Japanese would not surrender. And so, you know, just not defending the killing of 100,000 people exactly. But in a way I am because it was the right decision. It saved far more lives than it actually cost. But in the, in the mafia, and I can get it.

If you go away, let me answer your question. Let me answer that question. The people who say that it saved 25 to 30 million lives was hope. The government, of course, they're going to say that. I mean, independent analysts to take a look, who've taken a look at this ad nauseam.

Since the end of World War II, we'll tell you that the lives saved far, far outnumbered the lives cost. Doesn't make it not controversial. But you can't talk about it without adding that perspective. But I mean, the thing about the mafia, and I can understand if a guy was going to kill you.

I mean, even the law recognizes, maybe not exactly the way you would do it. But what recognizes the right to self defense.

Where, you know, you, you sleep with the guy's wife.

You could get whacked. You, you interfere with my business. You could get whacked.

“It basically is just whatever the head of the crime family wants.”

And the guy doesn't show up like a samurai face to face in a meeting where you fight it out to the death. He just gets in the car with you. He gets whacked in the back of the head. So I'm interested in the moral, you know, the way you thought about those kind of differences morally. Well, morally, I don't know if it's, to me.

If it makes a difference, if you kill somebody on a battlefield or you kill somebody in the car, or whether you use a gun or whether you use a knife or whether you use poison, that is that you just took a life. It doesn't matter how you take.

You can beat somebody to death.

You couldn't fight. You couldn't win a fight. You can go overboard and just beat this person to death. So you just took a life. No matter how it is, whether it's more glory about a meal or a meal.

That means, yeah, that means of how you're doing it. I don't know if it makes any difference. Now that I want to take guns away from everybody because there's a shooting. I mean, if there's not a shooting, I want to take guns away from everybody. You get some sickle.

So he goes in with a bomb and he blows half the school up and he kills more people actually that he's using a gun. Does that make you happy? I don't think the means of what you use is that important. You're taking a life.

Whatever it is, whatever your reason is, whatever the senses look at later on, you're taking a life, whether it's on a battlefield in the street. No matter how you do it or what you do, you're taking a life, bottom line. Well, we have excuses for what how you do it. If me and him are in a battlefield in the street,

like he has a goal and we back up and we pull out a gun from the side and we both shoot in each other, you're taking a life. What's the difference how you do it? That is dead. My bottom line, I'd say, you can hit by a car and you will crunch up.

Believe me, all your bones are busted up and you're dying. What if how would you feel if the person ran over and said, "It's me, Sammy." He didn't do it on purpose, it's an accident.

“Does it make a difference to me if it's an accident or it's on purpose?”

I'm more crushed up, I'm in tremendous pain, I'm about to die. That is death. I don't know the whole thing. That ignores the moral code. I agree with you in terms of, you die by a knife, you die by a gun.

It doesn't make much of a difference to you. We're expanding beyond that too. The law recognizes some killings as justified. It would not recognize any of the ones that you're talking about as justified. I think you know that, what you're saying is that in the mafia,

you live by a different code of justice. And as I understand it, your position is that you wouldn't run around killing what you call legitimate people. If somebody pissed you off in your social life, he wouldn't be at risk of getting whacked.

For the most part, we'll get to one of the exceptions I know about, but it sounds like it may have been an accident. But for the most part, you only went after people who were part of your world and who had agreed to live and die by this code. Right, exactly.

I never killed a woman or a child and I never killed even a legitimate guy

who I didn't get a long way or whatever. I mean, I had fights, but that's as far as that would go. I'm not going to kill somebody because I don't like what he said or something like that. When I complete lunatics, some of us became lunatics. But I never, I never went to that degree.

I live by this code. And I would willing to die by the code. I told my family when I cooperated. We talked about cooperated. What I cooperated, I said, if somebody comes down and kills me, don't, don't even be mad.

Don't say nothing, don't do anything. Don't be mad. I broke the code. I understood that I could die for what I was doing. If I could understand it, you understand it.

Leave it alone. So I believe in that code.

“Just like I believe in God, but I don't believe in certain religions.”

Probably most religions. But you got to live by something. And I live by what I was taught by my mother and my father, the legitimate man.

You talked about the law enforcement.

“I'm still friends with agents and WAPD cops.”

So today, because they were different, we got along with friends. They had one life. I had another life. We understood each other.

And I was basically a different kind of a gangster.

I cared about people, people's person, basically. My ex-wife and my daughter or my son and say, "God, you talk to everybody." Yeah, they human beings. I talk to people. I love people.

I like people. But what about Alan Kaiser? This was a 16-year-old boy who you killed. And I don't understand. You don't understand.

I don't know. No, it's not actually that. And I didn't kill. First of all, it was a gang who came. And they actually did movies about this.

So I went to that place. I wound up getting a beating. They got jumped by six-seven guys. My ankle was broke on both sides. I had a kiss from my knee down.

“And I had permission to go after this guy.”

And it wasn't Alan Kaiser.

So I'll tell you what happened. We got in the car and we were looking for him. One night, we saw him pull up in front of a guy. The different guy. Aldo Candito.

Yes. Yes. And I said, that's him. We went back to our club. We got guns.

We got a shotgun. Now, it was supposed to be loaded with double or buck. Which would put that on a moose. But they were using it for pigeons and playing around with it. It was a very burnt shot.

So anyway, Louis Malito had it. I said, pull up to the car. When you see him coming out of that house. When the car was double buck. Stop.

Ask him for directions like we're lost. I was laying down in the back seat when it cast. On my leg. There was a driver.

“And Louis Malito was in the past, you see.”

I said, when he gets to the car to answer you, I'll shoot him in the face. Louis Malito rolled down the window when he came out. And he must have been told the night before that. What they did was to a maid guy, me.

And he knew he was in trouble. So as soon as he knew he asked him for directions, he started to run. Louis jumped out of the car through a shot at him. Hit him in the back.

He kept running. He didn't put him down. He kept running. There's kid Allen Kaiser. And I spoke to the family and everybody about this.

He was 16. We didn't know he was 16. He wasn't a target. Wasn't in the head. Wasn't supposed to get it.

No accident. He ran at Louis Malito. He might have been part of that guy. I don't know. The driver yelled to Louis Malito.

Guy coming at you. He turned around with the shotgun. Itches away from the guy and shot him in the chest. When he went down, he put the shotgun to his head. Pull the trigger again and kill them.

We found out the next day that he was 16 years old. We were in shock. It was terrible. 16. The number itself.

Shocked him. But why did he want it? Louis Malito. Why did he do that? He wasn't the target.

But he was shooting at him. He could have ran back at his house. He could have went the other way. He could have just stood there. And never got touched.

So now whether he was on drugs, whether he was part of the gang. I don't know. You hear stories. His family says he was not a gangster. Well, he was just an innocent kid walking home.

No, no. Not a gangster. 16 years old. He definitely wasn't a gangster. He could have been a gang member.

Or he knew this guy because the guy was in his house. So the family can't deny that. That guy went in his house. They were together. He came out.

He, the other guy came to the car. And he was on the side. Well, but he was going to shoot him. And the family recognizes that, too. I talked with the sister.

And she said, I don't know what made him do that. Now, people will say that I killed the 16 year old kid.

First of all, I didn't shoot him.

Louis did. But it doesn't matter. If I could have shot him, I would have. I'm not trying to make myself a good guy to shoot him. But the police found him exactly where it was in the street, where he got to.

He came off the sidewalk into the street after Louis. Not on the sidewalk, where his books come in home from school.

None of that's true. Now, it was a shame.

We were sick about that he was 16 years old.

And we were confused why he even did that. And he wasn't a target of the hit. We weren't even looking at it. But what would you expect? What would I expect, Louis to do?

The guys are actually a foot away from him. What is he supposed to do? He's just standing away for the guy to grab him and tackle him to the ground and do something. He's on a hit. You know, you know, obviously, this is why we don't choose the life of crime.

This is why we don't go to murder people in neighborhoods and take the law into our own hands. And why the law prohibits it because bad things can happen.

“And that's why there's something called felony murder.”

You're in the process of committing one felony. And you accidentally or otherwise commit another murder. You're going to be charged for it, even if it was an accident. And of course, the felony because the law recognizes creating extremely dangerous situations. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And I'm charged with it because I'm part of the murder. Not the shooter. And he wasn't the target. But I still get charged with it.

And I understand that that's why it's on my list of 19 people that he's there. I mean, and I get it. But I did give a courtesy to the family. They talked to my daughter. They talked with my son.

And they wanted to talk with me. And I did talk with them. I took the time to explain what happened and why. Nobody wanted to kill this kid. They understood that.

I don't know what they told you or told anybody else. And I know that the gotties instigated these people saying that I killed their son or their brothers, 16 years old. I'm a baby killer. That was brought up by the gotties who were trying to make me look bad or make it look worse.

And I know how it was brought up. And like I said, this was talked about with the families, the whole thing. It was talked about with the police. And it's not, I'm not saying it was a good thing. It was a horrible thing.

But it's one of those things that happened.

“I mean, if I see a murder, I think I'm a pretty tough guy.”

I see somebody shooting at somebody. How am I not going to run at the shooter? He's got a gun. I got it. I got it.

I got it. I let me pause you there. Let me, let me squeeze in one more break. And we'll be right back. A much more to the story with Sammy, the both Gravano as we continue at right after this.

[MUSIC PLAYING] I hear this bitch behind my back talking to my father. And I think nothing in my back is turned to my face. And automatically I just black the f*ck out. I don't hear about f*ck if he's ready.

I don't hear about f*ck if he's ready. Except my bloodline bitch, I'm coming for you. You want to keep talking about families? Let's talk. You want to bring up families?

Do you want to get my daughter into this? For my f*ck daughter? For my father? Every f*ck lady that you spoke about. I will take a piece of you every time bitch.

This is why you never talk about families.

Look at the outcome. Now that blood was drawn, this will never be the same yet. Okay, so that was the bulk of that clip is Karen Gravano. Sammy's daughter. Who was one of the stars of the show, "Mobwives,"

which I confess I absolutely loved. And she was very open about what it was like to grow up as your daughter. And sort of when she-- How she slowly became aware of what you did for a living. And how she could tell--

You know, obviously she's firing feisty. But how she could sort of tell that you were an important man. You know, the way people greeted you, the way people showed you respect. And I know, you know, that must have manifested in your life, too. You're sort of getting into the clubs in New York.

And I saw the ABC documentary where you talked about-- You looked at the Manhattan skyline and said, "You know, I own this. I own it. I built it. I control it."

“So can you talk to us a little bit about that piece of your history?”

Yeah, well, you know, I became very powerful in the construction industry.

And one day we were on the other side in Connecticut, I believe it is. And we were in a fancy hotel. And we went out on the patio and smoking a cigar, I think. And I looked at the skyline at night, Manhattan is gorgeous, lit up at night. And it's just--the guy who was with me said, "Money, look at that." I said, "Look at the beauty here."

It's absolutely stunning. It's gorgeous. And you're part of building this whole thing. I mean, you can't get a job at this point in my life. Without some sort of a wink and a nod for me saying, "Yes, I know." I mean, I became very powerful in the construction industry.

Paul had me pull cast the line, or had me under his wing, because he loved the construction.

And he enjoyed using me to run certain unions and do certain things for him.

And yeah, I loved what I was doing as far as the construction. I should mention, because you mentioned Paul cast the line. Because you had sort of started with a different crime family. And that eventually moved over to the Gambino crime family. And that's the family that Paul cast the line over time was the head of.

And you would later become part of his assassination. But before we get to that. So you're living large, you're living large in New York. And this was a time, I mean, what is a weird question.

“But like to what extent did that film, the godfather, effect people's view of the mafia and your own experience within the mafia?”

You know, because when I was growing up, you knew about the mafia. But they're definitely was a glorification around it.

You know, it seemed like, ah, they hurt people, but maybe mostly the wrong people.

I mean, the excursion was on regular folks too. And yet, they seemed kind of cool. And people wanted to like rub elbows with them in very high circles. And respectfully, she felt Frank Sinatra and, you know, so on and so forth. So what was your experience of that movie and people's reaction to the mob?

Well, that movie stunned me. It was probably one of the best movies I ever watched. It was completely well done. Godfather, the one and Godfather, two, Godfather, three was a joke. But yeah.

Because you're in it. It's just coming out.

You were in it when those movies had.

Yeah.

“And it, you know, it showed the family orientation, how we are with family, the weddings.”

Our family had weddings like that. And people would get up and sing and it was fun. And you know, who was a sonny is with one of the bride's names in a room upstairs. I mean, that's typical of us. That was really typical of us.

All that stuff that happened in that. Oh, go there. The agents watching us. And it just gave me a whole different look at the mob and how the people would look at it. And as far as the fascination, I know what it is.

Everybody in my mind, anyway, has a fascination, especially men, have a fascination of being a tough guy. Going with beautiful women, beautiful cars, making money, you know, fucked up government. I don't want to pay taxes and I don't want to do this and not do anything. So everybody looked at it and it's, you didn't live that life, but you admired it in a way. You felt the certain way when you watched it.

And I watched this new movie that came out the offer, how they made the guide for the very interesting movie. Great movie. With the producers in Hollywood, the whole nine yards. I mean, just watching these things, the mafia really, you know, it's, when I was in prison a couple of times, Abes, and other gang members came to me and told me, "Tell me, tell me about the structure of the mafia."

And I would tell them why. You're not the mafia.

“Your, your, your, your, your, your, your area and brothers, why would you want to know?”

And they said, you know, structure lasted a thousand years. People admire you guys. People want some people want that to be like you guys. So, what's the whole structure about? So, I realized them even them asking me questions like that.

That they, they themselves and want that to be like it. My answer to them was, we're not savages. We don't kill outside our, our organization. Where everybody in the mafia at one time or another has been involved in a murder, 99%. So, how do you control that group of people?

If there's no violence within us, if there's no punishments that could cause death, how do you stop them? How do you stop a guy? What are you going to do? Cut off his tie?

What are you, what's slapping on the wrist? He's not going to listen to you. That he'll do whatever he wants to do. Then there'll be no control. We'll be no better than a gang.

And that's what I would tell. So, maybe guys and stuff like that. You have to have rules. You have to have ideas. You know, I looked at that.

There was a conversation I just had recently about. I was in Paul Castellano's house. And the union, which we controlled the association and the union for the garbage. And there was a mess of strike. It was on television.

I came in and I said, he told me to sit down.

The maid got me a cup of coffee. And he said, set it for Jimmy Brown.

“And the people who are running the union and the association.”

So we sat there for a while. 15 minutes, 20 minutes. Those guys came in. Jimmy Brown was a captain. The other guy was a maid guy.

And he said, look at this television. He said, what are we? Animals? Pick up that garbage from schools from hospital. From old age homes.

Will win the strike. But what do we animals? Over money? Over winning? Will win?

Pick up that goddamn garbage.

It struck me in a way that his the boss of bosses. Paul Castellano, who's the boss of bosses. Who's the head of the commission. Saying something like that.

“Carrying about children, hospitals, old age homes.”

That they would be infected with garbage and whatever. It gave me a different look at things. And those are good things that I saw. There's evil things. I saw there's people who bought a line.

Got the like killing. And became serial killers like Roy de Mayo or guest pipe. When people like that. And we killed them because they became that. So we don't believe in pedophile as rapists, serial killers.

We want to get rid of that.

When I was in my neighborhood.

I, you know, the whole neighborhood I would say, this is my neighborhood. People I don't even know. Maybe you lived in there. I didn't even know you. You're a beautiful woman.

You'd walk down the block. My guys, I would tell them, this is not a construction site. Don't who? Now don't do anything when you see her. She's part of our community.

They're us. Nobody's going to touch her. Her husband knew she was beautiful. He'll tell her, go right past seven. He's called.

Don't worry about it. He said that because he knew she was safe. We wouldn't let nothing happen now. Around the block, only God knows what happens. So we live the different way.

“And I think that touched the public in a certain way.”

They didn't agree with the violence. But we were different. We were a different type of an organization, criminal organization. I'll call it criminal because it is. You know, we would take, like you say, from every industry.

But we took a little bite out of every industry. We screwed the government out of taxes. Yeah. We screwed insurance companies. Yeah.

We didn't feel any guilt about that because these, they screwed people all the time. My mother and father, I broke their back. And we're so legitimate. I don't even know how I became a gangster. I said it true.

They were so legitimate, so honest. But they were taking advantage of, by unions, by, by the government. So I have no sympathy for government. I have no sympathy for insurance companies who sometimes go overboard and people are sick. And oh, no, we're not going to pay that claim or we're not going to do this or we're not going to do that.

I'm not saying all of them. There's some really good people honest people out there in every industry. And there's some bad people in every industry. So, you know, I have mixed feelings with a lot of these things. What about like the mind-pass shop owner on the corner who are just trying to make ends meet.

And they got to pay extra money every month for security or, you know, for permission from you guys to do what is their legal right to do. Or else. It never happened. Never happened. It's far as I'm concerned.

Never happened. And all the mom and pop stores knew my mother, my father, me, my family. It was a community. What, what, if you worry about the mom and pop stores, I'll tell you what crush them is big corporations. Well, it really leads.

Of course. Get these big corporations and crush them. You know, I had a little, uh, milk farm they called it. It's a little grocery store at one point in my life. And I bought pamphlets, wholesale, and I put them for a cheap number.

It was a make it any money just as a drawer for people. So, I sent my partner, my goomba to Hollywood, Komo. Go to the supermarket, see what they're charging. When he came back, he said, "Semi. They're charging, like less than we're paying for them wholesale."

He said, "Well, number one, they're buying tons of stuff." I wasn't. I was buying two cases. They're buying 4,000 cases. And they, if they want to make a sale and do the same idea that I have,

"How could I compete with them?" I took the two cases of pamphlets and threw them out. I can't compete with them. Okay. So, this is what happened in small business.

Got crushed. But the mom and pop stores.

I mean, I have never ever thought about it.

We love these people. We know them. We went to a bakery, a fruit and vegetable store. Those things don't even exist anymore. But you guys, it in charge people for security saying, "No.

No, not security." Never. Well, something, though.

“I mean, I remember, I have some personal knowledge on this,”

because in another life before I was a journalist, I was a lawyer. And the lawyer I worked for at this law firm, Jones Day, was a charged with enforcing a consent degree that the mob had entered into in New York City. And that meant the mob admitted it, it had done a bunch of things. And we were responsible for making sure it lived up to its promise not to keep doing

them. And, you know, the sort of the harassment of small businesses, small business owners, was on the list, money laundering, and so on. That was another thing. But, you know, this sort of smaller crime, smaller than murders,

and so on within the family. That's one of the reasons why people don't like them, hobby, right? Like it's not all within your own family. There are innocent people who get hurt and who have to pay

unnecessary money that they shouldn't have to pay, and who could get hurt if they don't do as told. Well, listen, I like I said before, you know, there's good and bad in every organization. And there's bad guys in the mafia who would do something like that.

Do a lot of things like that. That wasn't our norm. Now, I would do that with a disco or something to, like, when you talk about protection money. If you could mention my name,

nobody could come in and bother you.

“My fear lies or anything at any other way.”

I'll take care of your problems. But I didn't cripple them, they gave me a pay. What they gave me something that helped them. I don't look at it as hurting them, shaking them down. It's like a rent.

It's like anything else that, or any bill that you pay. In those cases that I did, it was a reasonable play. What I did mostly is use my power to help grow a company, and I would become their partner. I'll give you a quick example.

There was a guy who had a small little container company. He'd go to houses and put the container, you're moving, you put all your garbage in that container, and he's making money. The containers were garbage.

And I got to like the guy I went to him, and I said, listen, I got connections in Jersey. I could get the best containers, and I could increase your business. So we had a conversation.

I said, I don't want any contracts or anything like that. We could work on a handshake. How much do you make a year? And he said about 100,000 a year. I said, how much do we go partners?

The first 100,000 you make, that's yours.

That's what you make. Anything above that meeting you will partners, and I could get you more work. I could get you better containers. So we did that.

We should shook hands, and we did that. At the end of our partnership, I said, how did we do? When did you make? It's the same.

I made 400,000. All right. The first 100,000 is yours. But the allegation against you by your critics is that nobody should have accepted this kind of an offer from you

because if they wanted to renegotiate, or if they wanted a bigger piece of the pie, you would kill them. No, it's not true. That is not true.

I've never killed a partner.

Listen, I'm, I'm, this is what I told, well, we're talking about happened 40, 50 years ago. And if you came to my office, I'll show you 14, 15 different letters of people who were partners with me. And knew me back then, or send them me love letters.

And I don't know what I'm talking about women. Men, send me was great. I've watched your podcast. I hope you make it. Our partnership was great.

So I don't know.

“What happened to the guys for whom it wasn't great?”

What about what happened to the guys who said, I don't like the deal. And I actually want to break up. I didn't care, the guy went to container business after a couple of years when I grew and I was making so much money.

I gave him the business back. I didn't try to make money. I walked away. This is yours. I did it with the guy named Joe Medonia,

with the A, A's participatory at 200 copies. When I grew in status, I said, Joe, I love you. I made a ton of money with you. It's yours.

It's all yours now. And if anybody bought it, you're getting touched with me.

And I've got to let it from him in my office. Now, I'll let it from him. Love and love and the partnership, the relationship we had. Now, what would happen if a guy was wanted to take advantage of me

“in some way or from me out or push me out or do something on his own?”

It wouldn't be happy with it. It wouldn't get killed. It's not a killing in my eyes. It's not a killing offense.

But I was powerful with unions and everything.

I could be a tremendous pain in the ass. And that's what I would be. What about he's going for jobs? If he would go for jobs, I would tell him, don't give them no work. Yeah.

I imagine if Sammy the bull tells you don't give this guy any work. You don't give the guy any work. Because there's a lot of power behind that name at that time, especially. So that leads me to Donald Trump. Because there was speculation in the press when he was running for president

that he had mob ties, no one could ever get him on it. Like, you know, they're press tried to get him on everything. None of that was ever proven. But it reminded me of this, this one exchange he had with David Letterman. This is before he ran for president back in 2013 where he was asked.

Because this is a guy in New York City real estate. You know, he has to deal with construction and some of the industries that you just mentioned. Unions all the time.

And here's how that went.

This is out 11. Have you ever knowingly done business with what I like to call organized crime? Have they ever swapped by? I've really tried to stay away from them as much as possible. But if you ever had a case where a guy stopped by and said,

Donald, we're going to handle the linens. You know, growing up in New York and doing business in New York, I would say there might have been one of one of those characters along the way. But generally speaking, I like to stay away from that group. Yeah, well, I think that goes without saying.

But sometimes they don't let you stay away from them. There's truth of that. But if you smart, you can stay away.

“You have to stay away and just sort of lead your life.”

You don't want to get involved. Although I must say, I haven't that on occasion. A few of those people, they happen to be very nice people. You just don't want to owe them money. Yeah, I just don't owe them money.

I've heard you talk about him before. And sort of said, like, he was, you knew not to, don't go there. You knew. No, it is what it was with Donald Trump. It was smart.

It was a good buildup. It was a great buildup. He was pretty honorable with the people he dealt with. He had a group of X FBI agents for security purposes. So we knew that.

So you could push on him a little bit. I tried. But couldn't succeed. What he's saying is right. He knew we would air.

He knew that. He had to deal with situations.

“But he built it as a, as a business guy.”

You couldn't go up there and try to talk like this guy was talking. You're going to threaten them. Give me, you would be arrested in three minutes. Those agents were around 24/7. So I backed away from him because there was nothing I could do.

A guy named Eddie Gallo Full had a, a demolition company. He did a job for him. They was able to reach some people in the company.

But it never went to his level that we know of.

And he didn't want to deal with us. I left him alone because I thought that was a bad problem. I didn't want to go try to threaten him because I thought we would go to prison. So we left him alone. There was plenty of people who wanted to deal with us.

So to go out there like a thug and walk in his office and try to threaten him. You would go to prison for sure. So I don't think anybody bothered him. I'm going to give you a quick example of a news reporter or woman who called me one day and told me to send him to your town. He was very powerful during the 80s.

And he was a big buildup. You must know something. They asked me because after he became the president. So I said, really don't know. You know, just what I told you now.

That's what I know about him. I really don't know any incidents that he's done anything. If that's what you're looking for. Sammy, please, come on. She's begging me for information.

It'll just be between me and you. Which I know is bullshit. That's not going to happen. She's looking for information. It's not going to stay between me and her.

So I felt like goofing on and I said, listen. It's just between me and you. Sammy, yeah, yeah, I give you my word. Nobody'll ever know. I said, all right.

There was a dry wall draw by wanted. I knew this beautiful woman was a friend of mine. She was a hooker. So I hooked it up with Donald Trump.

We had a manager to talk. And I couldn't help it. I started laughing. So she said, you fuck your life. She said, I'm not lying.

You keep pressing me.

“And she was asking me, what's that name?”

What's that name? Why? Who do you care what a name is? You're not going to say that. Why do you care?

So she gave it into my speed. It would have been printed on the front page. Yeah, yeah. So now she's laughing. I'm laughing.

And I should listen.

There's one thing I definitely would never do with Donald Trump.

I don't dislike them. But I would never have a manager to tell the truth. That's the truth. So my head. We kind of just let me pause this right now.

Just have a bit of breaking news at this moment. You just mentioned him. The movie Godfather and Sonny Corley. Only James Conn was the actor played that role. She's died.

She's got that news in. The team's called James Conn just died. Wow. That's sad. Yeah.

What an icon. Yeah. Yeah. You know he was hooked. What do you mean?

He was in the month. What?

“James Conn was in hooked him with the mob.”

That's the guy who played Sonny, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was there when he came down in that's permission to be in that movie. I was there with my personal call.

Joe Columball gave him a role. Who did he ask permission of? To be in the movie. But who was he who's permission was he seeking? Joe Columball's.

And he came to Columball in Portugal because there was a guy Andrew Mush who was friendly with him. Matter of fact Andrew Mush who was a captain in the Columball family. He came Godfather and his kid or vice versa. They were real tight all their lives. So he was connected with the Columball family.

Wow. That's a point when he was being cast for the Godfather. You're saying he had this connection. Yes. Wow.

Yes. I was there when he came down and they said he's an actor. He's coming down. And they've played the part. They brought them over to Carmine test permission.

And you you witnessed him asking for the permission. No, absolutely. I was there. What did he say? No, he has permission.

Carmine told him I'll talk to Joe Columball. I'll make this happen. Don't worry about it. What he did is he put him in Andrew Mush's hands tight. You know, he might have got the part anyway.

But they played this whole little game with him. But they became super close. They became one became the Godfather. One of the kids and you could look that all up. You can you can see that.

But I was not confused because James Khan was a successful actor.

“I think I don't have his whole bio in front of me.”

Prior to the the Godfather. So are you saying he was young? He was young. I don't think he was a major actor. He could have been an actor.

Of course he was an actor. But I don't think. But he wasn't in the mob like you were in the mob. You're saying tonight's like connections and what runs. What does it mean?

Yeah, it's it's a associate. It's an associate of the mob. Not always. He's on record now with the mafia as an associate. He's not a made member.

It's not one of us, but he's an associate of the. Just like it's a natural was. He was, too, you say. I mean, of course, it's been rumors about this for years. But you're saying that you're.

They're true. You know, when we took over John Goddy and me and. John Goddy was a fucking ego maniac and he was in a restaurant. It's an. I tried coming and.

He didn't say nothing to John. He was going to buy him a bottle of wine or something. John refused it. And he sent this guy. Joe Watts over to.

So it's not a natural to tell him whenever you come in a restaurant. You see John Goddy. You come over and you kiss his head. Oh, boy. And out.

So natural went to where he's supposed to go to the general of East Family. Because that's where he was for years. This guy Frankie blew eyes. And Jim Giganti. I was there when he got in touch with us and told John.

You know, bro, he's always been with us.

What do you send so many over to abuse him? He does a lot of favors. It's not us, but he's my dog, bro. If you need a favor, he'll do it. Don't go send it people with threatening me for a people.

And so I mean, how much more? I mean, and I always know it. But I'm giving it out example where he was abused by. This Joe Watts on John's orders. And the Genevieve family came right out of the woodwork and protected him.

And I should say, I mean, with respect to James Khan. Of course, we haven't had the chance to reach out to anybody in his camp and ask these questions. And they're quite clearly going to be in mourning today. Andrew, that's for Andrew Russo. They used to call him Andrew.

Mush. If he's related to him.

I will say I knew James Khan just a bit personally through a mutual friend.

He was an absolute gentleman and completely cognizant and lovely. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I know. I know. I know. I just don't. I feel uncomfortable. If none of this is true, disparaging him on the day of his death.

And so, and I have an at the chance to check it out myself. So with respect to you, not saying it isn't just don't know when I make that clear to the audience. But, but that's unfortunate. It's sad to have lost him. He was working the godfather earned him an Academy Award nomination, a Golden Globe nomination.

And of course, a place in all of our hearts because he was this fire brand who was tortured.

“And I think just did such a brilliant job of portraying what one might go through.”

If one were born into such a family or in your case, willingly joined, quote, the family. Before we leave that subject.

Did your wife, I always wear it under about the wives?

Like, did your wife know everything? I know she knew you were in the mafia, but did she know, you know, about murders? Did she know all that? No, absolutely not. I never told my wife anything about the mafia.

And it was my way of protecting her. She always, in my opinion, could turn around. If she was ever questioned by the feds or anybody, she could say, I don't know legitimately. Not as, I'm not going to give her information, especially, but murder something like that. I'd have to be out of my mind to do something like that.

But she knew I was in the mafia, but she didn't know any of that. In either of my kids, I was a family man. I lived two lives. At home, I was a father or a husband. When I made money, I bought a farm.

We put horses on the farm. We, it was a family life.

“When I drove to that place, I left the mafia behind me.”

When I got off the highway, it was in Jersey, Greenbridge, New Jersey. It smelled the trees, the grass. I was like a different person. That's the farm. Wow.

And it was a 30 acre farm. We turned it into a horse farm. We lived great times in that farm holidays, fourth of July. So when I left, I left out a Friday, took off. Usually staying there on a Saturday and Sunday.

When the FBI went up to Greenbridge, New Jersey, they went to every restaurant. Everywhere I went, asking people, you know, about me. And not one person said anything negative. When I sold it, there was a woman who was, she sold it. She asked me for a cart where the kids sit on it and they could drive it.

So I had said, you know, I'm not going to sell it. It's part of the farm. And my dad's salad. I told him that cart isn't for sale. And I gave it to the woman.

She told the feds. That's how he dealt with me.

“He never offered me money under the table or doing anything.”

But he gave me this cart for my grandchildren. And a matter of fact, as soon as I'm done with this conversation, I'm going to get in touch with him. And I'm going to tell him that usually here is going to be questions. So I was a different animal there.

Yeah, well, I mean, your kids talk about you in this way. It's part of what makes you fascinating. The dichotomy between your professional life and your home life. And up next, in our last segment together, I want to get into turning on Godi, going into witness protection.

And your job that you did while that happened. Plastic surgery. And then how you wound up back in prison. And then free again. Okay, so don't miss that. Stay with us for one more segment.

Assam you the vulgarvano continues with us right after this quick break. My team's best to been looking into the James Con thing during the break and says, Indeed, Andy Mush Russo, part of the Colombo crime family, was a long time friend of James Con. And at one point, James Con did indeed offer to post

Mush's bail money when he was accused of a crime. Andy Mush Russo was indeed Godfather to one of James Con's children. So to be continued on that front. There were, there have been reports that Con had this connection.

Though I've never heard it directly from somebody who was actually in the mob.

So we've gone to a different place. Okay, Sammy, you wound up, you and John Gotti wind up running the Gambino crime family. The genavise of crime family. And John Gotti's mob boss, he's the boss of the family. You become under boss.

And you guys for years and years were very tight. Very tight. And then as I understand it, and as we said in the intro, things went downhill. And I don't want to spend too much time. I spent the talk about a lot.

But they went downhill and you're both in jail together. You thought he was going to turn on you.

You went to those two agents who were following you around all the time and said, "Let's talk about John Gotti." Now his defender say bullshit.

“They're like, "That's Sammy trying to cover his own butt."”

So he doesn't look like a rat. John Gotti wasn't going to turn on Sammy.

And they basically just call BS on the whole story.

So what do you want to say about that? Right. I mean, I've heard that. There's many inch of hours of tapes. It wasn't means that hours of tapes.

There was. But the opening apartment there was a small amount of tapes. He was up there for months. But we didn't use the apartment. A lot of times when we did use the apartment.

We didn't talk about anything. There was a couple of times that I wasn't in the apartment. And he was sitting with Franklin Casio. Now, when people talk about it was all bullshit. I mean, it's made up.

There's agents, New York State, organized crimes, that test force, that herdees tapes, listen to the tapes, and knew exactly what was going on.

“But I'm going to give you one story that's going to blow all that out of stuff away.”

The judge got rid of our lawyers. Jerry Shaw Gell and Bruce Culler. And we had to get new lawyers. One of the lawyers that we brought in did an interview and you could check this out in an article with Jerry Capisey.

He did an interview with Jerry Capisey and told him this. I was brought in to be the lawyer for John. And he told John, I was in that meeting. He was a lawyer's meeting. He said to John,

"You can't beat this case. Your tapes are devastating. The four, five, six tapes out of all the rest of them are devastating. I could try to work out a plea agreement." And John said, "No, I'm going to beat the case.

I got a secret weapon." So Bruce Culler, I mean, Bruce Culler. What did I just say? His name was. That big lawyer.

But anyway, he said, "Well, tell me your secret weapon. How are you going to beat this case?" And he says,

“"I'm going to throw Sammy and Frankie under the bus.”

And I'm going to go free." We all left. Sounded like a joke.

The lawyer never came back.

When he did the interview with Jerry Capisey, he told him that story. He said, "I never went back because I didn't want any part of that strategy." But John continued with that strategy

because when he was in the apartment with those tapes, he had planned to kill me. And you can't just kill him on the bus. He was very powerful, big money owner. The whole family likes you.

If you can kill him, you shake the whole family. If you can kill him, you can kill all of us. There's a guy who's the most loyal guy to you. He's working in your cases. He's killing people for you.

If you could do that. So all of the things he was telling Frankie to talk about, to the captains, to prepare. Sam is killing his partners. He's killing union guys and taking over the unions.

He wanted that to go out. So that when he kills me. He would have just a location. That is on those tapes. We looked into what he was saying on those tapes.

And indeed, it's very negative about you and your alleged behaviors. So I see it. And I forgive me for skipping past some of this. But you know, this has been out there.

So you wind up saying, you're going to cross me.

I'm going to cross you first.

And you'll wind up going to jail, which he did for the rest of his life. You got a good deal. There's a sweetheart deal where you're supposed to go away for five years. You really only had to serve less than one year

because you'd already serve four prior to, you know, not the whole time. You're a little bit off. I took a play with the thing, not for five years. I took a 20 year play.

I got only served five years. Yes, I agree. Because of the cooperation that I did. Yeah. I took a play for 20 years.

Got it. And I didn't do a year.

You got some good time off of the five. So I did almost five. When I got sentenced, I had seven months to go on on what. I got it. Yeah.

It's a immaterial. The point is it wasn't a lot of jail time for, you know, the feds. What are you doing? Absolutely. Yeah.

For what you did. So the deal is you're going to go into witness protection as we mentioned at the top of the show for a while. And can you just tell us, because I read that you were. You did something with pools.

Where did they send you? And what was the job?

“And did you actually run around like looking after people's pools for a year or two?”

Or selling people's pools?

Well, when I first got out, I went in the witness protection program for eight months.

I get, I promised them I would do one year. They were begging me to go in the program. I didn't want to go in. I had plenty of money. They said, you're going to make the government look horrible.

Come on. You got a great deal. Five year deal. Give us something. Go in the program for a while.

I gave them a year. They only wound up doing eight months because I met a woman there. I was talking to an onion with a little bit. And she recognized who I was. And they came back in.

They said, we're going to take you and move you to another state. We're going to start from scratch. And I said, no, I promised you a year. I mean, eight months. I'm not doing it.

They said, you have to do it. That's the rules.

But like while you were doing it.

While you, I'm interested in your life while you were doing it.

“Like, how does a guy who's in the mob doing the stuff you're doing go to?”

Like, look, and after somebody's pool and claiming that you have this other name and this fake background. You know, what? What was that? Well, I wasn't doing it while I was in the program. And I changed my name.

When I left the program in eight months, I changed my name back to. To save a total of ammo. So I wasn't walking around with this. If I run, I feel like you're. You don't like the fact that you were in this program at all.

Is that because it violates like the mob code? Is it, it makes you sound? No. No, no. I don't want to be in it.

What am I going to do to? You can't have any contact with your family or friends or there's all kinds of rules. I just did five years in prison. I'm not going to live by all bunch of set of rules. So I gave them that one year.

You could bounce me around, change my name.

Do what you want with me. And then I'm done with you. I'm out of prison. So I didn't want to stay with these rules. Did you go to people's cocktail parties?

“You go to like the barbecue of the neighbor next door?”

For example. Most of the fake name again. I can't remember the fake name. Jimmy Moran. Did you say, like, hey, Jimmy Moran.

And like, come on over. Well, watch Super Bowl together. Like, how did it go? No, no, no. I was just running around.

It was 50. Five years old. I think I was, uh, or 50 shot me as old. And I was there. I was, it was in a college town.

I wound up in Colorado. And it was a bolder Colorado. It's a college town. And I was hanging out there. I met a couple, you know, people.

And I played chess with some people. I'm a chess player. And I'm friendly like that. But no, it wasn't party time. It was, I was, it was like doing time on the outside.

I wanted to get done with the witness protection program and go home. So you did that. I did that. Sorry. I'm not an old condensed in my own time.

So I just want to get in the last thing. So you go back to your real name and your life. And we talked earlier about whether that was scary in terms of, like, people are going to come get me and sure enough, some tried. Um, and you wind up like to me.

It's just so like, you know, I get it because if you're in a life of crime, maybe it's hard to get out. But wind up dealing drugs and going back to prison for 20 years, almost 20 years. How did you let that happen?

How did that happen? How did that happen? Now on that one subject, not one subject, but that's exactly what happened. And I wasn't dealing drugs. It was ecstasy, which they consider it.

I'll drunk. It's, and it was that that's all it was. It was no heroin. It was not cocaine. It was not the crack.

It was ecstasy, which is a bullshit drunk. They put it on a level. But anyway, I didn't even do that. There's a thing coming out, a documentary that we're working on. And me, my daughter, my son.

And I'm tied up on the contract with that documentary that's going to talk about that little part of my life. So I don't think I could talk about that. Or I'll get my head in. That's me.

Because I'm in contract with it now. So that's fine. That's fine. So we'll stay tuned to wait for your longer take on that. But you get out of jail on 2017.

Right. So now, how old are you now? 7-7. 7-7 years old.

“You and your wife divorce, but it sounds like she's still in your life.”

And kind of a business partner now. We've talked about your daughter care. And you have a son as well. So, you know, what next? What do you do with the time you have left?

Well, I've done my business. She's not my business partner. I'm a bitch. I work for her. She owes the call.

She handles my rights. And I work for her. I do my podcast. I do some other things. And I do some things on my own.

So, we're not really partners. But we're close. We have kids, grandchildren. We've been divorced since 1991. And so, but we are close.

And I'm still close with my kids, my grandchildren. And I do this. I couldn't find a better thing to do in retirement.

I'm never going to go back to crime.

I'm never going to do anything like that again. So, I enjoy the social media stuff that I'm doing. I mean, this contract about the story of my life at that time with the X to C in order to be in order to have a loan. Is that the Salvatory or is that a different project?

Because I know you're.

“No, that's what you've got your own short film series called the Salvatory that's coming out.”

Yes, the Salvatore. It's based on a true story. But it's not a true story. It's fiction. But it's me.

It's his what it is. I get out of prison in 2017. I'm contacted by the FBI, my wife and children were in the program supposedly and they're all killed. And the FBI wants me to go after and follow some serial killer. And I agree to it.

I don't want to do it at first.

And it showed me a picture of dead woman and kids. And I agree to go after him. Now, I'm going to say this here. But I'm not even supposed to be saying these things. But what happens is that these FBI guys got money from the mob.

And they gave this serial killer my wife and kids address. And he was supposed to go kill them. So they get the money. They break the link. And they got me.

Now they got me going after him. Sounds a little confusing. But me going after him. I get it. It's sort of a normal show.

So this is going to come out on Sammy on his YouTube channel. So if you're not subscribed, you can see it there by doing so. In the minute we have left. Rounding back to the discussion we had on faith and God at the top of the show. What do you make of it?

A lot of folks and they get to be 77 years old. Let's start thinking about the afterlife and what possibly awaits. And forgiveness and all of that. So how do you see what's next for you? You know, meeting a maker, making a men's asking for grace for forgiveness.

Is any of that important to you?

“It's important to, you know, what's going to happen?”

I mean, I really don't believe that you go anywhere. I'll be honest with you. I don't think you go anywhere. But if I go anywhere, I'm going to go share it. I'll talk to them and I'll talk to you.

I'm not going to ask for forgiveness. If you made me, then you made me. You could have stopped anytime you want. I'm not going to, you made me what I am. I'm a lion.

You made me that. So if you wanted to stop me, you could stop me anytime you want. I'm not going to ask for forgiveness. I did what I did in an honorable way. If you could call it that in my eyes.

I never really took advantage of people.

I never cheated. I never lied. I never bullshit a people to an extent except for the government. Because of course, I couldn't tell them the truth. And I could tell my family the truth of things I was doing.

But I think that's understandable. And I really, I'm not looking for forgiveness of what I did. And what that would mean, this is taught in the church. If you don't believe this, you're going to hell. I don't believe in all that bullshit.

I really don't. If you don't believe what I say, you're going to hell. If you don't tell, I don't believe any of that. So I believe there is a God. I look up at the sky.

I do artwork. I learned how to do artwork in prison. I look up at the sky. Who could do that? What artists in the world could do that?

It's got to be a God. Life.

You see animals. You see things. Yeah. Animals kill each other.

So I don't believe in the stuff they tell us in religion.

You know, I got it. I think I got it. God is fair. He's honorable. If he's there.

And I don't think I'll have too much of a problem. I think people bullshit about religion.

“I think they'll have more of a problem than I will.”

I got it.

I got to leave it at that because we're kind of up against a hard break.

But I agree with you that God is fair. And he is honorable. And he, I believe he will have the last say. Sammy the bull, Gravano. Thank you so much for telling your story.

And as I say for what the mob says, giving testimony that led to in their view, with the FBI said, led to the demise of organized crime in New York. Amazing. All the best to you.

“His podcast is called Our Thing and his mini series, The Salvatore.”

It's coming out next week.

My God. What just happened? What just happened in that last two hours of my team. And I were just talking about it. It just went to a lot of places I didn't.

Did not expect the thing about James Con. And but you know, there's something. There's something to be learned there because we have been so fascinated by the mob in this country. So fascinating by the mob. And it is interesting to listen to somebody who was in it at the highest levels.

Talk about how it works and what the ethical code actually looks like. It looks like, right? Like some of that stuff at the eye behaved honorably. That's how he sees it. How he believes in God.

But doesn't think that there will be any judgment for him because he thinks God made him. The way God made me a lot. I mean, that stuff was very eye-opening to me in terms of how his brain works and how people can live a life like this.

“How could, how could you live a life where you kill 19 people?”

I understand he says they agree to live by the same code. But you know, the rest of us who live by a very different code have trouble understanding any of this. And it's an organization that's had its tentacles in American society for a hundred plus years. Right? So it's like, anyway, there's a lot to be learned. And our fascination with this group remains, it may be dwindling.

It's not done in New York, but it's certainly not what it used to be. But it's still out there. And you know, it's glorified and virtually every Hollywood movie still to this day. So, I don't know. I enjoy the exchange and I enjoy listening to, you know, his take on it.

Obviously disagreed with a lot of his ethical conclusions as I'm sure you did. But I learned a little bit, and I hope you did too. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.