In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City police Intelligence Detective, is joined by Frank DiMatteo, a man deeply rooted in the Brooklyn mob scene, and his co-author, Michael Benson, a seasoned true crime writer. Frank brings a unique perspective, shaped by his years growing up under the mentorship of mob legends like the Gallo brothers. Together, we dive into the evolution of organized crime in New York, focusing on the rivalry between the Irish and Italian communities as they vied for control of Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood. Frank recounts his early days in the mob, from running simple errands to taking on more significant operational roles. We discuss their latest book, Red Hook: Brooklyn Mafia Ground Zero.
This is a look at the iconic neighborhood, treating Red Hook as a character in the story. The book highlights longstanding rivalries, including how the Irish initially ruled the docks until Italian immigrants arrived and tipped the scales—ultimately leading Frank to conclude that the Irish “lost because they drank too much.”
As we unpack Red Hook’s rich criminal history, Frank and Michael reveal how this area became a breeding ground for notorious figures like Al Capone and Machine Gun Jack McGurn. Through personal anecdotes and broader historical insights, they paint a vivid picture of life in a community that served as both a battleground and home for the mob. Join us as we explore Frank and Michael’s fascinating work, shedding light on the intricate layers of mob life and the neighborhoods that shaped these stories. This episode offers an unfiltered look at the history of organized crime in Brooklyn, revealing the tension between power, loyalty, and survival in a world in the shadows.
To get this book, click here for Red Hook: Brooklyn Mafia Ground Zero.

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Transcript
[0:00] Welcome, wiretappers out there. I’m glad to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, Gary Jenkins. Gangland Wire is the show, and I know a lot of you guys already knew who I am, but I get some new people every once in a while, so I have a great show for you today. One of these guys, Frank DiMatteo, grew up in the New York families in Brooklyn and around the Joey Gallo gang. He’s got several books out, and Michael Benson is his co-author on this, and Michael Benson, prolific author. And between them, they’ve got books about the mob. I’ve got most of them already. I’ve got The Cigar. We’ve got The Buffy Hitman about Carmine DeBasse. He’s one of the killers of Joy Gallo. A more recent one by Michael Benson and somebody else about moguls in Hollywood. And there’ll be some mob connections. Oops, didn’t have the mob connections to Hollywood. So I want to get Michael on to sometime in the future to talk about that book and Hollywood and the mob, which we know a lot about in Kansas City because we’re so close to Chicago and Chicago are the guys out there in Hollywood and extorted the shit out of them. Anyhow, so welcome guys. Tell us a little bit. Maybe we start with Frank. Frank has this kind of colorful

[1:16] mob history and the way he was raised. Frank, tell the guys a little bit about yourself.

[1:22] Well i was born in my father you know got involved in this life about 1960 i grew up under the under the watch eye of larry gallo joey gallo and alba gallo my godfather is bobby bon Giovanni which is bobby darrow hit guy for the gallo family and my uncle’s joe chapani which was originally with Luciano and Costello and Adonis. These are the mentors and these are the guys that I knew and followed and listened to and picked up everything I had to pick up until I was old enough to move around with them. And when I was old enough to move around with them, I became the driver. I just grew from being a driver for my father and these guys to be more active in the life. Yeah. And I stood there with my life until about 20 years ago. We walked away after it was a big pinch with the last crew we were with. Everybody got arrested. We got some subpoenas. We wound up walking away. And I wound up making a magazine and then now writing with Michael.

[2:33] The magazine is called Mob Can’t Depot. Well, I am a freelance writer. I went to college to learn to be a writer. I was also born in 1956, probably one of the reasons Frank and I get along so well. I started out as a sports writer, wasn’t terribly good at it. I was a pretty good boxing writer. Turns out I was a much better fan than I was a writer when it came to sports. I switched to true crime. I wrote a bunch of books about psycho killers and innocent victims and became a little bit of a TV star doing evil twins and evil kin on the ID network. The market for true crime books softened largely because there were a lot of TV shows, whole networks dedicated to the subject. Books didn’t sell as well. Our editor, Gary Goldstein, found a book that Frank had written called Lion in the Basement. Frank wrote it all by his lonesome. It’s a little bit like a clockwork orange. It’s not quite written in English. It’s written in Frank.

[3:31] So Gary’s idea was to have me take a whack at it and add some new material. I talked to his mom and other people. We put some new things in there and fixed up the English, made the spelling uniform. The result was President Street Boys. And that started a whole thing. We did a bunch of mob bosses. We did a hitman. And then Frank had the idea of, hey, let’s do a book where the hero is the neighborhood instead of one particular mobster.

[3:59] So we start this book, Red Hook, back when the Europeans first arrived. It starts with the slaughter of the Lenape Indians by the Dutch. So, I mean, from the very beginning, the red in Red Hook is for blood.

[4:12] So that’s how Red Hook got its name. I think it has to do with the color of the soil, but it could have been named after the blood that was spilled there. Yeah. I just interviewed an Atlanta-based FBI agent about a case that he did on the Gambino Connected Club called the Gold Club in Atlanta. Michael DiLeonardo took a case, and the owner, Steve Kaplan, had a warehouse in Red Hook. He said, they told me it was in Red Hook. I said, where is Red Hook? I’ve never heard of Red Hook. It couldn’t be more out of the way.

[4:46] It’s one of the reasons it is the way it is because that’s where the docks are. So it’s always been mobbed up, but it’s also geographically isolated more now than ever with the Gowanus Canal, the Atlantic Ocean, the now the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. It’s a hard place to get in and out of. Interesting. And that’s what I noticed in the book, that Red Hook is the protagonist of this story. It is a character in this story. And you take the readers on a really colorful tour of Red Hook and white hand and black hand gangs, as you said, from the Indians and the white hand, black hand gangs. And those wars between the Irish and the Italians clear up the gas pipe, Casso and got his pal Shorty Masioco, Masioco. I can never get that name pronounced right. But anyhow, you bring them in. You know what? It evokes in me, one of the first mob movies I ever saw when I didn’t realize it was a mob movie was on the waterfront. I think that’s probably where that was set. I would imagine. And that was, that’s what it evokes in me. So yeah.

[5:52] Let’s, maybe we start talking about a little bit about this battle between the Irish and white hand gangs and the black hand gangs and Al Capone is what I’ve always say. I say a lot when I, especially when I give talks, I’ll give talks here in Kansas City about the mafia, this phenomenal. I’ll explain to people, the Irish and the Germans got here first, but then the Italians came along later. The Irish already have the good jobs. They’ve got the police jobs and the government jobs. The Italians come in and the already established Irish are going to keep them forced out. The Italians have to fight for everything they can get as an immigrant group. It just so happens that they brought this tradition of the mafia from Sicily with them. And that was a way to organize and help their own people get a foothold in this new country. You have to start businesses. You can’t get a job. You can’t get a farmer’s job because the Irish got that sewed up. They’re not going to let you in. You can’t get a cop’s job. You can’t get those kinds of jobs. Let’s start talking about that history in Red Hook. It really played out in that area.

[6:54] The Irish, like you said, were here first. They had older jobs. Red Hook was a ghetto. It wasn’t a good neighborhood. It was always a rough neighborhood.

[7:04] They ran everything, the docs, the stores, the cops, the lawyers, judges. They ran the whole thing. We never complained, but it was bad times. And we had to organize. And some guys that came over from Sicily knew what to do, started putting everybody together. They had to go against the Irish to eat. And they got stronger and stronger in the neighborhood because the blood of Red Hook is the docks. That’s it. That’s the docks. And then stores and restaurants and food markets to feed everybody. But the money was the docks.

[7:39] And we just got stronger and stronger. I mean, I always say the Irish lost because they drank too much. You know what I mean? They just drank too much. At the time, you know, they were comfortable and they were set in their ways. You know, we were on a mission. It was a little different at the time. Between killing themselves, we didn’t have to kill half them because they killed themselves. So it was pretty easy. And we just eventually took over the neighborhood and created that Longshoremen Association that we ran for the next 80 years and slowly moved the Irish off the docks. Pretty much, they moved themselves off the docks from killing each other. We took over, you know, and then we changed the neighborhood into an Italian-based neighborhood with all the Italian flavors to what it is today. You know, it was already Italian already. We had a small, very small Irish community, very small, big Spanish community, and an Arab community.

[8:39] Surrounding us. Now, Red Hook is on the other side of the tunnel because they split it. That whole neighborhood was Red Hook. Then they split it when they built a tunnel and a highway. The other side of Red Hook, Deep Red Hook, became more of a jungle,

[8:54] even in my days, growing up. You would go there. It was a drug haven, and we had some bars on that side. Then they’d build the projects, and that really destroyed the neighborhood. But on our side, it was more stores and it was bustling a lot more. And the Italian influence really, you could see that on that side with stores and food markets, restaurants and neighborhoods that stuck together. And that’s what I seen as a kid. And that’s how we took it over. We took it out of necessity just to survive because we were starving at the time. Men had a choice. They could either work on the docks or they could be a gangster with a shot at glory. There was no glory on the docks. You just broke your back and died.

[9:37] Um my grandfather was a longshoreman emily’s father was a longshoreman um tough life they were hard there you could see they were beat up by the time they were old they worked hard my grandfather’s legs were shot his hands were crippled emily’s father’s too they they fought for those jobs what about if you had to eat but again you had a choice either you do that or you go on the street and rob and and that’s what happened i think one of my favorite characters from the white hand section of the book is a woman named Anna Lonergan. We first meet her testifying on behalf of her mother at a murder trial in which the victim was her father. Mom gets off because dad beat mom until she eventually turned down and killed him. But Anna goes on to marry Wild Bill Lovett and he gets whacked. Then she loses her brother Peg Leg Lonergan. He gets whacked. So she remarries a guy named Maddie Martin. You got to wonder, is he standing they’re saying, I do what he thinks is going to happen to him. Two years later, he gets murdered. So she lost a dad, a brother, and two husbands. People stopped looking at her. She was the ghost of murders yet to come. When the second husband dies, this gives you an idea of the boys from the press

[10:49] back in those days and how soft hearted they were. She comes walking into the morgue to identify the body and they go, so you should be pretty used to this by now, huh?

[10:59] These are all white hand guys. These are all Irish white hand guys. The white hand gang. And it’s a game of King of the Hill. You get to be King of the Hill and the guy below you whacks you and you fall off and then he takes your place for a couple of months. It made the job much easier for the Italians that the Irish hierarchy were self-destructive. One of the more interesting characters is Al Capone. This is where he started his criminal career. One story I read was about him coming back from Chicago.

[11:28] Frankie Yale brought him back to kill one of these white hand gang members it was anna’s brother peg leg oh he’s the one that killed peg leg great nickname down scarface kills peg leg i can see the headline now it was coney island but he was in brooklyn and he got the scars it all came right out of red hook al capone came up there under the tutelage of frankie yale and those guys johnny torio was from there and they moved to chicago and create that whole thing in chicago it’s really the cradle of the modern american and Mafia, it seems to me, in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Al Capone was married in Red Hook.

[12:08] What do you remember about Machine Gun Jack McGurn, which was not his real name? He came from Red Hook. He was one of the killers in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, I believe. I recently did a story about Al Capone played golf a lot with Machine Gun Jack McGurn, a guy named Fred Killer Burke, great nickname, but, but machine gun, Jack McGurn started out in red, uh, Do you keep the machine gun in his golf bag? You know, the guy that was just wearing this was a caddy. And he did say that Al Capone had a gun in his golf bag because it went off accidentally and grazed Al Capone’s leg while they were playing golf. You know, McGarren came from Union Street, Al, for Van Brunton, Columbia. You know, he’s a Brooklyn boy. He came from the other side, but he’s a Brooklyn boy that wound up in Chicago. And he was Italian. and not a, he took on this name as a fighter. A lot of Italian guys did that back then. Yeah. Vincent Gavardi. Okay. That’s his name, Vincent Gavardi.

[13:12] Some old man, I call him grandpa, but he used to always mention Vincent. And we had no idea what he was talking about. We called him Vincent. We called him McGurn. And he wound up being a driver for Capone many years ago. And he was telling us about Capone. used to wear a shirt, never wear it again. He took a lot of the shirts. He wound up being involved in a murder there, and he beat it, and he wound up coming to New York. He came from Italy to Houston, to Chicago, to New York. And he used to tell us about Vincent all the time, about real tough guy. And we had no idea what he was talking about until many, many years later. And he was always talking about Jack McGurn, that he was with McGurn a lot at one point in Chicago, but met him in Brooklyn.

[14:00] Went to Chicago with him and he said he was a very bad dude, McGurn. Loyal as they come, but a killer, very talented, was a golfer, he was a boxer, a loyal guy. He had nothing but good things to say about him. And I never knew he was talking about Vincent Givaldi. We always thought, and it wound up being him. It was amazing, the guy telling stories about him and then finding out who he was. You know, firsthand, we… Knew that the Pops was in Chicago and did drive Capone. So we knew all this

[14:33] stuff. It was interesting. And then writing about McGregor a little bit, it was interesting. Also, going up into the 50s and those juvenile gangs, that’s where Carmine started out with the juvenile gangs. Many of these guys, Sammy the Bull, the Rapper Street, something, I can’t remember the name of it, but a lot of these guys and Gotti, they started out with these juvenile gangs. And so you get into that a lot and tell some of the roots of that and some of the colorful names of those juvenile gangs in Persico. Can you talk about that a little bit? What do you remember that you guys researched about those? Well, I know that Carmine Persico was the leader of the Garfield Boys.

[15:12] And there’s an argument that both West Side Story and The Godfather contain scenes based on Carmine Persico’s life because he was in the rumble. Happened to be in Prospect Park over by the boathouse, not in the playground. The rumble, just like in West Side Story, was over a girl. There was going to be fists. Somebody pulled a knife. Then somebody pulled a gun. Kid got shot in the belly. Next thing you know, they’re all running. The gun ends up getting thrown into the Gowanus Canal. Luckily for them, it sunk because at that time, Gowanus Canal wasn’t quite liquid. The gasoline petroleum jelly company dumped so much into the Gowanus that you could actually bounce things off of it. That scene later became the Romeo and Juliet finale for West Side Story. The loss of innocence when the kids of New York stopped using their fists and started pulling guns. It made rumbling a lot riskier. Really? And the other scene is the attempted murder of Larry Gallo, which is featured Carmine the snake. I’m sorry, is it in The Godfather or The Godfather Part 2? That was in The Godfather, I think. where the cop walks in, what are you doing open on a Sunday? One of the Godfather’s people, and he throws something over his neck and starts strangling him and fighting with him. The cop sticks his head in, yeah.

[16:36] That really happened. Cop got shot when the guys tried to run away. And Larry had a scar on his neck for the rest of his life. He didn’t supposed to go by himself. And he wound up, he was very comfortable with Carmine and the snake. And that’s why he went on his own, because it was still on the same side at the time.

[16:58] And that’s why he wound up almost getting killed. Is that the reason why your dad was brought in as a bodyguard? Was that the incident that started? Right around that time, they found my father in a wagon wheel in the city. He was working for, bouncing for Tony Bender. The Gallo brothers went to Tony Bender because Tony Bender was very sympathetic to their cause. So they want to break away from Joe Pafaci. They were getting schooled by Bender. My father wanted to be a bouncer there. The story goes that they were there one day. My father wound up knocking out this guy and wound up being Emile Griffith. Larry and Joey says, we need a guy like that in Brooklyn. And they went to ask Bender if they can bring him over to Brooklyn. That’s how my father got to Brooklyn with the Gallo brothers from Tony Bender. Imagine decking Emil Griffith. It’s some punch.

[17:48] He was right. It’s not a story. Many guys used to say to Ricky, man, you broke his face. And I was a little kid. They always said something about Ricky doing that. So it wasn’t just a story we made up. When other people talk about it, you know it’s true. And amil griffith was a perceived killer because he famously killed benny kidd perett on friday night fights national television oh really i didn’t remember that it was into friday night fights i remember watching that when i was a little kid with my dad he’d be yelling right i’ll be damned right more than likely i sure do yeah sure yeah it was good interesting so tony bender now he was genovese guy but he ends up disappearing if i remember right.

[18:41] Yes, Tony Bender was a Genovese captain. There’s a lot of talk why, different stories, why he got killed. They’re saying because they were selling buns. I don’t believe in none of that stuff. That’s just my opinion, that Albert on the stage got killed for that, and Bender got killed for that. My belief is that Vito was making a move, and Vito took him out, Genovese. Because Bender was strong, very strong, and these guys are very paranoid. And my belief is that they took them out because of that but they make the story up with the button stuff it’s interesting you know selling buttons i’ve noticed that the mob somebody gets killed and all of a sudden there’s these stories that denigrate them that just come out oh he was gay oh he was this he was that and so they need to denigrate somebody by floating those stories as interesting phenomenon they wait till they can’t defend themselves who tells a story a guy that likes you tell the story or a guy that don’t like you telling stories. It’s all BS anyway, especially when half the people tell the stories weren’t there or not even close to somebody was there. It’s a treacherous life, life inside the mafia for sure.

[19:54] So talking about Versico, that kind of brings up the war with Gallows and Joe Colombo. Your dad was really close to the Gallows and you were all in and around them. I mentioned before I did this, I read this book that Pete the great Diopolis did. And so you actually knew him. You had some memory of him. I said, he seemed like a nice guy. And Frank says, well, I don’t know if he’s a nice guy. But, you know, we got to talk about the gallows here. Let’s talk about that a little bit. Well, I knew Pete well. I stood on the block with Pete for two, three years, so I know Pete. It was a breakaway. The Gallows did not want to be with Joe Pofacci.

[20:33] a group of maybe 40 guys wanted to break away. He had some other family that was sympathetic to their cause because Joe Pofacci was not a good boss. He made guys around him who were family or people around him who were really close. But everybody else was hurting. And then they got tired of him. He was charging him dues every month. And the guy was a multi-millionaire, didn’t need to dine, but he would squeeze up a nickel. People got fed up, especially when you’re in the street and you’re breaking your ass and doing bad things. And you want to bring money home and you’ve got families. This guy’s squeezing every nickel out. So some guys were sympathetic to the Gallicors. You know, they wound up killing Frankie Schatz. And they were supposed to get a piece of the book. It was a big book, Making a Business Down Red Hook. They didn’t get it because Pafaci gave it to someone else. They got screwed everywhere they could. So they reached out to other families and tried to get some support. First, the support was to grab Pafaci and Thomas to change his ways and to be more generous, to go against them. They were just trying to get support, but it didn’t happen. And they wound up breaking away and going to war. And they kidnapped some guys. You know, they had the idea of kidnapping some guys and try to get to a table to make amends. But that didn’t work. Larry and Joey had a big argument over it. Joey wanted to kill a couple of guys and send their bodies back. Larry, the diplomat, said that it wouldn’t help.

[22:02] That you should just negotiate it. Paffacci makes a deal to get them released that they’re going to sit down at a table and they wouldn’t get what they think was theirs.

[22:12] And he reneged on that and just put a hit on all the Gallup boys. Meanwhile, Joe Paffacci, in the middle of it, he was afraid of the Gallup. That’s my opinion. When it went down, he ran to Florida when everybody was getting kidnapped because he was one of the guys supposed to get kidnapped.

[22:28] But he took off right away because they smelled something going on. He checked himself in a hospital, and I think it was in Florida. When they released all the prisoners, they just went back and forth until he dropped dead of cancer. Joe Colombo took over, and his underboss, Zotto, took over. They were still feuding back and forth, and a lot of bodies were coming up. Then Joe Colombo took over because Magalito died of a heart attack, and they made peace. Joey Gallo wound up going to jail and never recognized Columbo as a boss. So I think from 63 on, it was pretty quiet until Joey got out of jail again. And when Joey got out of jail, he went right back to arguing with the Columbo’s now, with Paffacci’s now the Columbo’s. And that’s how 1970, it all broke out again. 70, 71, broke out again, the argument. Joey couldn’t get along. Joey wanted to be boss.

[23:28] That was his and mine. They say he was nuts. He was a smart, nutty guy, but he was a real tough guy, had no fear. And he was one sided. That’s it. He didn’t believe that Colombo should have. And that’s why they went back to war again. The main drag up through Red Hook. The block where the galos hung out was very remote. It was against the docks and then to the expressway, which is built in a big ditch. Not the sort of place where anybody’s just passing through. If you ended up on the block, that was your destination.

[24:04] The stores, buildings, and apartments were all family for years and years and years. I think that Gallos had, between Columbia and Van Brunt, owned three themselves, and their mother owned one, and another crew member had another building, and Armando had another building. I mean, we then got Joulos. They had, you know, when I got there, there was only like 20 houses left on the block or 15 houses. There was a lot of, you know, knocked down buildings already. But probably owned, if there was 20, we owned 15 of them. So it was really a private block as far as owning everything. It was pretty much private down there. You’re only going down there if you’re visiting a family member or a longshoreman in or having lunch. A lot of longshoremans went down there because they were two, three places. So that’s how the stores originally opened up because they would serve lunch to longshoremans.

[24:56] A funny story. you in the late 70s, my very first apartment after college was at Henry and Sackett. I lived above Mark’s Pharmacy with my girlfriend at the time, who’s still my wife. And we were told on the QT, don’t go on the other side of the expressway. It was rough on that end. It was really rough in those days. It was Spanish and Italian. A lot of Spanish down there at the time. A lot of the stuff coming in because it’s isolated on that side this way. Uh, you had a, a lot of the red hook projects and all that stuff came in that way, cause that was the way to get in and out. So it was a little rough down there, but no one bothered us because everybody know who we were, but you know, other people had problems, you know, and then we policed the area as good as we could. It was rough down there. Talk about the sniper fire.

[25:47] When they shot, I think it was 74. After Joey got killed, it was a lull. They wanted to break up. They didn’t want Albert to be the boss of the crew. So they put my father up to be the boss of the crew. My father says, it’s Gallo’s name. It’s his family, a crew.

[26:07] So about seven, eight guys broke away, really tight guys that went through the war in this first war. But after Joey got killed, they were still there. But then they want to break away. So about seven guys broke away and they went back to Colombo. And they started feuding over who owned the numbers, who owned the clubs, you know, bookmaking. Because everything was entwined so deep over those years. These guys started shooting each other. On the corner of Union Street and Columbia is, you know, facing our block. So we had a Frankfort guy in the corner of Columbia and Van Brunt that we used to eat Frankforts on the corner all day. Punchy Ileano, Frank Ileano, was on the corner, and they wound up shooting him from a rooftop on the corner of Union Street. He lived. About a month later, Louis the Syrian, Nubella, was on the same corner, getting a hot dog. Cypress shot him, and he lived, though. Not that the shooting did them any good. No, because both guys lived. The shooter got away. In between that, the Gallo crew tried to kill two of the guys twice, and they wound up living too. But they got some other guys in between. I think they got Tarzan and the Blue Beetle. I think they killed them in between. And…

[27:31] Then it quieted down for a while because the gallows wound up talking the chin and breaking away from the Colombo family and going with the Gennarisi family. In between a year, everything was nice and quiet. Sniper again, but this time on the block across the street from Aurora’s club, shoots another gallow member, Stephen Borrello. It makes a stink that you can’t do that. So they call in Chiraz, which is Jerry Baciano, and Mooney. They called the guys in, and Mooney ran away, but Chiraz came in, and they told him that you got to stop, and everything will be okay. They just called him one day on Bond Street, and they wound up killing him, Chiraz. And they sent a message to Smoke, Mooney, that it’s over with now, They didn’t come back in because Mooney ran. And when Mooney came in, they killed him too. So they killed both of them for that shooting. And after that, it was all over. Everybody else just disappeared. And those seven, eight guys, they went, well, who went with Bananos? Who went with the Colombos? Who went with the Gambinos?

[28:47] And it was really over then. After the Mooney killing, all that Gallo stuff was completely finished.

[28:56] And i was 76 during those years i read him he actually was a guy testified against a real bad killer in chicago harry aleman and a guy ran with him testified that aleman used to sit around the social club and they’d have these headlines like the gallo murder and other real flamboyant killings on the streets aleman used to say well they know how to do it in new york that’s the way I want to do it next time just run in a restaurant and make a big splash and he did a couple of those so, that’s why they made that movie the guy in the conchus straight it was more guys wounded than killed a lot of guys were killed but a lot more guys got shot and died, they went after Carmine twice and twice and they missed Carmine it was crazy times in the mob world there was some.

[29:51] I have a question from the movies. Does every little corner store and bodega have numbers and maybe take some sports bets? Is everybody lined up in a neighborhood like that? Downtown, where I’m from, I’m not your mom and pop place. They would make like Romeo’s and they make sandwiches and coffee. But if you had a bookmaker that would sit there, everybody would know to go there and see Sonny or Mike the Owl and put their bets in. A lot of those people, legitimate people, they were hardworking Italians there for two, three generations already that ran these grocery stores and food markets and Italian restaurants. They weren’t all criminals and gangsters. There was a lot of very legitimate, hardworking Italians at the time. But all the people knew that there was some kind of bookmaker be right there to take their bets. Yeah. Okay. He was always sitting right underneath the TV set. That’s right. That’s how you could find them.

[30:50] Interesting. So I don’t know. You got any other stories that you really liked out of this book? Something that you guys really liked, either one of you? I mean, the whole book is interesting, man. I mean, it goes for… It is. It is. It’s a whole mixture of colorful characters and situations out of this one little neighborhood. Frank likes to say that it’s like the Old West and that they were like cowboys. And one of the things I found that made that seem even more true were the feral dogs for more than a hundred years there were wild packs of dogs in Red Hook, they moved like rats, they skittered when they ran and they could fit through tiny spaces, and they’d look suspicious and guilty all the time and scary, well you know a couple of times they would tree a guy, they’d have to climb the tree and they’d be at the bottom of the tree, bark at him and it wasn’t until they built Ikea.

[31:43] Which is the big furniture store that they finally came in and rounded up all the wild dogs and disposed of them in some humane way. For hundreds of years, there are reports that, you know, you don’t go down to the end of Conover Street because you’re liable to get coyote-like animals coming at you. But they weren’t coyotes. They were dogs that had never known the touch of man. And it went on for decades and decades. Great. Red Hook was only known in the 70s to the 90s to buy drugs. That was the only reason to go down Red Hook. There was no restaurants. It was two bars in the whole neighborhood and the boys ran them. But everybody went to Red Hook to buy drugs. That was it. Two places in the city, 125th Street in Lexington and Red Hook. That’s where you got your heroin. I knew the big pot bill is there. They had storefronts and everything, and that was a place to go. You had to go to the hook. But that’s what it was known for. No one went to the hook. You couldn’t get a decent person and go on the other side of that highway in the 70s and 80s.

[32:50] That’s kind of the ultimate gentrification of a neighborhood put in Ikea. It’s like, oh, my God. It’s gone now. All the color is gone now. Yeah, Red Hook’s probably nicer now than it ever was. And there’s still some sections that are sketchy. Well, they threw money into it and tried to rebuild it. I think because it is isolated, that hurt them. They were thinking that if they threw the money in and put the restaurants and rebuild, because there’s a lot of nice homes down there and warehouses you can convert and stuff like that. But it’s still so isolated that you’re just preying on what you have down there. And I think that’s what hurt it. They’re running cruise ships out of there now. I happened to take a cruise that started and ended in Red Hook, and it was almost impossible to get home. I was maybe six, seven miles from my home when I got off the ship. It took hours because getting 5,000 people out of one exit and one entrance to a neighborhood took forever. No car service down there. There’s no cabs down there. You couldn’t get it. There was never a yellow can down there. Hard to get in now.

[34:02] Interesting. Well, public transportation, I guess they got left out of the public transportation network in New York city. Mainly you can get anywhere on public transportation in New York city.

[34:13] I think you had one bus to Columbia Street, up in Columbia. That was it. There was a lot of blocks there in Red Hook on that side. So you had a little hike to get to that bus and get off that bus to where you live. The nearest train was the F train. They built the tracks so high over the neighborhood that it’s about a six-flight walk up to the tracks. That’s the highest elevated train station in the country?

[34:37] You could get a nosebleed trying to catch the F train there. Another wall between the rest of the world and red hook and they were right on the border of the split huh it’s really interesting neighborhood well guys the book is red hook Brooklyn mafia ground zero get that i’ll have links in the show notes to buy that book and actually i have links to both frank and michael’s author page on amazon because they’ve got a lot more books out there that i know all you guys would be interested in several of them and we’re going to do more shows with both of you guys, I really appreciate y’all coming on the show. It’s been most enlightening. I really like that Chicago Red Hook connection. I didn’t exactly understand that before I started looking at your book and then talking with you guys.

[35:24] It lets you know how this thing developed and ends up in Kansas City and Cleveland and Milwaukee. Every one of these Midwest families came out of that, except that little influence out of New Orleans, but primarily right out of Red Hook and those areas down there on the docks.

[35:44] Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So look out for motorcycles when you’re out on the street. If you have a problem with PTSD, if you’ve been in the service, make sure you go to the VA website and get that hotline number. If you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, our friend, former Gambino prospect or proposed member, Anthony Ruggiano is a drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida, and he has a hotline on his website. I appreciate everybody tuning in and I really appreciate Frank DiMatteo and Michael Benson coming on the show. Thanks a lot, guys. Thank you, Gary. Bye, Gary.

Red Hook: Brooklyn Mafia 36:19 Share

Gangland Wire

Welcome to Gangland Wire: Introducing Frank DiMatteo and Michael Benson

Frank DiMatteo’s Background: Growing Up in the Brooklyn Mob

Michael Benson’s Journey into True Crime Writing

The Concept Behind 'Red Hook: Brooklyn Mafia Ground Zero'

The History of Red Hook: From the Lenape to the Mob

Red Hook’s Geographical Isolation and Its Impact

The Irish and Italian Rivalry in Red Hook

The Transformation of Red Hook: From Irish to Italian Dominance

The Hard Life of Longshoremen and the Rise of the Mafia

The Tragic Story of Anna Lonergan: The Ghost of Murders Yet to Come

Al Capone’s Early Days in Red Hook

Machine Gun Jack McGurn: A Loyal and Deadly Figure

The Roots of Juvenile Gangs in Red Hook

The Gallo Brothers and the Breakaway from Joe Pafaci

The Gallo War: Kidnappings, Negotiations, and Betrayals

The Gallo Crew’s Stronghold in Red Hook

Sniper Fire and the Final Days of the Gallo War

The Aftermath of the Gallo War and the Gentrification of Red Hook

Red Hook’s Public Transportation and Isolation

Closing Thoughts: The Legacy of Red Hook and the Mafia

Shownotes Transcript

Red Hook: Brooklyn Mafia