A MARTÍNEZ, BYLINE: Last year, I got to speak with Louis Ferrante for the first time.
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LOUIS FERRANTE: I was a criminal from when I was 13. I led a hijack and heist crew of armed robbers within the Gambino crime family. The FBI hunted me. To their credit, they got me. I never informed, I never cooperated. So I took the 13 years, and I docked a life sentence, and fell in love with books. I taught myself how to write and had an opportunity to reflect on all the things I had done.
MARTÍNEZ: Ferrante clearly is qualified to be the author of a nonfiction trilogy on the history of the American mafia. His latest book is called "Borgata: Clash Of Titans." It's the second and the latest title in this series. Lou, thanks for joining us again.
FERRANTE: Hey. Thank you for having me, A.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. So Volume 1 from last year, "Borgata: Rise Of Empire," covered the first hundred years or so of the American mafia. So what can readers expect from this book? Where does it pick up?
FERRANTE: The first volume was basically the meteoric rise, whereas this book is all of the massive confrontations that they face within their own ranks, and also without. Specifically, their toughest nemesis was Robert F. Kennedy. After Bobby battled them in the McClellan Committee - known as the Rackets Committee - and he dragged numerous mob bosses before Congress and had either attempted to deport them or recommended that they be prosecuted. He hated the mob, and it infuriated the mob across the country.
MARTÍNEZ: What did the mob think they were going to be able to do differently or better or even bigger with the Kennedy administration in place?
FERRANTE: They just wanted to be left alone. But when Bobby became attorney general, they felt it was, you know, he came after them with a vengeance.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, tell us about what you call the Gallo Rebellion and how that changed the mafia establishment.
FERRANTE: Oh, boy, that's great. So the commission was formed in the 1930s, and there were five New York families. And the heads of those five families were pretty much the same up until the 1960s. And all of a sudden, the Gallos come along - mainly Larry and Joey were the two main brothers. Joey known as Crazy Joe. And they attempted to overthrow the mafia's old regime.
Crazy Joe had a mixed hybrid crew of guys. He vowed to start a - what he called a quote-unquote "sixth family" that would include his Black, Latino, Jewish and Muslim crew members, some from Egypt, some from Syria, and who were otherwise treated as second-class citizens in an Italian American Mafia family. In order for his crew members to get, quote-unquote, "made" into his new family, Joey said he would dig up some Sicilian ancestors that they could claim a relation to...
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
FERRANTE: ...Which is hilarious. And, you know, he was a character. The first part of the rebellion fails. And it happened during a volatile period in American history that saw civil rights marches, antiwar protests and violent prison riots.
FERRANTE: And the Gallo Rebellion seemed to check off the mafia box in a long list of revolts that challenged authority on every level of society.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. But do you know what? His strategy - Joe Gallo's strategy - makes sense. I mean, if you're going to try and take down the biggest families, the establishment - right? - you need soldiers. And you can't be picky when you need bodies, right? So, yeah, why not try and get as many people as possible, even if they're not necessarily Sicilian?
FERRANTE: That's a hundred percent right. He had such good relations with all the different ethnicities around Brooklyn and Queens. You know, the mob never saw somebody like him before. And they vowed to kill him, unfortunately, because of that.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, Joe Colombo is another prominent character in this volume. He was a mafia boss and the founder of the Italian American Civil Rights League. Why was that significant?
FERRANTE: What happened was Joe Colombo, he felt that his son was unjustly targeted by law enforcement. So he decides to pick at the FBI headquarters in Manhattan. And the large number of legitimate Italian Americans who showed up to protest shocked even Colombo, who instantly realized he had tapped into a bone of contention among Italian Americans who had always felt they were discriminated against in America. So Colombo springs into action, and he started the Italian American Civil Rights League.
So it grows beyond Colombo's wildest imagination, and he relishes in his new role of mob boss turned civil rights activist. But his leadership of the league brings heat obviously to him and other mafia families who told Colombo to step down and allow either a true activist or a famous entertainer to replace him. He refused to step down and, as a result, was gunned down in front of a massive crowd during his big Unity Day rally held in Manhattan's Columbus Circle.
And who was responsible for his death? The mystery behind it, the real players responsible were never exposed until now. I did tremendous amount of research, A, and I traced all of the connections, and I think I've gotten to the bottom of it as best as anyone has ever done in the last, you know, 50 somewhat years.
MARTÍNEZ: Joe Colombo is one of the reasons why "The Godfather" was made - right? - because...
FERRANTE: Exactly right.
MARTÍNEZ: ...The movie was facing a lot of pressure from Italian American groups. And the producer, Albert Ruddy, met with Colombo to kind of figure out a way to grease the wheels to not only film in New York, but to even let the movie happen.
FERRANTE: That's exactly right. "The Godfather" movie would have never been made no way, no how other than with Colombo's approval. Now, the interesting thing, the irony is Colombo is denying that there's a mafia, and at the same time, he's telling Ruddy, you need to bring my consultants in to explain to you how the mafia really works. So, you know, Ruddy got a kick out of that. He's like, well, gee, there's supposed to be no mafia, he says out of one side of his mouth. And then, on the other side, he's telling me I need his consultants to explain what the mafia's really like. But yeah, it wouldn't have been made without him. I'm glad you mentioned that. It's a great piece of American history.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, I know that there's a third book coming up, Lou, but, I mean, in this book, in the second part of this trilogy, I mean, this is a part where I think for a lot of people, maybe the mob, the American mafia is maybe at its recognizable peak and that maybe they don't understand or know that the decline is coming. But, I mean, did they know?
FERRANTE: Some old-timers must have known because in my own day, in the '90s when I was active on the street, late '80s, early '90s - and I went away in 1994 - there were old-timers who felt that it was deteriorating right before their eyes. I mean, I was rising up in the mafia at the same time the mafia was plummeting, and I didn't understand that until I was in prison many years later and had time to reflect on it. And that's something I get into in Volume 3. It becomes chaotic. If the mafia can be called an empire, by Volume 3, the savages and barbarians are picking away at the rancid carcass of empire - what's left of it.
MARTÍNEZ: That's Lou Ferrante. His new book is "Borgata: Clash Of Titans: A History Of The American Mafia." Lou, can't wait for Volume 3.
FERRANTE: Thank you so much. I appreciate it, and I'm looking forward to seeing you again.
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