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Transcript

Greenburg Police Officer Thomas Granchelli · NYPD Through The Looking Glass

0:00
SPEAKER_00: He and Johnny Peanuts were in Johnny's kitchen.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: Johnny's wife was upstairs.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: He shoots him in the back of the head and right just like this, there's two bullet holes right at the base of his skull.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: He says, I shot him with a 38 and the bullet fell out.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: So it actually went in, hit his skull, made a U-turn, and fell out on the kitchen floor.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: But the impact from being whacked in the back of the head knocks the guy out of the chair and he's doing a fish out of water on the floor.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: He shoots him again a couple more times in the chest and finishes him.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: So everything he's telling the undercover is matching up with all the evidence.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: But the case is still open.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: They have no idea who did it.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: The guy's wife, now just to show you how you know mobbed up guys are, his wife never came downstairs.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: Three gunshots in the kitchen, she never came downstairs.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: So this guy confesses all this to the ATF agent.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: They put the agent on the stand, he tells the whole story.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: And my man was brought in every day.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: Usually they suit you up and you look like Asta's pet horse while you're sitting there with the defense attorney.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: You got the suit and tie on that you never wore before in your life.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: He brought him in in his prison outfit, the khaki scrubs, with a black overcoat over it to make him look like he couldn't possibly be a mafia hitman.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: Hi, today we're here with retired Greenberg Police Officer Thomas Granchelli.
1:27
SPEAKER_01: Tom, welcome to the show.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: Hey Vic, how are you doing?
1:29
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me on.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: No problem, Tom.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: Tom, please introduce yourself.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: Tell our listeners a little something about yourself.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: My name is Tom Grantchelli.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: I uh grew up in the Bronx.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Wanted to be a cop ever since I was five years old.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: Like you, I I loved uh trying to hunt people down with the wanted posters that you snap from the post office.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh my friend Peter and I spent three days standing at the bottom of the stairs at the uh the end of the L train on 241st and White Plains Road, uh waiting for some guy from Enid, Oklahoma to come off the train.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: But uh I don't know why we thought he'd be coming from Brooklyn, but we gave it a shot for about three days and we figured out that everybody else was out having fun while we were doing something stupid.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: But we had a pretty elaborate plan for we even had a piece of clothesline rope to tie him up to take him down to the 4-7 precinct and turn him in for the reward money.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: So we had a pretty good plan, but the guy never came off the train.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: I started with the uh Launchmont Auxiliary Police in 1975.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: I was 20 years old.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: I convinced my folks that nothing ever happened in Launchmont, because they didn't they didn't want me to be a cop.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: There were no other cops in the family.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: My dad was an accountant.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: So what I wanted to do was, you know, was taboo.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: My mother asked me when I was about eight years old, they the parents used to ask you that question all the time, what do you want to do when you grow up?
2:49
SPEAKER_00: And I said, policeman.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: And she said, You'll you'll be dealing with the dregs of society is what but all the while I was taking every single police test that came up.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: So I ran, I met a large model cop, and he said, Why don't you join the auxiliary police?
3:05
SPEAKER_00: And growing up in the Bronx, I knew the auxiliaries were completely separate from the police department.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: He says, Here it's not like that.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: Here you're armed, you wear the same uniform, you're like a reserve force, you ride as the second man in the car, and you you're basically with us all the time.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: So some of the guys really liked that, and a lot of the regular guys didn't like that.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: They felt they'll never hire more cops if you're using so I couldn't wait.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: They I got sworn in like on a Tuesday.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: They gave me a hand-me-down uniform, and I got this ill-fitting Gomer Pyle looking uniform on.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: It was like, you know, when uh when Andy Griffith needed extra guys, he would put Gomer in uniform and he just looked like a real schlepp.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: So I come in with this ill-fitting uniform.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: I got nothing but a nightstick and a pair of handcuffs, and I'm ready to go to work.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: So they hand me off to this guy who's got 19 plus years on the job, doesn't want anything to do with auxiliaries.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: He spent, I think, 12 years in Marines before that.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: And so he spent his whole life in uniforms.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: So he comes in, he's all squared away.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: He's got the hat right here, the shine shoes, every crease you could cut yourself on his creases.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: So he eyeballs me up and down, and he's like, Where'd you get that uniform?
4:21
SPEAKER_00: So I said, This is what they gave me.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: He says, There's a street.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, first paycheck I get, I'll go across the street.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: We're volunteers.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't getting a paycheck.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: So get in the car with him and he's like, Don't put that there, don't put your hat there, don't put your nightstick there.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, you know, why don't you tell me what you want me to do?
4:37
SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, I really don't want you to do anything.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Don't touch the radio, don't get out of the car unless I tell you.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: So I said, Oh, this is gonna be beautiful.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm not in the car with this guy 15 minutes.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: We get a call that there's a traffic light out at the corner of Larch Monte Palma, one of the busiest, busier intersections.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: So he couldn't wait to dump me out of the car.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: So he says, You're gonna take the traffic, I'm going back in service.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: I said, There's only one problem.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to do traffic.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, I'll show you.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: So he gives me about five minutes this way, this way.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: Make sure you stop the cars before you let the other one don't just don't get yourself run over and don't cause an accident.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: So I said, Okay.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'll watch you from over there for a while.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: Walks off, gets in the car, drives away.
5:18
SPEAKER_00: So now I'm in the middle of the street by myself, don't know my ass from all on the ground.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: So I'm giving directions.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: I got the hang of it, I got the rhythm of it.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: Car pulls up, the window goes down, he says, Officer, can you tell me how to get to West Avenue?
5:31
SPEAKER_00: So now I this is the first time I've ever been called officer.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: My j my chest swelled about three sizes, and I could not remember where the hell West Avenue was.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: So it clicks.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, I'll hold up the traffic, I'll turn you around over here, go back to that light, make a right, next light, make a left, go past the gas station, can't miss it.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: I turn around to let the traffic go the other way, and I read the traffic sign that's a half a block from me, says West Avenue.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, holy shit.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: I just sent this guy eight blocks in the other direction, the street he's looking for is a half a block away.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: So I hear a car coming around about ten minutes later, this car's coming around the corner on two wheels.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: The guy's all pissed off.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: I recognize the car, and as he goes by me with the window down, he goes, asshole.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: So I went from officer, I went from officer to asshole in ten minutes.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: So that kind of deflated my ego a little bit.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: But then the guy I was riding with went to meal, he left me on the corner.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: I had to get another car to come pick me up.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, I had to use a payphone for somebody to come and get me, because I had no rent, just looking like an idiot standing on the corner.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: But then I got the hang of it.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: And I still had my parents convinced that, you know, nothing ever happens in Launchmont.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: And about 13 months later, a cop by the name of Arthur DeMatti was shot and killed in Launchmont on October 12th, 1976.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: So I'm there about 13 months.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: I've got the hang of what's going on.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, back then there's no cell phones or or anything.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: So the phone rings in the kitchen and I answer it, and it's my buddy's wife.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: He was a regular cop, and she says, they're calling everybody in.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: You got to get up there right away.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: Audie's been shot.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: They took him to Neurochell Hospital.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: So at this point, I don't know if he's dead or alive.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: So they just told me to get up there.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if I'm supposed to go to the hospital, the scene, headquarters.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: She had no further information.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: So I'm racing up to New England through away and I'm saying, maybe he needs blood, I'll go to the hospital.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: And I said, No, they probably got that covered.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: So I went to the scene.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: I ended up spending almost, I think I was there until about 2.30, 3 o'clock in the morning.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: We couldn't find his gun.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: And it turned out he was shot and killed with his own gun.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: They when they got him to the hospital, his holster had been torn.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: He was shot first in the arm.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: He tried to get away, and the guy had basically hunted him down and shot him at point blank range.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: And we found the gun in the car when the guy tried to escape with his patrol car.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: He the perp was shot in the hip trying to get away.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: He was running like a rabbit.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: He'd run for a little while, hide in the bushes, run a little bit, you know, so they finally caught up with him and shot him.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: But he was and still is the only police officer shot in the line of duty.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: And then shortly, not shortly, but I was already retired when an auxiliary suffered a heart attack wrestling with a perp, and uh and he died.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: So you had, you know, I'm I'm trying to convince my parents, nothing ever happens in Launchmart, and I show up on the evening news at the scene of, you know, the cop killing.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: So but that was exactly 50 years ago yesterday.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: And then from there, I I I ran into while while still in auxiliary, I solved two burglaries, ran into a house fire, got four people out.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: So now I was getting commendations from the chief of police and pissing off the regular cops.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, you know, every time my name showed up in the paper, when my parents were, you know, you told us nothing ever happens in Launchmont, and every time we turn around, you're in the freaking paper.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: So while you guys were looking for the son of Sam, at the same time we were looking for a guy uh that was known as the phone cutter.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh he would he only burglarized houses when people were home, and his MO would be he would cut the phone lines before he broke into the house so that the people inside could not call the police.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: And he drove us crazy for about 14 months.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: I was working stakeouts every weekend looking for that guy, and he ended up hitting about twenty two houses.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: And the night they grabbed him, the idiot, you would have only been he only took cash, and on one or two occasions he took a couple of bottles of booth.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: So you really had no way to connect him with the burglaries other than his MO.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: It turned out he was the garbage man, and that's how he was casing all these places during the day.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: He knew the ins and outs of all the backyards.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: He was getting in and out during the day.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: He was only hitting the houses on Friday and Saturday nights, so we knew he had to have a regular job someplace.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: So he drove us crazy for more than a year.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: The night they grabbed him, the the jerk stabbed uh a town of a marinick detective in the leg with a screwdriver and they shot him, and uh he ended up dying a week later.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: But you know how things go with burglaries, you wouldn't have been able to connect him with most of them.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: So he he probably would have gotten away with most of it if he didn't go and stab the cop.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: He ended up getting getting himself killed.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: But again, nothing ever happens in Launchmont.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: So I was taking every test under the sun.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: The first one that called me was the New York State police, and I had just gotten married for the first time.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: It was in 77.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: They called me.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: I just moved from the Bronx to Hodgedale.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: So New York State is a big place.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing they wanted me to do was go to Albany and spend six months in a barracks up you know, up in Albany.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: And I started thinking about that.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: I just got married and now I'm gonna spend six months up in Albany, so that wasn't gonna go over big.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: And then I figured New York is really a big place, and I got a big mouth.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: So I could end up end up anywhere from the tip of Long Island, Buffalo, and they could put you any place.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: I could be counting most on the Canadian border, and that's that's my job.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: So I said, maybe that's not for me, so I didn't take it.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: I got called for corrections, and I said, you know, spending my next 25 years in jail wasn't wasn't quite the answer for me.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: So I took the job with the Sheriff's Department, which was mainly uh working in the courts, transporting prisoners.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: And I tell you, for it I worked for them for about two years.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: The only problem we weren't making any money.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: So that was the biggest drawback.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: They were in the process of merging the Sheriff's Department and the Westchester County Parkway police to form the Westchester County Police.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: So the courts ended up going with the New York State court system.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: Road patrol went to county police, and they did away with the Sheriff's Department completely.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: And uh corrections took over transportation of prisoners back and forth.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: So, but for two years I worked with all felonies, all you know, murderers, rapists, armed robbers, I mean the real cream of the crop from Malvern and Yakers never should be.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: Have anybody newsworthy or famous while you were doing that?
12:10
SPEAKER_00: There was one female actress that I think her case ended up getting scrubbed because the only one that got hurt was herself.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you want me to mention uh a name, but uh yeah, there was there was that one.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: What are you talking about Jennifer O'Neill?
12:26
SPEAKER_00: That's the one, yeah.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: She she was fiddling, she bought a gun because she was on her fifth husband and she was afraid of him, so she went out and bought a gun, and I guess it was an automatic, and she had it in her lap and she was fiddling around with it, ended up shooting herself in the abdomen.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she walked into court and she was absolutely striking.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: You know, like every every hair, every I mean, from head to toe.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: She was a cover girl.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: So you can imagine the way she was dressed.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: The pants fell perfectly at the shoes, and and I'm like, who the heck is this?
13:02
SPEAKER_00: And they called her name.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: I was like, holy shit.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: But uh, yeah, she was she was married to some real winners, you know, and what struck me with that was I was I was in my twenties and I was single, and I'm saying, you know, there is no way, you know, a guy like me would ever get a girl like that.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: And I'm then when I saw her husband, I was saying, You married this putt?
13:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I did have a shot, but you really screwed things up.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: But I'm 10 years younger than you, and I remember as a kid when that was in the paper, and I was like, wow, she's beautiful.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: I remember that old story about her shooting herself, lived in a mansion somewhere, and she's and then it was like she shot herself, and I I think she was like on the fences seeking treatment, and it just turned into a whole thing.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: She was she was like a serial bride.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: She was married five times, and each one was worse than the other.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: This the last guy uh was her handyman, and she ended up marrying him.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: I learned a whole lot from from being there.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: I got to deal with inmates.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, and actually I got along best with the murderers because you know they did what they did and they owned up to it.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: You know, had you know, like sleaswall burglars, you know, they never did it.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: They you know, they were all innocent, they never did it.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: But murderers would tell you, yeah, you need to kill him, I killed him.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, and uh I actually thought it was a joke one morning.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: We always handcuffed in the back, and the prisoners would be brought up on a back elevator.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: Two deputies would escort them up, turn them over to you.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: The first thing they would do is give you his his paperwork.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: Nobody moves any place in the penal system without paperwork.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing they would do is hand you his body receipt and where he's going, and they're all handcuffed behind, they're all felons, and the elevator door opens up, and this guy's got the Stevie Wonder sunglasses on, and he's cuffed in the front to a belly chain.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: He's got the white blind man's cane with the red tip on the bottom, and I thought they were punking me.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: I thought it was a joke, and I started laughing as soon as the elevator opened up.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: And they're looking at me like I'm an idiot.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, come on, guys, for real.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: So I look at his paperwork, it's murder too.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: He's being sentenced, so he's already been adjudicated guilty.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: So I'm walking the guy down the hall and I said, Murder too.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: I said, How did you you blank?
15:17
SPEAKER_00: How did you pull this off?
15:18
SPEAKER_00: He goes, I shot him.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: Who shot him?
15:21
SPEAKER_00: I said, No, I know you pulled my left.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: So he goes, No, he says, I listened, he's Third Street and Third Avenue, Mount Vernon.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: He said, I listened for the sound of his voice, and I aimed right below it and shot him dead center in the chest.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, son of a bitch.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: For real?
15:38
SPEAKER_00: Because yeah, he said, I listened for the sound of his voice and I shot him in the chest.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, damn.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: All right.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I had some I had some characters.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: I had one guy, uh, his name was Joe Sick, and I ended up spending three weeks with this guy.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: And now I was a smoker back then, and you could smoke in the building.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: So with inmates, cigarettes, cigarettes were currency.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: So I could I could get them to do anything they wanted for a cigarette.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: It was called, I used to call it coffin nail compliance.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: I give you a cigarette, you don't give me a problem.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: So I get this guy, Joe Sick, he was up the the ATF wanted it.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: So he was a gun runner in Yonkers.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: So he was he would sell stolen guns.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: You had a you stole a gun someplace, you bring it to him, he would sell it.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: So the ATF is on this guy, they put an undercover on him, and they're trying to buy guns from him to make a case.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: So they put this really good undercover on him, they meet in Yonkers, and the whole premise is for him to buy guns.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: He's all wired up.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: And he meets with Joe Sick, and they start talking about why this guy, you know, his cover story, why he needs a gun.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: So the undercover tells him, I gotta do a hit.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: I gotta do a hit for a guy in the Bronx.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: So Joe tells him during the course of all this, Joe tells him, Well, what are you gonna do the hit for?
17:01
SPEAKER_00: I'll do the hit for you.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: Don't bother getting your hands dirty.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: I'll do the hit for you.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: So the undercover now starts playing with him back and forth.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: He says, What do you know about doing a hit?
17:11
SPEAKER_00: So now he confesses to a murder.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm the guy that whacked Johnny Peanuts in in Yonkers.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: So he just walked into an unsolved murder.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: So now the undercover, you know, put puts him off.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: He says, you know, I don't know about you doing the hit for me.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: I'll have to talk to my guy, see if it's all right with him.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, he goes back to his bosses and says, I got this guy confessing to a murder.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: The guy was such a putz that his his attorney did such a magnificent job of making him look like anything but a contract killer.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: He went to federal trial with the ATF, got convicted of the sell the gun sales.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: So he was looking at 13 years in federal prison.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: So now we got him on state charges for the murder of Johnny Peanuts.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: He describes the whole thing to a T.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: I it it matched.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: I saw the autopsy pictures.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: As court officers, you you got you're moving evidence around, you got you got your hands on everything.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: So I got to see the autopsy pictures, and it matched perfectly with the story he had given the ATF agent.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: He he and Johnny Peanuts were in Johnny's kitchen.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: Johnny's wife was upstairs.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: He shoots him in the back of the head, and right just like this, there's two bullet holes right at the base of his skull.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: He says, I shot him with a 38 and the bullet fell out.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: So it actually went in, hit his skull, made a U-turn, and fell out on the kitchen floor.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: But the impact from being whacked in the back of the head knocks the guy out of the chair and he's doing a fish out of water on the floor.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: He shoots him again a couple more times in the chest and finishes him.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: So everything he's telling the undercover is matching up with all the evidence.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: But the case is still open, they had no idea who did it.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: The guy's wife, now just to show you how you know mobbed up guys are, his wife never came downstairs.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: Three gunshots in the kitchen, she never came downstairs.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: So this guy confesses all this to the ATF agent.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: They put the agent on the stand, he tells the whole story.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: And my man was brought in every day.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Usually they suit you up and you look like Asta's pet horse while you're sitting there with the defense attorney.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: You got the suit and tie on that you never wore before in your life.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: He brought him in in his prison outfit, the the khaki scrubs, with a black overcoat over it to make him look like he couldn't possibly be a mafia hitman.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: He's just a putz.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: He couldn't possibly he I remember the word he used.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: He told the jury, my client is nothing more than a braggart.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: Somebody else told him the story and he repeated it.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: There's no way he did this.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: And the jury bought it and acquitted him.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: But I spent three weeks with this guy.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many cigarettes I gave him.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: It was always a hobby, give me a cigarette.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: So I would give him a cigarette, coming and going from court.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: I'd sit with him, have a cigarette.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: So when we were wrapping up, it was the day of the verdict.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: He said, Now, this is how guilty the guy was.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: He says, You think they would let me do the federal time first before I do the state time?
20:25
SPEAKER_00: He even knew he was gonna get convicted and then got to quit.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: He knew.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: He did it.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: He said he did it.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: So just to break his balls at the end, I said, Joey, uh can you do me a favor?
20:36
SPEAKER_00: I said, can you give me your social security number before you go away?
20:40
SPEAKER_00: He says, Yeah, for what?
20:42
SPEAKER_00: I said, I gave you so many cigarettes, and if I get your social security number, I could take you as a dependent on my income tax.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Yeah, you could do that, I'll give it to you.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: So I said, Yeah, no, no, Joey.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: But you know, so if the IRS is listening, I did not do that.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: But you know, these are these are the the people that you meet, you know.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: But you you know how it is.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: I there were there were just some people, you know, you had to spend how many hours with people at Central Booking, I'm sure you got to know their their stories.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, while you're sitting there with them, you got nothing else to do.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: You may as well talk to them.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: And some of them, you know, really had really had a pest.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: Then I went over to after two years, and the the other benefit to that and not only knowing how to deal with felons and how they move and how they act, because they've got nothing else to do all day but to figure out how to screw with you.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: And they're yeah, you don't know what they're planning.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: So you really got to be on your toes with these guys.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: You know, as soon as I got there, they sent me down the bullpen, and you got no gun, no weapon, no nothing, and you're walking into a cell with 40 guys in there that are wanted for everything.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: So they really test your moxie right up front.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: They want to see if you can handle yourself.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: So I got got through that.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: But the other side of that coin is I got to watch some brilliant attorneys working.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: I got to watch one case with Janine Pierrot as a young ADA.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know with her, what what she is what you get.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that she has uh a presence.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, usually women don't like other women.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: She's got a presence that even other women go, whoa, that's Jeannie Pierro.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: It it's she's got something that she had, and it's not put on.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: She had it all the way back then.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: She was in her late 20s, early 30s when she started that domestic violence unit uh in the county, and it was the first of its kind.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: Um she prosecuted a murder case, and I watched her work that uh so and she she got a conviction on the manslaughter, but she wanted the murder too, and she was actually pissed that she didn't get the conviction that she wanted.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: But she was amazing to watch in the courtroom.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: She was amazing to watch in the courtroom.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, she's just got a presence.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: Like there's there's not another one of her any place.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: So from there I went to Greenberg, which is the largest town police department in Westchester County.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: We had the the cities, you got Neuroshell, Yonkus, Mount Vernon, but it's the largest town police department.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: We were really well equipped, well educated.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: We modeled a lot of what we did after New York City.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: Our cars were almost the same.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh we were the first on the East Coast to have computer terminals in the cars.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: So it was and the the chief was brought in to he would not tolerate corruption of any kind.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this guy was, you know, you take a cup of coffee and you're gonna lose days.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: There had been some shenanigans before I got there, and he cleaned house and and that was it.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: So you weren't having any of that.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: And he told me in the beginning, he says, if you want to lock up the mayor's son, you go ahead and lock him up.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: I'll back you, but you better be right.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: He says, if you're wrong, I'll have your ass.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, he meant it.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: But he he stood behind us most of the time.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: I got I I made a deal with the captain.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: He had to get one of the guys out of the DWI unit.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Tommy, I think you'd be good for it.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: So I just got married the second time.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Captain, please.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: She works eight to four during the day.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: I would be just the opposite.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: I would be working eight at night to four in the morning.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: I said, please, don't no, leave me where I am, I'm happy.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: He asked me three times to go into that unit.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: And he says, I'll tell you what we'll do.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: He says, You give me one year in the DWI unit.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: He says, and I will let you write your ticket when you come out.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Does that include street crime?
24:35
SPEAKER_00: Which was plenty clothes.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: He says, if that's what you want when you come out, you got it.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: He says, you pick your spot when you come out.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: So for the third time, I went back and I asked my new wife, can we do this?
24:46
SPEAKER_00: And she says, Well, if it's for a year and you're giving me a definite, go ahead and do it.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: I said, I will owe a captain, I report directly to the captain.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: This is a good career move.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: So I'm in there about six months, they pulled my partner, they put him back in patrol.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: So now I get a different partner that I'm not getting along as great with as I did the first guy.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: We were we really hit it off, the first guy.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: That's like a marriage.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: When you're in the car with a guy for 18 hours.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: So the first guy we were great, second guy not so good.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: So I got sort of a shaky marriage there.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: The captain that put me in there, that I got along with, I was in there eight months and I'm going, okay, I got four months to go, and I'm the hell out of this, this nonsense.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: He puts in his papers, retires, and takes terminal leave.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: He just was gone.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: That's uh shit.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: So now there's like 15 lieutenants that can move into this spot.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: I get along great with all of them.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: I've worked with all of them because as the DWI car, I stayed still and everybody rotated around me.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: So I got to work with every boss.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: The only one I didn't work with was the executive officer under the captain that I made the deal with.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: So out of all of these lieutenants that can move into that spot, they moved the XO that I don't get along with.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: So now he, I'm reporting directly to him.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: Out of everybody I could have had.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: So my year is up, I go to him, and I said, Look, boss, my time is up, get me out of here.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Oh no, you get out when I tell you you get out.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: So two and a half years later, I'm still in that freaking car.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: And hating every minute of it.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: But the the the fun well, we had to go to every single accident, and if there was a fatality, we started the investigation to see if there was alcohol involvement.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: And usually when there was that kind of speed, there usually was alcohol involved.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: I I saw people do amazing things with automobiles.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: That you know, you get to a scene and you're trying to figure out what the hell is that?
26:50
SPEAKER_00: You know, the the car is on its top, the wheels are on, you know, facing up, and you look, what the hell is this?
26:56
SPEAKER_00: One guy, he was coming down a hill that was banked the wrong way.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: And you remember you're a car guy.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: You remember the the old Ford Crowdvics and the the Chevy Caprices and Palace?
27:10
SPEAKER_00: They were almost a perfect rectangle.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: The bumpers were dead straight across the back.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: This guy, I he had a station wing, and I don't remember if it was the Crowdvic or the the Caprice, but he's coming down the hill on an angle.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: They hit a telephone pole and rode the pole up, and the back bumper just got stuck in the dirt.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: So we pull up and he is actually at a 45 degree angle to the pole.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: And he looks like Don Notchman, the reluctant astronaut, ready to blast off.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: Because he's he's in the driver's seat sitting this way.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: He can't open the door because the weight of the door keeps closing.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: He can't climb over the seat because if he rocks the car, it's liable to fall.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: So he's just sitting there holding on to the wheel and looking at the space, and we pull up, and now I gotta get Con Ed because of the pole.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: I gotta get the fire department to to secure the car and get a ladder up.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: So while I'm I'm talking to the guy, and we're getting the conversation going, and I said, My job is DWI.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: So I said, uh, by the way, I said, and I'm I'm having a conversation with him over my head.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: So I said, by the way, I said, you've been drinking?
28:25
SPEAKER_00: He says, You think I get this car up this fucking pulse over?
28:29
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yeah, okay.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: So you know we gotta have a talk when you come down, right?
28:33
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Yeah, I know.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: It's like he couldn't have possibly got that car up the post.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't drunk.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: So they had it, it was a production.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: They had to kill the power to the block, they had to secure the car to the pole, they had to put the ladder up.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: They got he was so embarrassed when he came down, I felt bad locking him up, but but he had to go.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: But you you would you met some people, it's like like they just yeah, you got me.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: And then um, I'm I'm with a young partner.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: My my regular partner would we would alternate Saturday nights off.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: I would be off one, he'd be off the other.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: So we they would always throw a rookie in with us to give us give them the experience of the DWIRS and what we were doing.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: We would run moving radar, uh, which drove people crazy because they couldn't figure out, you know, most people don't know you can run radar while you're moving.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: So you just put it in moving mode and you're picking up cars going the other way.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: So we it's in the summertime.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: We stop for the light at West Hodgsdale Avenue on Central Avenue, all the traffic goes and the car in front of us doesn't move.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: We're in the left lane.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: So I throw the overhead light, they gave him a little tap on the horn, gave him a little siren, nothing.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't move.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: So we get out, my young partner walks up on the passenger side, I come up on the driver's side, and this guy's in the seat.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: He is out cold.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: He is out.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: So I was like, shit.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: They you know this the luckily the shift lever was on the column and the the keys used to be on the column.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: So I reach in and I just grab I don't want to startle the guy because if he takes off, I'm hanging in the car.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: So I reach in, I grab the shift lever and I pull it into park and just click the key off.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: And now I can do whatever I want with him.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: So now I'm shaking him and I said, Hey, I said, You have any idea where you are?
30:18
SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Shit, yeah, Shea Stadium.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: And I said, No.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: I said, No, buddy.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: I said, we gotta we gotta go over down the sidewalk, have a talk.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: But Shea Stadium was 35 miles away.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: I said, I said, yeah, I said, Who's winning?
30:33
SPEAKER_00: He goes, I think the met I said, no, you you gotta come out.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: You gotta come out, we gotta talk.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: But there's there's some beautiful people out there.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: So being in the DD DUI unit in the 80s is the disco days.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: All right.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: We got Fudgies, Milky Way.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: I'm listening this is way before my time, but my parents would take us up to Westchester on my dad's day off.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: That was a big deal getting out of the Bronx to go to Burger King and catch a movie.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: And we used to drive by those places.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: And I never really knew what was going on there.
31:03
SPEAKER_01: And then later on you find out, and I know I I think one of them was owned, or maybe they both were owned by organized crime.
31:09
SPEAKER_01: Do you got any stories with the Milky Way or Fudgy's?
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Fudging, actually, there was a guy named Fudgy, and you know, that was it wasn't his real name, obviously, unless his mother had a real CTO.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: But that was that that place was connected, and you know, everybody thought he was the owner, and it wasn't.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh, there was another place, a real nice Italian restaurant across the street, um, where the mob guys used to bring their girlfriends on Friday night, and they would come back with their wives on Saturday night.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: And that was that they had a small quartet with dinner and dancing, and that kind of thing.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: So it was fun to watch those guys come and go.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: It was you know, all pinky rings and Cadillacs, and but the disco era was just dwindling.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: It started, I mean it started to die in the late 70s, and I was running DWI 84, but in the beginning, Fudgies, the Milky Way, the Executive Lounge, all these places were still in swing.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: What I used to love was, you remember the the iRock Camaro?
32:11
SPEAKER_00: It was a special edition Z28 and had that decal on the side.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: IROC, I think it stood for, I had it written down someplace, it's international race of champions, is what it's supposed to stand for.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: But every time we got these these disco patrons, the car, I think the car was too fast.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: And as soon as you took your foot off the brake, you were speeding.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: So there's a 30 mile an hour speed limit on Central Avenue.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: So I didn't even bother setting the radar.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: I used to I used to set it at 42 because everybody is gonna everybody is gonna be speeding.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: So at 42, 43, we at least had to have a conversation.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: And most of the time I would find out whether or not they've been drinking.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: But we used to say that the IROC on the side of the Camaro stood for IREC of Cologne.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: Because you would get out of the car on, it would be absolutely crisp outside.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: That cold air would hit you when you got out of your car.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: They would put their window down, and you would get this hot blast because they've been warming the car up in the parking lot.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: And she's drenched in white diamonds that she had us print on before she left the club, and he's done a whole bath and dracon noir, and you would get hit with this combination of perfume as it came out and hit the cold crisp.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: And then you would try to find the the smell of alcohol in there someplace.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: But you the first thing that would you would come out was Ireek of Cologne, and you would get hit with this blast of just there was one we just started the seatbelt law.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: New York State was the first with the seatbelt law in 1984.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: And you could write a front seat passenger who didn't have his seatbelt on, and nobody really knew it or did anything about it.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: But it was great for a pain in the ass on the other side of the car.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: So I stopped this IROC and I get hit with the cologne, and we're doing the whole have you been drinking thing, and a very well-dressed young lady, 20s, they had just gone from the club.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: She was doing about 45 in the 30.
34:21
SPEAKER_00: So I see you were speeding, and I have your license registration insurance card.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, by the way, you're not wearing your seatbelt.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: So I didn't know I had to.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, it's kind of a new thing.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: So the boyfriend or the fiance is I called him disco danny because she kept he kept interjecting while I was trying to talk with her.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's that that passenger pain in the ass.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing I asked him, I said, You her attorney?
34:48
SPEAKER_00: And he says, No, I'm not her attorney, I'm a fiance.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: I said, Okay, but you're not helping her out here at all.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: Just mind your business.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: And and he kept it up.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: And she's going, Danny, why are you being such an asshole?
35:01
SPEAKER_00: Danny, just keep your mouth shut.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: So he he gives me one of these, oh, you freaking hip cops, you got nothing else to do.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: So we we we went back and forth, and I'm talking to him through the window.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: And I look over and I see he doesn't have his seatbelt on.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: I said, Here we go.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: So I get all of her information.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: She's being as polite as can be.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: I can tell by yeah that she's driving because he's got half a bag on.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: So I walk around the car and I wrap out his window.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: I said, Roll your window down.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: So he rolls the window down.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: I said, Let me have your driver's license.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: I said, for what?
35:34
SPEAKER_00: I ain't driving.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: I said, give me your driver's license.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: As you're a front seat passenger, no seatboard, give me a license.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: I ain't giving you shit.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, I'll tell you what's gonna happen.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: I said, I'm gonna pull you out of the car by your neck.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: I said, and I'm gonna get your license, and then you're gonna go to jail.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: You freaking hit cops, you got nothing else.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: I said, give me the license.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: So she's like, Danny, why are you being such an asshole?
35:56
SPEAKER_00: So he became disco danny.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: So I he gives me the license.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: I go back to the car, I have the kid run everything through the computer, get, you know, the practice.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: So I said, then watch this.
36:07
SPEAKER_00: I said, watch this.
36:07
SPEAKER_00: She goes, man, what are you gonna do?
36:09
SPEAKER_00: So I pull out my summons book and I wrote him for front seat passenger, no seat belt, and I let her go with a warning on everything.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: So I come up on the car, give her back a license registration insurance card, and I said, please slow it down.
36:22
SPEAKER_00: The speed limit here is 30, and try to remember to wear your seatbelt.
36:25
SPEAKER_00: It's a law now.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: So I walk around the car and I give him back his license, and I give him a summons for failure to wear the seatbelt.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: He damn near hit the freaking ceiling.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: He goes, I'll see you in court.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: I said, I look forward to it.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: I said, I'll see you then.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: But between the the the smell of the perfume and him being an asshole, he had to get the ticket instead of her.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: And people think people think of Greenberg is like a sleepy hamlet, but you've had some some real newsworthy stories there.
36:58
SPEAKER_01: And weren't you at the scene of the Carol Wormis fatal attraction homicide?
37:02
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: I was there.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: And the funny thing about that is a garden apartment complex that had a a staircase with I think there was a ground floor, second floor, third floor, you know, two on one on each side of the staircase.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, they were up on the right hand side.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: And there were a couple of things I remember distinctly about it when we got there.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: He had left to go bowling.
37:29
SPEAKER_00: And in the meantime, he met Carolyn while he was bowling.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: It was already set up.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: It was her birthday.
37:35
SPEAKER_00: There was a holiday in motel right next door.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: So he used the excuse that he was going bowling and he met up with her, and I think they they had sex in the car or they did get a room.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what the deal was with that.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: But he left early to go bowling.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: Carolyn went to the apartment.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: Now, Carolyn, it was a weird arrangement.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: Carolyn and Paul, the husband, worked together at the school.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: So they had an affair going on for quite a while.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: But we found out later on, so did the wife.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: So we even had a boyfriend we had to look at.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: So he comes home from he left to go bowling.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: Carolyn went into the apartment, killed the wife, and she's convicted of this, so we're not telling stories out of school.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: Kill the wife, he comes home from bowling and finds the wife on the living room floor.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: Unbeknownst to him, Carolyn had been there and gone while he was bowling, and she met him later.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: So when I got there, they had the husband separated, and he was in one of the neighbor's apartments on the left-hand side, and I could see him from the staircase.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we locked eyes for a second, and there was just something that struck me really wrong with him.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: And when the detective that was going to handle the case, my friend Richie, when he got there, I said, Richie, you gotta look at the husband.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: I says, He's he's wrong.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: There's something not right about this guy.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Yeah, he says, he was the last one to see her alive and the first one to find her.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: He says, I gotta look at him.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: So Richie takes the case, and I ended up with I was in the uniform standing outside the door the whole time with the yellow tape up.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, I was that guy all night long.
39:18
SPEAKER_00: So Richie came back first thing in the morning in coveralls, and he's climbing into the dumpster.
39:23
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, What are we what are we doing?
39:26
SPEAKER_00: He goes, nobody knows where the gun is.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: So that that's what started the whole thing.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: But the look that I was getting from the husband, I said to Richie, I said, he either did it or he knows who did it.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: And I think he really, he really suspected it was her.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: But Richie put a solid four years into that case.
39:47
SPEAKER_00: The first one, the first trial ended in a mistrial, and they had to do it all again.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: And just to show you what a great gal she was, during you know, there was there were a couple of years in between.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: So Paul being, you know, a serial philanderer, he's got another girlfriend.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: He's down in Puerto Rico with this other girl.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: Carolyn is out between trials.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: She goes down to Puerto Rico and shows up at the hotel next door to his and calls him from the hotel next door.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: Well, before you know it, our boy our detectives are coming in in the middle of the night.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: Puerto Rican Hotel Security is escorting him to the car.
40:28
SPEAKER_00: The Puerto Rican police are putting him on the plane.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: Our guys are meeting him at Kennedy Airport.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: So in the middle of the night, she shows up and calls him from the hotel next door, and he's like, get me the fuck out of here.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: So she went down there.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what her intentions were to find him down there, but yeah, he was with the new girlfriend down in Puerto Rico.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: So they tried her again on new evidence.
40:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh Richie, there was a glove in one of the pictures that they couldn't find, and Richie finally found it, and it was brought up at the second trial, and she was convicted.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: But she got out in 2019 and hers the the The homicide was in 89, January of 89.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: But we were looking at him first because he was just He was off.
41:10
SPEAKER_00: He was definitely off.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: The first thing I looked for when I walked into the apartment, because he said he was out bowling, was I wanted to know where the bowling ball was.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: And it was exactly where you would put it.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, when you come in from bowling, the first thing you wanted to do is put that damn ball down.
41:29
SPEAKER_00: And it was right in the foyer as you came in.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing you wanted, you don't go all the way to the closet to put it away.
41:36
SPEAKER_00: The ball was right there in the foyer where you would put it down if you walked into the bar.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: So I that threw me off a little bit.
41:43
SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, maybe you really did go bowling, but maybe she was dead before.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: So they put all those pieces together.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: But she shot her nine times and nobody heard a shive.
41:53
SPEAKER_00: And Richie figured out that she had she used the silence on a 25.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: She bought it from a private investigator in New Jersey, this guy Parko.
42:04
SPEAKER_00: And uh so he Richie tracked the gun down.
42:06
SPEAKER_00: He did an amazing job.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: I worked with Richie in patrol.
42:10
SPEAKER_00: Sunday afternoon, I'm working like an area that's got this huge Robert Martin Industrial Park was all warehouses and office buildings.
42:19
SPEAKER_00: And it was basically deserted on a Sunday.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: So I'm working in that sector and I get a silent alarm going off in a warehouse office complex.
42:28
SPEAKER_00: So I get up there and it's my sector, Richie's riding the adjoining sector, and on the desk we got a guy we called the man with no brain.
42:36
SPEAKER_00: He was the desk suck.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: So I get there and I find a side door that's tracks, it was a dusting of snow that stayed on the grass.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: But when the sidewalks are clear in the streets and you got that light dusting on the grass, I see footprints in the grass going through a side door, and they don't come back out.
42:53
SPEAKER_00: So I get to the side door and you can see Primarks on the door.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: So I get on the radio, now the alarm has gone off.
43:00
SPEAKER_00: That's the reason I'm there.
43:01
SPEAKER_00: And I get on the radio and I said, send me another unit.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: I got a possible break here.
43:06
SPEAKER_00: So the desk officer, the man with no brain, gets on here and he says, Six six, what do you got up there?
43:12
SPEAKER_00: So I says, I got I'm here on an alarm, I got a possible break.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: Send me another car.
43:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 10th four.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: So Richie's on his way.
43:20
SPEAKER_00: So Richie shows up, we go inside, we flip the lights on, and this place is like a football field.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: There's row after row of shelves that go up 30 feet to the ceiling in this warehouse.
43:32
SPEAKER_00: So we flip the lights on, and the lights are going on and on and on.
43:35
SPEAKER_00: They must have gone like a look like a football field.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: And with bins going all the way up on these shelves, so we discover we're in a toy warehouse.
43:44
SPEAKER_00: So we start, you know, I says, Richie, I says, you can hide a whole troop of Boy Scouts in this place having a jamboree.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: We won't find them.
43:53
SPEAKER_00: This place is huge.
43:54
SPEAKER_00: So Richie says, Call the desk and have him send us the dog.
43:58
SPEAKER_00: I said, The dog.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: The dog he'd have to bring the dog in on overtime.
44:02
SPEAKER_00: For for us to get the dog if it wasn't working, you needed your supervisor, the tour commander, special dispensation from the Pope.
44:11
SPEAKER_00: But you gotta have all of this.
44:12
SPEAKER_00: I says, he didn't want to send me you.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: He's not gonna call for the dog.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: So we decided to go it alone.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: So we're s we're getting so bored now, going row to row, checking these bins.
44:22
SPEAKER_00: It's just ridiculous.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: You couldn't find anybody in here.
44:25
SPEAKER_00: We come across this bin that has toy M16s in it.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: So we put our guns away and we take out the toy M16s and we're fucking around with the toy M16s and we're going row to row like we're playing army.
44:39
SPEAKER_00: So we're just having a good old tonight.
44:41
SPEAKER_00: We're just bored to death now.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna find anybody.
44:44
SPEAKER_00: So we're playing.
44:45
SPEAKER_00: So we get to the you can see the the the glass wall in the back where the offices are.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: So now we gotta go check that out.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: If there's gonna be money anyplace, it'll be in the office.
44:55
SPEAKER_00: So we get to the door of the office, and we've still got the the toy guns, and Richie stops at the door and he grabs me by the arm and he goes, wait a minute, police department, come on out, or I will send a dog.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: And I said, you know, damn good ideas.
45:08
SPEAKER_00: So he says, This is Officer Constantino, Greenburg Police Department, come on out, or I will send a dog, he will bite.
45:14
SPEAKER_00: And I start jingling my keys and making noise.
45:16
SPEAKER_00: Oh he doesn't want.
45:19
SPEAKER_00: This is Officer Concertino, Greenburg Police Department, come on out, or I will send a dog, he will bite.
45:24
SPEAKER_00: And I'm growling and I'm jingling my keys.
45:27
SPEAKER_00: On the third one, he goes, This is Officer Constantino, Greenburg Police.
45:31
SPEAKER_00: From the last office on the end, we hear, I'm coming out, I'm coming out, don't send the dog.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, now we drop the toy guns, pull out our real shit, and we aim down the wall.
45:43
SPEAKER_00: We're looking at each other like, holy shit, I don't believe this worked.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: This young black kid comes out of the last office and I said, You better get your hands up.
45:51
SPEAKER_00: He puts his hands up, I said, Turn away from me.
45:53
SPEAKER_00: I didn't want him to see that we didn't have the dog.
45:56
SPEAKER_00: So I said, Turn away from me, face the wall.
45:58
SPEAKER_00: So he turns away.
46:00
SPEAKER_00: I said, get your hands on the wall.
46:01
SPEAKER_00: He said, just hold on to that dog, man.
46:04
SPEAKER_00: Don't send that dog.
46:05
SPEAKER_00: I said, We'll take care of the dog.
46:08
SPEAKER_00: You just keep your hands on the wall.
46:09
SPEAKER_00: So I got down, I cough him.
46:11
SPEAKER_00: I said, Who else is with you?
46:12
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Nobody, man, nobody.
46:14
SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking there was only one set of footprints outside.
46:17
SPEAKER_00: So he's probably telling me the truth.
46:19
SPEAKER_00: I said, if there's somebody else in here, I said, that dog finds him, he's gonna tear him up.
46:24
SPEAKER_00: I said, so you ain't doing your buddy any favors.
46:26
SPEAKER_00: You better give him up.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: No, no, man, I'm by myself, I'm by myself.
46:30
SPEAKER_00: Get him out to the car, and he's looking all over the place for this dog.
46:34
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yeah, the dog is checking the warehouse.
46:36
SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about the dog.
46:38
SPEAKER_00: So I put him in the back of the car.
46:39
SPEAKER_00: And he, all he's worried about is, where is this dog?
46:43
SPEAKER_00: So finally he goes, Man, you ain't got no dog.
46:46
SPEAKER_00: I said, No, we don't got no.
46:48
SPEAKER_00: He said, Son of a bitch, you never would have found me.
46:51
SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, we probably wouldn't.
46:53
SPEAKER_00: He goes, I said, where were you?
46:54
SPEAKER_00: He goes, I was under the couch in the office, man.
46:57
SPEAKER_00: He said, You never would have found me.
46:58
SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, probably not.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: I said, But it worked.
47:01
SPEAKER_00: What can I tell you?
47:02
SPEAKER_00: So we made a canine arrest with him.
47:04
SPEAKER_01: Tom, I wanted to ask you about Greenberg and Greenberg covers Scarsdale and Hartsdale.
47:09
SPEAKER_01: Weren't there a lot of famous people that lived up there, like Alan Arkin?
47:12
SPEAKER_01: I think Jane Seymour lived up there.
47:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, one one guy I got to know fairly well.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: An actor, his name was Ron Silver.
47:20
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you remember him.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: He did a lot of Broadway stuff.
47:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
47:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I got to know him pretty well.
47:26
SPEAKER_00: And he lived in law down.
47:28
SPEAKER_00: It was it was pretty neat.
47:29
SPEAKER_00: He got us made sure we had parking light next to it.
47:31
SPEAKER_00: And he was a pretty cool guy.
47:32
SPEAKER_00: He ended up passing away.
47:34
SPEAKER_00: But there were the on the other side.
47:37
SPEAKER_00: You remember the old timers, Cab Callaway and Mans Babley.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: She was old.
47:43
SPEAKER_00: Yes, the Ed Sullivan show.
47:44
SPEAKER_00: She was a riot.
47:45
SPEAKER_00: And Cab Callaway, the the uh the musician, he was from Greenberg.
47:49
SPEAKER_00: But they were on the on the north end.
47:51
SPEAKER_00: We had everything on the south end, we had multi-million dollar homes on the south side coming in from Yonkers.
47:58
SPEAKER_00: And on the north side, we had housing projects.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: And in between, we had shopping centers, industrial parks, we had just about everything.
48:07
SPEAKER_00: So you really got because I was I had a mouth on me, they didn't want me on the south end of town where people could write letters, good or bad.
48:15
SPEAKER_00: They used to keep me.
48:17
SPEAKER_00: I was always either in the industrial parks or the projects, they would send me up that way.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: We had there was one guy, he didn't drive.
48:25
SPEAKER_00: He was from the projects, didn't have a car, he was a security guard at the community center, the senior community center.
48:32
SPEAKER_00: And this guy had a thing for beef.
48:35
SPEAKER_00: And he used to walk from the projects to the wall bounds in the shopping center.
48:40
SPEAKER_00: He had two favorite targets.
48:42
SPEAKER_00: He had wall bounds and he had modells.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: He used to get all his sneakers from models, and he used to get all his beef from Wallbounds, but he never had any money.
48:52
SPEAKER_00: He was just that he used to do all his shopping with no money.
48:55
SPEAKER_00: So we ended up arresting him for shoplifting about 29 times, which was starting to get up to twice a month with this guy.
49:02
SPEAKER_00: So everybody else was keeping track of the money end of it, what he was still money-wise.
49:08
SPEAKER_00: So I started, I said, one day I said I'm gonna break his balls.
49:12
SPEAKER_00: So I get him, you know, on a holding one at Waldmouth.
49:16
SPEAKER_00: Security's holding up for shoplifting.
49:18
SPEAKER_00: So I go to pick him up, and he knew the drill better than we did.
49:21
SPEAKER_00: We take him in, give him his desk a pair of second, and all, and out he goes.
49:25
SPEAKER_00: And he would always show up for court in his security outfit, and the judge knew him, paid a fine, get the hell out.
49:32
SPEAKER_00: Modell would call up and just go, yo, Alfie's been here.
49:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's got a pair of size 11s, you know, he just so we didn't even bother going to the store.
49:41
SPEAKER_00: We would pick him up walking home.
49:43
SPEAKER_00: So I get a holding one at Woolbounds, go there, they got the Polaroid, he stole beef again.
49:49
SPEAKER_00: So I said, this time I'm not gonna make it that easy on him.
49:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna break his balls.
49:52
SPEAKER_00: So I bring him in.
49:53
SPEAKER_00: I get the binder for our rules and regulations, and I I bring it in, I slam it down on the desk backwards so he can't see what it says.
50:02
SPEAKER_00: And I said, I finally got you now, Alfie.
50:04
SPEAKER_00: I said, everybody else has been paying attention to the dollar amount you stole.
50:08
SPEAKER_00: I've been paying attention to how many pounds you stole.
50:12
SPEAKER_00: I said, I'm gonna nail your ass under agricultural law as you have stolen enough beef that I'm gonna nail you with cattle rustling.
50:21
SPEAKER_00: He goes, What?
50:22
SPEAKER_00: I says, federal agricultural law, you have stolen 800 pounds of beef.
50:28
SPEAKER_00: It adds up to a small steer, and I'm charging you under agricultural law with cattle rustling.
50:34
SPEAKER_00: He goes, You can't do that.
50:36
SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, watch me.
50:38
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't do that.
50:38
SPEAKER_00: So I screwed with him for about a half hour thinking he's going to do federal time.
50:42
SPEAKER_00: I got the FBI coming down.
50:44
SPEAKER_00: And the sergeant goes, okay, you fucking long enough.
50:47
SPEAKER_00: Now come up with a story and get him the hell out of here.
50:50
SPEAKER_00: So I wrote down 795 on a piece of paper and I gave it to the sergeant.
50:56
SPEAKER_00: I said, when I go back in there, you tell me I'm five pounds short and hold up the sign that says 795 because I need 800 pounds.
51:04
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Grant Kelly, wait a minute.
51:06
SPEAKER_00: He's when I checked your math.
51:08
SPEAKER_00: He says, you only got 795.
51:10
SPEAKER_00: I said, son of a bitch.
51:12
SPEAKER_00: I said, all right, Alfie, this one's on me.
51:14
SPEAKER_00: I said, I gotta let you go.
51:16
SPEAKER_00: I said, but five more pounds, I said, and I'm putting your ass away for cattle rustling.
51:21
SPEAKER_00: I go through my rotation, I come back on four to twelve, Wolfbounds is holding one.
51:25
SPEAKER_00: I said, don't even tell me.
51:27
SPEAKER_00: So I get there, there's Alfie sitting in the office.
51:30
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Alfie, I said, if it's over five pounds, I said, your ass is mine.
51:34
SPEAKER_00: They showed he took a rack of pork spare ribs.
51:37
SPEAKER_00: He wouldn't touch the beef.
51:39
SPEAKER_00: He wouldn't take the beef.
51:41
SPEAKER_01: He took pork ribs, he wouldn't take the beef, but he stole the meat anyway.
51:45
SPEAKER_01: Thomas, on that note, I found a newspaper article from 1988 I'd like to ask you about.
51:50
SPEAKER_01: You were involved in the death investigation of Alfonso the snowman in front of Frattiello's Italian devil.
51:57
SPEAKER_01: Holy shit, according to reports.
51:59
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
52:00
SPEAKER_01: Alfonso had a pepperoni mouth, a mustache, and eyebrows made of fusilly noodles.
52:05
SPEAKER_01: Could you go into that case?
52:07
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that was my first snow misside.
52:10
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah.
52:11
SPEAKER_00: I I happened to be at a friend's deli.
52:14
SPEAKER_00: We had we got a we had a blizzard, we got snowed in, and nothing was going on.
52:18
SPEAKER_00: So we built this huge snowman in front of my friend's deli.
52:23
SPEAKER_00: And we did all the things, the Frazili, the and the night that night, somebody jumped the curb on purpose and ran him over.
52:33
SPEAKER_00: And so it was it was also it had to be a slow news day.
52:38
SPEAKER_00: And a reporter happened to walk into my friend's deli, and he's telling them all about the snowman that got run over, and his friend the Greenberg cop is investigating it, and somehow it ended up in the paper.
52:50
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Joey, that's that's all I need is to end up in the freaking paper.
52:55
SPEAKER_00: But I it was a snow micide, and he was worried because we were offering a we a reward for information the arrest and conviction of anybody connected with the snowicide.
53:07
SPEAKER_00: And I said, he says, we're gonna have to pay them the money.
53:10
SPEAKER_00: I said, Joey, think about what you're saying.
53:12
SPEAKER_00: There's no such thing as snow micide.
53:14
SPEAKER_00: So how can anybody be arrested and convicted?
53:16
SPEAKER_00: But it ended up in the paper.
53:18
SPEAKER_00: I think only one person in Greenberg saw it.
53:21
SPEAKER_00: I ended up in the paper for a real robbery at a country club, and I told the reporter, look, I can't talk to you.
53:28
SPEAKER_00: I said, but if you're gonna take a picture, I will hold the crime scene tape straight, because they always fold it over and you couldn't read them.
53:35
SPEAKER_00: I said, I'll hold the crime scene tape straight for you so it comes out right in the picture.
53:40
SPEAKER_00: So he takes my picture with the crime scene tape and it ends up right smack in the middle of the front page of the paper.
53:46
SPEAKER_00: But because I had gone there in haste that morning, that the the two robbers were taking hostages when they were coming in to work in the morning.
53:56
SPEAKER_00: And they were holding on to them so somebody could open the safe.
54:00
SPEAKER_00: But what they were getting were all the groundskeepers from the golf course and the kitchen help.
54:05
SPEAKER_00: They're always the first ones in.
54:06
SPEAKER_00: So these people don't know from the safe.
54:08
SPEAKER_00: So they're tying them all up and waiting for somebody to come in that could open the safe.
54:13
SPEAKER_00: So we get it as a robbery with hostages, people tied up.
54:16
SPEAKER_00: So I end up with my picture right smack on the front page of the paper, holding the crime scene tape.
54:24
SPEAKER_00: It's like one of the only times anybody's ever spelled my name right.
54:28
SPEAKER_00: And there I am.
54:29
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, I went there in a hurry in the morning.
54:32
SPEAKER_00: So I've got five uniform violations in the picture.
54:36
SPEAKER_00: So Captain My Captain, the love of my life, calls me in.
54:41
SPEAKER_00: I told the guy, I can't talk to you, but I'll hold the tape for you.
54:46
SPEAKER_00: So he said, What's your name?
54:47
SPEAKER_00: I gave him my name.
54:48
SPEAKER_00: My hair is too long.
54:50
SPEAKER_00: I have my vest on as my outermost garment.
54:54
SPEAKER_00: I do not have a shield displayed.
54:56
SPEAKER_00: I don't have a hat.
54:57
SPEAKER_00: I don't have a jacket.
54:58
SPEAKER_00: So he is giving me shit for being on the front page of the paper with all these uniform violations.
55:05
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Do you have any idea of the chaos we were responding to at 10 after 8 in the morning?
55:12
SPEAKER_00: That we had people armed, people tied up, we didn't know what we were running into, and you're worried that I didn't have a hat?
55:21
SPEAKER_00: I said, Okay.
55:22
SPEAKER_00: Next call I get at the country club, I will stop, I will rent the talks, I will be perfect when I get there.
55:27
SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about it.
55:29
SPEAKER_00: But this is what you're worried about.
55:31
SPEAKER_00: I respond to an armed robbery and I don't have a hat.
55:34
SPEAKER_00: But uh Did they make a call in that case?
55:36
SPEAKER_00: I believe the detectives did collar up on that.
55:39
SPEAKER_00: It was a while later, uh, and I believe one of the people involved.
55:45
SPEAKER_00: You know, most of these things are inside jobs.
55:48
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you you got an ex-employee that knew his way around, he knew where the safe was.
55:53
SPEAKER_00: But I think the detectives did collar up on that later on.
55:56
SPEAKER_00: We didn't grab anybody that day, though.
55:58
SPEAKER_00: But yeah.
55:59
SPEAKER_00: The snow message, so that's that's the one thing you found on me.
56:02
SPEAKER_00: You did your homework, man.
56:04
SPEAKER_00: You had to go some to find that one.
56:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:06
SPEAKER_00: I had a 100-pound pig, a 700-pound pig on a Christmas Eve.
56:11
SPEAKER_00: They wanted me to go out and wrangle it, and I thought, are you for real?
56:15
SPEAKER_00: How do you rope a pig?
56:16
SPEAKER_00: Even if I do catch it, what do with it?
56:18
SPEAKER_00: So that that made the paper.
56:20
SPEAKER_00: Squealy the 700-pound pig.
56:22
SPEAKER_00: But what had happened was that they had a pig and two sheep on their property, and they lent the sheep to the live nativity scene at the church in Irvington.
56:33
SPEAKER_00: So the pig missed the sheep.
56:35
SPEAKER_00: So he busted out going to look for the sheep and was wandering around in traffic.
56:39
SPEAKER_00: And the size of this thing, if something would have hit it, it would have totaled, it would have So they sent me up there.
56:45
SPEAKER_00: So I I figured out who owned it.
56:48
SPEAKER_00: So I go get the owner, and he goes, Oh yeah, he keeps busting out looking for the sheep.
56:52
SPEAKER_00: He misses the sheep.
56:53
SPEAKER_00: I said, What the hell are the sheep?
56:54
SPEAKER_00: He goes, They're at the nativity scene at the church in Irvington.
56:58
SPEAKER_00: So he says, I'll go get the pig, no problem.
57:00
SPEAKER_00: So he gets in the car, we go down, and he he gets out of the car, he spots the pig who's grazing at the local days in, and he just gets out of the car and he starts going, and the pig just falls in line right behind him while he's making sheep noises, and it's following him right back to the house.
57:19
SPEAKER_00: So an Elmsford car pulls up.
57:21
SPEAKER_00: He goes, What the hell's he doing?
57:23
SPEAKER_00: He says, he's making sheep noises.
57:25
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't he know that's a pig?
57:27
SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, but he misses the sheep.
57:29
SPEAKER_00: He says, and I'm the fuck out of here because you're bulb crazy.
57:31
SPEAKER_00: And he just left us there.
57:32
SPEAKER_00: But you know, we had we had everything from projects to pigs to office buildings to snowmassire.
57:38
SPEAKER_00: We retired a while.
57:39
SPEAKER_00: What are you up?
57:39
SPEAKER_00: What are you up to these days?
57:41
SPEAKER_00: I when I first came down here to Florida, I opened an automobile detailing business.
57:46
SPEAKER_00: There were no car washes between there were no car washes here in Palm Coast.
57:51
SPEAKER_00: It was a it was a small development.
57:53
SPEAKER_00: There was about 30,000 people here.
57:55
SPEAKER_00: You had to go to St.
57:56
SPEAKER_00: Augustine or you had to go to Daytona to get your car washed, and by the time you came back, you'd be covered in bugs.
58:02
SPEAKER_00: So I started an automobile detailing business, a mobile business.
58:06
SPEAKER_00: I could come to your house with a complete auto shop in my truck and my trailer, detail your car right at your house, and I did that for about 10 years, and then I turned 50.
58:16
SPEAKER_00: And when I turned 50, I said, it's time to get a job with long pants and air conditioning.
58:21
SPEAKER_00: So I went and got my real estate license.
58:24
SPEAKER_00: And I did that for 20 years.
58:26
SPEAKER_00: And then in 2025, I had my 20 in on that, and I packed that in.
58:30
SPEAKER_00: I said, okay, I've had enough.
58:32
SPEAKER_00: They were making changes in the business, and we hit 20 years, 70 years old, and my my company got sold to somebody else.
58:39
SPEAKER_00: I said, okay, all the pieces are fitting together.
58:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm retired.
58:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm done.
58:43
SPEAKER_00: And then I sat around for a little while and I said, Okay, I'm driving my wife crazy.
58:47
SPEAKER_00: So it's time to do something.
58:49
SPEAKER_00: So I decided to write a book.
58:50
SPEAKER_00: And that's how I ended up hooking up with you.
58:53
SPEAKER_00: I haven't got it quite ready yet.
58:55
SPEAKER_00: I'm hoping to have it to a publisher by the end of the year.
58:58
SPEAKER_00: But I'm having fun.
58:59
SPEAKER_00: It's very therapeutic to just get all of that out of my head and onto a piece of paper.
59:06
SPEAKER_00: You know, I've got so many stories floating around in there, it's just good to get them out.
59:10
SPEAKER_00: And just as a plug for you, I've got all of Vic's nine books.
59:15
SPEAKER_00: I've read seven of them already.
59:17
SPEAKER_00: I I've started the eighth one.
59:19
SPEAKER_00: They're all a lot of fun.
59:21
SPEAKER_00: If you enjoy Vic's podcast, get out there and get his books.
59:25
SPEAKER_00: Because they they are they're they're easy reading, they're fun.
59:29
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's some serious NYPD stuff in there, but it's you know, it's light reading, and uh like he said, uh they they make great Christmas presents.
59:36
SPEAKER_00: So if Christmas is coming up again, get out there and spend ten bucks yet.
59:41
SPEAKER_00: But I enjoyed them all.
59:42
SPEAKER_00: And you know, you've been you've been uh great to me.
59:45
SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate the boost you've been giving me and the advice you've been giving me.
59:49
SPEAKER_00: So I really appreciate it.
59:51
SPEAKER_00: And uh you got a book coming on me when I get it published.
59:54
SPEAKER_00: I'll author, I'll uh autograph it for you and make sure you get a copy.
59:59
SPEAKER_00: I I read Mons's book too.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_00: She's the riot.
1:00:02
SPEAKER_00: Was it Marik?
1:00:03
SPEAKER_00: Marik Bartolis.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she's she's a riot.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_00: And her book, that girl, I'll tell you what, that girl's in more fights than I had.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, she's she was in more fights in two weeks than I was in than I was in in five years.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_00: But you know, she can handle herself.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_00: She's she's a tough cookie and smart too.
1:00:21
SPEAKER_00: She's she's really sharp on the research.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_00: She can really get in depth.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_00: As a detective, I would not want her looking for me because that girl will find you.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_01: No.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_01: All right, Todd.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for your kind words and thank you for spending your time with us today.
1:00:33
SPEAKER_00: It's been my pleasure, Vic.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_01: You stay well.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_01: As always, I'd like to thank everyone for tuning in, especially my listeners in Congress, New York, Pleasant Hill, Missouri, Mantua, New Jersey, Ekatobe, Ontario, and West Des Moines, Iowa.
1:00:48
SPEAKER_01: If you worked in law enforcement and had an interesting criminal background, please drop me a note on Twitter or Instagram at VicFroy50.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_01: If you're watching on YouTube, please hit the like and subscribe button.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_01: And if you enjoy the content, check out my Amazon North Vegas.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_01: Just type in my name Vic for I like the car, where you can preview all my NYPD books for free.
1:01:04
SPEAKER_01: Thanks again, everyone, and I'll see you next week.