Boston's most prolific contract killer

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2S55G46 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Springs Toledo is the author of a great book about one of Boston's most notorious underworld killers, Joe McDonald. The book is called Don't Talk About Joe Mac, and it's available on Amazon. Springs Toledo, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. A real pleasure to be here. Pleasure's mine, my friend. Springs, tell our listeners about bank robber, prison escape artist, and contract killer Joe McDonald.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Joe McDonald is the uh real-life Kaiser Sose, is what I realized early on when I was looking into this thing. He is the X Factor on the Boston Underworld. Nobody spoke his name. That title is by design. That title was actually the third working title, but once I had that, I knew I had the title because it fits the man perfectly. People did not talk about him. He did not want his name on anyone's lips. And it was for good reason. You know, he what I realized about him is that though he was not a good citizen, he was without a doubt a killer, he also had a code, you know, and he uh devoted his life to his criminality. A lot of these guys that that I looked into and spoke to were kind of part-time criminals. He was full-time, five decades of all kinds of murder, mayhem, robberies, heist, you name it. But he did it right. I mean, if you're gonna join be a part of the underworld, you wanted to do it like Joe McDonald did. You know, he he kept he kept a very, very low profile, was not looking for glory, anything like that. So what I wanted to do, now that he's safely dead, of course, is to tell his story. But uh even that took, you know, great caution because he still has a lot of friends out there. So what I did uh, you know, right near the beginning is to get the okay from his family. You know, I talked to his daughter and she gave it the project his blessing. And what that did is that opened up a lot of people. A lot of people who never spoke before, would never speak about Joe, despite the fact that he died in 1997. That opened them up because I said his family wants a story told.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Can can you go into how Joe McDonald escaped from a Massachusetts prison?

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Um He walked away. I mean, basically what happened was there's a great irony there because once you get out of the war, uh it didn't take long for him to, you know, to adopt a criminal lifestyle. There's a lot of reasons for that. But, you know, as I said, he kept a very low profile. So what he did, uh what happened was he got arrested for an armed robbery that it really looks like he was not involved with. His older brother was, he was not involved in it. And he always swore his innocence, and his daughter told me that he maintained that claim throughout his life. And he admitted the murders to his daughters, and he, you know, he he did not make any, he was not shy about what he was doing, but he also was not a liar. He always said he didn't do that. Nevertheless, he got arrested, was sentenced to 12 to 15 for armed robbery. This is a a um a dairy farm, basically, in Stonham, Massachusetts, outside of Massa uh outside of Boston. And what happened was uh he got picked up outside of his house, and they would they looked like they got a phony witness. From what I could gather, the witness they got was not quite legit. Finger Joe, Joe did 12 to 15, um, but he was very connected already. He's in his early 40s at this point. This is 1960-61. And in no time at all, well, he went to Walpole, no time at all. He was transferred to Medium Security in MCI Norfolk, and then within a matter of months, he's up in Plymouth at the forestry camp, which is minimum security. Uh, I think he was there about maybe two weeks, 10 days, and he just walked away. You know, 7 o'clock headcount, there's no Joe McDonald. And I found a trail that he walked down, and guys used to come and drop off bear and whiskey there for the for the uh guys who were in the forestry camp. Well, there was a car waiting for him, and uh brought him right back to Somerville. Now, why did he come? Why did he escape at that time? Well, what I was able to figure out is that that's when the uh the famous gang Boston Gangland war had erupted, and his best friend was at the center of it, Buddy McLean. So he escaped to defend his friend.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

What's amazing about Joe McDonald is on two occasions he was on the run for years. I think six and a half years one time, and I I can't I forget the other time, but like there was like an underground railroad in Boston and safe houses and and the way Winter Hill was structured, he had a salary coming to him, and if he needed guns or disguises, they they they supplied him with it.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Yeah, it was futitive funds. I call it fugitive funds. And he had that right. I mean, they almost had a charter. You know, the Irish uh so-called mafia was not as uh it was not as hierarchical as uh as La Cosa Nostra. You know, it was really based loosely on the clans from Ireland and Scotland, and basically the strongest rose to the top, but it was a partnership. You know, that nobody was kissing anybody's rings. These are all Irish. So there was a partnership. But Joe was the go-to guy. He was the oldest guy. He mentored Buddy McLean, he mentored Howie Winter, who was kind of the face of Winter Hill that we all got to know in the uh 60s and 70s and into the 80s. But Joe was the guy in the shadows. He's the guy that's kind of really in charge, especially when things got hot and heavy. He's the guy. But uh, you know, what he did was he, like I said, he kept a very low profile, he stayed in the shadows, but it was a different kind of setup. And if you had to go on the lamb, if you had to become a fugitive, you usually went to Florida, but Joe was all over the place. Joe was all over the, you know, in between both coasts. Yeah, you got stuff to you. You there was a great, uh, very organized, well-organized network, you know. He's uh and he had, you know, and they I mean he had he had deep connections with Hell's Angels too, with a lot of those bikey gangs. So he wasn't just a Winter Hill guy. You know, he was beyond that. He was very well connected to bank robbers and heist men up in Montreal. Uh they were called the Montreal Express. And they even had an exchange program. Joe would go up there and get involved in heist and arm and car robberies, and then disappear and get away with it, and they would be shipped down to Boston doing the same thing. So it really worked well because there's no trace of them. They make the hit, you know, they take the money and they're gone. So uh Joe also knew where the this is I wasn't able to substantiate this, but my understanding is that he was in contact with the guys who escaped from Alcatraz. He was sending the money and everything else. So I got a lot on him. You know, I got more than I think anybody expected anyone else to get. But I don't know everything. You know, Joe was a Joe was a very heavy hitter.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

It seems like he compartmentalized a lot of his things on a need-to-know basis. And I think the only time he really confided, we'll get to that later, but he confided to his daughter almost like a priest, like to get things off his his conscience, or even that he wanted to be known for these things.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

You know, that's interesting, and you used the right word. He was the ultimate compartmentalizer, and that's what made it awfully difficult to figure out what happened. So I got lucky with a lot of the stuff I did figure out, including several cold case murders, um, because I had lines into the different compartments, if you will, family, partners, guys who worked with him, guys who knew about him, law enforcement, plus all the documentation. So I was able to piece together things, and then you can see what he was up to. But everybody everything was on a need-to-know basis. Even his partners didn't know how many kids he had. You know, nobody knew much about his private life. So you had to kind of pull things from different spots, then check the credibility to make sure people are telling you the truth, and then put it all together and see if it fits. So that took years, you know, but he was very hard to track. Matter of fact, you're right about that six and a half years. He was uh he got on the FBI's most wanted fugitives list on April 1st, 1976. Ostensibly, they said it was because of uh million-dollar rare stamps robbery in um Beacon Hill. The fact is that he killed a federal witness who started off as a fence. He was a civilian, a grandfather, you know, real middle class guy out in Sierra Madre, California. But the heat got greedy and decided to become a fence for those stamps that Joe had stolen with Jimmy Sims. And what happened was uh the FBI got onto him, they pulled him in, he flipped like a pancake inside of five seconds, but inside of about three minutes, it seems like Joe got the call from somebody in the government and let him know who flipped and that he was talking. Joe drives out there and kills him. That's what got him on that FBI top ten fugitive list. But he was he was escaping, he was making good for six and a half years, which is unheard of. There's a whole nother story behind that, but what the evidence suggests to me is that it was Whitey Bulger who got him caught. Whitey Bulger feared him. That's that much I was able to establish pretty soon and pretty early that Whitey Bulger, when it came to Joe Mack, Whitey Bulger was given ground. Whitey Bulger was not cross on that man. Not that he wasn't feared, Whitey Bulger was feared, Whitey Bulger was powerful, but I think he knew his limitations and Joe was a limitation.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Well, according to your sources, Joe McDonald was no fans of Whitey Bulger. Can you go into why?

SPEAKER_00 9:21

He hated his guts. He tr he truly hated him. What happened was this was the early 70s, and Whitey Bulger's life was in danger. There was a uh, you know, there was a feud that broke up between the Coleens who he was with and the Mullen gang. And uh Whitey was uh Whitey was on the losing end, which was unexpected. And so his life was in danger, and he knew it. So he went to Howie Winter. Now I make a point in the book, he didn't go to Joe Mack. Had he gone to Joe Mack, he probably would have ended up hog tied in the trunk and then delivered to the Mullins. But he went to Howie, how we winter. Howie Winter was more of a politician, he was more of a diplomat. And uh he begged for his life, and Howie Winter made his first critical mistake of Winter Hill, and that is he not only protected Whitey Bulger, he made him a partner because of his connections. And he was figuring, which is not irrational, uh Howie was figuring that Whitey's connections would become Winter Hill's connections. So he figured he would be an asset to this organization. You know, things didn't turn out that way. But Joe cautioned against that. I'm not sure he was too involved with that decision by Howie because he had his own things going on. He was, you know, he wasn't alongside Howie for every decision, and oftentimes he was on the run and he had a lot of things going on. Joe was a very busy man in crime. But when he did find out, he went to his daughter. And he said that, you know, basically, in uh in so many words, he said this was a big mistake. He said, uh, you know, Whitey's just a punk, he's nothing, he's nobody. And yeah, so then and then, you know, after that, several times, Joe wanted to kill Whitey. Joe saw that he was a rat, he didn't trust him, he wanted to kill him, but he was restrained by Howie Winter. And again, Howie Winter, it was not an irrational decision. You kill Whitey, there's gonna be hell to pay because of his connections in and state government, to say the least, never mind the FBI. So he was restrained. But yeah, no, Joe, Joe despised him, Joe didn't respect him. Uh I I got firsthand witnesses with standing there when Joe straightened him out and, you know, told him in so many words that you're nothing to me, uh, which you don't hear much about, you know. Right. Whitey Bubble has become a mythological creature in the uh in the official story. He was a very powerful man, but he was not what he appears to be in many ways.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

I know what I know about Howie Winter and reading your book, which probably gives the best take on a lot of things, Howie Winter was like the Henry Kissinger of the Boston mob. He was a killer, but like Howie liked to use diplomacy, but I just don't understand. Like, I get it that he was afraid of Billy Bulger bringing hell on earth on them if something happened to Whitey, but like even after the racetrack scam, where where it was apparent that everybody's going to jail, including Joe, who really didn't have anything to do with it, yet Whitey and Steve Fleming walk away as unindicted co-conspirators, like at some point you gotta go, these guys are bad. And they never put a contract out on him. I I just find that fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

That was well, there's so there's reasons for that. That was uh that was one of the times that Joe says, let me just let me add him, you know, he'll disappear, he'll never be seen. But what Howie said before that, what what what yeah, what Howie said to Joe was that if you if you do Whitey, we're gonna be back, you know, doing small-time bookmaking on street corners. That's what's gonna happen to us. He said it's too much of a risk. Howie was a careful man, but you're right, he was the uh Henry Kissinger of the Boston Underworld. He was very, very bright. And he was he was the linchpin for peace after the McLaughlin McLean War, the you know, the Boston Gangland War in the 60s. He's the one that really ushered in some some kind of well, an era of peace, aside from the Cleans and the Mullins, because he absorbed all of the rival crews and he set rules, basically. And I mean, Winter Hill in the early uh in you know, in the uh early 70s, that was something else. I mean, you had some real heavy hitters involved in that. This is before Whitey uh was was uh initiate was was allowed in. But no, he was very bright and very careful but he's very careful. He was a killer, but he was kind of like Buddy McLean. He'd kill if he had to and if there's no other way. Joe did it easily. However, yeah, but but Joe was not so he was not sociopathic. One book calls him a psychopath. He was not a psychopath, he was a professional. But if he if you had to go, he did it without blinking. And that was a difference between them. You know, he was and he was very, very good at it. I it later in the book I I I get a number as to how many he actually did kill, and it's it's astrom astronomical comparative to you know John Moderano and Whitey Bulger and Bob Bowser and and the rest. And I think the number's solid. But no, Joe uh Joe was a different kind of guy. And Howie, though, Howie was the real brains. I think Joe was brilliant too. Don't forget, too, Joe got himself out of prison. He got himself out of a 30-year-plus sentence that he uh in 69 he walked out. He got he did three years, he should have done about 33 years, and he represented himself pro se. That's mentioned in John Moderano's book. I got the evidence, that's exactly what happened. So he had a brilliant legal mind, and him and Howie were formidable. But Howie did make mistakes when it came to Whitey. And now back to uh your point about after the the uh the horse racing fix and all that, when uh Fleming and Whitey uh were considered unindicted co-conspirators and they were let go. Right. But see what happened there was Whitey had cleared the field. You gotta give him his due. Whitey Bulgey is a snake in the grass, but he knew how to get rid of his enemies and his rivals. In 75, he got rid of the two guys in Salty that he feared the most, and that was Buddy Leonard, who's a damn killer, and Tommy King, who was a double damn killer. They were outshining Whitey Bulger. Whitey was a partner, but those were his guys because they're salty. Whitey was given this, you know, Salty neighborhood. And they were outshining him, they didn't really respect him. What happens? He had them both killed. So he cleared, he, he, he, uh, he solidified Salty as his own. And then he's looking at the partners now. These are very serious men. He's never gonna he was he was outshined by all of them. They were all more serious than him, the Winter Hill Partners. But what he did is he found an opportunity with that horse racing thing and clear and helped clear the field. So by the time they realized what had happened, Whitey's on top. But he's he didn't, it wasn't by you know, trial by combat. You know, it wasn't really tip your hat to. He basically, he just, you know, he he he betrayed them all. So he's the only one left. And he's got Flemie, who in my opinion was more like a junior partner. Uh Whitey was a dominant force, but there's nobody left. There's nobody left. And who does Whitey choose as his crew? Young guys. Young guys. He didn't, he did not want an equal near him.

unknown 16:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Didn't want Joe Mack around him. Joe Mack didn't like him, wouldn't have him around him, but it was mutual because Whitey couldn't brook a rival. You know, he he he'd feel threatened. But there was nobody left. Now Joe was already on the lamb for the stamps and the uh the killing of the uh uh of the stamp collector in Sierra Madre. So he just knew not to come back. You know, you couldn't you had to be more careful because now they they got that indictment on him. So he had to go so thus he's you know, he's uh down in Florida and St. Louis and New York and you know New Hampshire and uh by some reports Colorado and Arizona, but he's got to lay low. So he wasn't able to draw a bead on Whitey. And I think a lot of stuff that Whitey did would not have been done had Joe been in the picture.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Yeah, he would have he would have kept his chain in. Springs, the amount of the amount of investigative work you did for this book is amazing. You met with the who's who of who's left in the Boston underworld. And a lot of the people you met might be old, but they're stone killers. Did you take any precautions meeting up with these people?

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Well, first, I want to thank you for that little nod because you know, as a detective, uh, you know, you you see what I had done. And so that means a lot to me coming from the source, you. Precautions? Well, yeah, first of all, I'm a bachelor with no dependence, so who cares? So I can take more risks than the next guy. Second of all, you know, I I'm I I'm pretty careful by nature. I also was very I you know, I speak their language. The accent helped, of course. Yeah. And, you know, I was one step removed from a lot of them. So I had, I used intermediaries to get me to them. Uh some of the guys who I did not know already or, you know, didn't have access to. I knew guys who did have access to them. They knew me, so they could vouch for me. And they said you can trust this guy, it's all right. More interestingly than that, more interesting than that is is the interviews themselves. I had to go by instinct. And what I knew right off is that, you know, you don't even ask to tape them. You don't ask to tape them, you don't put a tape recutter on that. You don't even bring that up. I did not, I did not write anything either. But there was a few times where I knew it was gonna be a lot of information. So I brought a notebook and a pen, and I I told guys I was talking to, I said, you know, I said, I might have to write some of this stuff down. I'm not gonna remember it all. I said, however, um, you know, when I'm done, you can look at it because I'm not I'm not here to hurt anybody, I'm not here to disrespect anybody. And if you're gonna help me, I'm not gonna hurt you for it. So you're free to look at the notebook. But even so, when I would interview them, I had the notebook on my lap and I would write it so they couldn't see it. Because you have a notebook on the desks and you're writing it down, they keep looking at the notebook, and it makes them nervous. Why wouldn't it? You know, you're behaving, you know, like a cop. It can't do that. So I had it out of view, and I just without, I just nod my head and just have a conversation. Meanwhile, my hand is very busy writing these notes down that I had to decipher later because it looked like hieroglyphics. But things like that is, you know, what you had to do. Now, you talk to a journalist and they'll say, you know, you never let them approve of you know of uh what the notes are. I'm like, I don't care what what they say. I don't care what a journalist said, what the rules are. This to me, first is respect. You know, I'm not gonna hurt these guys. Um they're helping me. Second of all, why would I put myself in unnecessary danger? And plus, what do you want to do? You want them to open up so you make it comfortable for them to open up. So, you know, I did it in some ways, it was unconventional how I got some information, but you know, they uh it worked out okay. Some guys I knew enough to bring scotch to. I bring them scotch, you know, and they drink it, and then I stay a long time and they they're gonna talk even more. But yeah, I was very careful. They said off the record, it's off the record, depends on the table, it's off the record, you know.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

So I'm curious, um, was Joe McDonnell involved with Cadillac Frank Salemi at all?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

He was, and they knew each other, yeah. But Cadillac when Salemi was with Fleming, I'm not sure that Joe was ever that comfortable around Flemie, given that Flemie switched sides, which is a big no-no in Joe's world. Joe was an old school guy. I mean, he was born in 1917. Uh Whitey was born in 1929, 1930. So you see, he's a lot older than these guys. You don't switch sides, you stick with your friends. That's number one for him. So here's Fleming during the war. He's with Charlestown and Salemi. They're with Charlestown at first. Then they saw the writing on the wall, Winter Hill is rising up. And, you know, they're more formidable than expected. So what happens is Fleming particularly switches sides. So I don't think that he would necessarily trust them. But put it this way: the guys, the underworld figures who knew Joe, not the ones who were really close to him, but there's a lot of guys I talked to who knew him, might have done a couple of jobs with him, but they knew who he was. They never saw him smile. They never saw him smile. And they would tell me I never saw him smile. So they didn't know anything about him. Joe was very careful around those kinds of guys. Very careful. He never showed any weakness. He made sure they feared him. And I don't want to say it was a defense on his part, but he kept him at arm's length. He knew who to trust and who not to trust. So yeah, he but they moved in the same circles. You know, they uh they did a lot of the same kind of thing. But Joe was standoffish.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Were you able to get to Cadillac Frank to interview him, or was he already in jail by the time he got No, I didn't I didn't go for him.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

I one of the things I had to do was I had to keep the names low because a killer with these books, and you know you've read them all, a killer with these Boston mob books is if you you have most of the readers are civilians, and you have 40,000 names, you'll lose the story. So I made some decision. Fleming, I didn't even try for Fleming, didn't even try for him. And with Fleming goes Flemie. I didn't Try for him either. And the reason why, especially for Fleming, is he's a known perjurer. He's telling stories. A lot of the the more uh incredible, meaning uncredible accounts in the official story came right from Fleming. And I know their lies. Because I talked to the guys who were closer to the action than him, who finally opened up, who didn't have a government's gun to their head, who told what they saw. You know, so and they there's no ulterior motive. They're not trying to get out of a sentence. They did their time. They're looking at the end of their lives. They're not gonna lie. Yeah. Well, some of them will, but so I had to be real careful with that. But they have less reason to lie than Fleming. Like I said, I didn't bother with Fleming. Not that I could have found him anyway. Maybe I could have, but I know he's uh I heard he's in upstate New York somewhere, but he's under lock and key.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

That's true. Oh, so he's with the feds. Oh, that's true. Not up in Walmart. He's painting. He's now a painter. He's probably selling it on eBay. Right. So long before late actor Alex Rocco started Godfather too as Mo Green, he played a pivotal role in the Boston gang war in the 1960s.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

That was kept under wraps, and they did a great, you got a hand it to Somerville. That that didn't get out. You know, they uh they protected Alex Rocco, uh, Bobo, Bobo Petrikov. Bobo. They protected him because he was the he was the uh the local kid made good. Now he downplayed his connection to Winter Hill for good reason. He pretended you kind of knew him now and then and just kind of bumped. No, he was a bookie. He was right there with Buddy Blue, but him and Buddy were best friends, you know, and uh the thing that precipitated that whole gangland war was one of the things that precipitated it was the assault on Georgie McLaughlin up at Salisbury Beach. And Alex Rocco was the lead kicker. You know, I mean that but that didn't come out. Now there were other guys involved, but my understanding is that Alex Rocco was very much uh of a, you know, of a of an assaulting force of nature that night. And when Buddy and Bobo, Alex Rocco, and an MDC cop named Russ Nicholson, when they killed Georgie McLaughlin's brother Bernie, right in Charlestown, which was retaliation for the McLaughlin brothers putting a bomb underneath Buddy's car, which was the family car, which is the car that his wife would drive his children to school in. That was it. So that's when they killed Bernie McLaughlin. Bobo was driving. Bobo was a getaway driver. So, and then what happened uh in no time after that is they got Georgia McLaughlin, killed Russ Nicholson. They're coming for Buddy. And Buddy's looking off of Bobo. He said, Bobo, you gotta go out west, you gotta get out of town. So he got him and called up some teamsters out in California and got him out. And Bobo goes to California, becomes a bartender at first. And then, you know, one thing leads to another, and next you know, he's in an episode of Adam West's Batman series in 1966, you know, playing thug number one or something. Yeah. So it's beautiful stuff, really, but that's because Buddy saved his life. Buddy sent him out there, and and you know, and the local kid made good. He came, he made a triumphant return with Friends of Eddie Coyle. He was in that with Robert Mitchell, which was my favorite crime movie. It's the best Boston crime movie. I'm sorry about the town and the departed, but no, the Friends of Eddie Coyle is very close to how it actually was.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

I enjoyed that movie. I saw that movie before a couple of months ago, actually, before I started researching for your book and when it popped up. And it you mentioned in your book that Joe McDonald's was actually uh a technical consultant. Was it for Bullet or was it for um The Friends of Eddie Coyle? Or both.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

That's that's fascinating stuff. Uh with Friends of Eddie Coyle, you remember that there's a there's a chapter in the book, it's called The Man Who Wouldn't Die. And that's about John Robishaw, who was at Savage, who yeah, that's a cold case murder. It happened, uh he they found his body in September of 72 uh on the Fellsway in Somerville, across from the Somerville District Court, which tells you something. And what I found out, I found out exactly how it was done, but that was Joe. And he was that's a hot hit. John Robishaw was not a man to play with. Six foot two, 220 pounds, an absolute menace. Uh, I called him the Michael Myers of the Boston Underworld. And it took Joe and another guy to put him down. Well, guess what? Three weeks after that hit, Joe's on the set of the Friends of Eddie Coyle. He's a teamster. The director for the climax of the movie wants some color, wants some details, so we asked if any teamsters have information about how a hit in a car would do, which is the penultimate scene. Now, I don't know for sure that it was Joe. All I know is that Joe was the go-to guy when it came to hits like this. Peter Boyle looked a little like Joe. He played the hit man uh in the car at the end, who got Robert Mitchum. And that was three weeks after they got the scene where Peter Boyle kills Robert Mitchum after feigning to be his friend in a car happened three weeks, was shot three weeks after Joe McDonald with another guy pretending to be the friend a friend of John Robeshaw kills him in a car and then dumps a body. So that's fascinating. Bullet too. If you see Bullet, the assassin Mike or Ice Pick Mike, that's based on Joe. That's based on Joe. It's a long story. I'll get into it if you want, but that's based on Joe. So even look like Joe, and that's by design. The uh script writer's name was Alan Trussman. He just passed away in May. He was from Brookline. The original script was based in Boston. Um he was writing it, you know, when the gangland war was going on. Connie Hughes was, you know, was um was uh was recently killed on the Mystic River off the Mystic River Bridge. So, you know, he went into the there was a place off of Charles Street in Boston. It's a beautiful section of Boston near the common and the public gardens. It's called Charles Street, and off of Side Street there is a it was a place called the Charles. Now, now it's called 75 Chestnut, but back then it was called the Charles. And it was a mob hangout. It was also a place where the chief of police went and the you know the mayor went and everybody else. So it was kind of a, you know, everybody's there. It's like it was the place to be. Well, Alan Trussman walks in there, goes to Howie Winter, and says, you know, I'm writing a script. I have this killer. His name is uh, I don't even have his name yet, and I'd like to get some details to really kind of liven it up. Who can I talk to? Howie Winter says, see the man at the bar? Bald head, go talk to him. That's Joe McDonald. I heard that from a guy who was there. Now, fade the black. That's all I know about that. Then I get the original script. How does Trussman describe Mike? 5'9, 175 pounds, 50 years old, gray hair, balding, square jaw, blue eyes. It's Joe. It's absolutely Joe. And what do they call him? They call him Ice Pick Mike. When Joe died of natural causes in 97, his family went in and um, you know, had to search the house, you know, get the guns out of the walls, get all the cash out of there. Well, his garage, which is on the property, Joe's garage, was well, first of all, it was soundproofed. So what does that tell you? They also found in the garage an ice pick wrapped in a bloody rag. Ice pick Mike. But that's that's Joe. So I I watched that movie. I love, I've always loved Bullet. I'll never see it the same. I mean, I just pick up little things. If you read the book and then watch the movie, it's a different movie. Same with uh Friends of Eddie Coyle. Matter of fact, a couple of my sources are in the movie. They're just in the cafe, you know, but they're in the movie, they're on set.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

You know, you told I don't want to give up too much of your book because I want my listeners to buy the book. But that guy John Robichard, I mean, pure evil. And when they try to kill him in a car, they shoot him a bunch of times. He gets back into the car and he goes, You didn't kill me. It's like you said, he's like Mike Myers.

SPEAKER_00 30:00

Yeah. And he's, yeah, shoot me again, shoot me again. The guy in the passenger, uh, the guy that shot him, uh, he passed away too. He was done on death row in Florida. Uh that guy's six foot six, 240 pounds. And he shot Robishaw in the chest. Uh, and then a couple more times, and yeah, he's he gets up, he jumps in the car, he says, shoot me again, shoot me again. When that happened, he got out of the car and ran like hell. The two guys from Salty in the backseat, they're climbing over each other to run like hell. They thought this was, you know, the the living dead. Um, that's why I called it that's why I named that title. Um, that the title of that chapter is The Man Who Wouldn't Die. Plus, it's my own little homage to Film Noir. You know, it's a very Film Noir title, which I love. So yeah, The Man Who Wouldn't Die. Sounds more like 1950s science fiction, but whatever. It's that too.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Well, Joe Joe McDonald had balls to even take that contract to try to kill that guy with all the bullet holes in him, and he was still going around cause you know, re wreaking havoc.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

Yeah, that's a that's an incredible story. I was very lucky to get that. And that's one of the things about the book is that this stuff has never come out. This is the stuff that's never come out. And it's unfortunate because a a large part of the official story is fictionalized. But what I found out in talking to these uh guys who never spoke before, who would write there, there's no need to fictionalize this. It's crazy enough. You know, there is just no need for it. But no, Joe had no fear, and everybody told me that. Guys who didn't even know each other told me the man he just didn't have any fear. And when you read the first two chapters, you'll realize that the fear was knocked out of him a long time before.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

You interviewed his daughter Jackie, who did not have an easy childhood as a gangster father. Could you go into the few men who were thought to have taken advantage of her? What happened to them?

SPEAKER_00 31:48

She well, she was um she was a gift. Without her, I wouldn't have written the book because I don't I just didn't want to write straight true crime. You know, I I need something different. And she really humanized the book. She's the heart of the story. To me, well, I don't, it's not to me. She is a heroic figure, really and truly. And, you know, she humanized her father, too. Her father emerges from those chapters where she comes in as a as a as a human being, as someone who laughed, who lived, who cried, you know, who was frustrated, and who tried to do his best as a father. You know, um, I mean, he had those old school traits, you know, that your grandfather or my grandfather had, you know, strong, silent type, loyalty, defend your family, all that kind of stuff. And she admired him very much and she loved him, you know, but he was something different. Uh yeah, her experiences were, you know, unlike, unlike anyone I've ever heard of, and she emerged from it. You know, she had a very tough time. That's that's actually a tough chapter for her. So I really love that she was willing to open up about that. And that took her a while. You know, she really had to kind of search a conscience and really kind of uh go back there in her head, which she didn't like to do. And she told that story. The name of that chapter is uh, what is it, Blue Sunday. And uh yeah, that was to come back from that to me, that really kind of makes her at least as strong as her father, if not stronger. I think she's stronger than her father. I think she's the one to root for. You know, her father was something to revere by underworld standards, but she's really she's she's something very special. I mean, she's a friend of mine now, and I, you know, I I think she's just she's something very special.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

She's got a couple of great quotes in there about a couple of times you asked her a question, she goes, I gotta think and drink about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And burst out laughing. I was like, they're just so cute, and I could picture it.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Yeah. She's a real, you know, she's uh grew up in Malden, which is, you know, on the outskirts. It's great at Boston, and she's very much of a Boston girl. You know, she's very strong, she's very witty, she has a uh fantastic memory, details, and she's also is a straight shooter. I mean, she's she inherited that very positive trait from her father. Her father, she said, hated liars. You know, you lie to him, he'll turn your back on you. And she's the same way. So she is uh really, she's enhances the book's credibility because she's not gonna lie, she had nothing to hide.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Springs. You you you um well, hold on. Springs, John Monerado admitted to killing 20 men, and you interviewed him for your book. What did you think of him?

SPEAKER_00 34:30

Oh, he's a likable guy. He really is. He's uh Matter of fact, a lot of the most serious guys that I spoke to, the most serious guys, are the guys you like the most. They're friendly, they're easygoing, they got nothing to prove. What's there to prove? It's the pretenders, the wannabes, that are you know, that are dopey, you know, they they they try too hard to be tough guys. But the more serious the guys are, like John Moderano, the more down to earth they were, the more they easily they laughed. He said, Anything I can do to help Joe, I'm willing to do. He said, I he said, I love that man. I heard that a lot. You know, I loved that man. Didn't just like him, didn't just respect him, loved him. Yeah, but I I think that uh, you know, he's a likable guy. I really do, I really did uh get that impression from him. I only spoke to him once. You know, so I I had to be careful with some of these guys. Because if if I'm gonna contradict some of this, you know, some of their accounts that they that they shared or shared under duress, which was usually the case, I wanted to be very careful with, you know, paling around with them or talking to them too much because I didn't want them to feel like I did them wrong. So if I got the impression that I might have to tell a different story, I just I distanced myself, you know, politely.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

Well, Joe McDonald and John Monerano killed World High Lie accountant, John Callahan, and then Roger Wheeler, who owned World High Lie, because he was going to figure out a scheme. Can you kind of go into how that evolved?

SPEAKER_00 35:56

Well, there's the official story, which uh involves Whitey Bulger up to his eyeballs. They got Whitey Bulger as like the master planner behind that whole uh world the world high highlight murders. That's not the case. You know, what I found out, and uh, and that was a lot of work, and I also got a little lucky. The freedom of information documents that I was able to get my hands on, some of them weren't redacted enough. So you can see, you could see, yeah, you could put things together. So, I mean, you want to read the chapter for all the details? The chapter title is I like that that title by the way. It took me a long time to get it. Oh, yeah, Truth, Lies, and World High Lie. Yeah. But yeah, no, Wheeler was Wheeler, that's an interesting case. Wheeler was, well, first let me back up to Bullett, because this this relates to Bullett. Matter of fact, that that section's in that chapter. Hanging around in the Charles in the early 70s was H. Paul Rico, FBI agent corrupt from the Boston office, John Callahan, a star accountant who got mixed up with Winter Hill, and Alan Trussman, the script writer for Bullard. Fast forward five years, now they're all down in Miami. What are they doing? They're all working for World High Lie in Miami. John Callahan's the president, Alan Trussman's on the executive board, and Rico is the vice president in charge of security. So they're all together again. And they were making a lot of money on the sly during that during that time. But what happened was Callahan was hanging around too much with Winter Hill. And state police, out of Connecticut, they got wind of it. That got back to Rico that Callahan's cover's been blown, so to speak. He's been compromised because now it's known that he's he's with Winter Hill. That could hurt the whole operation, including, you know, the extracurricular benefits. So what does Rico do? Rico goes to the board and asks basically for them to get rid of Callahan and force Callahan to resign. Now, it look makes him look like he's a company man. No, he's they're covered, they're all together. They're covering his tracks. He's doing the least of the evils here. So they have to get a replacement. So they're looking around, looking around. Roger Wheeler is out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. So he's not a streetwise guy. He's the richest man at Tulsa. They consider him to be that he would be an absentee landlord. And then they can, the shenanigans can continue. So he gets in, he buys the place, but guess what? He's not an absentee landlord. He's looking into things. He's suspicious and he's looking into things, and he's gonna blow the top off of everything. So now, Whitey Bulger, no, he didn't have anything to do with that. That's Rico and that's Callahan. Who do they tap? First, they tap Brian Halloran. Brian Halloran's also in that chapter, but Brian and Rico didn't tap Halloran. That was Callahan on his own because they're but they're drinking buddies. And Halloran's a thug. Yeah, they're close. So you know they're they're singing in the Irish bars and drinking a lot, and they got prostitutes and everything else. So he's probably in a, you know, on a drunken Saturday night, he gives a contract, so to speak, to Halloran. Callahan's kind of a wannabe. Rico gets wind of it and says, What the hell? What are you doing? This guy's a coke head. This guy can't be trusted. So it gets rerouted to Joe. Okay. John Materano gets involved, and that's how it happens. But Whitey Bulger, no, no. First of all, Joe's not gonna work with Whitey Bulger on a big hit like this. You know, Roger Wheeler, a millionaire, and you're gonna Joe's gonna do this in you know on at the behest of Whitey Bulger, who he despises and doesn't trust and suspects to be a rat. No way in the world it's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

Your book, you know, I've read a lot of books on the Boston mob, and yours makes the most sense, quite honestly. A lot of things that you were able to piece together that wasn't exactly the FBI's narrative. And just to go into what I know about this story, I was a kid. I think I just started my NYPD career, and Unsolved Mysteries in like 1988 profiled this case. And I was like, wow, that's fascinating stuff, right? And then I'm coming down to the Tampa area and I'm going to High Lie. And I hook up with this bartender, and me and my buddies are betting and buying drinks and everything, and got to know this bartender. And I asked him about Callahan because I saw the Unsolved Mysteries. He almost knocked the road drinks over. He goes, You can't bring that guy's name up in here. It's like, why? So I keep working and working them. Finally, he goes, Everybody thinks it's the Italians that kill that guy. He goes, It's the Boston mob that killed. He knew a lot. And I tried to get so much out of this fucking guy, and I couldn't get a word out of him. And then decades later, the top gets blown off that whole thing, and Moderano and Monterano winds up going to jail and cooperating, but for whatever his reasons are. And the hit on Callahan makes total sense. What you said about the blood splatter on the front of the car as opposed to what he said. He killed him in the car. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

That makes total. I don't I don't fault John Moderano, and I don't consider that perjury. You know, I don't I don't think John Moderano was speaking freely. Yeah. So I and that's that's in his defense. John Moderano was a champion witness for the for the U.S. Attorney's Office. He was a champ witness. He didn't let on to me about what actually happened. He never let on to anybody. So he did his job by their lights. It just so happens that what I figured out is that there were documents that Moderano has no access to, you know, among them the autopsy report, among them the crime scene investigation report that's never come out, which is where the blood spatter turns up. Right. You know, that that hit didn't happen in Fort Lauderdale. That hit happened in Miami. And that blows up that narrative. Again, it's not Madorano's narrative. So that was uh that was um that was jaw-dropping. You know, when I've when I was able to, when I saw what I saw there, that was I don't want to say intimidating, but that was like, you know, an oh my gosh kind of moment. Because but then you see also, you see the Joe's, you know, for the hard hits, they go to Joe. Joe does the hard hits and he knows how to do them, you know. But that one really bothered him because Callahan was, he was very close to Callahan. And he stayed at his house, he drove his car, you know, several of them did. And some hits Joe didn't want to do, but he knew that he had to, you know. It reminds me of uh an old saying I heard years ago that, you know, you're not gonna stand someone who sleeps in silk pajamas is not gonna stand up under legal pressure. And matter of fact, when Oscar De La Hoya fought Manny Pacquiao about what, 15 years ago now, everybody thought De La Hoya was gonna whip, you know, this up and comer and you know, boxer Manny Pacquiao. I said, there's no way De La Hoy is gonna beat him. And they said, why? I said, because Pacquia came from nothing and he's close, he's very much close to nothing. Oscar De La Hoya's been sleeping in silk pajamas for decades, decades. Guy like that is not gonna beat a you know Manny Pacquiao. And the same thing applies here. Callahan was not gonna stand up under pressure, and and the law was coming for him. Mike Huff. Mike Hoff, who is uh, you know, he's a a real hero in the story as well. Tulsa, a retired Tulsa homicide detective, you know, he was coming for uh Callahan to interview him, and you know, Callahan was not gonna stand up, and everybody knew it. Joe knew it, so he had to go. I mean, you look at these murders, especially when it comes to Joe, they almost all of them make sense in terms of the underworld culture, in terms of, you know, when you consider the fact that if you break a rule there, you're not gonna go to small claims court. You're not gonna go to, you know, there are rules, and everybody knows the rules. You do this, this, or that, you gotta go. Joe's just the guy that made you go. That's that's just how it works. So it I understand I understand it. I mean, I'm a practicing Catholic, so the fifth commandment kicks in, thou shalt not murder, and that's the end of it. But otherwise, you can see the logic behind, you know. When Joe killed that witness, In 76, Raymond Lundgren out in Sierra Madre. His wife was there. His wife's looking right at him. He doesn't shoot his wife because there are rules. You know, there are rules. You kill the witness because the witness did what he shouldn't have done. Well, if the fence did what he shouldn't have done, which is become a witness. So he's got to go. I understand that intellectually. Could I do it? No. And I don't think it should be done, but you can understand how it works in that world. And Joe followed the rules. Even when it was hard to do.

SPEAKER_01 44:27

But that you had me sold on that Callahan murder because the two things the blood splatter, you can't fight that. But Moderano and Joe McDonald like this. And they're sitting in a car for eight hours watching the car that they're supposedly it's got the dead body in that they're going to move once the garage opens, and there's no conversation. That would be a heavy conversation because and they like Callahan. So that would be a heavy conversation between two friends. And the fact that it was just like, yeah, we just sat in the car. No.

SPEAKER_00 44:57

Well, it's also the uh don't forget, too, it was the uh the security guard, uh the the parking attendant, he's logging in what cars are in that parking lot. And at 3 a.m., Callahan's Cadillac is in that park on 3 a.m. According to the official story, that Cadillac's 40 miles north in Fort Lauderdale. Well, how can it be there if it's there? And that's one of the things they didn't redact. Because once that Cadillac turns up at 3 a.m. in the Miami International Airport, there goes the official story out the window. And again, Madorano doesn't have access to that.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

Here's another thing that perplexed me in your book, because I I've read this in Moderano's book, Hitman, which is actually a really good book as well. Indian Al was a freelance gangster who kills an Italian mafia figure in the North End. Why does Winter Hill and Joe McDonald get the contract to wipe out Indian Al and his brother Indian Joe? Like, what did they have to gain? Shouldn't the Italians have taken care of that?

SPEAKER_00 45:56

Well, that's when you get into the underworld structure in the Boston Underworld. Now, Boston, unlike New York, Boston's overrun, especially back then, overrun with Irish. One of the chapters is called Boston Was Overrun with Sick Bastards. That's the name of a chapter, and that came from one of the sick bastards. You know, but but the way it worked, um, the Irish were so busy killing, you know, uh feuding among them themselves, which is also part of the culture, that in the North End you had a more of a stable criminal force, and that was that was Jerry Anjulo and and company, uh particularly uh Sonny uh, what's his name? Bione and J.R. Russo. But they answered to Providence in Rhode Island, and that's a real power in Providence. So they're under the auspices of Providence, and then you have all the Irish gangsters. They would accept a contract from them. Maybe they chances are with that is that they owe the money, and this is a way to offset a debt. They'll just take care of that. It's also you scratch our back, we s we scratch yours. So that's that's mutual, that's cooperation at the very least.

SPEAKER_01 47:03

Yeah, I was reading that and I'm like, okay, all right, the Italians want them dead, but that that makes sense, and then it diverts attention away from the Italians if the Irish go and take them out.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

Exactly. And you know, the the Italians did hits, and then they'd put the body in the trunk of a car, and where'd they leave the car? Seltie. I'm not sure that was called for. Seltie's all Irish, you know, so they would do that. But also at that time, the early 70s, the big guns in the north end were locked up, namely Russo and Bione. So those are the and they had they had other hitters too, but they were, these guys were in the, you know, they were in their 70s by then. So they they farmed it out. And how we, you know, how we winters, he's a diplomat. He's he's Henry Kissinger, he's gonna do a favor for them.

SPEAKER_01 47:45

He is. Later in life, and Joe McDonald's not a kid. He's like pushing 60. He become he gets on the FBI's most wanted list again. And from what you do what his daughter told you was the the amount of harassment her and her family got was a lot more than Whitey's family got when Whitey was on the run.

SPEAKER_00 48:05

Right. Yeah, no, they really, well, they really wanted Joe, and they knew how dangerous he was, and which is interesting because you read all the books, you've read a lot of them, aside from Madorano's hitman with Howie Carr and uh and a couple of others, Joe's basically a footnote. Joe's a footnote. You know, you look in the index and most of those books, and he either does not appear, or he's on, you know, two pages and one of them's a footnote. So that's you know, that that alone is interesting, but the law knew, like, you know, the the state police knew who he was, the FBI knew how dangerous he was. I heard from one good source that in the FBI, uh was it, I forgot what office. It was a federal, I think it was FBI office somewhere, maybe DEA. No, it wasn't DEA. But anyway, they said that uh Joe Mack is the most, it's on the wall, actually, that Joe Mack is the most dangerous underworld figure in New England. He was, you know, he was, he's the go-to killer, and everybody knew it. But yeah, no, she caught hell. And you know, she had based on living with helicopters over her head. That's not easy to do. So she had an aversion to the FBI, understandably, and they just assumed that because her father was Joe McDonald, that, you know, she was a criminal. She could not have, she was, she she was she's an angel, especially back then. You know, she wouldn't hurt a fly. And yet they just make assumptions. At the time they were making assumptions because, you know, Joe was that much of a criminal. They thought it was in the blood.

SPEAKER_01 49:30

Springs, do you believe that Whitey Bulger was behind Joe McDonald's capture on an Amtrak train coming into Penn Station with those machine guns?

SPEAKER_00 49:38

Yeah, I do. Uh I like I said, Whitey Bulger feared him. He also wanted to clear the field. And he did with those indictments for the horse racing. Uh, but Joe and Jimmy Sims, they were already on the lamb. They're already in Florida. So Joe was still alive danger to Whitey. Now, the rumor on the street, and a lot of the, and I talked about 40, 30 or 40 underworld figures, most of them, they come right out and said it. They said, Yeah, that was Whitey that set him up with those machine guns when he got caught at Penn Station. And I said, Well, you know, what else you got? They didn't have anything else. They just said they know it was him. They heard it was him, they know it was him. But usually, if different parties are saying that from different parts of the city, there's an element of truth. So I got into looking at it. And when I talked to Madorano, he said that Joe got mixed up with a guy named Gus Meany. And and Madorano said to Joe, don't trust that guy. He's a deadbeat, he's no good, don't trust him. So I remember the name, Gus Meany. So I went looking for Gus Meany. I went asking all my contacts, hey, who's who's a guy named Meanie? His first name is Gus Meany. And they were like, I've never heard nobody named Meany. Then by accident, I found out the guy's Italian, his name is Gus Meany. So now it starts to come to light. Gus Meany was a kind of a two-bit kind of uh criminal. He was uh he owned a strip joint up in Peabody, uh, you know, a real mover and a shaker, but he wasn't shaking much off any money tree. His own son told me that if he made any money, it was by accident. He said his father was the most god-awful criminal he had ever heard of. And his son's a defense lawyer now, good guy. So Joe got mixed up with Gus Meanie down in Florida hanging out with him. Well, I kept digging, digging, digging, talking, talking, talking, and I find out that Gus Meany was connected to Whitey. There was a big multi-million dollar uh bank robbery at Medford Depositors Trust. That's where Joe was born, actually, Medford. And these guys, including cops, MDC cops, got together and robbed millions from this from this bank. Well, Whitey.

SPEAKER_01 51:41

Was this a safety deposit box thing with Bucky Barrett and then Whitey killed Bucky Barrett? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 51:46

Exactly, yeah. So Whitey gets wind of this and he goes to Gus Meany thinking that Gus Meany's got to have information. Gus Meany has tied into everything. So he gives him a he takes him for a ride, he got a nice pick, he's sticking Gus Meany, wants the information. So Gus Meany's scared to death. Gus Meany goes to uh the the uh the MDC cop uh try to get information on behalf of Whitey. So what does that tell you? He's now recruited on behalf of Whitey to try to get information to get money because Whitey wants his cut. Next thing I know, Gus Meany is down in Florida a year or two later, and he's hooked up with Joe McDonald. Now he's got lines, and Whitey's pulling his strings, at least at that point. Then he's in Florida, and then who drives Joe to the train station with a suitcase full of machine guns? Gus Meanie. Now that's that's interesting. And then Joe gets on the train, goes to Penn Station, and gets caught. The police found Gus Meany's car in the parking lot, so I know that Gus Meany took him there. I also know that it was Gus Meany's suitcases because traces of weed were found in the suitcases where the machine guns were in. Joe had hated drugs. Yeah, absolutely hated drugs. That's Gus Meany's bags. So that's the it's a it's more like a fishing line than the thread. You know, it's not quite a it's not a smoking gun, but it's there. So then Joe gets caught. Oh, and then it gets better. So Joe gets caught, he goes to trial, and who writes a letter to DOJ, Department of Justice, asking them not to give him a break and to give him the full Monty, 90 years or whatever it was for the machine guns, Jeremiah O'Sullivan, who's already he's already Whitey's guy, and he's takes his time to, you know, don't get get him out of here, you know, throw away the key. So not only that, but Joe got caught September 15th at Penn Station, 1982. Gus Mini gets picked up and arrested, uh, what was it? Like 10 days later, or a week later, and in July or June, Jimmy Sims is picked up. Now, Jimmy Sims was excellent at disappearing. He got picked up in Key West. What was he doing? He's making lobster traps. That's how that's how covered up he was. And yet he gets caught? Who else could it be? It's the guy that's giving him the future funds. It's Whitey Bulger, the only one left. And they all get picked up. So what is Whitey doing? He's clearing the field. He's clearing the field, but he messed up because guess what? Joe did not get the 90 years you'd mandatory you'd think he'd get for the machine guns. He's out in four. What's the difference? The difference is that Joe had his lawyer uh file a brief. The brief was a motion to discovery as to informants. He wants the names and the address of all those who gave up information and admitted that it was of no value to his defense. So what does that tell you? He wants to smoke out Whitey and he's gonna kill him. The government now they want Whitey because you know they got all the stuff building with the North End and the Italians and all that, and Whitey is supposedly a key to that. So then they make a deal with Joe. So Joe's out in four years.

SPEAKER_01 54:59

So all right, so this is interesting. I picked up on this, I wanted to run this by you. If Whitey Bulger set Joe McDonald up to transport the machine gun, supposedly for the IRA, right? He did the same thing to Pat Knee. Pat Knee was en route to a bank robbery to raise funds for the IRA with the machine gun that Whitey Bulger supplied him with that was missing its firing pin. Pat Knee gets grabbed up in a bank robbery conspiracy with machine guns, but later on the machine gun is found to be inoperable because Whitey wanted him to get killed doing a heist. Patnee winds up getting out on a technicality because the machine gun was inoperable. He did time for the conspiracy to commit the bank robbery, but it it's the same Whitey playbook with a machine gun and the IRA.

SPEAKER_00 55:48

Yes, and Whitey, Whitey also covers himself up. Like, for instance, with Joe, he uses Gus Meany. He's in the shadows, but it's the same thing. The MO was there.

SPEAKER_01 55:57

You know, I I don't want to give up too much on your book because it's I'm just blowing through stuff. And I mean, I've got everything from the pig roast to a uh goose funeral and Joe McDonald's daughter's backyard and the Jimmy Sims disappearance. But like growing up in the Bronx, there were a couple of bars where you could easily lose your life acting stupid. You went into a bar that Joe McDonald used to hang out in called Ping Arthur's in Chelsea. That sounds like a Star Wars bar, like the Cantina scene with the amount of shit that was going on in there.

SPEAKER_00 56:29

I'll tell you, you know, I wrote this when I wrote the when I decided to write the book, I had it in my head as a film. So I wrote it as a as a film. You know, that's why I get, you know, I get into detail, especially around Boston. And that scene, yeah, King Arthur's was something else. I mean, that I I can see that that'd be like the Copa in Goodfellas. You know, but a little more raw-boned.

SPEAKER_02 56:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:51

You know, but the stories are absolutely crazy. And, you know, I I mean I already have Woody Harrelson picked out to play Joe Mack. And I got Amanda Seafried. I'm not saying I I have them, but in my head, I got Woody Harrelson as Joe, maybe Tom Hottie, and uh Amanda Seafried as uh Jackie, you know, but and so I'm I'm I'm doing the best I can because this this if it's not a film, it should be a series. It could be like, you know, the Sopranos if they go to the Wild West, you know, and just get crazy.

SPEAKER_01 57:21

Dude, this would be a great HBO series.

SPEAKER_00 57:24

I got enough Ontario for about seven seasons right now.

SPEAKER_01 57:27

I got your Whitey Bulger, and he come cheap. The guy that was on that 70s show's Kurtwood Smith with the receding hairline looks just like Yeah Yeah, I can see it.

SPEAKER_00 57:42

Yeah, a friend of mine already said, a friend of mine, he's uh knew them very well. He said he wants to be Howie Winter, so I'm gonna try to reserve a spot for him. I said you're gonna have to get some hair plugs, you know, like Howie Winter did. But yeah, you know, we can all we can all dream. I just think that this this book should be a movie. I mean, that some of the guys, you know, there's a lot of a lot of guys in the know, and there's more stories out there. I'm still I'm still compiling them. I still got you know giant files. The stories keep coming in. People want to tell their stories. And these guys are getting older, they're looking at judgment, you know, and these they're all Catholics, they got the you know, they got the confession orientation, so they want to get stuff off their chests, and I just keep getting these stories, and they're just you know, they're extremely entertaining, and it's funny how much comedy is involved. This book was at risk of being very grim, you know. This book was gonna be very grim, but the humor, it just lightens it. You know, it just lights.

SPEAKER_01 58:31

I didn't find it grim. I it for me, it moved along. It was interesting. I it I like I emailed you a couple of times. Like, I can't put this thing down. I mean, it was it was really good.

SPEAKER_00 58:43

Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 58:44

Thank you. No, listen, Springs, you've written a great book about the Boston Underworld and legendary crime figure Joe McDonald. What's the name of your book one more time, and where can our listeners pick up a copy?

SPEAKER_00 58:55

It's called Don't Talk About Joe Mack: The Life, Wars, and Secret History of the Man Behind the Winter Hill Gang. Amazon's your best bet. And if you if you think it's really good, give me five stars, that always helps.

SPEAKER_01 59:09

I certainly will. Springs Toledo, thank you so much for spending your time with us today. My pleasure. I had a good time. Thank you very much. And as always, I'd like to thank everyone for tuning in, especially my listeners in Quincy Mass, Putnam County, Florida, Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Bronx, and Miami, Florida. If you worked in law enforcement and had an interesting criminal background, please drop me a note on Twitter or Instagram at VicFerrari50. If you're watching on YouTube, please hit the like and subscribe buttons. And if you're really feeling strong, hit the hype button. If you enjoy the content, check out my Amazon author page. Just type in my name, Vic Ferrari Like the Car, where you can preview all my NYPD books for free. Thanks again, everyone. I'll see you next week.