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(upbeat music) - Hi everyone, Steve Adubato.

Welcome to a very special half hour.

All right, what are we talking about today?

"Garden State Gangland, The Rise of the Mob in New Jersey."

This is the book, that is the author, he is Scott Deitche.

Scott, first of all, thank you for joining us once again.

You joined us a while back to talk about some other mob-related activities, but this book has been on my nightstand for months, marking it up, trying to learn from it.

I will admit, not just with "The Sopranos," based after a real-life family we'll talk about in just a minute, mob family.

I've been fascinated by organized crime in New Jersey for a long time.

I'm not alone, am I?

- No, it's still, to this day, fascination.

And you would think that there would have been a lot of books written about New Jersey, but this is the first overarching history, and with the popularity of like "Boardwalk Empire," "The Sopranos," I think that that kind of fixation in people's minds, New Jersey and the mafia is kind of very closely tied together.

- And by the way, a background, Scott is a marine biologist.

Don't ask, okay, so let's get it out of the way.

You're a marine biologist, you're an environmental consultant, you do a lot of, where the heck does the mob fit into marine biology?

- Well, when they send the corpses to sleep with the fishes, I can tell you the species of the fish.

- Don't go there, don't go there.

Okay, so when and where did this interest, not just in the mob, but the mob in New Jersey, 'cause we'll talk about New York and New Jersey and the mob, huge differences, go ahead.

- Yeah, so I grew up, born in Perth Amboy, and I grew up in Woodbridge Township right outside New York City, got all the New York City news, saw all the, I remember how Paul Castellano was shot.

My mom was a big fan of like the old James Cagney gangster movies and stuff.

So it was always kind of there.

And then really, it was in 1990, I saw "Goodfellas" in the movies, and I'm like, "Oh, I wanna read the book this is based on."

And that kind of started this path of, went from interest to obsession to, "Hey, maybe I'm gonna write about this."

So that was kind of the progression.

- You know, okay, so let's break this down a little bit.

I'm gonna do some categories, and I know you'll be able to respond to it well.

To be super clear, I grew up in Newark, New Jersey in the North Ward of the city.

There are five wards in the city.

The mafia/the mob was most prominent in the neighborhood I grew up in, and Scott knows that.

The connection between the mob and Newark, why is that connection so powerful?

And what was the corrosive impact of the mob on governing in Newark and its people?

- So you'd have to go back.

Obviously, the early waves of immigration, the early 1900s, Newark had a very large Italian population.

And out of that subset, there were people that gravitated towards organized crime.

- A small subset, a very small subset.

- Absolutely, very small subset.

But not just Italians.

There were, you know, Longie Zwillman, we talked about him last time.

- [Steve] Jewish mafia, go ahead, Jewish mafia, go ahead.

- And then with the advent of Prohibition, Newark was really well-positioned.

You had a lot of breweries in Newark.

I forget the, there was like the largest number of breweries in the state of New Jersey.

So that's where that gravitated.

And in order for any organized crime group to gain success, there has to be a certain level of political corruption.

So you started seeing the machinations of the mob and organized crime moving into the political sphere in Newark and, you know, eventually expanded to other cities.

But certainly, you know, by the '40s and '50s, the mob had a pretty, had their tentacles pretty deep in the city hall.

- Let's be even more specific.

As a kid growing up in Newark, I knew that the mayor at the time, Hugh J. Addonizio, was quote-unquote mobbed up, meaning he was owned by the mob.

The government not only charged him, but he was convicted as well.

He was influenced by a variety of mob figures.

There was money involved.

He was taking that money to do what, Scott?

- To protect the interests of organized crime.

You know, through selective policing, through ignoring things going on, through giving them sweetheart deals with development.

You know, by that time, the mafia in New Jersey was really heavily into the labor unions.

So, you know, sweetheart contracts, things like that.

Those are things that a mayor could do.

They could control or have some undue influence.

- And Dominic Spina, who was the police director in the city of Newark, again, as a kid growing up, also had these connections, which had an impact on the degree to which Newark law enforcement professionals, some, may have looked the other way?

- Absolutely, absolutely.

And that was a way to protect, you know, the gambling rackets, all the things they had going on in the town, but also gave them kind of that power base of operations that they could expand to other parts of New Jersey.

- So I'm gonna get real inside right now, and I know you'll appreciate this.

So as we're taping this program, third week of October, 2024, the reason it's relevant is the weekend coming up is the annual St. Gerard Feast.

St. Gerard is the patron saint of motherhood.

And that feast takes place at St. Lucy's Church in the old neighborhood, the old little Italy that my parents grew up in.

You go to the church, St. Lucy's, and the windows, right, you know where I'm going with this, right?

The windows, they're donated by the stained glass, beautiful windows.

One of the biggest windows at St. Lucy's Church, donated by Richard Boiardo, otherwise known as Richie the Boot Boiardo.

Who was Richie the Boot, and why was he so generous with the church, to the church?

- Well, Richie the Boot was one of the early mafia powers in Newark.

He came up around the same time as guys like Zwillman, Katina, a really kind of- - Jerry Katina, you have a book coming out, Jerry atena, we'll talk about a little bit, go ahead.

- Yep, so Boiardo grew up in the same neighborhood.

As Prohibition starts, he becomes a power.

He later becomes a main member of the Genovese crime family, one of the New York Five families.

But Richie the Boot becomes one of the most powerful and influential mobsters in New Jersey, but he got his start right out of Newark.

And while I don't know the specific reason, and you might know the backstory on, I'm kind of thinking why he donated those stained glass.

- He was generous.

- I was gonna say, a lot of those guys, they cultivated this image of, hey, we're gonna donate to the community, we're gonna donate to people, and it's gonna kind of whitewash our reputation.

- Yeah, and it doesn't exactly work that way.

- No.

- That being said, Scott, I wanna play out this a little bit more.

I used to hear this name growing up as a kid, Sam the Plumber.

You know what I'm talking about, right?

Sam the Plumber DeCavalcante.

Who was Sam the Plumber and the DeCavalcante crime family, and what the heck does it have to do with "The Sopranos?"

- So the DeCavalcante crime family is the only homegrown New Jersey mafia family.

- Meaning they're not tied to New York.

- Exactly, and let me preface this, and I'll get this out of the way, there was at one time a Newark family that was separate, and it later disbanded by Prohibition era, and some of the members went to the New York five families, but the DeCavalcante family really made up of a core group of Sicilian immigrants from Ribera, Sicily, and it was based primarily out of Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Sam the Plumber became boss of the DeCavalcante family, and then when the FBI started naming the families in the early '60s after who was boss at the time, this Elizabeth, New Jersey family became the DeCavalcante family.

And Sam the Plumber was kind of interesting.

He operated out of Kenilworth, New Jersey.

He had a heating business there.

- Was he a plumber?

Was he a plumber?

- I don't think he got under many sinks, let's just say that, probably not.

- Yes, he was not trained as a plumber, but go ahead.

- And he was also one of the first mafia bosses to be bugged by the FBI in the early 1960s at this heating and air conditioning company that he owned.

And keep it in mind at the time, this was kind of illegal for the FBI to do this, but they got a ton of great information about the machinations of organized crime in New Jersey from those bugs.

- Let's do this.

I wanna talk about Atlantic City/Philadelphia because we have a big audience down there as well.

But before we do this, when you were with us last time, I mentioned this, I just wanna do justice to it.

In the book, there's a section that talks about, and again, as a kid growing up, when you grow up in that neighborhood, let's just say there are a lot of stories, but this story that I heard about my great, great, great uncle, Tom Adubato, who was a cop, was the first Italian-American law enforcement professional cop to be killed in the line of duty, and it connects back to organized crime, doesn't it?

- Yeah, he was investigating organized crime.

There were a few at the time.

He was the first in Newark.

There was Joe Petrosino in New York, who also met a similar fate.

And this was kind of rare for that time, especially in the police department that had no other Italians.

So he was definitely a trailblazer.

- He chased the mobster into New York, and it was a hallway apartment building.

He was shot, and he literally carried this, he carried the guy down.

He was killed in the line of duty.

But he was a Newark officer killed in New York City, correct?

- Yes, yeah.

- Just wanna get that out of the way, 'cause I promised my family I would.

So how about this?

South Jersey, Atlantic City.

So we're doing a special on the history of Atlantic City with Nelson Johnson, former judge who wrote "Boardwalk Empire."

- Oh, wow.

- Which, in fact, the 2010 series, started 2010, the "Boardwalk Empire" series, great series, watching it again, on HBO is based on.

And so the character of Nucky Thompson in the show, but Nucky Johnson in real life was his name.

He was the boss of Atlantic City.

It's not a question whether he was in the mob or not.

He was a criminal.

But why were the Philadelphia mob families so influential in Atlantic City, both pre legalized gambling, and after?

- I think a couple of things.

I think geography plays into that because already you had a lot of the Philly guys that lived over the border, whether Camden or other areas in Cherry Hill, those parts of South Jersey.

So quick and easy access to Atlantic City.

Also at that time, a lot of the North Jersey mobsters were busy up in North Jersey 'cause there was so much money to be made there that I think, and that's not to say that a lot of the Northerner New York guys didn't go down to Atlantic City, but I think Philly early on kind of had that presence and put a beachhead there in that South part of Jersey.

So by the time Prohibition rolls around, Philly has an outsized presence in Atlantic City.

- And it's so interesting, for those who are fans of Bruce Springsteen and who is not, there's a reference in one of Springsteen's songs, you know where I'm going, right?

"The Chicken Man."

"They blew up the Chicken Man."

"The Chicken Man" was Phil Testa?

- Yep.

- The Philadelphia mob wars.

- Yeah, Angelo Bruno was a longtime boss of Philly.

After he was killed, Phil Testa became boss, and he lasted about a year, and he was literally blown up, and as the song says, "and his house too."

- Talk about that, and P.S., again, we're not trying to in any way honor these characters, but to understand New Jersey's history, and I should have said this up front, it's a piece of the equation as to what New Jersey is.

We'll talk in a little bit about how organized crime is not so organized and not nearly as powerful as it was, which is a really good thing, but to act like it doesn't influence New Jersey politics and culture is not realistic.

Scott, is that fair to say?

- Absolutely, absolutely.

You look at their height in the '50s and '60s, there was a lot of political corruption, all the way to the Statehouse, to Washington, D.C., with representatives from New Jersey.

They controlled construction unions, they controlled the ports.

There was a big chunk of economic activity that was under the thumb or had influence of organized crime.

- How did that impact what we pay for goods and services as consumers?

- Well, it raises it, because let's look at carding, for example, waste management.

The mob owned all these companies, and they would collude to fix prices, bid on contracts, so when you have a monopoly of companies owned by organized crime, they're all kind of feeding each other.

There's not a lot of room for legitimate competition to come in, so they can raise the prices and raise the rates.

- Dutch Schultz, Newark Chop House.

- Yep.

- I mean, people don't know.

They hear Dutch Schultz, famous mob name, but Dutch, and actually, it's the restaurant downtown in Newark, New Jersey that is dedicated to, well, again, these are legitimate people running a restaurant, but they're all Dutch Schultz pictures all around.

Who was Dutch Schultz, and why was he killed in Newark?

- Dutch Schultz was a New York, actually New York-based mobster.

He was, again, this is during the Prohibition era.

Things were violent to begin with.

- By the way, to be clear, the Prohibition era that Scott keeps talking about, in 1919, the Volstead Act was passed by Congress, signed into law.

It made liquor illegal.

I guess there were some in government who believed it would cut down on liquor consumption, alcohol consumption.

Let's just say not the case, and was a boon for organized crime.

Pick it up from there, Scott.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And so that's a 13-year period to 1933 with repeal, that organized crime basically controlled the trafficking distribution, and in some cases, manufacturer of illegal alcohol.

Dutch Schultz was getting real big in New York, started making some enemies, and he started getting a little kind of, I wanna say a little wild.

And Lucky Luciano was one of the mobsters who told him, "You need to calm down."

And Dutch Schultz put a hit out on Thomas Dewey, who was a district attorney in New York.

- Dewey who ran for president, excuse me for-- Dewey who ran for president against Harry Truman, the famous headline, right?

- Dewey defeats Truman, yep.

- Dewey, well, let's just say Thomas Dewey was a top law enforcement professional.

And Dutch Schultz puts a hit out on the prosecutor?

- Yeah, because he was being prosecuted by Dewey.

And basically, I think he was killed.

He was at the Palace Chop House in Newark, which I don't think the building's there anymore, but it was a very famous restaurant, and he was there, and he was set up.

His guys were in the back room, and two gunmen came in and shot him to death.

So it was a long line of grudges and bad blood that he left behind.

- So, you know, you cannot, it's so interesting, New York, The Five Families, if you will, and then there's New Jersey.

Meaning, I often wonder about this.

New Jersey winds up, we have a, some people think we have an inferiority complex because we're not New York.

For those of us who were born and raised in the state, we don't look at it that way.

That being said, there were significant differences between organized crime in New York City and New Jersey, correct?

- Yeah, I mean, they controlled a lot of the same stuff, but the New York guys looked down on the Jersey guys.

There's a line in "The Sopranos-" - Oh, nothing's changed, but go ahead.

- Yeah, yeah, there's a line in "The Sopranos" what they call like a bunch of farmers out in Jersey.

- Farmers, they call them farmers.

- Yeah, yeah, so, you know, there was that kind of looking down on them, you know.

It wasn't swanky Manhattan, but a lot of the New York guys would come over to Jersey, especially Fort Lee and the Palisades area.

There were a number of kind of high-end gambling places back in the day, the '30s, '40s, '50s.

- Fort Lee?

- Yeah.

- Right over the bridge.

- Fort Lee, the Palisades, right over the GW Bridge, yep.

- Murder Incorporated, Albert Anastasia, you can look up these names.

Fort Lee-based, Bergen County-based?

- Yeah, yeah, there were a lot of, Vito Genovese, boss of The Five Family.

He lived in the Atlantic Highlands, so there were a lot of- - Down the Jersey Shore.

- Down the Jersey Shore on Raritan Bay, so there were a lot of Jersey, there were a lot of New York guys that relocated to Jersey, or, you know, it was kind of like the commute, commuting to New York for your job.

- Yeah, for your job.

So do this for us, tell us, other than the RICO Act, which allowed the government to pursue organized crime and prosecute gangsters in a way they were not able to be able to do before RICO.

The RICO statute allowed the government to prosecute the highest level person in an organization, regardless of whether they were actively involved in a crime or not.

That was a big part of putting a dent in the mob.

Where do you see, quote, the mob in New Jersey today?

- Oh, it's definitely severely weakened, nowhere near what it was.

A lot of it has to do with law enforcement.

The RICO Act, like you mentioned, you had guys turning, you also have a loss of what they were doing.

Sports betting, sports betting is legal now in almost every state, New Jersey included.

That used to be bread and butter for a lot of wise guys.

Now, you go down the street and make your bet.

I'm here in Florida, I can make a bet on my phone.

It's changed.

So that's taken revenue stream, stuff like marijuana now legal, taking a revenue stream.

Labor unions aren't as big as they were, that's a revenue stream.

So, I mean, they're still involved with the waterfront, they're still activity at the waterfront.

- Explain that, explain the docks.

The port's very relevant, and we're not casting aspersions on anyone who works at the port.

Port Newark, a huge issue, but organized crime's influence on the docks, and PS, go all the way back, you wanna look at On the Waterfront.

- Yeah, it goes back to the beginning, yeah.

- Put that on the perspective of the docks, the ports.

- Yeah, so, you know, the ports here, you're controlling, the mafia always had a hand, not only in the labor unions, but legitimately would like get positions in the union, a longshoremen's union, would have guys with no show jobs on the dock, would control what trucks came in and out, what shipments got unloaded.

When you have that kind of power, you can really move a lot of product, you can hijack product, you can hold products hostage.

- How do they impact the rest of us again?

The people go, "Well, that's not my world, "I have nothing to do with that."

No, you did it.

But that world impacted the rest of us, please, Scott.

- Oh, absolutely.

So, you know, you're paying more for goods and services 'cause they're taking something off the top.

They're shaking down, you know, the stevedores are shaking down guys that are coming in with their trucks to unload these containers.

So it's a domino effect, and it definitely always reaches back down to the price of goods and services.

- By the way, we're talking about Scott Deitche, he's the author of the book, "Garden State Gangland: The Rise of the Mob in New Jersey."

The new book you're working on, on Jerry Catena, who was Jerry Catena and why is that name important?

- Jerry Catena was probably one of the most powerful mobsters that nobody has really ever heard of.

He was born in the Ironbound in Newark, he grew up- - Which is the eastern part, it's in the east ward of the city, heavily Portuguese community, pick it up from there.

- He tutelages under Longie Zwillman, and by the 1950s, he's an incredibly powerful mobster in New Jersey.

He gets inducted into the Genovese crime family out of New York, eventually rises to become acting boss of the Genovese family in the 1960s.

One of the only mobsters who's jailed, he's jailed for four years for failing to testify in front of the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation.

And when he gets out, he retires, "retires" to Florida, and actually dies in his bed in 98 of natural causes in 2000.

So that in itself is fascinating, but the one other thing I'll leave you with is he also was a very successful legitimate businessman who started what is now Bally Gaming, which is a huge name, obviously.

So he was one of the original investors in Bally Gaming.

- And that book you're working on?

- Yeah, yeah, it'll be, it's due to the publisher in spring of 2025, probably be out towards the end of next year.

- We'll have you back to talk about that.

You mentioned Longie Zwillman.

Talk about smart business people.

Longie Zwillman happened to be Jewish, very tied to the Jewish community.

A very, I don't wanna say successful mobster, but he made a lot of money.

He was a smart business person, and if he were legitimate, may have done very well in corporate America.

That being said, and also had connections to Meyer Lansky, a prominent name as well in organized crime.

Who was Longie Zwillman, and also Longie Zwillman did not get to retire to Florida or any other place.

He died tragically at his own, many believe, committed suicide.

Put it in perspective, Longie.

- Yeah, so Longie Zwillman, he was more of a racketeer than a gangster, certainly when he was young.

- What's the difference?

- He saw the potential in legitimate business.

He invested in a lot of legitimate business companies, companies like Public Service Tobacco.

He had investments in real estate.

He had a wide array of places where he was putting his money.

And Longie Zwillman, also along with Jerry Catena and some other New Jersey guys, heavily involved in early Vegas, which a lot of people don't realize that the New Jersey mob, we're talking about in the 1950s, like some of the original Vegas hotels, like the Fremont, which is still there in downtown, Longie Zwillman was a silent partner and had interests.

And so he saw the potential of taking the illegitimate money that he's made prohibition and post-Prohibition and invested into companies that actually did well.

- And Longie wound up, I believe he did not want to, he was being prosecuted by the government and did not wanna testify, did not wanna go through the process and was found hanging in his home.

- Yep, yes.

- West Orange?

- Yep, yes, West Orange.

- I'm embarrassed that I read so much and know so much about, I don't really know much, but again, part of New Jersey history, it's not who we are, particularly those of us who happen to be Italian American, born and raised and proud to be a New Jersey citizen.

It's a piece of the culture, just a piece.

And "The Sopranos" may be accurate, but just a piece.

That is Scott Deitche, who is a marine biologist by profession.

And fascinated by the mob, "Garden State Gangland: The Rise of the Mob in New Jersey" Scott, thank you so much for joining us.

We appreciate it.

- Thanks for having me back on, Steve.

- You got it, I'm Steve Adubato.

That is a scholar when it comes to the mob, Scott Deitche.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

Funding has been provided by NJM Insurance Group.

New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Holy Name.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

New Jersey’s Clean Energy program.

The Fidelco Group.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

And by Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

Promotional support provided by Meadowlands Chamber.

And by New Jersey Monthly.