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once you are away you may tell anybody you are away you cannot tell them where you are
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you cannot uh communicate uh easily through the internet all you can do now is is one them
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[Music] this is Gerald Shore he's given thousands of people new names told them where they would live and warned them
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they could never go back home and they have a sheep with the rules she didn't you know eight by ten piece of paper and
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they sign that piece of paper that they will abide by the rules and the rules are you know we don't want to go through
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the list but the uh essentially it's uh I will be a good person and live a normal life
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Above All Else keep your head down you have to get a new job and a new place to live in a new city
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with a new social security number and no credit history if you meet someone you like you can
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never tell them who you are or where you're really from you can't bring them home to your
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parents all of these rules were the invention of one man Gerald Shore the father of the
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witness protection program [Music] back in the 1960s he was working for the Department of Justice on organized crime
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when he realized there was a problem organized crime specifically the Italian mafia had its own set of secret rules
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and these rules made it impossible for law enforcement to get anyone convicted here are the rules of organized crime as
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Gerald Shore summarized them in a 1963 report you may not engage in an affair with the
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wife of another member you may not engage in an affair with the sister or daughter of another member no stealing
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from another member no acts of violence against another member unless approved by the boss
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no handling narcotics or deriving a profit from their sale many people have pointed out that this
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one doesn't seem to be taken too seriously but the most important rule of all is
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silence do not give information about the organization to any outside person especially the police
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some say the rules are explained to Mafia initiates during a sort of ceremony The Crime Boss Pricks your finger and
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then smears the blood onto a picture of a saint then the picture is put into your hand
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and set on fire you have to hold it while it's burning and repeat the oath and then you're introduced to everyone
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else as quote a new friend of ours if you break the rules you'll burn like the card
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yeah you how could a member of an organized crime group come forward and testify
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and live I mean they would murder him before if they knew he was going to testify or murder him after he testified
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and indeed might even murder other members of his family and so I thought we needed a way
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to offer some kind of protection and we certainly couldn't protect them at home in the city we'd have to move them
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someplace and so from that came the idea of the witness protection program because you're scared
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in court has held that not even the fear of death can diminish your legal duty to
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testify but that doesn't stop people from being scared as Gerald Shore realized people only
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talk when they feel safe so he found a way to protect them I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal
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[Music] [Applause] in his 34 years running the witness protection program Gerald Shore says he
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interacted with every single witness who entered it today he's 86. and he agreed
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to tell us some but not all of what he knows yes son happy to help out good there's only one area that I cannot go
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near and of course that this is anything that is classified yep oh good Gerald Shore grew up in New York City in
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the 1940s his father owned a dress shop in the Garment District a part of the city that was to use Gerald's phrase mob
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infested so in order to keep his business running without any trouble his father was
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friendly with the people he needed to be friendly with Gerald remembers Mafia guys it is bar
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mitzvah when he was 15 he was eating cheesecake at a restaurant with his father when two men walked by and
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greeted them his father said I know them from work later Gerald read in the newspaper that
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they were suspected of throwing sulfuric acid in a journalist's face at that same
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restaurant following organized crime became his hobby I used to clip articles at a
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newspapers about organized crime and save them and I started a scrapbook he went to college got married and went
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to law school in Texas he had two children and started his own legal practice in Corpus Christi
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and then one day in 1961 he read in the Dallas Morning News that Robert Kennedy was expanding the organized crime
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division at the Department of Justice and that was of course something that struck me whose hobby was organized
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crime so when I saw that he was going to have an organized crime Drive I went up to
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Washington the left and wound up leaving my practice and going to work for the organized crime and racketeering section
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of the Department of Justice his job was to collect evidence that would convict mob members his territory
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was New York City and he started to notice very quickly that the mafia's Code of Silence was
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going to get in his way people who talked got killed he had the photographs of dead bodies to prove it
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even with police protection potential Witnesses wound up dead famously in 1941 the most feared Hitman
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in New York called Abe kid twist Rellis agreed to testify against a high-ranking
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Mafia Boss he had six police officers guarding his room at the half moon hotel in Coney
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Island and then on the morning he was scheduled to testify he fell from his hotel window
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six stories to his death newspapers called him the canary who could sing but couldn't fly
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in 1961 a heroin Smuggler named Albert aguachi from the Buffalo crime family threatened to inform on the Family's
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boss Don Stefano about a month later his body was found in a field naked his front teeth knocked out and a reported
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30 pounds of Flesh cut from his body Gerald remembers one man who'd worn a wire for the FBI he'd been caught and
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had wires jammed through his skull to send a message after you deal with the Thousand or so more of them more than a
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thousand you uh there's not much shocking left Gerald Shore knew that in order to get
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any results in the courtroom they would have to find a way to keep these Witnesses alive in the early days he was
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just making it up as he went along no one had ever done anything like this before
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he has stories about U.S Marshals chasing down a family pet flying a boxer in to spar with a bored Witness
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and even paying for one witness's wife to get breast implants a facelift and dental work
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but eventually he settled on a system can you take me through the steps of entering the program if I were a
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potential witness that needed help what what are the steps more steps the steps of getting into the
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program are what are the crimes that they're testifying the witness is testifying to
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how important is that witness to the case I mean there's a considerable evaluation and that you are in danger if
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you testify then they will ask you if you would agree to relocate if you would they then send an
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application form to my office where my staff evaluated the information they provided and what was involved in
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relocating how many people how many children and then a psychologist will examine the witness and members of the
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family so all that information is then sent into the office of enforcement operations in the United States
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Department of Justice and there they have a staff of people that are really run the program and a staff workstop
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reviews it makes their recommendation and if the director decides it's true it sounds good let's go and they go ahead
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and send over to the Marshall service it's a deputy United States Marshal which wrote to the witness's home assess
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their needs how many adults how many children is anybody sick and evaluate the situation
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and all of that information is gathered now that's as far as I'll take you with one breath
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after all of that the families relocated to a secret location in Washington DC where families
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entering the witness protection program go for kind of an orientation and then you're told how to act
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and people will work with them on they're getting used to their new names and so on so it it's uh getting him used
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to the documents and used to the new name and using it and responding when someone calls them Witnesses and their
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families get to keep their first name and their last initial Gerald wanted to give them time to catch themselves when
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they were signing a check he also didn't want anyone to accidentally turn their head when their old name was called and
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that's the sort of thing you have to practice children had to practice writing down
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their new name over and over and everyone got a whole new set of documents so they would have a new
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driver's license no school records uh whatever would you would normally have would be changed into another name
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legally Legally right legally I mean a judge who would perform the usual procedure associated with name changes
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you have to leave everything behind photo albums Diaries drawings your children made your memories become a
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kind of liability and you're coached on how to change the subject when someone asks you about yourself
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the name of the school on your children's report cards changes the grades stay the same even though Gerald
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says some parents have asked for artificial improvements we we have been asked by uh
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people who have been in the military if we would make them offices you know make somebody a lieutenant and of course
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we're not going to do that what the papers they get will reflect exactly as the real papers do only the
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names changed did people ever want to change their pasts like have this opportunity to
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create a new identity and so tell you to make them from here or here or tell you
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to say that they did this or that well we we will not make up a past for to pass on to others
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uh we will report that there were Carpenters if that's the case uh but the problem is uh who are they going to give
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as a reference you know uh if you give the you can't give the name of the Deputy Marshal uh
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that gives away is something very peculiar about you you're dealing with a deputy
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how do you get a job if you don't have any work history at first I went out to several corporations I had a friend who
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worked for the United States Chamber of Commerce who's uh located in Washington DC and he was very interested in crime
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and the fighting crime and I uh mentioned to him that we were going to relocate people but we have to find them
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work and so he uh said he'll set up a meeting with five or six corporate presidents
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for a luncheon and and it'll be in a private room and I would explain the program to them
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and uh and he said if they agreed but the majority of them agreed to help you he said that I will help you
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forever you know and uh the result of that meeting was we put together almost I think 1 000 corporations that agreed
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to assist hiring relocated people and it worked very very well Gerald says that the witness protection
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program will support you financially for the first six months in your new location
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but then you do have to get a job and take over your own expenses the program couldn't afford to support
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everyone forever in the early days they spent as much as one million dollars relocating some
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witnesses it was controversial yes there were people that that were very concerned about it
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and uh uh concerned about the the appearance of moving families to paying money for them
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to do that and how would we deal with that but there were but the actual total cost of doing it
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and uh I think I estimated that we would have five families in New York City in one year
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and I think it turned out I think they had 25. so I obviously are not good when it
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comes to math critics have asked whether it's buying testimony which is illegal one martial
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is set about a famous witness the truth is we were buying his testimony to some degree
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I know the justice department will deny it but it is what we did how else would we ever get inside
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Gerald says that 95 percent of the witnesses who've entered the program were involved in illegal activity
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themselves and some critics asked whether it's fair to everyone else to move criminals into
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unsuspecting communities did people who ever enter the program commit more crimes yes
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yes about 15 percent what would happen in the program committed a crime would you get
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involved yes and we would place them in another prison if he's convicted if he's arrested by the state
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a state we would know it because Witnesses are fingerprinted and all their fingerprints
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are sent to the FBI when an arrest is made in any city in the country uh the prince of the prisoner are sent
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to the FBI so anytime they're arrested we get a notice and in the uh one of the early
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surveys again the number of 15 percent fifteen percent committed crime again that must be incredibly frustrating
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well we consider it a great success because the criminals who go to prison without being in the witness program a
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much much higher rate of them commit crime again whereas those in the witness program
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that are in prison when they get out they're getting help getting a job they're no longer in the society with
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the friends that are criminals uh you know they they have someone out there to help them
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so uh I think the help these personal assistance is the most important reason for us having a very low recidivism rate
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there have been some notable exceptions in 1979 a bank robber named Marion Pruitt was serving time in an Atlanta
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prison when he agreed to supply information about who had murdered his cellmate the witness protection program relocated
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him to Albuquerque his wife to death with a hammer and burned her remains in the desert
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he then killed five more people and robbed a series of banks before he was caught
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he later admitted that he had murdered his own cellmate and framed another man for it so that he could get into the
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witness protection program as one high-ranking U.S Marshal once said it's a problem program
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it's always going to be a problem program because every element in it is human [Music]
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how were the cities how would you decide Bobby is going to Tucson and Cheryl's going to Tacoma how did you pick the
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city well the first thing you would look at is your workload you have witness security inspectors throughout the
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country but they can only handle so many witnesses at one time in the land needs
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so you would look at the workload and uh and uh so that would eliminate certain cities then you would try to find one in
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which they would be comfortable but if you'd always talked about wanting to live in San Francisco they wouldn't put
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you in San Francisco too easy to guess still they tried to match Witnesses with cities that might suit them you know
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it's very difficult to adjust you know from New York City to Idaho I think the hardest thing is well
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several elements the community you live in is different uh having to adjust to that having to
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lie to their neighbors for the first time and they have a made up history and that's
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what they have to tell the neighbor the normal things that you do in life the first time they go to a grocery
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store and use a charge card and a new name and remembering to sign the slip with the new name not the old name
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it's also [Music] very difficult and uh when a mother dies that's left back home and they want to go to the
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funeral we will somehow make arrangements for them to not necessarily be at the funeral but they will get to see
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their deceased relative the mother and father whomever privately in the in the funeral home
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with something I would not wish on anyone the only reason to do it was if it was your only hope to stay alive they
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can leave the program anytime they want and if they want to go back home they can go back home
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all the witnesses are told don't go back home among other things there was a guy in 1972 who was in the
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witness protection program and decided to break the rules and go check on his house
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his house had been rigged with a bomb and when he opened the front door it exploded and killed him
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but according to the U.S Marshals not a single witness who follows the rules has
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been harmed or killed while under active protection they report that since 1971 they've
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successfully relocated and given new identities to more than 8 600 Witnesses and nearly ten thousand of their family
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members did anyone change their mind once they learned what they'd have to do yes yes there are people who have left
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the program and I've even gone back using their real name and uh some are very free about that but
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that's their choice in 1975 a New Jersey Hitman named John Tully entered the program
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he was relocated to Austin Texas and given the new name John Johnson he set himself up with a pretty
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successful fajita and hot dog stand business everything was going well until 1991.
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when he decided to run for mayor for some reason he announced he would put John Johnson off to the side for now
00:23:13
and told everyone who he really was he provided journalists with a seven-page rap sheet and said his
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cooperation with the government had helped to convict nine people he said he'd been a thief before running
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for office which was better than everyone else who quote got into office and then started crooking
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he received 496 votes Gerald Shore says that a lot of these cooperating Witnesses are used to
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feeling like a big deal and to now have to live quiet simple lives is hard as he
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puts it time was frozen for them [Music] being away from a life you've lived 40 years with
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the patterns you've developed the friendships you made and changing and suddenly you're you're
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in a wilderness you don't know anybody you're not a rising star uh you're just another person
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[Music] in our next episode we'll speak with the son of a Columbo Kingpin who testified
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against his father and then had to enter the witness protection program [Music] criminal is created by Lauren Spore and
00:24:40
me needy Wilson is our senior producer audiomix by Rob Byers special thanks to Natalia luderman
00:24:48
Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal you can see them at this is
00:24:54
criminal.com where we have a link to our shop where we've got all kinds of new things like a tote bag featuring my
00:25:01
favorite art of a baby bird skeleton and we have a new shirt that glows in the dark and new stickers for criminal and
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for this is love we made a whale sticker criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina public radio wunc we're a
00:25:17
proud member of radiotopia from PRX a collection of the best podcasts around I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal
00:25:29
foreign [Music] [Music]