00:00:00
when it comes to Quality sleep Ashley has you covered with top mattress brands at winning prices and with special
00:00:06
financing options available you can snooze now and pay later plus your mattress purchase helps give the gift of
00:00:13
better sleep to children in need and US Special Operations forces visit your local Ashley store or shop online today
00:00:22
and make every snooze count financing is subject to credit approval C store or ashley.com for d details Rosetta Stone
00:00:32
is the language learning program with a lasting impact I've been using the rap to learn French and it's not just about
00:00:37
memorizing words but actually having real conversations and it's not just French they offer 25 languages right now
00:00:44
Rosetta Stone has an awesome holiday deal 50% off their lifetime membership every language unlimited access forever
00:00:51
for anyone keen on diving deep into a new language check out rosettastone.com it's a
00:00:58
GameChanger [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:01:48
for listening I am your host with the most the captain and with me as always say hello to my little friend it's good
00:01:56
to see you and it's good to be seen you see what we did there we we reversed it and we're surprisingly
00:02:03
horrible at each other's Parts I think I'm worse I think it took the captain like a million tries maybe yeah maybe
00:02:16
300 we are drinking green Diamonds by other half brewing in beautiful Brooklyn New York out of five Diamond studded
00:02:25
bottle caps green diamonds was brought to us by some members of our true crime G family first we have Jill from Iowa
00:02:32
who says cheers to you guys and here's a sixpack next we have Steven M Steven M has set up his donation to be
00:02:41
reoccurring so each month he's sending beer money thank you Sten Love You Stephen let's head east and say hi to
00:02:47
Daniel in Southampton Pennsylvania hi Daniel and way down South we have Christy from Texas Christy says try 1554
00:02:56
from new Belgian Brewing out of fort fort Collins sorry it's one of her favorites she also says she loves us and
00:03:04
our jibs well I say like your J and last but not least we have Alex a bloke from
00:03:12
Bedford England he says keep up the good work and he loves listening while driving to and from work well Alex Blan
00:03:20
bloke you keep up the good work and keep up the good driving to and from work cheers mates and if you want to throw a
00:03:26
little money in the Hat for next week's beer fund or a lot of money go to True Crim garage.com and click on the Donate
00:03:33
button and that's enough of the business yeah gather around grab a chair grab a beer and let's talk some true
00:03:41
[Music] crime we are ready for part two of our interview with Don talking about Joseph
00:03:47
Columbo just a little recap here at the height of Joseph Columbo's influence on June 28th 1971 he was shot while
00:03:56
standing inside a press barricade at Columbus Circle a few hours before an Italian American Civil Rights rally the
00:04:04
shooter Jerome Johnson was immediately subdued and handcuffed by police Johnson had posed as a cameraman with official
00:04:12
press credentials minutes after Johnson was subdued he was shot and murdered while still handcuffed and surrounded by
00:04:20
a sea of New York Police Department yeah Joseph Columbo would survive the the attack or the attempted assassination he
00:04:29
would end up in aoma for roughly about seven years yeah and we we know who the shooter is but the who was operating the
00:04:37
strings you know on the puppet what was the motive and who and was this a hit was this a lone gunman was this a hit
00:04:45
was this a conspiracy by the government we're going to dive more into that right
00:04:49
now and the other thing too here Captain we got Jerome Johnson who's killed after
00:04:53
the shooting and his murder's unsolved as well so hold on tight here it comes part two with Nick and
00:05:06
Don I agree with what Columbo was trying to do trying to keep the FBI under wraps
00:05:12
and holding them to the the set of laws that they've created and been a part of but don't we find this a little bit
00:05:18
hypocritical because I mean he's not really a law biing citizen himself I I mean if you were to take
00:05:27
everything in hindsight and look at all of it was he the person that was supposed to be championing this cause
00:05:35
and you know the the answer has to be yes because who else had the balls and who had the courage and who had the
00:05:43
people and who had the people behind organized crime to make something like this happen but yes when you're when
00:05:49
you're looking at this through the M you know if you look through it depends on what scope you're looking through this
00:05:53
if you look at through the microscope you're saying no this is not Joe Columbo's job Joe Columbo is a criminal
00:05:59
joeo could have killed people we just need to attack and go after people like him and then if you do if if you if you
00:06:07
cut him off from doing this you know did you have any Community leaders at the time that would fight for something like
00:06:14
this so I think because what was happening to him and to his family and the fact that he may have been in this
00:06:21
storm was the reason why he knew how hard you had to fight against these people to stop all this from happening
00:06:28
and it's it's a it's it's really difficult because you have to compartmentalize how you believe who you
00:06:35
believe Joe Columbo was can you be the type of person that wakes up in the morning um goes to work uh collects
00:06:43
money on a number bracket let's say and I'm just I'm just putting this all out as example these aren't things that I
00:06:47
know that he was doing but uh you know collecting on loone sharking and then going and to the FBI and saying hey you
00:06:54
guys are you know you're you can't come and search my home without a warrant and
00:07:00
you shouldn't be wire capping my phone and you shouldn't you know have people sitting in a car watching people go to
00:07:05
eat and that's come out with tax payer of money should before so it's really it's a it's definitely a thing that
00:07:12
leans into is he a hypocrite for doing this um but I have to say that you know the reason that he's doing this is
00:07:19
because I think he's he's a vict his family is a victim of this so he has to he has to do this I think he was backed
00:07:26
into this so Joe Columbo decides to pick a fight with Jay Ed Hoover one of the most powerful men in America that takes
00:07:32
some balls yeah um Joe had uh had no fear that was definitely something a lot of people had told me about him um you
00:07:42
know he was short in stature but he was very large in heart and strength and this was a guy that would he went after
00:07:50
the probably the scariest human being in the United States at the time above the
00:07:55
president um and when he did this he did this with intelligence um he knew that the strength of the people and the mob
00:08:04
meaning the folks you know like Roman mob could change things in society and what really probably affected the FBI
00:08:14
and the justice department was when Joe made an example and he marched 200,000 people into Columbus Circle and
00:08:23
then rallied and took tens of thousands of those people to the FBI offices and it started getting to the point where it
00:08:30
was the crowd control was not even able to be handled by the police department and Joe had to calm everyone down and
00:08:36
send everybody home and they started to see that you know Joe wasn't just going after the FBI he was going after them
00:08:43
with a weapon that could not be um could not be silenced which was the voices of
00:08:48
all these people and the action of all these people so Hoover as big and as powerful as he is he is only one person
00:08:56
and and after that rally the first Unity rally in in 1970 um President Nixon had to have uh they made a speech
00:09:06
and it was the attorney general actually John Mitchell who who made the announcement on National Television that
00:09:12
the words laosan norra and Mafia would no longer be used in any government uh paperwork or any government dialogue
00:09:21
because it was defamatory against the Italian-American people and Joe's crime cry for this but why he was fighting
00:09:28
against those words so much was because he felt that there if there's crime there's crime everywhere there's
00:09:35
crime in the community amongst Latinos there's crime in the community amongst the Jews there's crime in the community
00:09:41
amongst the blacks if if one or two people conspire to commit a crime together well then at that point you
00:09:48
have a conspiracy or you have an organization and it seemed that the justice department only wanted to lock
00:09:55
up go after and and sit and watch Italian Americans and Mafia and not only through the the justice department but
00:10:04
also through television media um we seen plenty of films come out up until this point and they were all aimed at the
00:10:11
Italian-American community and and Mafia and this is what people were being known
00:10:15
for any person that you saw on the street that was successful that had a a nice jacket and a nice car and wore gold
00:10:23
they were mafia they were laosan norra and Joe had a disain for these two words and just felt that this was going to
00:10:30
hurt his community for anyone to be successful and take it seriously so um he went after Hoover and he went after
00:10:37
the justice department first this was the biggest battle that he could have went after first um he did this before
00:10:42
he went after the news media people but he was successful and and that was definitely I would have loved to have
00:10:47
been a fly on the wall if Nixon was having a meeting with John Mitchell and and Ed Jay edger Hoover discussing how
00:10:54
they needed to take those words out and not only take them out but bow down and tell to National Television that those
00:11:00
words would no longer be used now this will play a big part in the attack that will happen later but tell us what Unity
00:11:07
day is Unity day was the rally that was held in Columbus Circle on 1970 um and it was the first one was in
00:11:18
in June on the 29th I believe in 1970 um this was this was what Joe wanted to do
00:11:26
he wanted to show the force of the Italian American people um he had been setting up lots of uh picketing at the
00:11:36
FBI offices and then they started to realize that they needed to make a bigger statement so he decided that he
00:11:42
was going to tell people to close their Stores um have people take a day off of work and they were going to rally and
00:11:50
for the fir you know he had seen what the sons of Italy had been doing and he had seen what Aid had been doing and a
00:11:57
lot of the Italian-American organ organizations but he knew the power of the Italian-American people within the
00:12:03
city he knew that they were building the city he knew that they were working in the education he knew that they they
00:12:08
were such a strong part of the New York Community but they had never really organized so he wanted to create Unity
00:12:15
day to unite all of these different italian-americans at one place at one time to show the strength of them in New
00:12:22
York so they could be taken a little bit more seriously because the problems were
00:12:26
that he wanted to combat with the Italian American Civil Rights League went Way Beyond problems with how the
00:12:33
justice department was treating criminals they also had an education department that was run by Steve iello
00:12:39
who later became the education Zar under Ronald Reagan and what ielo and Columbo
00:12:44
were working on was the fact that with the almost one fifth of the population in the school systems or I think it was
00:12:52
even more than that there was no italian-americans that had any administrative job in the education
00:12:57
systems in New York as a a vice principal or principal and they wanted to see some change they wanted action
00:13:03
you know just like affirmative action they wanted to see Italian Americans in positions of power um so that they can
00:13:10
they can have a voice and they they also wanted to help uh what was a major drug
00:13:16
problem that was going on in the city for a lot of the youths uh in Brooklyn Queens and Bronx at the time and as Joe
00:13:23
started to learn more and more going around as a community leader he saw that if they could organize and if the
00:13:29
American Civil Rights League could be a strong force they could start knocking these problems out that the government
00:13:35
may not be able to help knock out but Community can as a whole and one of the major cases that they helped with um
00:13:41
there was a young lawyer that was fighting I don't know if you familiar with the 69 Corona homes case uh where
00:13:47
they were doing eminent domain and they were going to knock down these 69 homes and Corona Queens so they could put up
00:13:53
school system but all the homeowners have told them there's this huge parcel of land that they can use to just build
00:13:58
the school and you don't have to take our homes from us and they did not want to leave but these people had no
00:14:02
representation so there was a young Italian-American lawyer that was fighting this case but on his own
00:14:07
showing up at City Hall and and and trying to without any political power he wasn't getting any leway and he went and
00:14:13
spoke in front of the league at a league meeting and then they got the support of
00:14:18
the league and they got protesters and they went down to City Hall and they ended up winning the case and that Young
00:14:23
attorney was Mario Cuomo who ended up becoming governor of New York later on in 197 71 there was that famous event
00:14:30
that took place Joe Columbo is attacked and he is shot can you take us through that day and any events leading up to
00:14:37
that day yeah leading up to that um was where a whirlwind of trouble started happening for Columbo um one of the
00:14:46
things was that Joe Gallow was released from from prison uh after serving about a 10year sentence and at this time Larry
00:14:53
Gallow his brother had already passed away so there was really no one in that organization that could say anything to
00:14:59
Joe Gallow to sway his opinion and he probably had suffered from poor impulse control and he came home and he was
00:15:06
making it well known that he had a problem with Joe he had a problem with his Italian-American civil rights league
00:15:11
and I think that he also wanted to hurt Columbo probably a coup or some something to that effect so there was a
00:15:20
lot of um there was a lot of things leading up to this day that um were against Joe and another one was that um
00:15:28
the League was bringing a lot of heat to the organized crime families because they started to see like wow a lot of
00:15:34
these figures that are helping out with all this we believe are involved in illegal activities so I had mentioned
00:15:41
earlier that there was a gentleman that mentored Joe as he was a little kid who was very close with Joe's father and Joe
00:15:48
continued a relationship with that man throughout his entire life um that that man was call Gambino and call Gambino
00:15:55
and Joe's relationship was that of a father son relationship and I think leading up to the the unity day the
00:16:03
second Unity day in 1971 which which shooting happened that Carl had expressed to Joe that he needed to step
00:16:10
down from the league that he he had chosen a path in his life already and he needs to follow that path without
00:16:16
bringing the attention of the news media because by this point Joe was already on
00:16:20
television shows he was doing radio he was speaking to reporters and it was just it he was while he wasn't
00:16:29
he getting arrested but not convicted of anything he was in in in a little bit of
00:16:33
a heavy situation with with everything from the FBI to the you know the state investigators so Carl asked him to
00:16:42
publicly step down and and and leave this in the hands of his son Anthony and and Nat Marone to let them run the
00:16:48
organization and Joe told him that he would and Joe was going to take a back seat and have his son and Nat Marone run
00:16:58
this organization and leading up to that rally the rumors were also out that Joe
00:17:04
Gallow was going to do something to try to disrupt the rally and there was definitely a lot of things flying around
00:17:10
in the streets of New York and that day prior to the start of the event there was a gentleman Jerome Johnson who had
00:17:20
press credentials so he was in the The Press Circle right next to the stage and this is about two hours before the event
00:17:27
started he had a blex camera and whether this weapon was on him or it was handed
00:17:33
to him many believe I believe that there was an accomplice a female woman that was also at the event that day um this
00:17:40
German pistol when Joe turned around he pulled it out and shot it three times hit Joe all three times in the back of
00:17:47
the head in the neck and Joe immediately went down to the ground um you can imagine the pandemonium of about 15
00:17:55
20,000 people in this small congested area of Columbus Circle um many of them law enforcement the shooter was tackled
00:18:05
immediately by an officer named Giuliani skoi who smacked the gun out of his hand
00:18:10
and then he was held down to the ground by about five to seven officers you had FBI guys you had um homicide detectives
00:18:18
I would even guess there was CIA there I can't confirm that but I can confirm hom
00:18:22
New York homicide uh police officers and FBI and within about minute or two while
00:18:30
Jerome Johnson was handcuffed face down on the pavement someone stuck a revolver
00:18:34
to his back and shot him twice in the back he wasn't killed immediately he actually lived until he made it to
00:18:41
Roosevelt Hospital Joe was also taken to Roosevelt Hospital and with these three
00:18:46
wounds you know expected to die they did emergency surgeries on him um and he did
00:18:52
survive he lingered in a coma for seven years following the shooting but it the shooting itself was fatal um he ended up
00:19:01
passing in 1978 Upstate um and Jerome Johnson again he was silenced that day so we never
00:19:09
knew who Pro who put Joe derome Johnson to shoot Joe Columbo who was the man behind this because there had to be a
00:19:17
mastermind especially after I learned more and more about Jerome Johnson this was not the type of person that would
00:19:23
just walk into Columbus Circle and shoot Joe Columbo for the sake of and you know in the book that I wrote um
00:19:32
the Final Chapter outlines four major theories that were spoken of um on who would be behind the shooting of Joe
00:19:40
Columbo and I don't have a Smoking Gun but I definitely have a loaded one because there's so much information that
00:19:48
had been put out by the media at that time that it had no backing there was no evidence to back any of the things that
00:19:54
the chief of detectives Albert seedman was saying to the public and every other week or so he was saying he was very
00:20:01
close to making arrest very that he had sources seedman never revealed his sources he never made an arrest and even
00:20:09
what seedman was saying and who seedman was saying was behind the shooting the head of the organized crime task force
00:20:16
Dennis Holman from the FBI was countering what seedman was saying telling him that this was not possible
00:20:23
that this was not that style of of of mob hit that he believed it was um for a specific amount of money and
00:20:31
let me get into the the money on that situation because when Joe Columbo was shot a few things happened right you
00:20:38
have the pandemonium imagine this there's three bullets Bang Bang Bang the Jerome Johnson gets tackled within a
00:20:45
minute bang bang Jerome Johnson shot in the back as the police are are trying to secure a crime scene what they could
00:20:55
the only thing that they could do with so many thousands of people around there there was they grabbed the guns that
00:21:00
were used there was another gun laying on the floor there was a briefcase laying next to Columbo and if you look
00:21:05
online you you can see a lot of these photos Getty Images probably has them um so when they went to the hospital
00:21:12
Giuliani skoi who I interviewed the police officer that tackled Jerome Johnson and rode with him in the medical
00:21:18
vehicle to Roosevelt Hospital he sat with Jerome Johnson in the room when they came in and placed a toe tag on him
00:21:26
and he also had these two pistols and these two briefcases and within those briefcases ski knew that there was
00:21:33
$40,000 in one briefcase and then the other briefcase had another said amount of thousands of dollars a little bit
00:21:39
less um Albert Sean came in that day looked at Jerome Johnson's body looked at ski and he had his homicide
00:21:48
detectives with him and while ski said he never saw seedman touch the guns touch the money when he walked out of
00:21:56
the room the money was gone and that money never made it into evidence lockers and seedman always said he knew
00:22:06
how much the hit was for it is my belief that seedman knew how much the hit was for because he thinks someone walked
00:22:13
into Columbus Circle and dropped $40,000 there so Jerome Johnson would what shoot
00:22:19
Joe Columbo in front of thousands of people and I believe over a thousand police officers were there that day grab
00:22:29
a briefcase and walk off with the money this Theory and and what sedon believes happened that day is very pedestrian and
00:22:39
I I I loved his book Chief and I think he's been behind a lot of great investigations in New York City but this
00:22:46
just never sat right with me and this was also you know reading Chief and reading other books was one of the
00:22:51
reasons I wanted to write the story and talk about Joe Columbo because this is a
00:22:56
cold case this is we're talking 40 something years ago this is an unsolved murder in the streets of New York while
00:23:02
the murder is solved in in in The Pedestrian sense that yes Jerome Johnson is the shooter of Joe Columbo and Jerome
00:23:09
Johnson is dead we don't know the plan we don't know the blueprint of why all of this stuff happened and you know when
00:23:18
I learned about centel Pro and I learned about Hoover and and the dirty tricks that he was doing in the in the
00:23:26
government against our own citizens Hoover had learned all this stuff from CIA and he had learned what we were
00:23:32
doing in Iran and he had learned what we were doing in all these other countries
00:23:35
with Counter Intelligence and he was applying it here to the US to make sure that our political system was not
00:23:42
affected so if there was any political dissidence they had tactics that would go in to disrupt those organizations and
00:23:49
there's documentation of these tactics everything from sending letters to Communists that there was organized
00:23:55
crime people that wanted to bomb their buildings to create tension between Communists and organized crime people
00:24:02
and these were all the things that Hoover was doing and I I have to think that if this is the stuff that I'm
00:24:08
reading in actual FBI documentation what was the stuff that was said and spoken about and done that wasn't printed on an
00:24:16
FBI document and and this was a lot of the the interesting stuff that I un I I discovered doing the investigation side
00:24:25
which I did about two years of Investigation and interviews before I even started writing the book and I just
00:24:32
had to believe that there was so much more going on for the the political and the government and the FBI side for Joe
00:24:38
Columbo's murder than just to believe John Q public story that this was a power struggle and Joe Gallow hired a
00:24:45
black person because he met black people in prison and Jerome Johnson shot him and then Jerome Johnson gets shot and
00:24:51
then a year later Gallow dies and that's it Case Closed let's move on wow so let
00:24:56
me get this straight we have this attack it takes place in front of thousands of
00:25:00
people two guys are shot they're rushed to the hospital one of them dies there's
00:25:05
two guns recovered and then the money there's money but it's lost and Joe Columbo he's a strong dude somehow he's
00:25:12
shot he's shot in the head and yet he survives yes he had shot in the back of the head um one of them was actually
00:25:20
more towards the lower throat area um but yeah he he was shot three times in the back of the head and he survive it
00:25:28
so just to get a clearer picture here we have two people that have been shot one
00:25:33
is the shooter of the of the first victim are they both taken to the same Hospital are they both taken to
00:25:39
Roosevelt yes both shooting victims were taken to Roosevelt Joe upstairs to ICU immediately to have emergency surgery
00:25:49
and as I was told Jerome Johnson died either right at arrival or a few moments after arrival at R of
00:25:58
so Joe Columbo survives the attack but his shooter Johnson is dead now Columbo lives for years we don't know what
00:26:06
Johnson would have said about this attack or who was involved or what the motives could have been for for the
00:26:11
shooting but Columbo's still alive but he's in a coma for years seven years after the attack um seven years and and
00:26:20
I wouldn't say that this was just a coma because uh as Anthony has told me he had
00:26:26
the ability to move his hands and fingers and I do believe that there was communication that happened um with him
00:26:35
and his family members throughout those seven years and there were many surgeries as well so I'm I'm pretty sure
00:26:42
that you know this was um something that even people in the organized crime world
00:26:48
and in the FBI were very afraid that Joel was going to recover from this and and come out and you know he he needed
00:26:55
for for a lot of people he needed to be silenced they needed this to be a murder
00:27:00
they didn't need this to be a shooting that he ever recovered from because I I do believe that like a lot of the
00:27:07
assassinations that we have seen from Bobby Kennedy to JFK to Martin Luther King when we see a leader that has the
00:27:15
control of the people and his opponents are trying to defame him and and trying to ruin his name and ruin his
00:27:23
credibility and they cannot and this is what was happening for the 365 days before Joe's death the FBI and the
00:27:31
justice department were going after him with everything that they had he was in the newspaper almost every single day
00:27:39
leading up to that shooting and arrests were made leading up to that shooting like never before but it was he was the
00:27:45
Teflon D there was nothing that was affecting his power amongst the people and when you have the power of the
00:27:52
people you have all of the Power and and this is what I would believe would be the breaking point for the justice
00:28:00
department and for an organization like coel Pro and for Hoover to have to say this man has to go this man needs to be
00:28:08
taken out like the Black Panther leader like Martin Luther King like anyone that
00:28:13
has power that they cannot tap into this show is sponsored by better help do you look forward to the holidays
00:28:29
maybe you struggle with seasonal Blues this time of year can be a lot and it's natural to feel some sadness or even
00:28:35
anxiety about it but adding something new and positive to your life can counteract some of those feelings
00:28:41
therapy can be a bright spot something to look forward to to make you feel grounded and to give you the tools to
00:28:49
manage everything going on if you're thinking of starting therapy give better help a try it's entirely online designed
00:28:56
to be convenient flexible and suited to your schedule just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a
00:29:02
licensed therapist and switch therapist at any time for no additional charge find your bright spot this season with
00:29:08
betterhelp visit betterhelp.com garaget toay to get 10% off your first month that's better help
00:29:17
hp.com garage Rosetta Stone is the language learning program with a lasting impact
00:29:26
I've been using the WAP to learn French and it's not just about memorizing words
00:29:29
but actually having real conversations and it's not just French they offer 25 languages right now Rosetta Stone has an
00:29:36
awesome holiday deal 50% off their lifetime membership every language unlimited access forever for anyone keen
00:29:43
on diving deep into a new language check out rosettastone.com it's a GameChanger major phone carriers make
00:29:52
you sign contracts with rigid data plans to trap you into a kind of forced phogy
00:29:56
sounds is pretty insecure if you ask me at Consumer Cellular we believe in a more consensual and healthy form of
00:30:02
phogy free of contracts and more flexible to your data needs this way you stick around not because we force you to
00:30:08
with contracts and fees but because you love our phone plans like ardently love our phone plans monogamously Consumer
00:30:16
Cellular when Freedom calls we're here to answer call us at 1888 freedom Don do you believe had Joe Columbo been
00:30:34
able to see who shot him he was shot in the back if he would have been able to see who shot him or if he would have not
00:30:41
been in a coma would he have been able to tell us who was responsible for this attack or what organization was trying
00:30:48
to take him down I know because I believe this this was the government I think he would have known this and I
00:30:55
think he would have I think he would have went for the throat still with the same tenacity that he was prior to the
00:31:02
shooting but I I don't think that he would have had I think it was the plan obviously was successful because here we
00:31:11
are 40 something years later and and even after you know Hoover had passed away and they learned about colel proo
00:31:19
and they learned about all the illegal activities and the I don't want to say his name wrong but Senator kefover or
00:31:25
cough over had had the hearings in 19 1978 where FBI members that were active in the 60s and the 70s had to come and
00:31:33
speak about the illegal activities it was before one of those committee hearings that seven men within
00:31:40
a six-month period ended up dying before they spoke at those committee hearings so we're we're talking about and and I I
00:31:47
hate to put tin foil hat on here but this is very real stuff that has happened in the United States and with
00:31:55
our government and with the power power whether it be the military complex or the FBI that you know we can't we we
00:32:03
cannot show the blueprint Joe could not come out of this coma and say this is what happened a happened then B then C
00:32:09
then D and it equals this and and I think that's the biggest problem with with any of the people that are out
00:32:15
there today that they can't believe any of these stories is because we don't have enough evidence but even even with
00:32:22
the evidence that we see sometimes we just don't want to be distracted with our everyday lives to look at this kind
00:32:27
of stuff and believe that it happened and I would say that that is relevant today with the situation of Julian
00:32:33
Assange and Snowden these people that are telling you your government is doing illegal activity on you spying on you
00:32:41
and doing and we're all just waiting for the next iPhone to come out Keeping Up with the Kardashians watching movies
00:32:48
watching football getting involved in politics arguments and leaving all this very real stuff alone they're very good
00:32:56
at keeping us entertained so our minds don't wander meanwhile they're keeping tabs on us the whole time they either
00:33:01
well they either keep you entertained or they keep you injured and how they keep
00:33:05
us injured is we're either financially injured or we're injured by our health and if if you're not then you're
00:33:13
entertained so it's it's either one or the other that keeps us kind of let's just say it's Sedated by these drugs the
00:33:20
drug of injury or the drug of entertainment and and with that and and then also the easiest tactic that any
00:33:27
ruler uses on his people is divide and conquer and we've seen one of the biggest divide and conquer situations
00:33:33
here with this last political campaign Trump versus Hillary Clinton where you have this
00:33:39
nation versus against each other you know and here we are thinking there's going to be a change with what happens
00:33:48
when we we I hope you know that there's really not going to be a great change in
00:33:53
what happens they're just going to you know it's a two-party system and it creates a lot of uh news media hype and
00:34:00
then here we go for another four years I guess I'm lucky that I'm entertained and
00:34:04
not injured your book presents several good theories as to what actually took place and who took down Joe Columbo
00:34:12
could you go through one of those theories for us one of the theories is The Lone Gunman theory that uh Jerome
00:34:18
Johnson was this uh wandery kind of you know in the weeds human being who oh want to be a filmmaker and just wanted
00:34:28
to be someone that people knew his name he wanted his you know five minutes of fame and he had done all these he was a
00:34:38
criminal he was he was arrested many times and at at I show evidence also in the book that it was probably it's to
00:34:45
surprise that he was even out in the streets and not locked up at the time of the shooting because he must have there
00:34:52
there's things that he was arrested for that he should have gotten jail time that he didn't so um The Lone Gunman
00:34:58
Theory as I'm investigating that I'm starting to see more and more that there was probably someone in the Justice
00:35:03
Department helping him long um and the lone gunman theory states that he would have he had plane tickets to travel out
00:35:10
of the country and he would buy rent this blex camera with $2,000 that he didn't have in Boston a few days before
00:35:19
drive down to New York City take the blex camera in he got himself fake press credentials um and he had this German
00:35:29
pistol and he goes and he shoots Joe Columbo and he was either gonna walk off or it was a suicide mission jihadist and
00:35:36
and I I look at that theory and I think this just this just doesn't add up and then you can you could always go and
00:35:44
pull the insanity card and just say well Insanity does not add up insanity is just Insanity there is no motive needed
00:35:51
it is just because the man is crazy but that doesn't add up either because he didn't make crazy moves he wasn't a
00:35:59
lunatic he wasn't someone that showed signs of lunatic he was just someone that wanted to be someone he wanted to
00:36:05
be a filmmaker he had a lot of women that he slept with and used for different things and this this is not a
00:36:12
lunatic he was he was a um a charismatic dreamer so the lone gunman Theory never
00:36:18
sat with me um the other theory was the Gallow and Gambino Theory which was that
00:36:27
Gallow had gotten the blessing from Carl Gambino to send a shooter into Columbus
00:36:35
Circle and kill Joe Columbo now with with this Theory the holes that are in it and that's what I instead of saying
00:36:44
why the one Theory Works more than the other mine was kind of the analyzation of taking away why this doesn't work and
00:36:51
the the first thing that I I noticed about the gambino Gallow theory was just that the commission let's say you know
00:36:58
the organized crime commission they would sanction hits and if if Gambino was sanctioning Joe Columbo to be murdered
00:37:06
in Columbus Circle in front of 20 this is against what the commission does they put a law into effect um after the
00:37:15
castle liia Wars that my murders would not be public murders anymore and you could see if you looked through history
00:37:21
that people were shot in a bar people just disappeared there was no more public dis of murder until 1990s when um
00:37:30
Paul castalano was shot in front of spark steakhous because John Gotti wanted to bring back the old school
00:37:34
style of murder now even that in itself a public display of murder is not what we're talking about here we're talking
00:37:41
about K Gamino commissioning Joe Gallow to commission a nonorganized crime figure Jerome Johnson a black man to go
00:37:50
into Columbus circle with a gun we don't know what this guy's Marksmanship is like and shoot this gun with 20,000
00:37:58
people standing around including the women and children of organized crime people and anyone in the Italian
00:38:04
American community and police officers so for someone who is respected and and probably goes down in history as one of
00:38:12
the smartest organized crime leaders in our history Carl Gambino for him to be involved in this plot I cannot believe
00:38:20
it I just I can't think something's like like that sh just doesn't add up and not
00:38:24
only me but this is where the FBI um the FBI leader Daniel P Holdman was challenging uh Albert seedman about the
00:38:39
murder so there's there's a lot of stuff with that theory that just didn't add up
00:38:43
to me as well there's got to be a second motive here I mean Columbo does not strike me as the kind of person that's
00:38:49
very hard to get to I mean he's very public he's out there all the time why does this crime why does this murder
00:38:55
have to take place in front of thousands of people I mean is is there a second motive behind making it a public murder
00:39:03
well now I'll go and I'll just ask you and I'll ask the listeners out there where have we seen this before you know
00:39:11
again if if this is an organized crime and and the the organized crime figures want to see Joe Columbo silenced they're
00:39:19
going to do this the way that they' silence other leaders and organizations as well and they're just going to make
00:39:24
him disappear and with the the Gallow motive and and um there's a book out there called the five families by Pete
00:39:32
the Greek theopolis and I I actually in my book you can read a lot about what I'm GNA cite from that book as well The
00:39:39
Gallows were just as surprised that Joe Columbo was killed Jo Galla was and his his his crew that day as well because
00:39:47
they were plotting to kill him and they actually made an attempt two times before Unity day to kill Joe Columbo and
00:39:55
they wanted to kill him but they want kill him in the style that someone was killed before where was like you know he
00:40:00
was shot on a street he was shot on the way home you know you find you you scul him out and you find out what his
00:40:05
routine is you find out what the clean they want to do a clean hit they want to make sure because remember these
00:40:11
organized crime people they they wanted to make sure when they killed someone he
00:40:15
was dead so sending in a black shooter that you don't even know how this guy hold the pistol in To Kill A man in
00:40:22
front of 20,000 people surrounded by police officers not knowing how his nerves are it just does not add up but
00:40:30
if we go back and we look like you said the second motive this was polarizing to
00:40:36
kill Joe Columbo was to make a statement to the Italian-American Community you kill him at Unity day in front of all of
00:40:44
these people National headlines it's on the TV news every single night now you just it's that's ethnic cleansing this
00:40:52
is this we are destroying everything that he has built up until this day and we are telling people or any leader who
00:40:58
thinks he's going to be the next Joe Columbo this is the fate of your community this is the Fate when you
00:41:04
don't do things according to I want to say status quo but when you don't you know you don't do things um in
00:41:14
the way of the political system that we have in place for you making this murder
00:41:17
take place in front of thousands of people it kind of puts the it hands the shooter and the guilty party to the
00:41:23
masses on a silver platter it really it really just kind of solves it and wraps it all up for the rest of us for it
00:41:31
causes us to believe that what we saw is real yes because there's really you know
00:41:38
who what plan is in place and again I I have to say that the only plan that could be in place that Jerome Johnson
00:41:43
felt he was Gonna Get Out Alive was if he was in caho with with law enforcement and he had an FBI agent telling him look
00:41:51
you're gonna go in there you're gonna shoot this guy we're gonna cuff you we're gonna throw you in the back of a
00:41:55
car you're gonna do a little bit of time in jail and then we're gon to send you to live in Ohio for the or in Kansas for
00:42:00
the rest of your life so yeah you have to believe the lone gunman Theory but his psyche doesn't add up to
00:42:08
the lone gunman Theory so it it definitely was like I said a successful and wellth thought out plan by whoever
00:42:15
put this into place if it is not the insane shooter who walks into Columbus Circle and just wants to kill someone
00:42:21
and get on the news and die because you know if you look at all the other assassinations that were were set
00:42:28
up like this all we ever get is is breadcrumb Trails we never really get to where you know from JFK Martin Luther K
00:42:35
we just we get breadcrumb Trails we get stories that have changed we get so many
00:42:39
things that you can you know it depends on how you perceive the conversations because they're all hear
00:42:46
say we don't know these conversations that have happened behind closed doors with the people that were involved all
00:42:51
we get is a story that is told to us and it's the same thing here in the Columbo
00:42:56
shooting we we have a story which is made up of multiple stories which is made up of multiple motives but if you
00:43:03
were to look at the government side and the CIA side you know they win in so many different ways with this shooting
00:43:11
they put a muzzle on the Italian-American Community they place the blame on Joe Gallow and organized
00:43:19
crime which allows them to appropriate more funds to fight organized crime because it went to the street into a
00:43:25
public display then they create a war amongst the Mobsters because you have the columbos
00:43:31
versus The Gallows again and that's going to create a street War which again appropriates more money to fight
00:43:37
organized crime bigger government so that the same things that Joe was saying was happening they kind of just said oh
00:43:44
really you don't like this well let's pump steroids into it and let's make it even bigger than it was before let's
00:43:49
make the let's make what we're doing blatantly obvious but we're going to use the evidence of this war and the
00:43:57
evidence of this shooting as our platform to do all of this and if you take that micro archetype and you say
00:44:05
well where government done this before look at Vietnam look at any false flag operation that had happened and in the
00:44:13
book If you read back there are so many small stories leading up to this shooting that show the evidence of what
00:44:20
was like a false flag where they plant evidence into a crime scene so they can get a grand jury hearing with the grand
00:44:26
jury hearing they know they can get these men into a room get indictments for small you know they would use all of
00:44:32
these small inciting incidents to create what they needed and to make it put it on a platform on a bigger scale and and
00:44:40
allow them to get the funds so they can make more rests so they can make the government bigger and bigger Joe
00:44:46
Columbo's in this coma for seven years now how does he pass away do is this a pull the plug situation or does his
00:44:56
health take a turn a PO a post it was a surgery and um the complications of that
00:45:01
had led to his death in 1978 so there were there were many before but um it was it was at the point where there was
00:45:08
you know as time grew I think there may have been more medical advancements on different things that they can do to try
00:45:14
to because this is neuro this is in the get Bullet in the Brain and um I I think
00:45:19
it was just complications after the surgery that caused him the fail where there was no actual plug to pull or
00:45:24
anything you were able to write this book with the help of his of Joe's oldest son Anthony and the Columbo
00:45:31
family could you talk about Anthony and the Columbo family he is definitely his father's son um you know and and as he's
00:45:40
telling me and describing his father I'm seeing it in him and especially when I think of anything that would be family
00:45:46
related um Anthony is still married to his childhood sweetheart uh he has a very close relationship with all of his
00:45:54
children um so as the leader of the household and and a person that is so family orientated he adopted all that
00:46:04
from his father and I I think that uh Joe learned that probably from his father and just the tradition of family
00:46:12
uh never left the columbos is when it came from Anthony then Joe Columbo and then Anthony who I worked with of course
00:46:19
they're named after you know their father the first son um so yes a lot like his father and definitely a leader
00:46:26
um his his leadership qualities as a boy even was recognized by his father and why his father appointed him to be the
00:46:33
leader of the vice president of the Italian American Civil Rights League he wanted Anthony to work in politics and
00:46:40
he I think he was priming him for that with the league and introducing him to politicians at a very young age and you
00:46:46
know pushing him right into public speaking uh Anthony has had so much media experience at a very young age
00:46:53
that this this is only because of the identity of his father that lives in him so I I definitely say there's a lot of
00:47:01
comparisons between Joe and his son was there any apprehension on your part going into this you are writing a book
00:47:07
that's dealing with a powerful event that could implicate some powerful organizations you know we have the FBI
00:47:15
and the the crime families was there any apprehension on your end um I think you
00:47:22
don't there's no real line that you cross L going into something like this like this is definitely something I'm
00:47:28
passionate about and I'm passionate as a writer and I believe stories need to be
00:47:32
told no matter how graphic no matter um you know how popular they are or unpopular they are so I think you you
00:47:41
know as this story happened and you know in the beginning do I believe the FBI did it you know okay well I'm just in
00:47:48
the shallow end of the water all of a sudden you end up and you're in the deep end with what you're saying which is
00:47:54
yeah there's some real heavy people and some big players involved in the story that I'm telling and you don't really
00:48:01
respect it in the beginning but then once you're in it you have to have the same respect for storytelling uh as you
00:48:07
do or just you know go uh swing a hammer or get behind the desk and do something else so I I
00:48:15
think that uh I just it just came to be what I want what I wanted to tell and keep telling so I didn't have any
00:48:22
apprehension in the beginning but I definitely felt the the gravity of the situation as I
00:48:28
got further and further well I want to thank you Don for coming on the show and talking about your great book Columbo
00:48:34
the unsolved murder Nick I I appreciate you this was great and I I hope I did well for you and for the show and I
00:48:41
really appreciate you making you picking this and making time for me all right a big thank you to Don for
00:48:53
taking the time out and talking with Nick for the show this is really interesting the crime family the whole
00:48:58
five crime family thing is is very uh fascinating to me and then this whole case in general I mean you have possibly
00:49:06
a lone gunman and that he's killed right after it's very similar to like a Kennedy assassination M yeah we you know
00:49:14
we heard Don talking about the different conspiracy theories right but he really
00:49:19
only went into one of them the lone gunman theory that he went into to detail about uh of course that doesn't
00:49:27
seem like super likely right because we have the shooter who's killed immediately afterwards and that makes
00:49:33
sense because you know the retaliation from Joe Columbo's guys right it's I mean it's a public event too but what
00:49:40
throws a whole Wrinkle in that theory is the money you know why why is there money the money makes that definitely
00:49:47
make a whole lot of less sense some of the other theories that he discusses in his book is the also the Gallow Theory
00:49:55
uh the general en thought here is that Joe Gallow hated Columbo wanted Columbo out of power and when Gallow went to
00:50:01
prison he made a lot of connections and Associates in the African-American community and that he somehow teamed up
00:50:07
with them and that's why we have Jerome Johnson as The Shooter another theory is
00:50:12
the gambino Theory uh there's also the brat Theory uh and brat stands for the black radical attack team and of course
00:50:22
there is the FBI CIA Theory oh yeah which is a very interesting angle and I I've been listening to this book audio
00:50:30
tapes well I call it audio tapes I guess it's audio books but uh it's definitely
00:50:35
interesting something that I've been diving into this week and a real quick update here uh Joe Gallow um you know
00:50:42
whether or not Joe Gallow had anything to do with Columbo's shooting Columbo would end up outliving crazy Joe Gallow
00:50:49
yeah Gallow was shot several times in 1972 in a New York City restaurant uh this is when a gunfight broke out he and
00:50:58
his bodyguard were there they were attacked in between Seafood courses uh by several mob members crazy Joe Gallow
00:51:05
was killed at the age of 43 so of course the recommended reading is Columbo the unsolved murder By Don capria and
00:51:14
Anthony Columbo um and again two this is this is Anthony Columbo telling his whole story about his father and his
00:51:22
family to Dawn and because there's a lot of things that don't come out in the news about this shooting you know we
00:51:28
hear about the shooting we hear about the mob boss but this is a guy that was a great husband he was a great father he
00:51:34
was a community leader uh and he was gunned down he was murdered and he was also fighting for equal rights yeah and
00:51:41
the whole thing is unsolved and at the time at the time of the case you have the the one of the lead detectives who
00:51:49
has an opinion on what took place and then you have the leader of the of the he's like the mob detective and they
00:51:56
have two different versions of what they think happened and how it went down so that that's caused to want to
00:52:02
investigate this further so check out Columbo the unsolved murder and you can do that by going to our website true
00:52:08
Crim garage.com and click on the recommended page and as you can see sometimes we release one show a week
00:52:15
sometimes it's two a week one week we did three quit guessing how many shows we're going to come out with quit
00:52:21
refreshing on your on your device there don't quit refreshing subscribe so they're already there waiting for you
00:52:28
when you're ready to listen and so hopefully us putting out two episodes this week helped you through your work
00:52:33
week in your commute because you guys mean a lot to us all right now you did the lead in so you have to do the lead
00:52:39
out let's hear him try it all right be kind be good no okay try it again what is it until next time until next time be
00:52:48
kind be good that's terrible until next time be good be kind and don't litter it's close enough
00:52:58
[Music] bro you can start your day off right when you find a professional on Angie to get
00:53:33
your plumbing right first connect with skilled professionals to get all your home projects done well
00:53:39
visit angie.com you can do this when you Angie that