In this episode of Gangland Wire, I sit down with award-winning journalist and Mafia historian Anthony DeStefano to discuss New York City’s organized crime. We discuss his meticulous research on New York’s most infamous mobsters and how his background in newspaper journalism has shaped his storytelling.
One of the most significant topics we cover is Alto Nights, the highly anticipated Mafia film written by Goodfellas scribe Nicholas Pileggi and starring Robert De Niro in dual roles. Anthony shares how his books Top Hoodlum, which focuses on Frank Costello, and The Deadly Don: Vito Genovese Mafia Boss played a crucial role in Pileggi’s research. He also gives us an inside look at the film’s development, including how real-life mob history is translated to the big screen.
We explore the legendary rivalry between Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, diving into their power struggles, assassination attempts, and Costello’s efforts to legitimize himself while staying deeply tied to organized crime. Anthony reveals new details from unseen FBI interviews, shedding light on Costello’s complex underworld dealings. We also discuss Costello’s mentorship under Lucky Luciano, the infamous Manhattan meeting that escalated tensions with Genovese, and how Vincent “Chin” Gigante played an unexpected role in Costello’s fate.
Beyond the mobsters, we also examine the women behind the Mafia men, discussing how the personalities of Costello’s and Genovese’s wives influenced their rise and fall. Anthony breaks down the casting choices for Alto Nights and the creative liberties taken to heighten the drama.
Finally, we reflect on why the public remains fascinated with Mafia history, from books to films to documentaries. If you love true crime, mob history, and behind-the-scenes Hollywood insights, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.
Click the link on Anthony DeStefano’s name here to see his mob books.
Subscribe to gangster stories weekly
Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire
Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee”
To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here
To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here.
To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here
To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos.
To subscribe on iTunes click here. Please give me a review and help others find the podcast.
Donate to the podcast. Click here!
Transcript
[0:00] Well, welcome, all you wiretappers out there. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. We have a show today with Anthony DeStefano. Now, any of you guys that read my books, and especially about the New York Mafia families, you probably know this name, Anthony DeStefano. And welcome, Anthony. I’m really glad to have you on the show, because you have been a huge contributor to the knowledge base of Mafia history in this country. Welcome. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me, and thank you for that very kind word. You know, I’ve read some of those books, and you’re a good writer. You’re like an old newspaper guy, right?
[0:38] Well, yeah, I still am. That’s right. You still are. You and, well, Nick Pileggiis an old newspaper guy. Larry McShane is a newspaper guy. There’s several of you guys in New York that kind of cut your teeth on the mob news, and there’s a lot of news there. And speaking of Nick Pileggi, you got involved with this movie that he’s written a screenplay for called Alto Knights. It’s creating quite a stir among mob fans right now. They’re really anxiously waiting for this movie to come out with Robert De Niro playing two parts of
[1:13] all things. I don’t know how that works, but we’ll see when the movie comes out. So how did you get involved with this? I’m sure you know Nick Pileggi and known him for quite a while. And he probably reached out to you when he got the job to do this. Is that how that worked? Yeah, what happened was, I’ve known Nick for a long time, like you said, and we were talking one day, I was doing research for a different book on the Lufthansa heist, and we were talking, but Nick started to veer off into talking about Frank Costello at length. And he was saying, look, I’m writing scripts. I think, you know, I make a great movie.
[1:50] And he said to me, you know, I think he also makes a good book. And I thought for a second and I said, yeah, you’re right. And I spoke to my publisher and we decided that let’s do a book right away. A book right away. You know, we can get into the story. By the time the film comes out, we’ll be there.
[2:11] Well, little did I know the way Hollywood works is that, although I could get a book out pretty quickly, and I did with Frank Costello, the book called Top Hoodlum, Nick’s film was not going to happen right away. You know, you got to go through a process out there with Hollywood. You got to get a director. You got to get a producer. You got to get talent. You got to get money. So it took about six years before this project really got off the ground. running. In the interim, I wrote about three or four other books, one of them being Vito Genovese, you know, Vito Genovese, The Deadly Don. So these books all came together at the same time.
[2:52] And Nick had both books, Top Hoodlum and Deadly Dawn, on his desk to write the script for the Alto Knights. And, you know, it’s a process. It’s really, you know, he had to do the research. He had to rummage through my books and my files. And, you know, I did this for him because I’ve known him a long time. And it was kind of thrilling to see this finally get off the ground. And you know he put the script together i think in 2023 and by 2024 probably late 23 they were in production and they had a delivery date or actually a premiere date sometime in the fall of 2024 well again hollywood never works where you think it’s going to work and this date It got pushed back or forward into late 2024, then early 2025, and finally March 21st, 2025.
[3:57] Which is the new premiere date, the date when it’s going to hit the screens. You know, it was a process. You had to get funding. You had to get actors, actresses, and, you know, it all came together. But it took a while, and it was Nick’s sort of passion to do this story,
[4:15] because what What it did was meld together a lot of the mob history from the 30s, 40s, and 50s. And that’s what was crucial here. It happened that way. It took a long time. The finished product is going to hit the screens very soon. It’s hard to make a good movie. Let’s hope that he hits it out of the park, which I think he and Scorsese did with Casino for sure. Yeah. And Goodfellas also. And I assume you were working on the Lufthansa heist. He probably consulted with you somewhat on that. Lufthansa Heiss was part of that. Actually, in other words, I consulted with Nick.
[4:53] Oh, did you really? Yeah. He had had the Wiseguy book, and of course, they did Goodfellas. And Lufthansa was part of that. So it was important that when I write my Lufthansa book, that I had to talk to Nick. And he was very generous with his information.
[5:09] We sort of swapped stories. And of course, we got into Frank Costello. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Speaking of Frank Costello, you know, I was kind of looking back on him and about your book. And I see that you were able to find some some secret interviews with federal investigators and some private meetings he had with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, Frank was debriefed probably one or two times.
[5:34] By the FBI. Now, he really didn’t give them that much, but he defended himself saying, look, I’m a businessman and I never stole a nickel from anybody. He tried to put his best foot forward. Those I found in his FBI files. And also there was some litigation when he was fighting against his deportation order back in the early 60s, I think it was. He gave a statement And there was material included in that bit of litigation, which also sort of helped the story. It helped him with his own words and with the words of other people who worked with him.
[6:17] So it was interesting. It’s interesting to find that stuff. Yeah, that really would be a fine, just be fun to read and put in some historical perspective. And speaking of historical perspective, you know, he was mentor. His first boss was Lucky Luciano and he was actually running Luciano family, uh, when Luciano was, was gone. So, uh, talk a little bit about that and his partnership with him. It seemed like Luciano was a real businessman and Frank was a real businessman. They wanted to run this thing with less murder, although they created it on murder, but they wanted to run this thing with less murder. Now, that transition there, that’s really interesting to me. Well, Luciano is credited with creating the concept of the commission and the sort of almost corporate organization for the mob with all the families. We get together in sort of a ruling council, like a board of directors, and try to mitigate violence and run things as a business. Costello was, of course, under Luciano at the time and during that period. Luciano got convicted, as you know, on a prostitution case and got sent away to prison. And the caretaker really was Frank Costello of that family.
[7:35] Ultimately, after World War II, Luciano was allowed to go to Italy. His sentence was commuted, I suppose, and he went to Italy. So we had Costello nominally in charge.
[7:54] And interestingly, when Luciano left the country, Vito Genovese came back because he was ducking murder rap out of Brooklyn. He fled to Italy, got palsy with Mussolini, and ultimately worked as a translator, if you believe it, for the U.S.
[8:11] Armed Services Provisional Government after the war. But, of course, they got wise to veto, and they realized that he’s wanted a murder rap back in Brooklyn, so they deported him back to Brooklyn, where he beat the case. And that gave him an extra bit of armor and sort of clout, if you will, because he got out from under that indictment and he had ambitions and he was vying over the years for power with Costello. So this is where the sort of friction and the rivalry comes to pass in post-World War II. And it really, of course, hit a peak in the 1950s when Genovese really wanted to be the power and moved against Costello in the assassination attempt. And we all know what happened then. Frank survived. That’s part of the Alton and I’s story, by the way. It’s the main focus of it. And that rivalry and the assassination. And ultimately, Frank Costello decided to retire.
[9:22] And did he retire fully well the fbi watched him from months and years and they came up with no indication that he was involved in anything in terms of the crime family but the suspicion is and i think this is suggested in the alto knights a film is that costello tipped off the authorities to Genovese’s big upstate crime conclave in Appalachia and New York, where they were all sort of busted. And people think that.
[9:59] Costello had a hand in tipping off the cops to get back at Genovese. And when you think about it, look, it’s plausible. But I think really what happened was that Genovese was very headstrong and he didn’t heed people’s advice. They kept saying, Vito, let’s not have a meeting in upstate New York where we don’t know any of the cops. Let’s go to Chicago or someplace like that.
[10:24] But he stuck to his guns and they had the meeting upstate. They got busted by the state police. There was all this bad publicity, indictments, which ultimately got thrown out. But still, veto stock did not increase or get any better with that disastrous meeting in Appalachia. Frank Costello, meanwhile, was the eldest statesman. He was watching the things from afar and telling the FBI, look, I’m just a gambler and a businessman. And I have nothing to do with any of that stuff anymore. And Vito, of course, after the disastrous meeting upstate, gets indicted for drugs. And that was his real undoing because he got convicted on little evidence, by the way, I must say. I read the case file. And there was really little evidence except that coming from one informant who had some credibility issues. But he got convicted anyway and sent to prison where Vito died.
[11:31] Frank lived the rest of his life out and died in his own hospital bed, so to speak, outlasting Vito by a few years.
[11:42] He was such an interesting guy. He was able to affect this front even before he, quote, unquote, retired. he had such great rapport with politicians and reporters. And, uh, and so he was, you know, and you even saw him in the Keefoffer commission, you know, he was not your, you know, he didn’t come across as your atypical gangster wearing sunglasses inside and, and talking to this real Brooklynese accent, like some of them did that, that really painted a picture for the rest of the United States of what a mobster was like. He was a interesting guy. Yeah. Frank Costello, Oh, aspired to be legitimate, aspired to be accepted by money society and political society. And to some extent, he was, particularly in the politics. And he really tried to create this veneer of respectability. And to some extent, he succeeded, particularly after he so-called retired. Now, with Vito, it was just the opposite. Vito was not a very good businessman.
[12:57] He had some businesses, but they weren’t as prominent, politically connected as Frank’s. And this is where the antagonism is portrayed in the film. You’ll see that. Frank wants to be respectable. Vito says, well, you can’t be part of them. You’re just like me and the rest of us. You know, we’re all gangsters, basically.
[13:22] And the interesting thing, you know, I should mention, people are saying the original name of the film was Wise Guys. Of course, that’s very close to the book Wise Guy that Nick wrote. They changed it to Alto Knights. And the Alto Knights was a real mob social club in the post-World War II era. Period, on the intersection of Mulberry Streets and Kenmare in lower Manhattan, not far from the old police headquarters, as it turns out. And that’s where Vito had his club and base for operation. And of course, until he got sent away. The story I hear was that Robert De Niro, as a young man, young teenager, used to play pool in the Alto Knights, which eventually gravitated to more of a sort of neighborhood club because the gangsters like Vito were gone. And so he was probably the only person I’ve heard who actually was alive, who actually was familiar with the club. So it has a special, I think, ring for him in that regard. But that’s where the Alto Knights name comes from. It was a club. Now, you’re asking me why Alto Knights as a club name? I have no idea.
[14:40] But there’s certain, you know, some people think it was an operatic connotation.
[14:47] But who knows? I mean, I don’t know where they got this from. And I’d read a little bit about it. It had been a social club for a long time. I didn’t realize it kind of morphed on into a regular social club, you know, on up into the 50s for neighborhood people to come in and play pool. That’s interesting. you know, before the Rebonite and, you know, the Bergen Fish and Hunt Club and all the Wimpy Boys Club and all those famous clubs later on, there were the Alto Knights with the club. Yeah, and De Niro, I think, as a teenager, and I’m not sure what period that would have been, possibly in the 60s. Yeah, should have been 60s. But, you know, I’m told that that’s, you know, he hung out there, played pool and knew some of the people. Today, it’s a restaurant. I went downstairs.
[15:40] I visited the place, and it’s like a strong room with very thick concrete walls and pillars and stuff. It’s kind of interesting. Today, it’s a restaurant. It’s not- Yeah. Is a lot of the movie set inside and within the walls of that? No, I don’t think a lot of the movie, a lot of the movie is set outside the club. Now, some of it must be in the club, but a lot of it is, you know, the upstate meeting, Frank and Beto meeting, the… The hotel in New York, on the streets, and just some flashbacks to their youths, respectively. And of course, a big part, some part of the movie deals with the relationship they had with their wives. Frank’s wife was Jewish, Bobby, and they met, married probably in 1920, either 1917 or 1920, somewhere in there. Vito’s wife was the second wife in the film. Anna. She was a very tempestuous, pretty woman from the photos I’ve seen, scheming in her own way. And she ran some of Vito’s nightclubs in the West Village.
[16:58] He actually signed a power of attorney when he fled to Italy. And he complained later on that she sort of screwed him out of some money. But she was very, very – she was a mob wife in the sense that When she was first interviewed by the congressional investigator, she denied knowing anything about anything he provides for me. He gives me money. I buy the groceries, whatever. Later, when she filed for divorce, she, of course, made the allegations against Vito that he was the head of all crime in New York. He was the head of gambling. He was doing this. He was doing that. And he used to meet with gangsters. So the tune changed, I guess, to suit her strategic needs. And it was funny because ultimately they didn’t get divorced.
[17:49] Divorce action was dismissed or withdrawn. And Vito signed an agreement to support her. She complained about the amount of support anyway. And she did her own life, and he had his own life. He didn’t live with her. But they’re buried together out in St. John’s Cemetery in Queens, which is an interesting twist. This is Beto with his first wife, Donata. He died of tuberculosis back, I think it was the 1930s.
[18:24] So it’s interesting the way everything sort of comes together in the end. Yeah. Those parallel lives that were so different, but yet so similar.
[18:33] I think that’s a fascinating topic as they went along. Now, the famous Cuban meeting in 1947, was that kind of like almost the genesis of a conflict between Vito Genovese and Frank Costello? Because there were some problems down there with Lucky Luciano trying to put Genovese in his place, if I remember right. Yeah, yeah. If I guess he’s right. Well, I think the rivalry started before then. I think Genovese saw, when he came back to the United States after being exiled, that he saw Costello as the man in his way. So this would have been just before that Cuban meeting, which was a notorious meeting. And I suspect probably knowing Vito, he felt slighted. He felt that he wasn’t getting his due well before then. So I think that’s where the antagonism started. You know, this is a classic tale of a conflict between a gangster and a racketeer, it seems to be like. Yeah.
[19:42] Sammy the Bull Gravano explained the difference between a gangster and a racketeer. Who’s a racketeer? That’s a more sophisticated, you know, union infiltrator and that kind of thing. And the gangster is a guy that runs the narcotics networks and does all the loan sharking and that kind of a thing. A racketeer will run a sports book. So it’s kind of a classic story between those two personalities. And in every crime family, you’re going to have some gangsters and some racketeers. Yeah, I think that’s a very apt sort of distinction. There are people who are more sophisticated, and there are others who sort of are like the street guys, you know, do the work, the dirty work. I think that’s what they have here.
[20:27] I think that the role of the two women in their lives is interesting and plays out in the film. Anna Genovese was the more…
[20:39] Uh scheming whereas uh Bobby Costello was the more supportive uh in that in that regard uh they they were costello didn’t have any children as far as we know although the rumors that he may have had a child at a wedlock but nothing’s ever been proven veto had with anna a uh a son of Philip, who died not long ago. He died probably within the last year and a half.
[21:14] And Anna had a daughter from a previous marriage, I believe. That’s how it went. So there was some offspring on the Genovese side, but nothing on the Costello side. Yeah, it seemed like when he got out of the business and died, it was just like that name was gone. It’s totally gone. Yeah. You can go to St. Michael’s Cemetery in Queens and Costello has a nice mausoleum there. He’s there with his wife and I think his parents and her parents. So it’s interesting. That’s his monument. What about Vincent Gigante, the purported hitman that flubbed the hit on Costello? How does the movie deal with that? Is it really gigante as a personality very much or well yeah he is uh the certainly the movie opens the movie compresses time and events that didn’t happen in the sequence you see it in the movie the movie opens uh if i had this right with costella being fetid at a um at a uh charity ball so to speak, which really did happen. But that happened many years before the assassination.
[22:33] Which took place right after the ball in the film. But it didn’t happen that way in real life.
[22:46] But Gigante is the heavy in the assassination attempt. the guy portrayed as pulling the trigger.
[22:57] He also, as it turned out, actually had a friendly relationship with Frank Costello afterwards. He’s actually socialized. He’s socialized, wow. That’s amazing. And, you know, it’s kind of like he became, as he moved on in his life, in my opinion, he kind of became a kind of a combination of gangster and racketeers. He took over the Genovese family and was pretty slick, but yet had plenty of gangsters out there working too. Yeah. You’re talking about Vito? Gigante, yeah. Oh, Gigante, of course. As he moved on and took over the Genovese family, he was kind of that perfect
[23:40] combination of gangster and racketeer. Yeah, well, of course, he got his comeuppance, notwithstanding the fact that he tried to come off as mentally ill, which was a scam. I interviewed Mike Campisi, who was one of the FBI agents that worked that case, and talked about the day that Gigante had to admit in open court that he’d been faking all that time. Pretty interesting. Yeah, I was there that day in court. Yeah, he made the admission.
[24:18] Okay. Yeah, really. Well, the federal government has a way of bending you to their will if they put enough people on you, that’s for sure. Yeah, that’s true. All right. Anything else? Any interesting little stories about the making of the movie that you remember or anything else you’d like to say about this story? No, other than the fact that when I went out to visit Nick Pileggi in the.
[24:45] Home out in uh east hampton he had the books right there on his desk all dog-eared you know put together uh with uh you know little index indexes and he had uh he called me up to ask me about certain photos and films and if i could get them for him so you know but like i said it was something i did for him because he was actually in my life my career he’s been pretty helpful. He never asked for anything. So I should reciprocate. Yeah. Like you, I know you do your research, but like you, he does his research. He doesn’t just go to the internet and pull off what he can. He does his research. I know when he was working on Casino, he was here in Kansas City with an FBI agent friend of mine. He was a case agent on that. And he spent, I think, two or three days with Bill. And Bill had snagged a lot of stuff that he brought home from that. And he really, You know, he really went into Bill’s mind and memory and his papers that he brought home and wiretap transcripts and all that at great length. Yeah, well, Nick, he’s out of that school. He’s out of that school where he does, you do the work. He also has an institutional memory, a lot of the mob events and history and personalities over the years. So he has that advantage.
[26:07] He told when I was a younger reporter he gave me a little tip on looking at the local newspapers out of Brooklyn these little you know weeklies and he said well why do you do that, And he said, well, do you see these photographs here? And they were photographs of local social events. But in the events, there were some of these mobsters who would show up, like at a wedding or an anniversary party. And he said, yeah, here’s Tommy Gambino. And sure enough, there is Tommy.
[26:38] And I said, so I started looking at those newspapers. I didn’t find anybody particularly important later on, but still, it was an interesting tip. And he was full of little tidbits like that.
[26:51] Very interesting. Well, the movie is Alto Knights, and this is Tony DeStefano and his two books. Do you have copies of those books there? I do, actually. It’s too hard to get. It’s Frank Costello. Yeah, Frank Costello. It’s the top hoodlum, Frank Costello. Frank Costello, Prime Minister of the Mafia. Yeah. And the other one is The Deadly Dawn, Vito Genovese. Yeah. And guys, I’ll have links to those books or you can get those on Amazon in the show notes. And Tony has a whole bunch of other books out there. It’s almost too many to go into. I’ll put a link to his author page on Amazon. You just go into that author page. You’ll find all the books that he’s done. I really appreciate your research into the mob over the years because, Tony, you have added, as I said earlier, you’ve added so much to the body of knowledge. Did you ever think it would become so popular?
[27:46] You know, over the years, I thought, is anybody really interested in this anymore? And it turns out they are. They are. Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe thanks to The Sopranos, I don’t know what
[27:56] we have to think for it. But it’s immensely popular. They can still continue to make these huge, big-budget productions with people like Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese and people like that. We’ll see more. I’m sure we’ll see more films. Yeah, I think we will. All right. Tony, thanks a lot for coming on the show. Well, thank you, sir. And thank you for your good perspective and also for your own personal knowledge of events. And it really helps for a great interview. Thank you. We try. We try. Thanks a lot, Tony. Okay. Take care. All right. Well, guys, that was a fun interview. I really like Tony. He’s just a real good guy, easy to talk to, and so knowledgeable. It’s just amazing how knowledgeable he is.
[28:44] And don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So look out for motorcycles when you’re out there on the streets. And if you have a problem with PTSD, be sure and go to the VA website and get that hotline number and hand in hand with PTSD. I say the same things over again. I hope you don’t get too bored with it. Most guys probably shut off at this point in time, but go to Anthony Ruggiano’s website and enter his YouTube page and get that hotline number. He’s a drug and alcohol counselor down in, uh, Florida. He was a Gambino prospect, I believe proposed member at one time. His dad was a mate guy.
[29:19] And you have a problem with betting, gambling, 1-800-BETS-OFF. We’re just about to get the sports app here in the state of Missouri. So that’s been a big contributor. I know a lot of you guys use it correctly. My son uses it a lot, and I think he uses it correctly. I’ve never seen him have any problems with this.
[29:36] But you can get hooked on those things, those prop bets and all that, and they really create an addictive kind of a pull to people. And I understand that. I’ve had my own problems when I was young. I figured out that it was not doing me any good. I could do a lot better without these things in my life that I was addicted to. So don’t forget, I got some books out there. Like I was talking about Tony. I will put a link to my author page. I’ve got the book of my old podcast, some of my old podcast shows about the New York Mafia or Big Apple Mafia, New York Five Families or something like that. I’ll put a link up to it. and a windy city mafia, Chicago outfit. And then I’ve got my book on the skimming case in Las Vegas from a Kansas city perspective. We know the casino perspective from Las Vegas. This is from the Kansas city perspective where that investigation first started. That’s called leaving Vegas. How FBI wiretaps ended the mob domination of Las Vegas casinos. And I’ve got a few videos out there. You can, you can either get the, we can rent the DVDs online. I got three of them at, uh, Amazon and I’ve also got them. You can buy the DVDs or you can rent them streaming both on my website and on the, uh, on Amazon. So thanks a lot, guys. I appreciate you putting up with my little sales pitch here at the end. And, you know, nothing happens to you. Sell something. Uh, thanks guys.
