In California, during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before, tried to assassinate the President of the United States. One was the protege of Charles manson.

26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeeke.

The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore in her 40s.

The story of one strange and violent summer this season on the new podcast, Rip Current.

Listen to Rip Current on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey, Law and Order fans, the new podcast, Law and Order Criminal Justice System is out now. But did you know you can listen to the episodes ad-free through the iHeart True Crime Plus subscription? It's available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Iheart True Crime Plus is the best place to get 100% ad-free episodes of all Law and Order podcast episodes. So don't wait. Subscribe to iHeart True Crime Plus today. Find iHeart True Crime Plus in your Apple podcast app and subscribe for instant access. You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeartPodcasts.

In the criminal justice system, landmark trials transcend the courtroom to reshape the law. The brave men and women who investigate and prosecute these cases are part of a select group that has defined American history. These are their stories. April 1983, the home of Joe Bonanno, Tucson, Arizona.

You have said the US government has tried to destroy you.

Yeah, that's right.

Why have they failed to destroy you? They haven't failed yet.

They haven't failed?

Well, yes. They may still get you. Sure. All my life I've been misunderstood. I just rule my family as a father.

When Joe Banano, the head of the Banano crime family, went on 60 Minutes in 1983, he did something nobody had expected him to do. He admitted the very existence of the Mafia. In his book, he all but confirmed the cooperation between the five major crime families, including things like dividing territory and sharing profits.

Once you fight to survive and to protect your life, make sure that you succeed.

Banano was promoting a memoir of his life in crime, a public display of hubris that would have been unheard of in Lucky Luciano's day. So while being the first former boss to publicly acknowledge the existence of the Mafia, Bonanno had also made a grave miscalculation.

Back then, every time an OC figure was arrested and go to trial or something like that, the defense attorneys, their argument was, this thing, organized crime, la cosa nostra, this is like a myth. This is the government's theory. I mean, this doesn't exist. So that was the defense back then.

Charlotte Lange is a former FBI supervisor who spent years investigating organized crime.

What had happened was Banano, his book, it was about his problems with the commission. And he basically tells you that the commission existed, and he hid out from the four other bosses for a period of time.

The commission was like the executive board of the five families running and ruining New York City and beyond. And Banano's admission of its existence gave law enforcement a new angle of attack because proof of a commission meant a way to link the families together and prove a conspiracy. No longer would crime bosses be insulated from the ruthless and violent crimes of their underlings. They could be held responsible for every act of extortion, theft, bribery, or murder that occurred at their behest. In short, it was a game changer and an opportunity not lost on Charlotte Lange, her FBI partner, Pat Marshall, and the newly appointed US attorney for New York.

I came in one morning and Pat turned to me and he said, Rudy wants that book that Banano wrote.

Through the eyes of New York's top cop, Banano's book was essentially a manual for taking down the mob.

Question you hear increasingly now is, who is Rudolf Giuliani and what does he want?

What he wanted was clear. Put these bosses in front of a jury and behind bars.

You're not with the mob because you want to be.

It's the gangster that decides whether you're his associate or not.

If you like your life, you will vote to quit.

I'm Anna Segan Nicolasi.

My father should have been a dead man.

From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcast, this is Law and Order, Criminal Justice System. Did you know anything about organized crime before you are now assigned to an Organized Crime Task Force?

No. I had seen the movie, The Godfather, but that was it.

Charlotte's story of becoming an FBI agent is a unique one.

When I was in college, the first two years, I was in pre-med because I was either going to be a psychiatrist or a veterinarian was what I was thinking. After I finished my sophomore year, I thought to myself, I don't want to do this. I would read the Washington Post, and I saw this article, the CIA was recruiting people. A friend of mine who I was really, really close to, I said to her, I said, I'm seriously thinking of putting in for it. And she goes, Oh, no, no, no, no, acre pets and everything like that. So I thought to myself, the FBI, well, that's similar.

So instead of the CIA, Charlotte applied to the FBI, thinking she'd travel the world. Instead, Charlotte soon ended up in New York working one of the most notoriously difficult beats in the bureau, organized crime. Adding to the challenge, remnants of the FBI's outdated G-Man culture, man being the operative word.

A particular supervisor said to me, I didn't ask for you. Women can't work organized crime. You will be the only woman on this squad as long as I'm here. That was my introduction to Welcome to New York.

But despite the challenges, Charlotte hit the ground running, getting her first assignment from Jim Kossler.

Jim said to me, I'm going to put you on the Genevus squad until everybody's here and up and running.

Charlotte joined street teams rounding up low-level gangsters and drug dealers.

I mean, yes, it was dangerous in many instances, but it was exciting.

Her skills were soon recognized even by the boss who'd believe that women didn't belong working organized crime.

He quickly realized that he could depend on me.

Charlotte was eventually partnered with Pat Marshall to gather evidence that would later be crucial to the mission case.

So the squad that I was assigned to was the Bonanno family squad. And there were a couple key capos in the family that we were going to zero in on.

And part of that was looking to the past, namely the assassination of Carmen Galante. While it occurred a couple of years before Charlotte joined the bureau, they sensed its significance.

We all knew that to kill a boss in a family, you had to have a commission approval. So in other words, if you are the boss of a family and you go to a meeting where there's only four of you, it's like you know somebody is in trouble at that particular point.

Which means if they could solve Galante's murder, they might have the evidence they needed to prove a criminal conspiracy between the five families. And like dominoes, down they would fall. And while Charlotte and the FBI were gathering their evidence, the ambitious new US attorney for New York, Rudy Giuliani, was tasked with a different job, assembling a rock star team of young lawyers to take on the city's most infamous criminals.

My name is Michael Chertoff, and in 1985, was a relatively new Assistant United States attorney in the Southern district of New York US Attorney's office.

Michael Chertoff is a former Secretary of Homeland Security and the co-author of the US Patriot Act. But when he started in the US Attorney's office, he was still pretty green, a recent law school graduate, eager to earn his stripes.

So I started in the fall of '83, I tried three or four small cases in what they call general crimes in order to begin to just get accustomed to trying cases in front of a jury in a courtroom.

But with his command of the courtroom, Michael quickly attracted expected the attention of his superior, who was eager to surround himself with just the right personalities and skill sets for his fight against the mob.

The assignment actually came to me in '84, and what happened was I had been in general crimes, and the US attorney at the time, whose name will be very familiar to you, Rudolf W. Giuliani, reached out to my unit chief and said, I've got an idea for a case I want to prosecute and try myself. I want you to assign Michael Chertoff to help me do that. He'll help me put the case together, do the investigation, and then he can assist me at the trial. My unit chief came to me and said, The US attorney would like you to work on this case with him. He'll try it, but you'll get an opportunity to be at the trial and participate and do the investigation. And it's a great opportunity. So I said, Fine, I'm happy to do it.

Michael's first step was learning the plan.

The way the US attorney was thinking about it was this. There had been a series of cases under the Racketeering Statute that were focused on attacking an entire organized crime family as an organization because the Racketeering Statute really allowed you for the first time to build a case that was organizationally focused and not just individual crimes.

In other words, it was custom made for taking down the mob.

And his idea was supposing instead of just looking family by family, we do a case involving the Board of Directors of the American Mafia, which is known as the Commission.

And central to their strategy would be Joe Banano's ill-conceived criminal memoir.

And in the book, he discussed his experiences as a mob boss, including talking about being on the commission. And Giuliani thought, Well, that's great. This is a roadmap to a case involving the commission. Actually, we're going to try to force Banano to testify so we can actually use his evidence about the background of the commission.

But Banano was harder to deal with than they'd hoped. By this time, he had moved to Tucson, Arizona, and was claiming to have a number of health issues.

Even in 1957, he feigned this heart attack and that he would die if he had to travel.

But Giuliani was persistent. At first, Banano claimed he was too ill to go to New York and provide testimony. So the government went to him.

Well, of course, Rudy being Rudy, he was like, We're going out there, and we're going to do it at the hospital.

Just picture the scene. It's an entire army of agents, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges all getting on a plane.

This was like this traveling show from New York. This was like big news in Arizona because this famous United States attorney in New York who's taking the mob down is coming to Tucson. And so what happened was we had this proceeding as to whether he was physically fit enough to testify. Of course, his doctor gone on and said that he had this going on and that going on.

Banano's doctor was a member of his family and just a med student, but the government had their own expert, too.

We had a doctor from New York who had examined him, and this doctor, of course, was stellar. With his credentials and everything. He said there's no reason why he can't travel to New York.

Still, Banano refused to travel or cooperate. But Giuliani wasn't done. He asked the judge to hold Banano in contempt of court. The judge complied. And from there, Banano went to prison, the longest time that this aging mobster had ever been locked up, and he stayed there for over a year. With or without Joe Banano's testimony, they would need hard evidence proving that the five families had conspired to commit crimes of all shapes and sizes, including murder.

This summer, a lone gunman on a rooftop reminded us that American presidents have long been the targets of assassins. Nearly 50 years ago, President Jerold Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks.

A woman fired a shot at President Ford.

President Gerald R.

Ford came stunningly close to being the victim. A woman dressed in a long red skirt pointed a 0.45 caliber pistol at the President.

These are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a US President. And the two assassins had never met. One was a protege of infamous cult leader Charles manson.

She is 26-year-old Lynette Alice Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. I always felt like Lynette was his right-hand woman.

The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in the Violent Revolutionary underground.

Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. Sarah Jean could enter into these areas that other people couldn't. A spy, basically.

The story of one strange and Violent Summer, this season on Rip Current.

Listen to Rip Current on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Fantasy football fans, the NFL season is here, and now is the time to get ready to dominate your league. The best way to crush your opponents this season is to listen to the NFL fantasy football podcast. Come hang out with me, Marcus Grant, and my pal, Michael F. Florio, as we give you all the info you need to absolutely steamroll your fantasy league and bring home a championship. You don't need to spend hours each day breaking down every stat and every stitch of game tape to set a winning lineup. That's our job. We'll provide all the insights you need to set the best lineups each week. All you need to do is listen to the NFL fantasy football podcast when it drops five times a week. If you're looking for a smart, fun, and entertaining path to dominate your fantasy league, then look no further than the show straight from the source at NFL Media. Do it before it's too late. Subscribe now and listen to the NFL fantasy football podcast on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In 1985, Michael Cherdoff was a young federal prosecutor in the office of then US attorney Rudy Giuliani, who was building a case that they hoped would take down the New York mob once and for all. The scope of the investigation was huge.

There had been a series of family-based investigations going on, and some of those involved very extensive electronic surveillance, wire tapping or bugs.

In addition to secret recording devices, the FBI embarked on more targeted missions, too. Surveilling specific suspects to witness their interactions with other mobsters firsthand. Here's former FBI agent Charlotte Lange.

There were certain days where I used to say to myself, I can't believe I'm getting paid to do this.

On multiple occasions, Charlotte was sent in undercover, infiltrating the Genevies family to eavesdrop on conversations.

When we had information from the wires, like when Fat Tony Salerno would meet with Paul Castellano, and of course, they would go to really nice restaurants in New York, and we would go in, maybe two women. Sometimes there were three of us, try to get at a table close to observe what was going on.

Two of New York's most infamous mob bosses, Tony Salerno of the Genovese family, and Paul Castilano, head of the Gambino family. It was no small feat to go after Paul Castellano. At the time, the Gambino family was arguably the most powerful of all the families, and Castellano sat at the top. He was a savvy businessman, known for his cutthroat approach to negotiating major deals. When it came to the financial dealings of the mob, Castellano was arbiter and king. For Charlotte, listening in on a mob boss was just another day at work. And as it turned out, the female FBI agents had some advantages that the old guard had underestimated.

Corinne Higgins, who was on the Colombo Squad, she was about seven months pregnant. And so when we went into this restaurant, I spotted them as soon as we came through the door. I said to the maitre d, I said, Can we sit over there? As you could see, my friend is pregnant, and she shouldn't be sitting in a draft or anything like that.

The Matre D sat the women directly next to Castellano and Salerno. Access unheard of from any of their male counterparts.

When we went back to the office to write up the 302, two of what we saw and what we heard, I said, I didn't think this was ever going to come to an end. They were very animated because they were disputing the profits that were coming from the shakedowns of these cement companies.

Salerna was also a major focus in the investigation, particularly because the Genovese family was so involved with the construction industry. And as Michael Cherdoff explains, the concrete business was big business for the mob, including including the commission.

It was all about this construction issue, how they controlled all the concrete being poured to build buildings in Manhattan, and 2% went to the family that controlled the particular labor union, and the other 2% went to the commission to be divided up among the members of the commission and their families.

So basically, the money first went to the top and then trickled down within each family from there, and the FBI heard all about The Concrete Club, as it became known, would become key evidence, so its inner workings became extremely familiar to the prosecutor's work in the case, including another prosecutor who soon joined the team.

My name is John Savares, and I was an assistant US attorney in the US attorney's office for the Southern district of New York here in Manhattan. I think I didn't know a whole lot more than anyone who saw the Godfather movies knew, all of which, of course, I had seen because they're terrific films. But you very quickly realize that that's Hollywood, and it's not, in fact, anything like what the mob is really like.

John was assigned to assist Michael Cherdoff and Rudy Giuliani.

So the first things I started working on was helping to put witnesses into the grand jury, helping to assemble additional evidence that would go into the grand jury, and helping to craft what would be the ultimate superseding indictment, the one that we went to trial on.

By this time, enough evidence had been gathered that prosecutors felt ready to present their case to a grand jury, which meant this case was likely heading for trial. And one of the central pieces to their case would be concrete.

What we were doing was trying to build out what is called the club scheme or the club aspect of the commission case, and that was the whole narrative around the extortion of the concrete industry in New York to extract penalty from each concrete contractor in order that they be assured labor peace because the mob had infiltrated the chief unions that did that work.

Labor unions cooperated because of bribes, corrupted leadership elections, and of course, physical violence.

And so the threat was, if you don't pay us what we want, we'll shut your job down. We'll have the union that we essentially control go out on strike. And that is devastating, obviously, to a construction company.

The mob pushed city construction costs up by about 20 %. By the late '80s, it was reported that as much as 75 % of New York's construction industry was controlled by the mob.

We a lot of time with several leaders of construction companies that had been victimized by this commission-driven scheme to get an understanding of what building projects were impacted by the scheme, how they felt, what drove them to do what they agreed to do, and why.

But the cooperation of these legitimate business owners was given at great risk to lives and livelihoods.

I do remember getting the strong sense of the fear that they felt from Ralph Scopo, who was the chief enforcer of the scheme.

Ralph Scopo was a member of the Colombo family. While he sat as President of their Union, concrete contractors were forced to pay thousands of dollars for labor peace. A 1% kickback was given to Scopo on their projects, such as the public library in the Bronx, a police station in Brooklyn, and in addition to the city jail on Rikers Island, he was a man who was not afraid to intimidate others.

We had a tape recording of Ralph Scopo in a conversation with one of these contractors, and he referenced something that had been in the newspapers about a mob hit someone who had been murdered. He said roughly something like, Well, you don't want that to happen to you, which, of course, was terrorizing the person on the receiving end of that message.

But despite the huge scale of the operation, most of these transactions were handled in person by mob members. And this worked to the FBI's advantage because it's easier to tail a couple of soldiers than the commission itself.

It's happening usually in cash, person to person. And we did have tape-recorded evidence at trial of various members of the mob who were the footmen on the ground running the scheme.

And because it was also profitable, it was something that all five of the families participated in. So cracking the Concrete Club would be the surest way to prove their criminal cooperation. So law enforcement worked from all angles, planting bugs and wire tabs, conducting surveillance, hoping to gather incriminating conversations about the concrete scheme that could be used in court. And the results spoke for themselves.

So If the job is 200 million, then your après is going to be 12 million?

Yeah.

What time is the time?

You can't do it. Over 2 million, you can't do it.

The 12 to 2 million? Hey, me, I tell you, go ahead and do it.

That's little Ralphie Scopo talking to a man named Alphonse Sal D'Ambrozio, a fellow member of the Colombo family.

Me, I tell you, go ahead and go.

I got to go see. Tell me what I got to do.

You got to see every family, and they're going to tell you no. So don't even mob. How do you know?

But Ralph Scopo and Fat Tony Salerno weren't the only mobbers that Charlotte kept tabs on. In the last episode, we talked about the 1982 bug planted in the black jaguar of the Luccaisi captain, Salvador Avalino.

And I will, provided that your guy's price is right.

Because I told Rokunoli, if for a spulabody's price is the same as DNA's price, Rokunali will use spulabody.

When you They have a boss, an underboss, and a conciliar being driven around, and they're chatting away about all their illegal activities. I mean, it was a treasure trove of information that jaguar.

In the end, the the Aguar bug would be a critical source of information in the government's case against the commission. Another piece of evidence they wanted, the cooperating testimony of one of the conspirators themselves. Every time a mobster was picked up on charges in facing possible jail time, it was an opportunity to trade up for a higher-ranking member of the family. Members of the Mafia were notoriously hard to flip, but the more incriminating evidence the FBI gathered, the stronger their leverage. And eventually, they hit pay dirt.

Then we had another boss by the name of Angelo Leonardo, and he was the boss of the Cleveland family, and he went to jail for drug charges.

But would this Cleveland mob boss agree to cooperate and provide evidence from the witness stand? The FBI was patient and persistent.

And there was an agent in Cleveland that used to go and visit him, say, Hey, Angelo, how are you doing? Everything like that. So basically this agent got Angelo to flip.

Leonardo was facing life for narcotics trafficking. So ultimately, in exchange for a reduced sentence, he agreed to spill everything he knew.

He would basically say how it works. You have associates, you have soldiers, you have maid members. I called him Ang because we got to spend a Christmas together. Ange's story was his father was the head of the family at one particular point, but his father was murdered. And the story goes, I think Ange might have been a teenager at the time, and his mother walked him down to a particular building, and she handed him a gun and said, You go in there and you kill so-and-so, because she had determined that's who had killed her husband. And that's what Angela did. He walked into this club, shot him, and ran out.

His story speaks to why the Mafia has proven to be so popular and even romanticized in pop culture. Despite their crimes, often heartless and brutal, many could also be disarmedly charming. Leonardo was one of them.

He was polite. He was intelligent. He was able to give background about the commission, how the Commission worked, what kinds of things they decided, general background on the way the mob operates.

But before the case went to trial, the man in charge of the entire investigation, who had staked his reputation on his success, would make the shocking decision to step away and instead handle a political case that he believed would be even higher profile. And of course, we're talking about the future mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani. Here's Michael Chertoff.

Now, the original concept was Rudy would try it, Giuliani, and I would be his second chair and assist him, so there'd be a more experienced prosecutor leading the entire prosecution. So what happened is late '84, early '85, I got called in by my unit chief, and she said to You've read about this new indictment of Stanley Friedmann, who is the Bronxborough President. He's been indicted for corruption charges by the Southern district. Rudy has decided he's going to try that case. So you're obviously going to take over being the lead lawyer in the commission case. And she said, I always thought this might happen, and I warned you about this.

According to Giuliani, he believed the commission case to be air tight, and he trusted his young lawyers to bring the convictions home. His critics say that the city corruption trial promised a squaring off against a political rival, and that Giuliani hoped to ride that victory straight to the mayor's office. But regardless of his motives, his exit from the commission case left leadership in the hands of the 32-year-old Michael Cherdoff.

It was a little bit like that famous play all about Eve, where the understudy winds up stepping into the starring role. All of a sudden, I found myself as the lead prosecutor in the commission case.

Sitting in the second chair was an even younger John Savares. Gil Childers crossed over the river from the Brooklyn DA's office to fill out the team. Together, they had less than 15 years experience in the courtroom, and these three were about to face off with the entire New York City mob. Here's Gill.

It was an incredible feeling on several levels. Whose bright idea was it to entrust this case to guys of this experience level, no matter how competent you may or may not think they are?

It was the case that could make or break careers, but more importantly, a win that could finally break the Mafia's a legal hold on the citizens of New York. And while they're at it, they might even solve a murder.

This summer, a lone gunmen on a rooftop, reminded us that American presidents have long been the targets of assassins. Nearly 50 years ago, President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks.

A woman fired a shot at President Ford. President Gerald R.

The word came stunningly close to being the victim. A woman dressed in a long red skirt pointed a 0.45.

Caliber pistol at the President.

These are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a US President, and the two assassins had never met. One was a protege of infamous cult leader Charles manson.

She is 26-year-old Lynette Alice Fromm, nicknamed Squee. I always felt like Lynette was his right-hand woman.

The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in the Violent Revolutionary Underground.

Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. Sarah Jean could enter into these areas that other people couldn't. A spy, basically.

The story of one strange and violent summer. This season, on Rip Current.

Listen to Rip Current on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Fantasy football fans, the NFL season is here, and now is the time to get ready to dominate your league. The best way to crush your opponents this season is to listen to the NFL fantasy football podcast. Come hang out with me, Marcus Grant, and my pal, Michael F. Florio, as we give you all the info you need to absolutely steamroll your fantasy league and bring home a Championship. You don't need to spend hours each day breaking down every stat and every stitch of game tape to set a winning lineup. That's our job. We'll provide all the insights you need to set the best lineups each week. All you need to do is listen to the NFL fantasy football podcast when it drops five times a week. If you're looking for a smart, fun, and entertaining path to dominate your fantasy league, then look no further than the show straight from the source at NFL Media. Do it before it's too late. Subscribe now and listen to the NFL fantasy football podcast on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

The three lawyer team decided to dig deeper into the murder of Carmen Monte. Michael Chertoff says it may have been the most important piece of the case.

An act of violence has a dramatic effect unlike tapes or people talking about paying money. And it makes in a very real way the jury understand that what we're talking about here is not just who gets money from a contract, but who lives and dies. And the fact that you have a criminal organization that is willing to kill someone in a restaurant, I think makes everybody sit up and take notice.

As you'll remember, Carmen Galante had emerged in the late '70s as the de facto boss of the Banano crime family, while the actual boss, Rusty Rustelli, was in prison. When Galante was gunned down at a Brooklyn restaurant, his assailants may have disappeared, but investigators knew that it could only happen with approval from the commission, which, if proven, would tie them all to the crime. But to prove that, the team knew they would have to start with the murder itself, a case that had so far gone cold. They went back with the one clear piece of evidence that they had, the getaway car. A witness had identified the make and model as well a partial license plate. From that information, police quickly recovered the car. A print had been lifted from the back passenger door, but had not led to any identifications, at least not yet. But later, investigators would have a eureka moment.

Someone had the bright idea, Well, maybe this is not a fingerprint. Maybe this is a palm print.

I think that the person was Michael Cherdoff, and that's one of the things I love about homicide investigations there's always something new. They thought about how someone actually opens a car door, not with your fingertips, but with your open palm. So just maybe it was a palm print that could break this case that had sat dormant now for years.

It was a palm print at first blush. It looks very much like a fingerprint, depending on where it comes from, but the same swirl patterns, et cetera. It was decided that we needed a full set of what are called major case prints, which include not only the fingers, but also the palms of each of the person's hands.

It would prove to be a major break in the case.

There had been a fair amount of informant information that a Bonanno soldier at the time, in '79, Bruno Indelicato was one of the shooters.

If you'll remember, Bruno Indelicato was someone that Joe Cantamesso ran into on a wiretape job. Indelicato was a nervous wreck after his father, Sunny Red, was shot dead just a few blocks away. That was part of the so-called Three Capos murder.

His prints were among those who were compared to that print in the car on the door handle and with no avail, with no match. So Bruno was still a person of interest, but there was nothing to tie him to it.

That is until they tested his palm prints.

He was brought in and a full set of prints, including his palm prints, and those were immediately sent to the police, NYPD. The fingerprint expert, Gus Lesnovitch, looked at it and took no time at all, and bang, it's Bruno's palm print on that door handle. It was really big. Lesnovitch had the crime scene guys remove the door handle from the car. He had that door handle in his office. But you could see that no one he could have opened that door handle after that print was left without obscuring that print. So you could effectively argue that the last person who touched that door handle was the last person in that car. So it became pretty convincing proof that Indelicato was one of the mast shooters, and it jumped into the back seat of that car.

The importance of the discovery cannot be overstated. It was proof of the identity of one of the shooters in Carmine Galante's murder, which had eluded law enforcement for years. It also linked to another piece of evidence that had been gathered the same day of the murder, which once again pointed to Indelicato.

There was a club in Lower Manhattan called the Ravenite, and this was a Gambino family social club, and it was run by the underboss of the Gambino family at the time. If you weren't a member of the family, and more specifically, the crew that ran and hung out in that social club, you wouldn't go into that club.

And authorities just happened to be surveilling the club on the day Galante was murdered.

And about half an hour after the murders took place, Indalicato and a couple of other Banano guys show up at the Ravenite, and guys come out of the ravenite. Bruno never goes in, but the consigliere of the Banano family comes out of the Ravenite with another guy or two, Gambino guys, and they have a discussion, very animated discussion with Bruno and these other guys. And then there's this congratulatory handshake with Bruno and a slap on the back. I mean, it's not like they were popping champagne corks, but it was like, All right, something happened.

Together with the Palm print evidence, this meeting served as proof of what law enforcement had long suspected. One, One, that Bruno Indelicato was one of the people who murdered Carmen Galante. And two, his appearance at the club also tied at least two families together in the crime. This was the bow, if you will, one of the final and most important puzzle pieces to tie the commission case together.

It makes it real in a way that just talking about construction fraud and construction shakedowns doesn't, that the mob is a violent organization. It crystallizes what What is the essence of what lies behind the mob's power, which is the ability to carry out violent acts, including murder.

But the video of the Indelicato meeting was not the only riveting show in town.

There was one instance where the commission as a whole met somewhere in Staten Island, and the FBI got wind of it and was able to take photographs.

A tip about the meeting came in from an anonymous source. So on May 15, 1984, an FBI team staked out the area and waited. Finally, around 04:00 PM, they got what they needed.

The agents went out there with cameras, and they photographed all the bosses of the families and their number two guys going into this house at the same time and coming back out at the same time.

That was former FBI Special Agent Jim Kossler, who oversaw the team that captured the landmark meeting of Mafia bosses. Not since the Appalachian meeting in 1957 had there been more clear proof of a commission gathering.

That Tony Solerino, Paul Castellano, Tony Dux-Curralo, Sam Santoro.

Was that the first time that you had them photographed, actually, that you had this physical documentation of a commission meeting because you had the heads of all five families coming and going? Yeah, exactly. That was the first time we'd ever seen them all together in one place. The table was set. Cherdoff and his team finally had everything they needed. They had bugs revealing conversations between mob bosses and commission members. They had a number of witnesses and turncoat mobsters willing to testify. They had evidence of meetings with all the crime family leaders assembled together, and they had commissioned members sanctioning acts of violence, specifically murder.

Those were all the major sources of evidence And what I had to do, which took me about a year from 1984 into early 1985, I had to listen to everything. I had to make sure it was accurately transcribed. And then based on that, I had to build the theory of a case. And that would lead to the indictment.

In February of 1985, the lengthy indictment was complete, including names of four mob bosses and five underbosses. Paul Castellano, boss of the Gambino crime family, Fat Tony Salerno, boss of the Gennavise crime family, Tony Ducks-Curralo, boss of the Lucasey crime family, and Philip Rusty-Rustelli, boss of the Banano crime family, as well as multiple underbosses. In investigators got the green light to make the arrests. So Charlotte Lange and her FBI team, along with multiple other law enforcement organizations, developed a synchronized plan to grab everyone at the same time.

We had made the decision from in the get-go because so many squads were involved in this. People from the Colombo squad were going to arrest Carmine Persica. New Rochelle was going to handle arresting Fat Tony. That decision was made that the different squads would handle the arrest. And I guess there was going to be some publicity that was coming out. They were afraid it was going to come out on the news.

In fact, a leak to the press almost blew their element of surprise. Rise. A week before the scheduled arrest, news of the gigantic case landed on the front page of the Daily News. The next day, taking no chances that any of their targets would flee, agents rounded up the major players. The mob bosses were charged and arrained. A trial date was set. In the meantime, the mobsers were allowed to return home and wait their day in court, where they could only speculate and stew about potential traitors in their midst. According to one informant, some vowed revenge, while others were thought to be plotting to assassinate the very lawyers who were poised to put them away, a course of action ultimately rejected by the commission. One thing was clear, the government had Mafia leadership feeling trapped, but when backed in a corner, they might prove to be their most dangerous.

My bureau car was in the shop, so I was catching a ride to go home with an agent on the Genevise Squad. And we're sitting at the Holland Tunnel, and we aren't listening to the radio. We aren't doing anything. And he drops me off. I get home, I start doing stuff, and I turned on the TV, and that's how I found out the Castellano had been killed.

Shakespeare said, of Kings, Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

The same might be said of those who rise to the top of organized crime. They get there by violence, and often as not, they leave by violence.

Next time on Law and Order: Criminal Justice System. We were right there in the thick of things whenever the bodies were still laying on the street.

It was chaos.

When the trial was first getting underway, the courtroom was absolutely packed.

What you're most nervous about are the witnesses. Are they going to wither under cross-examination? Are they going to be able to stand He just sounded like a mob boss, and the jury was hanging on every word he was saying.

You certainly didn't want to be known as the three guys who let the mob get off.

Law and Order Criminal Justice System is a production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts. Our host is Anna Sega Nicalazi. This episode was written by Trevor Young and Anna Sega Nicalazi. Executive, produced by Dick Wolf, Elliot Wolf, and Stephen Michael at Wolf Entertainment. On behalf of iHeartRadio, executive, produced by Alex Williams and Matt Frederick, with supervising producers Trevor Young and Chandler Mays, and producers Jesse Funk, Nooms Griffin, and Rima Elkayali. This season is executive Produced by Anna Sega Nicalazi. Story producer, Walker Lamand. Our researchers are Caroleyn Talmage and Luke Stentz. Editing and sound design by Rima Elkayali. Original music by John O'Hara. Original theme by Mike Post. Additional music by Steve Moore. And additional voiceover by me, Steve Zernkilton. Special thanks to Fox 5 in New York, ABC, and CBS for providing archival material for the show. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio and Wolf Entertainment, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.

In California, during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before, tried to assassinate the President of the United States. One was the protege of Charles manson.

26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore in her 40s.

The story of one strange and violent summer this season on the new podcast, Rip Current.

Listen to Rip Current on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey, Law and Order fans, the new podcast, Law and Order Criminal Justice System is out now. But did you know you can listen to the episodes ad-free through the iHeart True Crime Plus subscription? It's available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Iheart True Crime Plus is the best place to get 100% ad-free episodes of all Law and Order podcast episodes. So don't wait. Subscribe to iHeartTrueCrine+ today. Find iHeartTrueCrine+ in your Apple podcast app and subscribe for instant access.