THE ARCHIVES: INSIDE THE LIFE
“You can’t understand the man until you understand the world that made him.”
Most people think the Mob was just New York and Chicago. They think it was just Tommy guns and cannoli. They’re wrong.
The real war was fought in the Rust Belt. It was fought in the “neutral zones” like Erie, Pennsylvania, where the families from Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo came to hide, deal, and kill. It was a world of 19-foot Cadillacs, rooftop chases, and silence.
I didn’t just live in this world. I engineered it.
This is the Lore. The people I ran with, the places we owned, and the tools we built to stay one step ahead of the law.
THE FACES
The Secret Seven, The Hitmen, and The Angels.
They called us the Secret Seven—so secret we didn’t know who the other six were. But we were comin’. This wasn’t a street gang. This was a brotherhood. I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Jimmy “JR” Russell, the man who spent 27 years inside rather than rat. I was the near brother-in-law to Ray Ferritto, the man who killed the Irishman and brought down the Cleveland Mob. And I loved Mary Ellen DeSantis, the woman who paid the ultimate price for the life we led.
These aren’t characters. They are the people who saved my life, and the people I couldn’t save.
THE PLACES
Asphalt, Alleys, and Cages.
Geography is destiny. Erie, PA was 100 miles from everywhere, the perfect place to disappear . From the backroom of The Ole’ Monte Club where we planned the scores, to the “Fortress” of Lackawanna, NY, to the brutal reality of Cell Block D in the Erie County Holding Center.
This map is drawn in blood and gasoline. Take a tour of the bars we drank in, the highways we owned, and the cells where I survived “The Big Bitch”… 25 years to Life.
THE TOOLBOX
Trade Secrets of a Blue-Collar Engineer.
I wasn’t a thug. I was a technician. While the Feds were looking for muscle, I was at Radio Shack buying crystals to build encrypted police scanners. I was in the machine shop threading barrels for silencers I’d hang inside a tailpipe . I was fabricating custom nets to fish money bags out of night drops.
See the mechanics behind the madness. This is the engineering that earned me the title “One Man Crime Spree.”
“Most of what follows is true. Some events were as told by others… All events described herein actually happened, though on occasion the author has taken certain (very small) liberties with chronology and minor details, because that is his right as an American.”