Episode 410 - My Cousin Turns And Shoots The Guy In The Face! In That Life, Live Has No Value!

This is the ending to a pretty remarkable story from my years in the streets. Johnny is now serving life in prison. He has been locked up 18 years and is still fighting for his freedom. BUT, he is where he belongs. Society cannot have men like him running around. I got caught up in this whole debacle on a fluke. Another cousin introduced me to a guy who said he had a major score. Sounded easy. Just steal a safe off a yacht. No big deal. I knew the marins well. I had partied on boats I pretended belonged to family members. I used my grandpa's name to get it. He was a well respected prominent member of the local community, always donating to charities, hosting big parties and barbecues. But everyone knew he was a mafia affiliated. His last name was Tocco, and he had grown up with Giacoma Tocco the reputed boss of the whole Mafia. They were around the same age, and spent a lot if the together over the years. To what level my grandpa was involved, I will never know. I can only say that he was around them his whole life, and very close to some of the top brass. He was a founding father of the church they all went to, and head of several clubs and societies they were all part of. So, when I walked into the Marina and told the security guards I was there to go to his boat, nobody questioned a thing.

But this was a few years later, when Tony Giacolone, a mobster famous for being the number #1 suspect in the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance, got me a job working as a bouncer at a local nightclub, where much of the younger mob generations hung out. I got to knows some of them pretty good, as they all heard about me, from arrests to fights to scams and drugs. They liked me because I wasn't like them. They were white collar guys. I was more of a street guy, a tough guy. There were't many of these left in the mob by then. Their fathers and grandfathers had pruned them to the white collar racketeers, not gangsters. Less prison time. More money. But I didn't have that luxury. I was just a nobody street guy with the wrong last name. Soi I made a reputation out of fighting and brawling and generally acting like a knucklehead,

So they asked me to spearhead this boat scam, since I said I had a "box man" who could get into safes That was probably out of line. Johnny wasn't;t a real box man. Bu I had seen him get into a couple safes over the years. Mostly brute force. So brought him in. The problem was, the guy who laid out the play was an old time gangster from Chicago, a dangerous guy who was probably 50 at the time. My uncle Pete Tocco Jr warned me to be careful around him. He was the real deal.

The play went off without a hitch, but it was only a small score. Not the $200K we were told it would be. Johnny was pissed. That;'s when things went bad. Have a listen. The story coms full circle 20 years later while I am in prison. Truly bizarre and remarkable. You will see. The street life can be crazy, and sometimes stranger than fiction.

Enjoy. And know that this is not who I am. I only share these old war stories so you can see how far I have come, NOT to glorify that life or these kinds of people. Today I am a good man, honest, kind, faithful, loving and wouldn't take a dollar from a person unless I earned it. That is the reason my wife fell in love with me. That is the reason my friends love me. They, real ones, are few and far between, but they know my heart. I am NOT the guy in this video, I just want to illustrate how change can really happen. It is a mindset. I wold never go back to that kind of life. Ever. I would rather be dead. I love my life today, at my quiet homestead, and shudder at these memories. Scares me that I once behaved like this, and were around men who behaved even worse. a LOT worse. And found into be normal. That is scary.

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