My dad was involved in 30, 35 murders.
Now, he never admitted that to me, about anyone in particular.
He was indicted for one murder, and he was acquitted in that case, found not guilty.
But my dad was, he was a tough guy.
There's no question.
So. If he was involved in 35 murders, as the FBI suggests, do you think he was better off behind bars?
What I'm getting at here really is, if they framed him, Was it a net benefit to society that they framed him?
Well, you know, Steve, let me, I know there's going to be a tough one, but let me, let me tell you how I think.
The right and just side of me, the legally just side of me says that the government is never allowed to break the law to uphold the law, because if you allow that to happen, then it falls into monarchy and people are not protected.
Because if they do it against sunny frenzies, they can do it against anybody.
So I believe strictly the government has enough tools and weapons to get people the right way.
And they do 96, 97 percent of the time.
They shouldn't be allowed to violate the law to go after a criminal.
That's my feeling on it.
Now, another thing is this.
People think when we take an oath, the oath of omerta, it's an oath to stay silent.
It's not an oath to lie, steal, cheat and kill.
Does that happen as part of that light?
Yes, but we're told straight out.
Now, try to understand the thinking here.
You come into that life, you're told straight out.
We have rules. You don't ever violate another man's wife, daughter, sister, girl.
Never. That'll cause you to die.
During my era, we weren't allowed to deal with drugs.
You deal with drugs, you get caught, you die.
You maybe do some other things, you're not honest with people, you disrespect somebody, you hit another maid guy, you die.
Now, we understand that.
And they tell you, your best friend may be the one that pulls the trigger because the life comes before anything.
That's it. You don't violate the rules.
That's how we maintain control in this life.
That's how we existed for 100 years.
And that's how it's going to stay.
So now you're saying, OK, we all agreed to this.
We all admitted it.
If one of us decides to violate the policy of the law and we get caught, well, we understand and the consequences.
So that's how I looked at it.
And that's how I justified it.
Now, does that say you can go out and start to do random killings?
No. If the boss tells you to go kill somebody because he doesn't like them, and you do it, that's not right.
But if we kill our own, and you know, you hear a lot of times, well, we only kill our own.
Well, we don't only kill our own.
But if we only kill our own knowing that we made that choice, well, then, okay.
I I kind of, I kind of get it in a way.
Even though murder is murder and it's a crime and it's sinful and I understand that.
But that's how you justify it.
But it wasn't the case that you only killed your own.
Well, for some of us it was and for others it was not.
And I've seen both sides of that.
You've never talked about having to kill someone, have you?
No. Why is that? it's it's a it's just not a subject i care to get into you know i uh listen i'd like to be as honest as i possibly can because i am a christian and you don't want to lie to people but it's not something i want to talk about i was wondering because when i when i read that i thought maybe it's because you know there's some might be legal retribution maybe it's because, you know, it's not nice for people to hear about.
Maybe it's because there's still some kind of like rule where you can't say anything.
But I wondered why.
Maybe it's all of the above.
I don't know. Well, you know, Steve, look, there's guys, there's a lot of guys on the street now.
And if you go on YouTube, you'll see a number of them.
And they've admitted to murders that they were involved in.
These are made guys.
And they've admitted to it.
And many of them had struck a deal with the government.
They had immunity for the crimes they committed, even murder.
I mean, the government give you immunity for murder if they want you to cooperate and help them out.
It's amazing, but they'll do it.
And so they have immunity.
They could talk about their crimes.
I didn't cooperate to that level at all.
I don't have immunity for anything that I've done in the past.
And listen, our laws here in the United States, if you were standing next to somebody when they murdered somebody else, you could be charged for murder the same way than them.
So, you know, I'm not saying I ever was in that position.
I'm just saying that's the law.
So, you know, why talk about it?
Number one. And number two, murder is ugly.
You know, it's ugly.
And you don't ever want to talk about it.
I mean, I don't, if I were to do something like that, I wouldn't be proud of it.
I'm not trying to throw my chest out and say, hey, look what I could do.
Guys go to war. They kill people all the time, you know, in defense of our country defensive.
So, I mean, it's not like, oh God, you know, nobody, I mean, murder happens every single day.
Who wants to talk about it?
Some people do. I know, not me.
You got closer to the mafia when your father was sent down and this was the point where you decided not to go to school.
The boss of the Colombo family brings you close, brings you under his wing.
Do you have to do some kind of training or something to join the mafia?
Is there Tony. Oh, you do?
Oh, yeah. Well, when you come in, here's what happened.
I leave there. A captain and a family picked me up and took me to see the boss.
Now, unfortunately, Joe Colombo was assassinated.
He was shot, seriously wounded.
He lingered for about seven years, and then he died as a result of these wounds.
So a new boss took over, and he's passed away now.
And I sat with him.
This was about two weeks after my father sent word downtown that he was proposing me to be part of that life.
Because you can't just go up to somebody and say, hey, I'd like to join.
Somebody has to propose you, vouch for you, say you have what it takes.
There's a lot of nepotism in that life.
A lot of fathers brought their sons in, their nephews, whatever.
So in my case, it was my dad that proposed me.
And so I sat with the boss and he said to me, here's the deal.
You want to become a member of our life.
Your father sent the message.
Is that true? And I said, yes.
He said, well, here's the deal.
From now on, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you're on call to serve this family, the Colombo family.
That means if your mother is sick and she's dying, you're at her bedside, we call you to service, you leave your mother, you come and serve us.
From now on.
