Episode 7: Revelation
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After our last meeting in the studio with Anthony Ramondi, I start going through months and months of interviews and phone calls. Hello? Hey. Hey. I was just leaving you a message. I'm no longer asking myself what's true and what's fantasy in the stories Anthony told us about his life. I'm wondering if I've spent the whole past year telling the story of a pathological liar.

Or is something else going on? Sometimes the real events aren't the way they put them on the screen. It's sort of a mix of truth and fiction. Yeah. So I have a new question.

Why did Anthony Raimondi make up his own incredible, but possibly true, life story? I want to know a little more about, you know, your formative years and what made you. I'm Mark Smerling, and these are the confessions of Anthony Raimondi. Chapter 7, Revelation.

Just us, just us. To answer the question why, as in why did Anthony make up so much of his life story, Zach and I head back to Florida to talk to Virginia and Ralph Guido again, Anthony's cousins from the old neighborhood. Something I learned while I lived in Florida, charcuterie. Last night, Zach and I grabbed dinner with Ralph in Virginia, and I confessed my suspicion that Anthony might be making up some of his stories. All right.

Virginia said she needed time to think about that. Now, this is honey and lemon cheese, garlic and herb cheese, cheddar cheese. Thank you so much. Now, after laying out an impressive cheese platter, she sits next to me and pulls out a statement she wrote. Okay, so, this is what I wrote. Regarding the course of events in Anthony Raimondi's book, Who Has the Right to Judge?, what is reality and what is fantasy in someone else's life?

Where is there documentary proof that these things did not happen? Should we follow the author around 24-7 every day of his life to prove or disprove him? In my opinion...

Anthony has not set out to intentionally dupe or betray his readers. This is how he sincerely recalls his life unfolding. If you have a problem with this person or the book he has written, look deep inside your soul and ask yourself, how honest have you been in your own life story? None of us have the right to judge anybody else.

For me, judging Anthony is beside the point.

What I've learned about his life convinced me that his true stories are worth telling, which has only served to raise my curiosity about the other stories he told us. Where did they come from? Do you remember his father? Yeah. They're my godparents and mother and father. Oh, my godparents. Frank? Oh, my God. What a doll. Really, what a doll. What do you remember about him? He...

used to be so nice to me. He would compliment you. He would say, like, "I like that lipstick that you're wearing." I said, "I'm not wearing lipstick, but thank you." You know? And Mary, Boobie's mother, she was so nice. She really was. We used to call him Boobie. That was his nickname, Boobie.

When I was pregnant, they couldn't do enough for me. You know, I was like a Kardashian, like anything you wanted. You like snails? We're making you snails, you know? And Mary was an excellent cook. You said his father was also somebody who told stories. Yeah. Last night, Ralph told us that Anthony's father, Frank, would come home from his job as a longshoreman at the Brooklyn docks and sit around the table telling stories about being wealthy back in the old country, owning villas in Sicily.

Ralph said that everyone in the family knew the stories weren't true, but they were fun, so no one ever challenged him. And this reminded me of something Anthony told me about his father. My father answered to the National Commission. Anthony said that his father was a secret hitman for the top mafia brass. And let me tell you, my father did a lot of work for all the families over there. He was dependable and he knew what he was doing. So I asked Ralph about this. Anthony says his father was a hitman for the mob.

Maybe Frank really was a hitman for the National Commission. Or maybe he told his son that he was. Because he was a fable maker, too.

Now Zach brings up another important person in Anthony's life. What was their relationship like, Mac and Anthony? Hugh McIntosh, Anthony's cousin, the feared Colombo crime family enforcer. Mac used to tease him a lot, too. He gave him the name Pluto, you know.

He took it because it was Mac. You might remember from episode two that Mac would visit Anthony's grandfather's house on Baltic Street, where Anthony lived with his extended family. Then when Anthony was 12, his parents moved to their own place not far away. But it must have seemed miles away to little Anthony. Suddenly, kids on the block were picking on him. He started acting out in school. Then at 16, Anthony says he begged Mac to let him join him in the mafia. You know, nobody was going to mess with him anymore.

Mack was a violent and unpredictable criminal.

But he offered Anthony something no one else in his family could. Anthony changed completely when he started hanging out with Mac. Turned into a totally different person. He started bullying people around instead of being bullied. What did his parents think about that? Do you have any idea? They liked it. They did? Yeah.

They liked it. I think Mack provided for Anthony something that they couldn't provide. You know, that constant companionship, taking him places, introducing him to people. He was trying to find who he was. What Anthony found was a life of crime. But all those years Anthony was in the Columbos, he never moved out of his parents' house. During the day, he would hang out with Mack doing the bidding of his mafia bosses, delivering violence, or at least the threat of violence.

At night, he'd go home and listen to his father's grand stories while his mother cooked his favorite dish. When he was in his 40s, his parents died. And that's when Ralph says someone offered Anthony good money for their house. The prices were high. So you see, I'll sell the house. And he made the agreement that he could stay here for a month or two or something like that. Anthony sold the house, but he wasn't quite ready to leave. And then he just said, I'm not leaving, I'm staying.

I didn't think anybody was left in the neighborhood. You know, this is where I was raised. This is where my parents loved me. This is my safe haven. No matter whatever happened, I could come here. And now I have to leave it. And where do I go? I checked out court records. Anthony eventually had to be evicted. But this is the way he is. The way Anthony is, is a guy who clings to his past, whether that past is real or fantasy. Before this book, did he ever tell you any of these stories? No.

Oh yeah. He did? So this fable making has been going on for years. Oh yeah. What do you think, this just happened? When he calls me up on the phone, he's talking about people. I have no idea who these people are. And he says, don't you remember this one? Don't you remember? I tell him, oh, I don't remember. You remember, I don't remember. He really believes that whatever he told you is absolutely true. There's no doubt in my mind that he believes it's true.

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visit jdpower.com slash awards. Only at a Sleep Number store or sleepnumber.com. See store for details. This episode is sponsored by AutoTrader. Credit scores, down payments, interest rates. Car buying can be a numbers game, but you don't have to be a math expert to get the keys to your dream car. Just use Kelly Blue Book My Wallet on AutoTrader. Crunch your numbers.

and get your personalized results so you know exactly how much you'll pay each month for your car. It's like having a magic wand for your wallet. Presto! The car you've been wanting is now within reach. So hit the road and leave your calculator at home. Find your next car on autotrader.com. I want to know more about your mother, because my sense is that you were very close to your mom. Yeah, my mother, I was very close to my mother. She never gave up on me. She loved me no matter what. Whatever I did, my mother loved me.

If you turned around and told her I just killed seven kids and three women, she would say, no, not my son. Back in New York, I'm searching through tape again when I stumble across a folder of video interviews with Anthony shot three years before I ever met him for a documentary that never got made. Did you tell her everything? Certain things I would tell her, certain things she already knew.

There are hours and hours of this video. Some of the same stories Anthony told us. But then my focus shifts to the person behind the camera.

Her name is Elizabeth Browning. Do you pray? Yeah, every morning. Do you have like a relationship where you talk to God? Every morning I pray. Every morning. No, truthfully, every morning when I get up, before I even get out of bed, I do pray. I let them know, you know, this is what I'm doing and this is what I'm sorry for what I did. You know, when I come before you, it's your call. Elizabeth asks Anthony questions I would never think to ask.

I start to believe that she might be able to help me figure out why Anthony made up so much of his life story. But more importantly, she might help me understand how to think about that. So I gave her a call.

Tell me about yourself and how you got into storytelling and how you ended up meeting Anthony. I mean, that must be a whole tale unto itself. Yeah. My real vision, which is what I'm building now, is a production company that produces film and television that inspires and uplifts and brings more light and love and hope to the world. And so I had just...

finished a short film that I did. And I was sitting in my bedroom, I was praying and asking, "Okay, so what's the next project?" And this email comes through that says, "One of the last of the old world mafia gangsters, an enforcer with a Colombo crime family, has been diagnosed with cancer. He doesn't know how much longer he has to live, and he's looking for someone to help tell his story."

Impulsively, I sent out an email. I said, I have a question. How does he want his story to end? I get a response. He'd like to meet me. So I meet him in Little Italy. ♪

It was the Feast of San Gennaro. I'm walking, the streets have been closed, there are crowds everywhere, there's music playing and vendors, and I'm walking toward this Italian restaurant, and I felt like I was in a movie already. I got there before him, and I told the owner who I was here to see, and they were like, oh, yes, please, they ushered me in.

And in about 10 minutes, this gangster-looking big guy in a very nice tracksuit with the gold chains and dark sunglasses, he looked huge to me as he walked in. And I was just like, oh, dear God, what have I done? And he sat down and he took his glasses off. And his eyes were so kind. And there was this moment of going, oh, maybe he's not...

the image that I thought he was. So we sat there for three hours and when we got to the end of the interview, I said, "I'm not sure that I would be the right fit for your story." And he said, "I think you're the perfect fit." And so I said, "Okay, if we can find some way of bringing about a redeeming end to this story." And he was like, "Let's find out." For a year,

Every other week, I met him in the basement of a funeral home in Brooklyn, and I heard the stories. But what we were really interested in is, outside of those stories, who's the human being? So, what do you love the most? Animals. Animals. Truthfully, my animals, I do.

As much as people may think that I'm the devil or they think I'm mean or whatever, I'm an animal lover and I can't see anybody hurting an animal. My father was an animal lover all the way around the board. Did you always have animals? Yeah, always did. Dogs or cats? Dogs and cats. I even had a turtle. I even had a turtle. And my father got buried with all his pets, much like I'm going to have my pets buried with me. What do you love about your animals? Animals give you unconditional love no matter what.

There was that thread of his humanity throughout, and I was fascinated by the way he held it and the way he saw it and the way he understood it. What did you struggle with the most as a kid? You know, every kid has, like, you feel alone or you feel like you don't belong or... No, I had cousins with me 24 hours a day. We all lived together.

I didn't feel alone because there was always family there. When I started feeling alone was when my grandfather had to sell the house. Because my cousins were moving like to 11th Street and 12th Street. How old were you then? I was about 12. Me and my cousin Ralphie grew up together.

As we were growing up, my cousin Ralphie was more like my protector than my cousin. It was like, any guy that bothered me, he'd be the first one to jump right in and start hitting him, my cousin Ralphie. You know, it's interesting. I talked to his cousin Ralph Guido, who lived at Baltic Street with him. And I said, what was your first memory of Anthony? Ralph was like, he was a fat little boy.

And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, you know, all the kids picked on him in the neighborhood. And then, of course, because of his vulnerability, he signs up with Mac, the cousin who, when he comes to the house, everybody treats him like...

the pope is that the cousin who put the gun like in his face and said you want to you want to be this and he said pull the trigger because if i can't do this with you guys i don't want to be alive which i think is really telling he says if i can't be a gangster i said you might as well pull the trigger i just i want to be a gangster i want to be like you and like all my other uncles my sense

is that it's all he knew. Because it was his cousin that he loved, it was his cousin that protected him. And I think what chance do you have if from the moment you're born, that is what you are taught and rewarded and it's what matters, right? - It explains everything. - Have you ever personally, you, had like a moment of deep

Your connection to God or some a moment of spiritual they had nothing to do with organized religion I don't know if you want to call spiritual but I says if you remember go back to 1960 I was in the third grade there was an airplane crash the st. Augustine school which is still there and I'm looking at the window and the plane came through the building and I said it then and

And they thought I was crazy, and I said it now. I seen that standing on that plate. I don't care what anybody tells me. Standing on the wing? Standing on the body of the plate. You might remember this story. Right after Zach and I met Anthony, he drove us to his old grade school and told it to us. There was a couple questions in my mind. One was, why is he bringing me here to tell me this story first? What is he trying to tell me about his life? Because that seems like

Not the story he would tell, right? He would tell the gangster stories and the murder stories. What does it mean when a seven-year-old sees death riding on a plane that's crashing into the ground with people that are about to die and being in a world in which they have to come to terms with a lot of death? It could be that the mind looks for an answer

that's bigger than just bodies strewn across the street that have fallen out of an airplane. That there's something bigger that happened just because the idea that there isn't something bigger that happened is too much to bear for a child. For Anthony, that was when the reality sort of shifted, you know, and he started seeing things.

Maybe that plane crash was Anthony's first break from reality. This is when he began telling his incredible and possibly true stories. When I'm listening to his stories, you know, I'm hearing the seven-year-old who sees a man standing on top of a crashing plane. What I mean is, I'm listening to Anthony's stories searching for all the fantasies that helped him get by. What were you thinking of the stories when he was telling them? I believed everything he said.

I may still believe everything he said. I can't always explain how, but there is a truth and an authenticity in what he says and the way he tells his stories. He is an incredible storyteller, and he's woven his story with reality. Like, I can't tell you after spending almost a year looking at this murder of Pope John Paul I, whether he was murdered or not. It's Anthony's role in it. Is it like...

Anthony has heard these stories. He's been adjacent to these stories. He's been in these stories. He's woven his life around these stories. And now I really think he believes all these stories and his role in them. Oh, I have no doubt that he believes that it's real. And I think in the grand scheme of things, what's the real value of the stories?

I was fascinated by them and also completely, like, horrified by them. And if I found out, "Oh, no, he didn't really do it," I'd be like, "Oh, good. Good." Because I love him, and I wouldn't wish for him to carry that to the grave. Your birthday. I never gave it no thought, I'll be perfectly honest with you. Seriously, I never gave it any thought.

I did more than the interviews. Like, I visited him in the hospital when he was sick. You haven't celebrated your birthday in a long time? Really? Okay, well, that's changing today. It's a silly birthday celebration. It's a one-woman show birthday celebration. And I've seen this really gentle side of him and kind and funny and...

and irreverent. I'm gonna be honest with you. I, in my core heart of hearts, I think you are a truly good man. You are a kind man, you are loving, you are smart, and I want the world to know all of you. And, you know, I'll end where I started. How is his story gonna end?

I spoke to Anthony today, and he's back in the hospital again. He said he hoped to be home in a couple days. I hung up, and I found myself worrying about him. And of course, I'm thinking about how to end his story. Then I remember how Anthony ended his story with us. I was on what they called the merry-go-round.

This prison, to that prison, to that prison, and finally I make it to Talladega, Alabama. He told us that after he was convicted of loan sharking and extortion, he was shipped off from prison to prison in the federal system. And it's every Monday, going there. It's in the fuck. There's a guy across the room laying down on the bench, and I'm over here cursing my head off. And he says, will you shut the fuck up, Pluto? I'm trying to get some sleep. And he says, who the fuck are you? And he turns out, it's my cousin Mac.

Not long after this prison family reunion, Anthony came home to Brooklyn, to his parents' house. But his world had changed. A lot of the old-timers were in prison like Mac. A younger generation was coming up, getting into narcotics. They were turning on each other.

Anthony struggled to keep his place in this new world. And I'm going to tell you the freakiest thing is God's truth. I was walking out of my house. It was in November. I had the door opened up and something told me Mac died. It just came into my head. It said Mac's dead. He died. All of a sudden the phone rings. Who was it? Rosie, Mac's wife. She told me he passed away in the prison.

They had to send the body in. So it was me and my cousin John Orofino. We went to the airport. Mac's body came in. They had these freaking cardboard containers that they used to travel. Anthony's childhood hero, the man who granted his wish and let him join him in a life of crime, ended up coming home from prison in a cardboard box. We took him out. We had to get him and roll him up like this, and we were putting him in the regular stretcher.

So I turn around, and as I'm picking him up, I'm by his head, and I say, Hey, Mac, remember when we used to do this? At what point did you decide to get out? Now, when I decided to get out was I started thinking about it when my cousin Mac died. Then when my father died, that sealed it. Anthony went to his father's funeral, expecting mafia royalty to show up. Not one of the bosses, not one of the fucking underbosses came, or the country eddies. They've not even sent a fucking flower.

From all the five families, not a fucking flower, they said. Because he believed his father was a hitman for the National Commission. They just didn't give a fuck because my father was no use to them no more. That's what it comes down to. He wasn't worth nothing. He's dead. That's why he says, you know what? Now I got to do what I want to do. I walked away. When I walked away from Clumbo's, nobody called me. Okay, you know, I've been here since I'm a kid. You don't see me around or you don't hear that call. You don't say, hey, what happened to Pluto? It was like, who gives a fuck?

So Anthony began writing.

He wrote about how he was related to Lucky Luciano and mentored by Meyer Lansky. He wrote about fighting in Vietnam alongside other ex-convicts, about selling counterfeit stocks for the Vatican. And he wrote about how he planned the murder of a pope. Anthony ended his life story by writing himself a whole new one, one that's incredible and possibly true. You get to the end of your life, right? And you want your life to kind of mean something. And it's hard not to sort of

exaggerate your role in your own life at some level? Well, I would say everybody embellishes their life, including me a little bit. You know what I'm saying? Not to the point where it's a whole exaggeration and the story is not true. The point being that you start reflecting on your life. I could see how people either want to tell their story or they want to put themselves at the center of stories. Yeah. And it reminds me a little bit of the subtitle to your book.

Incredible and possibly true stories. But that covers me. And also, inside the book, I have any similarities between people, places, and events, living or dead, is purely coincidental. That covers me. That protects me. Right. So you can look at it this way. It's either all true, or it's half true and half a story, or it's a whole story that I made up that people want to see and people want to hear. Makes people start to wonder.

People will believe, some people will, some people won't. I know what I did, I know who I was with, I know what was done, I know what I went through. You don't believe me, I don't give a shit. That's all for the confessions of Anthony Raimondi. But there's one more episode left for those of you who want to dive deeper into the shenanigans of the Vatican Bank.

In our next episode, you'll hear more from Gerald Posner, author of the New York Times bestselling book, God's Bankers. He'll talk about Italy, the mafia, and the rather large body count surrounding Italy's largest bank scandal. And he won't disappoint. There's a way.

The Confessions of Anthony Raimondi is a USG audio and truth media podcast in partnership with Clockwork Films. We'd like to thank Elizabeth Browning for her time and the generous use of the interview she did with Anthony Raimondi. The show is produced by Alexa Burke, Kenny Kusiak, and Kevin Shepard. Zach St. Louis is our senior producer. Mark Smerling, that's me, is your host and story editor.

Executive producers are Josh Block from USG Audio, Jamie Cohen, Naomi Harvey, and Rob Huxley from Clockwork Films, and me, Mark Smerling. Scott Curtis is our production manager. Production support from Josh Lalongi at USG Audio. Fact-checking by Dania Suleiman. Sound design by Alexa Burke. George Drabing-Hicks did the mix.

Music by Universal Production Music, Marmoset, and Kenny Kusiak. Our title track is Big Fish by Kenny Kusiak. Legal review by Linda Steinman and Abigail Everdell at Davis Wright Tremaine. If you've enjoyed The Confessions of Anthony Raimondi, leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps other people find the show. And thanks for listening.