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New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500. That's audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500. The night after Zach and I spoke to journalist Philip Willen about the death of Pope John Paul I, I couldn't sleep. I came to believe that possibly something really grave had happened, possibly even that the Pope had actually been murdered.
You might remember from our last episode that Willen investigated the death of the Pope for the book In God's Name. He did a lot of work back then in the 80s to try to find out what really happened. And what had my mind spinning was how Willen's thoughts about the murder changed over the many years he reported on the Vatican. My current position is I've kind of slipped back into agnosticism and I couldn't really tell you whether he was murdered or not.
Now, after spending a year doing my own investigation, I find myself in the same place. I can't tell you whether Pope John Paul was murdered. But one thing I can tell you is that the Catholic Church may be uniquely capable of keeping such a dark secret. It's right up there with the KGB and the CIA. It was almost a toss-up as to what was worse for the Catholic Church, that a lot of people had lied to cover up the fact that the Pope had been murdered.
or that these people lied every day as a matter of routine. But this leaves me in a tough spot, because if the Pope wasn't murdered, then my new friend Anthony Raimondi couldn't have been there when it happened like he said he was.
Laying in bed staring at the ceiling, my heart starts to race. To calm myself, I focus my mind on the people we spoke to who believe Anthony's stories, like Billy Goonan in episode two. I met Anthony, I was probably 16, 17 years old. You know, I helped him out with pickups, I drove him around a lot. When Billy was a kid driving Anthony around Brooklyn, he remembers hearing about how Anthony murdered a mobster named Salvador Granello, a.k.a. Sally Burns.
I take comfort in Joe Palumbo's story from episode four about how he helped Anthony sell counterfeit stocks. He brought me some stocks and he told me about the scam with the Vatican, which I never heard of before. And we started making good money. And again, I still couldn't fathom how this was going on, but it was happening.
And I drift off to sleep hearing the voice of Anthony's ex-girlfriend Doris from the same episode. She told us that when Anthony was on the run from the feds, he invited her to the Vatican to keep him company. Do you know why he was there? Nope. And that was okay. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. So yeah, totally oblivious, not asking questions. I'm not a curious person. But I am a curious person. So all night, I toss and turn.
Doubts crowd my dreams. But I hear echoes of what Willen said about Anthony, the stuff of nightmares. I would be keen to avoid giving the idea that I endorse this crazy man who claims to have participated in the conspiracy himself. Yes, it's a subject for the psychiatrists. The next morning, I wake up with one thing on my mind. Hello. Hello.
Hey. Hey, what's going on, Mark? I need to get Anthony Raimondi to tell me the truth. Yeah, I mean, the whole story's so wild, Anthony. I'm Mark Smerling, and these are the confessions of Anthony Raimondi. Just after half past seven, and here's Laurie McMillan with a summary of the news. Pope John Paul I is dead.
The public speculation that this death was not natural grew by the minute. He goes, "Follow history, Anthony, for as long as we've had popes. If we didn't like them, we'd kill them and we'd put our own guy in there." Luciani was contemplating cleaning up the Vatican Bank. Well, obviously he passed away before he was able to do it. He only lasted 33 days.
Chapter 6, Judges.
After a few more sleepless nights, it's time for our final interview with Anthony Rimondi. But first, I want to meet with the team I've been working with on the podcast for the past year and talk over how I might approach Anthony.
Good morning. Morning. How you doing? Good. How are you? Good, good. So I went down the rabbit hole. Of course, no one actually goes to work anymore. We all meet on the World Wide Web and we quickly jump into what's on my mind. Zach and I have time on Thursday to go talk to Anthony in the studio again. I was just thinking because maybe I call Anthony before this meeting and tell him what's coming.
You know, we got the military records back. We've done a lot of research. We've really dug into these things, Anthony. And I could go through a long list of factual problems you have with your stories. I don't want to ambush you. This is not the jinx. I want to tell you we have a fact checking problem and we're going to have to say
that these things are probably not true. Yeah. Turns out my strategy didn't impress the rest of the team. Anyway... I'm curious if you do that conversation beforehand, like the downsides is that the whole conversation is very defensive as opposed to doing it live or doing it gradually and seeing the shift. Yeah, no, I hear you. Is it better to not give him so much time to prepare? If he has time to prepare...
we're going to get another prepared story from him that's well thought out. Whereas if maybe you just bring it up in the middle of the final interview, then you get something more honest, even if the words are dishonest, but the inflection is honest. There's something in his voice that he can't hide. He's so invested, but maybe he'll give us some leeway.
And that would be leaning in on the subtitle of his book, right? Yeah, it's almost like, let's talk about the possibly true part of your subtitle. Why did you have to name it this way? I mean, all he wants in the world is a movie to be made about him. You know, so maybe we use a little of that Forrest Gump language in the positioning of it.
It's decided. I won't call Anthony before the interview and prep him, but we need to prep for the interview itself. Hey, Zach, what's the Ancestry.com assignment? Do you remember? We gather some documents and photos to bring to our final interview with Anthony. Okay, well, this is a picture we should show Anthony. Zach pulls up a picture of Hans Forsen in his military uniform just before he went to Vietnam. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah.
This brings me to something I've puzzled over for months. How could Anthony possibly have known Hans' nickname was Fuji if he didn't meet him in Vietnam? It's so hard to conceive of how he knew Hans Forsen's nickname. I know. How did that, how does that happen then? There's no information about Hans Forsen anywhere. You know, it's not like he would have been able to find that information out without knowing him. I mean, maybe he met him somewhere else. So that's where we got to look, I guess. Where else could he have met him?
Okay. All right, guys. We'll talk later. All right. Okay. Goodbye. A few days later, Zach and I go meet Anthony in the Brooklyn studio we've used many times for this podcast. Yeah, so if you see me squirming and trying to get comfortable, it's because my tailbone is broke. Crazy. That's the coxioxus bone, they call that, or whatever the hell it is. Yeah. So we're going through the process of...
fact-checking because we have to do that. We have a lawyer. Yeah, of course. Everything's got to be fact-checked. I mean, I have to tell you, the book is really an entertaining read and has that quality of sort of Forrest Gump in that sense. Not that you're a Forrest Gump fan. No, no, no. You know what I mean? You intersect with a lot of famous people and notorious people and a lot of notorious events in the book. And there's certain things we're able to fact-check
and certain things that we weren't able to fact check. So I'm going to go through the major events that we're covering in the podcast. And if you can give us a hint on how to fact check it, that would be helpful. So the first thing is the story about the plane crash. That's for real, real. Oh yeah, that, that, I'll never forget that.
I start off with a couple softballs, stories we've been able to confirm as true. Like when Anthony was just eight years old and a plane flew by his classroom window. You heard people screaming on the plane. You could actually hear people screaming.
The dates of a famous United Airlines plane crash in Brooklyn lined up with Anthony's story. December 16, 1960. It was the worst disaster in commercial aviation history. Many thought that nearby St. Augustine School, where 1,700 children were attending classes, had been bombed. And Anthony's cousin, Ralph Guido, went to the same school and confirmed that Anthony was there that day. We were both in school, and the plane flew right by our window. It was that low. He was scared. He was really scared.
You know, a lot of the mob stuff, it rings true. And your details, your names, your dates and everything ring true. A lot of Anthony's stories about the Colombo crime family turned out to be true as well. Definitely you're the cousin of Hugh McIntosh. Ralph had a lot of good stories about that. But now it's time to talk about the stories Anthony told us that we suspect may not be true. We can't find anything about the Kadabra Club shooting. I mean, and that's a major...
I'm talking about a story Anthony told us in episode two. The time he says he shot another gangster by the name of Salvador Grinello, a.k.a. Sally Burns, in a nightclub. Anthony's friend Billy Goonan told us that he heard about the murder back then, but we haven't been able to find anything else to prove that the murder ever happened.
Anthony reminds us that any official record of this murder would have been expunged because of a deal he says he made with the feds.
That's another story we will get into in a minute. Now Anthony brings up a woman I tracked down in episode two.
Anthony told us that she was sitting right next to Salvador Grinello, a.k.a. Sally Burns, when he walked up behind him with a gun. Anthony doesn't look familiar to me at all. It's been more than 50 years since his supposed shooting, but she was clear about Anthony Raimondi. And remember, she didn't want me to use her name. I got in touch with him.
Okay. She has a lot of mob stories as well. She was talking about Toto Marino's bar. Toto Marino, yeah. Dixie Tavern. I used to go up there and eat with Toto's steaks. I used to go up there with him on a Wednesday. Toto Marino, he's the one that owned the bar around the corner from me. She was still in the neighborhood even when I came home. But she has no memory of the shooting that could happen. You don't remember some sort of crazy night in a club, any club, where...
where there was a shooting no sorry i can't help you with that well she was there believe me now you said she just forgot about sitting next to a guy who was shot she didn't forget about that she did not forget about that maybe she's afraid that she could get in trouble because she was there whatever she's the one who told him i was behind them definitely she didn't forget about that there ain't no way
Okay, so let's move on from that. The next story we talk about is the one Anthony mentioned just a few minutes ago, about how he traded a long prison sentence for the murder of Salvador Granello, a.k.a. Sally Burns, by agreeing to join the Army and fight with the secret squad of other ex-convicts in Vietnam. He says, you want to get out of here? Are you serious? What do I got to do? He goes, you go to the Southeast Asian Conference. He goes, you're going to get trained, and you got to do a couple of years.
There are a lot of problems with this story. So we got back a letter from the military center. Obviously, they have no record of you. Right. Our deal was that if we lived and we came home, we would be expunged with everything. There would be nothing there because they do not want the public to hear this. That you're getting convicts, criminals, murderers, whatever you want to call us,
to go there, fight, kill these people, and then we come home, and you put us back in society, and we're clean. We got a clean record. Yeah. I mean, we've heard of people who are juveniles or they were young men who got into misdemeanor trouble and the judge recommending that they join the Army. Yeah. We've just never heard of an organized sort of effort to get convicts to join the Army. Oh, yeah. They did it. They definitely did it.
You may remember in episode three, we interviewed the daughter of a guy named Hans Forsen, who Anthony says was his master sergeant in Vietnam. His daughter's name is Liz, and we gave her Anthony's book to read. It was just crazy how he referred to him as Fuji, because I've only ever heard of, you know, a couple of my family members call him that. Liz seemed to confirm that Anthony must have known Hans from the war. How else would Anthony know Hans' nickname?
But here's another thing you might remember about Fuji. After he got out of the army, he was arrested for stockpiling weapons in his mother-in-law's basement. I knew that Anthony had been arrested for loan sharking and extortion, so I did a quick internet search of prison records. And it turns out that Anthony and Hans were in federal prison at the same time. I asked Anthony about this. They sent me originally to Lexington, Kentucky. I must have been in there maybe about two, three weeks I must have been there.
And I hear somebody laughing, and I'm saying, boy, I know that voice. I turned around and I looked at him. I just, holy shit, what the fuck are you doing here? This is Hansel Fawcett, Fuji. Wait, he was in prison? He was in the prison. I was shocked when I seen him there. And I just looked at him, and I started laughing. That's what happened to you. And I used to see him every day over there. Did they call him Fuji around the prison?
No. I was one of the guys who could call him Fuji, and maybe there was a couple of other guys they could call him. That was it. Everybody else had to call him Master Sergeant. Then I got transferred out. He said, don't worry, we'll see each other again. So Anthony Raimondi could have learned that Hans Forsen's nickname was Fuji in Vietnam. Or he could have learned it in prison. Now Zach turns to a computer sitting on the table behind him. He pulls up some photographs of Hans.
the one where he's in full dress uniform soon after he joined the Marines, and another taken during a visit home from the war. Hans looks a bit older in the second photo, and he sports a mustache. Do you recognize this guy? I can't see the picture good. Not really. Not really. You know who he reminds me of? He reminds me of Sally Burns. Really? I swear to God. The old one or the cousin? No, no, no, the older guy. That's Hans.
Surely, Anthony should recognize his comrade-in-arms from his secret missions behind enemy lines in Vietnam. This makes me feel like the only time Anthony met Hans was when he was older, in prison.
Okay, the last of these stories and the one that we're kind of focusing on the podcast and driving towards that really sort of intersects with popular culture in a major way is the murder of the Pope, right? Now we come to the big kahuna, the story Anthony told us about his part in the murder of Pope John Paul I. Remember, Anthony says he was there the day the Pope died. So to better understand what happened that day, Zach and I interviewed Philip Willen, the journalist from the top of this episode.
You might remember that Philip lived in Italy and helped write a book about the Pope's untimely death. You know that book called In God's Name?
Did you read that one? It's the one about, it's the sort of definitive book about the murder of Pope John Paul I. Sold six million copies. The guy wrote it, he's passed on. But the guy who worked with him is his researcher in Italy, still alive. He interviewed the Pope's doctor. He interviewed the guys who embalmed the Pope. Zach starts grilling Anthony to see how his memory holds up against what we learned from Philip. The woman who found the Pope's body. Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh.
It was the guy who found the Pope's body. And quickly, Anthony turns the tables and starts grilling Zach. It was not a woman. I know the difference between a man and a woman. Trust me on this.
So this became a big issue for the Vatican, actually. After it happened, they released a statement saying that it was a man, another priest who went in and found him. But it came out that it was actually a nun. You can say that this is wrong, but it was this woman. I can see Zach's getting frustrated. But something's becoming clear to me during this heated back and forth, so I sit back and watch. And the reason the Vatican lied about that is because they didn't want...
to have the idea that a woman was alone in the bed chambers with the Pope. I was there. It was a man. So they could say whatever they want. It was a man who went in there. But nuns did not come in there at nighttime. His body was found in the morning. This argument reminds me of another thing Philip Willen told us. If you want to carry out disinformation, you need to blend information
some true elements and some false elements, and that will help to bury the truth even more deeply for the rest of time. - He wasn't breathing. Then he had to wait for the doctor to come. Then the doctor came and said the pope is dead. And then it came out that he died. - It's just tough for us because that story just doesn't match up with the official story that's been told. So it's hard for us. - The supposedly official story. Let me put it that way. The supposedly official story.
No matter how hard Zach goes at Anthony, he doesn't back down. He has an answer for everything. It occurs to me that Philip Willen was right. Fact and fiction surrounding the death of Pope John Paul I have spent so much time fermenting together, they've become a dizzying brew. Okay, it's time to commit.
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I didn't quite know why I felt something was off, but I left the interview with a distant voice jangling around in my head. My name, for those of you who may have forgotten, is Reisman. You've all volunteered for a mission which gives you... I remember, like, sitting on the bed with my father, and remember they used to have the ABC movie of the week? Oh, yeah, Channel 7. Channel 7, yeah. Yeah.
It took me a while, but one morning over coffee, I realized who the voice belonged to. It belonged to an old-time movie star, Lee Marvin. Any breach of either of these conditions... With Lee Marvin. Yeah. World War II, yeah, sure. I'm a big fan of these old action movies, and there's a lot about this movie that reminds me of Anthony's Vietnam story. You will select 12 general prisoners. Train and qualify these prisoners in as much of the business of behind-the-lines operations as they can absorb in a brief but unspecified time.
For example, in the film, Marvin plays an army major given the job of recruiting violent convicts for a suicide mission behind enemy lines. What's your name, son? His name is Franco, sir. Franco, come over here. And one of his recruits is a mobster in prison for murder. And them men don't have to drill. And there's nothing you can do about it. Just like in Anthony's story, Marvin has a problem with the mobster. Look, you little bastard, either you march or I'll beat your brains out.
And like in Anthony's story, the mobster gets his ass kicked.
Then the ex-convicts in the Dirty Dozen parachute behind enemy lines. So now you'll be learning how to jump with a parachute, and you'll learn it quick. Just like Anthony says he did in Vietnam. I got to jump out of a fucking helicopter. My turn comes, I go out. Boom. Go. And you hear, zing, zing, zing. How big are these bees? They're coming up this way. Boom.
There have been many times Anthony has told me a story that reminded me of a movie. Here's a clip from Robert De Niro's film, A Bronx Tale. They called him Frankie Coffee King because his face looked like a Drake's coffee king. Here's Anthony from episode one. They called him Top because he was top, so what had he done? They called him Whispers because everything was a secret to him. This guy, they called him the gorilla. I mean, this guy was fucking huge.
And then there's the movie Goodfellas. I mean, they did whatever they wanted. They double parked in front of a hydrant and nobody ever gave them a ticket. In the summer when they played cards all night, nobody ever called the cops. And here's Anthony. And on Baltic Street, they double and triple park. Cops would come, oh, they're in Frankie's house, okay, and they'd go away. But this is the way it was back then. I've even heard Anthony use dialogue from mafia movies in his own story.
Tells me, you come back here, I'm going to blow your head off. Your mother's going to have to have a closed coffin for you. They even shot Tommy in the face so his mother couldn't give him an open coffin at the funeral. Oh, no. Oh. Oh. All right. Hello? Now Anthony gets a phone call, and I instantly recognize his ringtone. It's Ennio Morricone's score for a spaghetti western from the mid-'60s called The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Fucking phone.
It seems that Anthony and I are both big fans of old action movies. What did you think of The Godfather 3? I didn't like that. I think it was stupid. It has the whole story about the poisoning of the Pope. I would say they knew about that to my cousins or whatever over there. But it didn't do justice to what happened with him and everything. Yeah, but you think that these movies, The Godfather movies, they were based on reality at some level. Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. But sometimes the real events aren't the way they put them on the screen. They're dramatized.
It's sort of a mix of truth and fiction. Yeah.
You have that tattoo that looks a lot like the poster for The Expendables. It is. I'm referring to a tattoo I can see on Anthony's forearm, peeking out from behind his rolled-up shirt sleeve. It looks a lot like the artwork from the movie The Expendables, about another group of shady characters recruited to go on secret military missions. It is. I'm the only one that's got that. I'm the only one that's got that tattoo. Was that an inspiration? No, they gave that to me. They gave me this tattoo. Who's they?
The obvious conclusion is that Anthony lifted some of his stories from the movies.
But listening to his explanation about how he got his tattoo, I actually wonder if fact and fiction are mixed up in Anthony's mind. All right, your chariot awaits. We wrap up the interview and bid farewell to Anthony Ramondi. All right, gentlemen. Great to see you, Anthony. We'll see you again.
A few days later, I'm on a Zoom call with the team again. They've all heard the interview by now, and I want their thoughts. Yeah, I mean, I was just listening back through. He's just going on and on and on, all this stuff. I don't know, it's crazy. We've succeeded in answering some of our questions, but we've also succeeded in raising a few more.
There's got to be part of him that actually believes these stories because he's so convincing and there's so much detail and he takes himself so seriously. We have to find somebody who can shed some light on who he really is.
And it might be Ralph and Virginia. If I went down there and I was like, listen, what I want to have a conversation about is who is Anthony Raimondi and why is he telling these stories? And the best thing you can do for Anthony is tell me who he really is. We have to find the reason why he's become this fable creator. We need Ralph and Virginia. Next time, Ralph and Virginia.
Okay, so this is what I read. 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? If you have a problem with this person, look deep inside your soul and ask yourself, how honest have you been in your own life story? And I talked to a filmmaker who spent a long time with Anthony Raimondi. What were you thinking of his stories when he was telling them?
I believed everything he said. I may still believe everything he said. The Confessions of Anthony Raimondi is a USG audio and truth media podcast in partnership with Clockwork Films. 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 Draving-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 Ramondi, leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps other people find the show. And thanks for listening.