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[NON-INTERVIEW DIALOGUE.] Q : Can you please just say and spell your name for the
camera please?
[7S0A1606] TC :
S-C-I-O-N-E.
That's great.
Thomas?
[7S0A1606] TC :
[7S0A1606] TC :
Great.
[7S0A1606] TC :
[7S0A1606] TC :
Davis?
[7S0A1606] TC :
[7S0A1606] TC :
from.
that we became friends and we all, we drifted off to our own lives. I lost touch of him and finally found him again one day.
Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 3 I was a rookie DA in the Bronx District Attorney's Office in the Complaint Room just writing up cases. with some miscreant in hand Vinny Davis. EMOTION And this cop comes in and I looked up and it's
[7S0A1606]
11:19:21
And he looks at me and he goes, "You're a DA?" a little shocking to him I guess. And I said, "You're a cop?" surprised both of But with that renewed our
[7S0A1606] TC :
criminals but not necessarily the kind you just thought would go right into law enforcement.
Was it a
tough area?
[7S0A1606]
11:19:56
Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 4 TC : Well, our neighborhood was almost all transplanted A lot of kids from the North Bronx,
Italian, Irish, Jewish, that kind of mix and pretty working class, lot of blue-collar people and a lot of kids that had moved up almost in their early teens so they still had a lot of the Bronx in them. So I would say that we were probably a
Westchester neighbors?
[7S0A1606] TC : Sure.
around town at, on Central Avenue and Yonkers [11:20:43], at the Nathan's. There's a shopping center across them [11:20:45]
called Tanglewood and they became known as the Tanglewood boys. And they would, the big self-styled real tough guys in the neighborhood. eventually. Most of them sort of graduated into crime A lot of them became an organized crime actually.
But at that time they were young and sure, we got in fights with them here and there.
[7S0A1606]
11:21:04
Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 5 And you've ran into a, a half a dozen of them and a half of dozen of human [11:21:08] next thing you know, you have a brawl.
That's funny.
area?
[7S0A1606] TC :
11:21:17 Well, of course, you never really knew, not till we And it wasn't as well-reported in those
with gates outside and the rumor was somebody's dad did interesting things for a living. but you didn't really know. You knew they were mobsters
neighborhood?
[7S0A1606] TC :
once the movies started to dramatize wise guys as something romantic, once The Godfather movie was out and then Goodfellas, people started to look at it as an exciting thing to be not necessarily because you're gonna get rich but just because it would be cool to be considered mobbed up.
Is it like it is in the movies or is it much harsher, Is it an accurate depiction in the movies of mob
[7S0A1606] TC :
11:22:27 Well, I'm sure that once upon a long time ago, maybe
when the mafia was really a core group of close-knitted Italians and very familial, maybe it was like in the movies. But by the
time, the 1970s and '80s and the '90s rolled around, these were criminals. They were criminals that just happen to have an
Italian descent or a connection to people of Italian descent and they had an opportunity to sort of build on their criminality.
[7S0A1606]
11:23:00
But most of the ones that eventually became mobsters were petty criminals to start with, you know, just bad guys. And they had
an opportunity to get a little bigger by affiliating with something bigger. existed anymore. I don't think the classic Corleone family But they were certainly mob people.
That's interesting.
Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 7 [7S0A1606] TC : 11:23:28 LAUGHING I think we're gonna have to edit that
situation.
Q did.
[7S0A1606] TC :
Fair enough.
personality like?
[7S0A1606] TC :
He had a tendency to run his mouth a little bit but EMOTION , you know, he could, he liked to brag So that would sometimes get on people's
That's great.
Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 8 [7S0A1606] TC : 11:24:20 Vinny Davis as a kid was very gregarious. Everyone knew him. He knew
everyone.
up a lot so that he could get on people's nerves because he would walk right up to you and just say anything to you like, he couldn't care less. Vinny was one of those guys, you either
loved them or you found them so annoying you want to choke him. And I think sometimes I vacillated between those two positions but he was somebody you knew.
[7S0A1606] TC : Yes.
when we were 15 or 16, we weren't, we were clumsy with the girls. But by the time he got into his late teens, yes, he was He liked girls and the girls liked him. And he
a ladies' man.
[7S0A1606] TC :
years, absolutely.
[7S0A1606] TC :
was courting Diane and marrying her, I think I was in law school and I was really out of touch with the neighborhood and what was going on. So I didn't know Diane till after Vinny married her.
And I didn't remember her from the neighborhood or anything. She wasn't, she didn't grow up right around us. So I was
Like he didn't
give you a call like, "Hey Tom, I'm getting married," or something like that?
[7S0A1606] TC :
11:26:01 No, as I said, that, that period of time, I was I was pretty much out of the
getting my education.
neighborhood, wasn't really around, because I was concentrated on doing better things in that state, getting out of the mischief.
[7S0A1606] TC :
I used to, I did the math one time and said, you were better off getting drafted and going to Vietnam than staying in the neighborhood. Because your chances of coming out in one piece
were better in Vietnam than they were in our little piece of Yonkers which wasn't true for everyone but it was true for enough people that it was significant.
That's interesting.
people who were sort of like more like knock around guys like you're saying?
[7S0A1606] TC :
11:26:58 Absolutely. The more opportunity for trouble you And yeah, we had our, our
fair amount of teenage tragedies, you know, you're drag racing debts and your overdoses and, and people got in fights and sometimes they didn't make it out of them. wasn't a bad place to grow up. about you. But for a lot it
Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 11 Q : Yeah. I mean, Vinny talked about it. My neighborhood
with somebody, you won't pull a knife or a gun until it was just two guys getting into a fight or four guys into a fight and you shake hands afterwards, was that your recollection?
[7S0A1606] TC :
11:27:36 That was the way. We, in our neighborhood, you got in And, but they were
a lot of fights.
fights and they, nobody was pulling a gun at anybody, nobody was getting caught up. Sometimes things get out of hand and But by and large, it
didn't take that kind of evil turn until those later generations started to come up after we were grown men.
[NON-INTERVIEW DIALOGUE.] Q : What did you think of Diane when you met her?
[7S0A1606] TC :
she was a little intense and I, I saw the attraction he found there obviously. She was good looking but I never trusted her.
[7S0A1606] TC :
11:29:14 She seemed very sort of self-centered and out for And I always thought that she sort of latched on to
herself.
Vinny and saw him as a way to improve her station in life which is not a really wrong reason I guess to find somebody and get married but I never really believed that she would do right by him in the end.
[7S0A1607] TC :
11:29:41 Possibly so. Maybe that was really what she wanted
was a bad boy that was a real bad boy not somebody like Vinny who was, had a little bit of a bad boy persona but at the heart, he was a cop's cop. And I don't know if the wife of a cop's cop
[NON-INTERVIEW DIALOGUE.]
just describe, you said she was pretty but could you just describe Diane physically for me?
[7S0A1607]
11:30:38
Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 13 TC : Diane Pelatti was small. She was a, a tiny, kind of
intense package, slim built, deep tan always [11:30:51] sort of striking kind of Italian good looks and wired pretty tight.
[NON-INTERVIEW DIALOGUE.]
[7S0A1607] TC :
11:31:29 In the middle of this whole thing, we went [11:31:31] And when we got to the
counter, there was an agitated person just berating the counter staff and then carrying on and going, "You hurry up and I have to get my ticket and what's the problem here?" Finally, they
were begging the man, "Please, you know, back up, take it easy." And we got up to the counter and Vinny just reached over, got him by the scruff of the neck and banged his head off the counter. LAUGHING LAUGHING And they upgraded us to first class.
[7S0A1607]
11:32:20
Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 14 TC : Diane was a good-looking girl. Very slight built,
very slim, dark olive tan, very intense, kind of always a little bit on the wired side so you always felt there was a lot of energy coming off her. looking. But she was no question about it, good-
in particular?
[7S0A1607] TC her. :
11:32:47 If that was your type, you would definitely draw into
If that was your type, that was as good as that type was
gonna get.
[7S0A1607] TC :
11:33:04 Well, I started to see, after we had seen each other When I got out on the defense
side, left the District Attorney's Office, I became the general counsel for a new police fraternal organization called the Shields. And at that time, we were pretty, I don't know, the
Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 15 word radical would say but there was a tough time for cops in New York City.
[7S0A1607]
11:33:34
And we were very outspoken on the topics that affected cops. Our motto was "Cops for cops." And no sooner that I agree to be
their general counsel, then we started to have these big, ruckus meetings and sure enough there is Vinny, right up to the front, very active cop. Everybody seemed to know him. Even though he And
was Transit cop, all the guys in the NYPD knew him too.
they knew him to be out there making arrests, always the kind of guy that would back you up.
[7S0A1607]
11:34:03 We would
see other at meetings, sort of catch up and I really didn't socialize with him and his wife. a, that's the other of his life. That was a sort of, that was I really, she got on the radar
Oh wow.
[7S0A1607]
11:34:32
Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 16 TC : No. Unfortunately, I, I never saw the good times of I only saw the bad.
All right.
You're saying
[7S0A1607] TC : Okay.
at that time, back in the early '90s, New York City had three independent police departments. everybody knows. They're the regular NYPD that
with keeping order in the city's subways and the bus systems, things like that which was a big job. police department all on their own. They were full size
[7S0A1607]
11:35:22
And there was the Housing Police charged with keeping order in the projects. New York City had thousands and thousands of
housing units that were under the control of Housing Police. But they all operated in the same territory. So you could have
a situation, so the picture stacked like a cake, where there is Transit Cops working a detail in a subway tunnel over which
Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 17 there's NYPD cops looking for the same people and behind which there's a project with the Housing Cops all trying to do the same job at the same time with different radio channels and different chains of command.
[7S0A1607]
Transit Cops, a lot of times, crime would start in the subway and spread to streets or vice versa, it was very common for them to work with the NYPD side by side. District 11 where Vinny was
assigned was right in the heart of the South Bronx, very close to the NYPD precincts that had the most homicides, the most robberies, the most rapes of any place in the city.
[7S0A1607]
11:36:37
It was a really wild time to be a cop and because just like in the modern army, 10% of the soldiers fight and 90% support, in the NYPD and in Transit, 10% of the cops make 80% of the arrests because they are the ones that will go out there in the street and really go the distance. Vinny was one of those guys.
[7S0A1607]
11:37:02
He was one of the ones that would, you know, chase a guy up the subway unto the street up a fire escape to make his arrest
Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 18 whereas somebody else might say, "All right, let him go." knew the regular NYPD cops and they knew him. So he
that maybe some of the other Transit Cops didn't have? true?
[7S0A1607] TC :
11:37:23 That's absolutely true. Transit, you got to realize, Sometimes they
would, they would just tell somebody when you got to the Academy, "Okay, you're going to Transit because they need cops and NYPD doesn't." It wasn't unusual. So everybody started out
equal but the NYPDs of course found themselves thinking, "Well, they're just Transit guys, you know. They work in the subway."
[7S0A1607]
11:37:50
So they didn't have the same level of respect necessarily except for the ones that really showed themselves to be willing to, to do their best for the other cops. And of course once I was in
the DA's Office, our office was just down the block from District 11, you know, Headquarters which is on the ground, like sort of on the Yankees Stadium and so I see Vinny wandering around, out in the street, anytime there's a situation where a
Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 19 cop would put over, "10-13, officer in trouble." whether it was, you know, Transit, NYPD, Housing, he didn't care.
[7S0A1607]
that go-getter attitude annoying because it just made work for them, you know, made them get stuck to an overtime, because Vinny has to take and arrest them. level of resentment too. So there's always gonna be a
That's interesting.
this, because he went above and beyond, all these accommodations. personality? What do you think it says about his
[7S0A1607] TC :
real cop and like I said, you know, there's different, there's career officers would do their 20 and just get out and retire. And they might find someone like him annoying because he's just too revved up. There's also more conservative officers who Yeah, he pushed the
Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 20 envelope. He took, he go in, he wouldn't wait for back up. He
[7S0A1607]
11:39:33
So that sort of thing, although it makes for a good drama, you know, it's a, it's a source of a good TV show for, for, you know, some cop assignment or something, the fact of the matter is a lot of cops found that to be not the most desirable way to be. They didn't necessarily, they might respect you for being
that active but they might say, "Well, you know, relax."
[7S0A1607] TC :
because I searched myself in my memory and I'm almost sure I heard of him before the whole story with Vincent and Sabol sort of developed itself just because I was a Yonkers guy and people like that were out there. He went to the high school a little
[7S0A1607]
11:40:49
Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 21 So he had a different clickyran [11:40:52] with but over the years, I dug up stories where people I knew interacted with Sabol in some way, shape or form. of him before of Vinny? stick in my mind. So can I swear I never heard He just didn't
[7S0A1608]
11:41:15
And Vinny came up to me and grabbed me on the side and he started to tell me this crazy story about something he had become aware of that he thought the Fed should know about. we had some FBI agents at the meeting. And
tell these guys, should I ask them to get involved?" said, "Well, tell me a little about it." convoluted of course.
[7S0A1608]
11:41:46
But I heard that it was somebody named Richie Sabol who was involved with the mob and had all these nefarious goings on that Vinny had become aware of and that there was some relationship with Sabol and Vinny's wife Diane and he felt it was gonna be his duty to go to the Feds about it. Attorney now for a couple of years. And I had been a Defense
[7S0A1608]
11:42:15
I got a little more savvy and I said, "Vinny, before you get the Feds involved in anything, you better have your story straight and you better know that there's no way it can backfire on you." Because I had seen people that sort of got involved with the Federal Agency and had them turn on them and they became a target as well as the people they originally trying to help out with. So I said, "Let's take a backseat." So that's how I
first heard the name Richie Sabol, at least in the context of Vinny Davis.
to help and then become, I know what happened to Vinny but become a target of the FBI?
[7S0A1608] TC :
situation to have some sort of eyes or knowledge as to what's going on, in the eyes of the Federal Investigators that might mean that you're involved yourself. They are always happiest,
and this has been my observation universally, the Feds are always happiest if the person that's giving them information is a little dirty too because they like to have leverage.
[7S0A1608]
11:43:27
So even if you walk in the door, just as a whistleblower and say, "I've got information for you about something that's going on you should know, the first thought in their minds is, how can we tag this person so we have a hold on them so if they change