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Oct. 1, 2022 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
51:23
Edition 668 - Andy Lound And Mike Rothmiller
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Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes, and this is the unexplained.
I hope everything is good with you.
I think I was going into my movie trailer voice there.
This is the unexplained.
Apologies for that.
I think it's just the time of year and the fact that the last month, I don't know how things have been for you, but it's like Art Bell talked about the quickening with events getting faster and faster and faster and time appearing to compress.
And I think, and I still have the book that he wrote about that.
I think that's probably been happening.
It's been a roller coaster lately.
The weather here in London, somebody flipped a switch and that switch has been turned to the autumn position.
So the trees, as I look at them now, are beginning to go brown and it's a little bit colder.
But I'm trying to keep the heating off in my apartment for as long as I can because of the huge cost of energy bills.
I have no idea how the increased cost of living is going to impact on all of us.
It's looking very, very difficult.
I mean, I need to lose a bit of weight, so I've cut back on my eating and I buy cheaper food.
What we're going to do about the energy bills, everything seems to be going up.
But I do think that life and the world are reaching some kind of crescendo point, and I do think that some kind of, I can't tell you what, some kind of change is coming.
We'll see.
That is enough of my two-cent philosophy here.
Mainly, I hope everything is good with you, and I hope you're bearing up wherever in this world you happen to be.
One thing I did want to say is that at some point, I want to be able to take a break, just, you know, not a long one, but a break from the unexplained, and maybe miss a few podcast slots.
Not yet.
Going to be a while before that happens.
But I want to have some time to do some planning and, you know, book some guests in.
I think I've mentioned many, many times, too many times, that I'm not the world's greatest administrator.
It's not what I do.
And I do my own guest booking and guest finding.
And I need time to sit down with a cup of coffee and work out where it's all going into 2023.
So I think the only way to do that, plus over the years, I've got to say that I've been so committed to everything that I've neglected a lot of stuff in my home, around my home and about myself that I have to be attending to.
They're just life things that you have to do.
So I hope you understand that at this stage of life, that is something I'm going to do.
But please don't misread this.
I know some people hear a few words and then assume all the wrong things.
Please don't assume in any manner it means that I'm going to be giving this up because I'm not.
I'm committed to it.
I've been doing it longer than most people.
And I think, you know, we've done some things that have been pretty good over the years.
You know, not all of it has been A double plus.
But I think we've hit a pretty reasonable average.
What do you say?
All right.
And, you know, I couldn't have done it without you, your moral support, and those of you who've donated over the years, thank you.
And thanks to Adam, my webmaster, too.
Okay.
Two items on this edition of The Unexplained from my TV show.
Those items are a space update, including art in this, from Andrew Lound, our space expert, who is a man who is absolutely fanaticable, fanatical in the best possible way about the subject of space.
So Andy Lound with Space Update first.
That'll be followed by Mike Rothmiller, talking about his new book that he's written about Frank Sinatra and his involvement with, his interactions with the mafia.
A fascinating period in history, and Mike Rothmiller, I think, explores it brilliantly.
Mike is a former LAPD cop and also now an author.
And he wrote this with a collaborator, and we'll talk about the way that it was done, too, in this conversation.
So two things, both from the TV show, so that they're here for posterity on this edition of The Unexplained.
Number one, Andrew Lound talking space.
And number two, Mike Rothmiller talking Frank Sinatra, the man who was, definitively for me, the voice of the 20th century, his phrasing, his voice, his pitch, perfect in every way.
I once watched on the TV an analysis of the way that he develops his notes.
The guy put them on the screen, the waveforms, and they were quite unique, the way that he was able to modulate and control his voice.
That's why he was the best.
You know, we had an equivalent in the UK, a guy who was a London bus driver for a while, but also did things like record the theme from Born Free.
You know, Born Free, as free as that.
I can't sing.
But Matt Monroe could.
And Matt Monroe was acknowledged by Sinatra as being the only Brit who could sing.
But Sinatra was in a class by himself, no doubt about that.
So we'll talk about him and his life on this edition with Mike Rothmiller.
Something different here, but I think something that is worth doing.
I love real stories about real people.
They don't have to be famous, but I think everybody has a story.
This one I think will interest you.
Okay, if you want to get in touch with me, like a lot of people have, please email me through my website, theunexplained.tv.
Follow the link and you can send me an email from there.
And I love to receive your emails.
If you require a reply, please put that in the subject line.
Okay.
Item number one on this edition of The Unexplained from my TV show, Andrew Lound, Andy Lound, and Space.
Sad news, I think, about Artemis.
It's been delayed again.
It is.
This is truly due to bad weather this time, which is always going to be an issue.
It's been delayed a couple of times for technical reasons.
They've solved the latest technical issue, which wasn't the rocket itself, actually.
It was part to do with the 8-inch diameter fueling connection where the pressure went up too high on the hydrogen pumping system and the seal failed.
And so they've had to replace the seals.
And that was tested last week, the new ones, and they're fine.
And now the weather's gone bad, so it's going to have to be delayed yet again, unfortunately.
But the only one we can play with is my rocket at the moment.
So I can play with my model.
That's very good.
But afraid I can't see the real one launch yet.
They've got Till 4th of October to launch it on this window, otherwise, it's going to have to wait a couple of weeks.
But it will go at some point.
And this is the nature of testing.
You have to be absolutely safe.
You do, and that's exactly why they have to be careful.
I love your model, by the way.
It looks like one of those super soakers, doesn't it?
One of those water pistols.
Now, serious news, this is going to be happening this week.
In fact, it's going to be happening within, I think, 36 hours or so.
The double asteroid redirection test or DART spacecraft, according to space.com this is, will slam into a small piece of space rock called Dimorphos on purpose at a staggering four miles per second.
The exercise comes in the name of planetary defense.
In other words, it's part of the plan to potentially protect us from asteroids or heavenly body strikes on this planet that could have devastating effects depending on how big and how fast the thing is.
The idea being here that we might be able to nudge it off course.
What are they doing?
Yeah, I mean, what we've got is we've got the Didymus, the main asteroid, and going around it is a little moonlet slowly orbiting it.
And the idea is to crash this spacecraft into the moonlet.
And as it's going in its orbit, it'll hit it front on as it's orbit.
And that should adjust its orbit by a fraction of a degree.
And a small CubeSat, which Itilia has built and put on top of this, will actually separate and will observe the impact itself.
The Webb Telescope is now going to observe the impact as well with infrared.
So that'll be a great way of doing it.
And then the HERA spacecraft will be launched by the European Space Agency in a couple of years' time to go to the system and see how much of a change this little moonlet has in its orbit about its parent body.
And that will give us some hardcore data then to how much mass we need to hit an object of a particular given mass just to deflect it.
And if we've got years notice, I have to say this, we need years notice, you know, 10 years would be better.
And we hit an object hard on and it alters its path by about a fraction of a degree.
By the time it reaches the Earth 10 years later, it'll miss the Earth by tens of thousands of kilometers.
That's if we get a couple of years' notice.
That's if we get the notice.
I mean, if we find out a month's time, then this process will not work.
We just can't get enough mass to it.
And we'd have to think of something else to do it.
We may have to go very desperate by exploding large nuclear warheads in front of it to cause a shockwave, to perhaps divert it away.
And the worst case scenario is blowing it or trying to blow it up.
But it depends how massive these things are.
And if it's rocky or if it's stone or if it's icy, that's a whole different game plan altogether because a metallic, rocky object is a metallic object is very, very hard to deflect much different capacity.
So do, you know, if we get the hang of this and we learn useful lessons and we develop technology to be able to actually achieve this, is it likely that at some future point, because they're saying it's inevitable that something big will come this way one of these days, maybe not in our lifetimes, but at some point, is it likely the way that it will be handled is that the technology will be used, it'll be pushed off course, then they'll tell us?
Good question.
That is a really, really important question.
And there's a big debate going on at the moment.
I think they would have to tell us because some of the amateurs out there, and I hate the term amateur these days, because if you say amateur, they always mean some little geek locked in a room somewhere.
And in reality, amateur astronomers today are as good as any professionals out there.
They simply don't get paid to do the job.
And they're really good.
They will actually spot it anyway.
And they will do the calculation.
They'll say, oh, wait a minute, aren't you aware that something's heading towards us?
So they're going to have to tell us because I'm afraid somebody out there is going to spot it anyway.
I mean, we've got groups around, there's a group in Britain, for instance, which monitor these things.
So someone's going to spot it.
So either way, they're going to have to tell us about it because someone on the ground will spot it.
Exactly.
You know, there is, I think, was it?
Alan Wicker was a great maker of documentaries.
What a character.
Sadly, sorely missed.
We now send comedians out to talk to people in far parts of the world.
But in the old days, they used to send Alan Wicker a proper journalist.
And he interviewed the great, great, great-grandmother of Jesse James, the outlaw.
And I seem to remember that she said she knew where he was buried.
And Wicker tried every technique to try and get that location out of her.
And she just said, the only way to keep a secret is not to tell it.
And she went to her grave keeping the secret.
The problem with today's technological age, you know, if somebody detected something heading this way, somebody would get to hear about it.
And that's a secret you couldn't keep.
That's right.
We've got the satellites observing the Earth all the time.
So the Russian army mounting on Ukraine, we knew all about it by private satellites way before anybody else told us.
Last topic very quickly, Space.com, we were going to do this a couple of weeks ago, but let's do it.
Now, Martian soil could serve as a 3D printing material.
That's exciting.
I mean, we've got the Moxie project supposedly creating oxygen on Mars out of the raw materials.
Now they're telling us that we might be able to actually make things on the surface of Mars using 3D printing and what's lying around on the ground.
Yes, they've created some simulations of Martian soil.
It can't be 100% accurate.
Excuse me.
It can't be 100% accurate because we haven't got any Martian soil.
But the best they can do, and they've been mixing a titanium alloy with it in order to make a very strong substance.
And they found that they've made the mixture first just the regular, the soil itself, and then with the alloy inside it.
And they found the alloy with it makes it incredibly strong.
And they can actually produce 3D printed items with it.
And you could do things like buildings.
I mean, buildings on the Earth have actually been built now using big 3D machines, which have been quite staggering really.
And so it is now possible to use that on Mars.
And the advantage of that is, of course, is carrying the material to it because you can't carry, you know, you can't just go to the local hardware store, load 40 tons of bricks and then send it on its way to Mars.
That's just not going to be practical.
You can't do that.
So it'd be best to use the on-site materials and using the regolith.
And in fact, one of the experiments of going to the moon, interestingly, when Artemis is up and running, will be to do these experiments on the moon to see if it's practical to actually do it there.
And then you can transpose that technology to there.
But this is a very good, good opportunity here that when you get to Mars, you can actually use the regolith to actually do 3D printing and just shows how far 3D I mean my model here is 3D printed so just so how far we've actually come to doing 3d printed buildings especially important of course is radiation protection for the astronauts because radiation is the biggest critical element to astronauts surviving on the surface of the planet right very comprehensive and one thing I love about you is that you don't use words like I would use like topsoil muck
dirt you use regalments and that's why we love you now i've got to say um normally i'm cutting you down i think i'm going to have to extend you slightly because we're having some problems we're going to be talking tonight um adrian i know that you will like this too about frank sinatra's mafia connections which is an amazing thing uh people often talked about it some people perhaps foolishly joked about it back in the day but there's been a book written about this and
mike rothmiller is former LAPD cop and author who's written about that we are at the moment frantically in our talk TV way trying to connect with him hopefully we will but let's run this one past you Andy while I've still got you Daily Express the European Space Agency announced the list of candidates who will train to join a future NASA Artemis mission to the moon during the International Astronautical Conference which was held in Paris across the week.
So we're going to have a Brit or Brits on board eventually.
Yes, it's quite likely.
I mean the selection they've had so far includes our great Tim Peak of course who did fantastic work on the International Space Station carrying out a spacewalk as well and EBA doing work on the outside of the space station and the list is quite fantastic.
It's quite a mix.
You've got Tim Peak of course Britain.
You've got France's Thomas Pesquet.
Germany's Dr. Alexander Gerst and Dr. Matthias Mora.
Italy's Luca Pamitano and Samantha Cristoforetti.
I love that name.
And Denmark's Dr. Andreas Morgensen.
And these are the seven candidates.
To be quite honest, if Artemis really gets going, all seven will probably get an opportunity at some point of flying to the moon and doing the work.
Because as the moon base develops over a period of time, you've got Gateway, the orbiting space station around the moon, and you're going to have the base on the surface of the moon.
You're going to need all sorts of candidates, scientists and all sorts, flying backwards and forwards to the moon.
And therefore, the list is just going to keep growing and growing and growing.
But this is the European Space Agency's list.
There's also going to be Canada, of course, Japan, the United States are going to have their astronauts going there as well.
Not to forget, of course, China have announced that their moon-based program is going to also be international.
And they're asking for international partners for theirs as well.
So they'll have their Tychonauts and people like that.
And it's quite important, this is because we've talked about this before.
We're talking about who owns the moon.
China have made a fantastic announcement that their international exploration of the moon will be for on behalf of the planet Earth and for peaceful purposes for the planet.
They actually made that statement, which I think is absolutely a brilliant statement for the People's Republic to actually make.
And it's showing they're getting an international viewpoint for exploration of the moon as well.
The legendary Andy Lound.
Check him out online.
Just put his name into a search engine.
You will find him, A-N-D-R-E-W-Andrew, L-O-U-N-D-Lound, and you will find him.
Great guy.
Okay.
Next up, we have from my TV show, Mike Rothmiller, talking about the life, times, and the mafia interactions of the great Frank Sinatra.
Astonishing stuff about Sinatra, the man who, for my money, had, and I know he's been called this by others, he had the voice of the 20th century.
He was a great entertainer.
But as you reveal in the book, there was another side to him, and I think we've heard allusions to this in many documentaries and programs over the years.
I'm going to quote from the book, though.
You say, Frank Sinatra was born angry.
It was cumulative.
And then later in the book, you say, he was a man who always held a grudge, and vanity tried to track, vainly rather, tried to track down the doctor who was clumsy with the forceps when he was born and scarred his face when delivering him.
He could not let anything go.
That's very true.
He held a grudge against many, many people through his life.
And the more famous he became, the longer he held the grudge.
Prime example would be John Kennedy.
When he was president, he was supposed to spend some time at his house in Palm Springs.
Sinatra had a lot of modifications made to that house.
And at the last minute, Kennedy canceled.
And it was because of his mob ties.
That just infuriated Sinatra.
I mean, we don't have a ton of time to talk about this aspect of it, but it's fascinating.
But Peter Lawford, a British actor in Hollywood who married into the Kennedys, Peter Lawford, who we've heard about in many programs that I've done with you as well, in relation to Robert Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and all the rest of it.
Peter Lawford was the man who was tasked with having to tell Sinatra that Kennedy was not coming.
Exactly.
He was the middleman, unfortunate for him, because he was kind of the middleman that set everything up in the very beginning, interviewed everybody.
And Sinatra, in a lot of respects, blamed him for this snub that he received from JFK.
I mean, you know, we're painting, this man was enormously talented.
We're painting a picture here of a man who had another side, and he undoubtedly did.
You know, he was involved with and eventually got together with Ava Gardner, didn't he?
Among his Hollywood connections.
I mean, he had many female associations, but he wanted Ava Gardner.
And there was a man who had dinner with Ava Gardner.
And I don't know whether it was after they split up or when this was, without going through the book in detail, I can't remember, but it doesn't matter.
The person who had dinner with Ava Gardner was actually threatened by Frank Sinatra.
We can't quote the words here, but Frank Sinatra was not messing about.
No, he wasn't.
He was very upset because it goes back beyond just the person he had dinner with.
There was a battle between Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra and Howard Hughes.
Howard Hughes had flinged with Ava, and he was very upset with Frank over that.
But now, Frank heard about it, and he basically told the guy in no uncertain terms that he better not be seen with Ava again, or Frank even hearing that he's been seeing Ava again.
So he was very, very jealous and at times very vindictive.
This isn't something that's in the book, but just because of the name that I've carried all my life, you mentioned Howard Hughes, the famous and incredibly talented American multi-billionaire who, of course, was a recluse and became rather strange in his later years and died secluded in a hotel that he'd bought in Las Vegas.
But he was a remarkable man, had a remarkable amount of money.
I presume when it comes to the mafia, Howard Hughes was too big to touch, was he?
In a sense, yes, because Howard Hughes was tied into the CIA for a long time, and they were very protective of Hughes.
And so Hughes was doing a lot of things, a lot of strange things.
I have interviewed two of his closest aides.
One set up all of his sexual activities, and another one was in business running casino for him.
And so there's a lot of inside information that people don't know about Howard Hughes, but he was very powerful.
He had a direct line to the president where he was staying in Vegas.
He had a direct line to the head of the CIA and a direct line to a number of heads of state in other countries.
And Sinatra, when he was trying to get his gaming license back, he went to the CIA and offered to become, for a better term, a soft spy for them, that he would go and he said that he could meet with the royal family in the UK, that he could get whatever information the CIA wanted if they would assist him.
And the CIA turned him down, his offer, because they were already dealing with the mob and they were very concerned that if they brought him into the, under their umbrella, he may learn about the mob involvement or one of the mob guys may say something to him and then he would speak publicly about it when he was angry.
So they turned down his request to work for it.
How fascinating.
We've got to take some commercials, but just to give you this aspect of Frank Sinatra's, and look, I love Frank Sinatra's music and I have his back catalogue.
Frank Sinatra, routinely under the open carry-in-law, carried a gun, didn't he?
At Walfair?
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
But he really didn't have a permit to carry.
He just did it, as a lot of celebrities did, especially in California at the time.
Mike Rothmiller is the author who's written this new book, along with a co-conspirator in this endeavor, I guess you can put it.
Okay, Mike, let's unpick the story of Sinatra's involvement with the mafia.
And I kind of thought that there would have been some grand meeting in an office somewhere, maybe his agent's office where he'd been introduced to some senior monster or something.
But apparently it all started in 1946, didn't it?
With a chance meeting with somebody who was to have a very big influence on Sinatra on a plane, a man called Benny Siegel.
Yeah, Benny Siegel was the gentleman that is known as Bugsy Siegel, who pretty much started Vegas, turned it to what it was today.
And you called him a pistolero mobster.
Great term.
Exactly.
And Benny went to Hollywood to basically put the mob's hand into the motion picture industry that was thriving then at the time in Los Angeles.
And that's what he did.
And Sinatra met him and he was enthralled by him.
And this went on throughout Bugsy's life.
He would be in a restaurant.
If Bugsy walked in, Sinatra would stand and say, how are you this evening, Mr. Siegel?
Very good to see you and so forth.
And he did that a number of times when he was having dinner with Phil Silvers, the actor.
They would meet like that.
And Silver's wife talked about it for a long time, how they just, both of them, were just enthralled by Siegel.
They would talk about his adventure, say, gee, well, I wonder how Bugsy kills people.
Does he prefer to shoot them or use an axe or does he beat them?
And it went on and on like this.
There was just something about Bugsy that I think instilled fear in Sinatra, but also he knew there was some power there, some great power with the mob.
And Sinatra growing up prior to that, he had some issues with the mob, but this was a major player that he was getting close to.
I think even before this, and the reference comes later in your book, but you say that Sinatra's real-life godfather had mafia connections and was able to get him out of a contract?
Yeah, that's Jim Moriati.
He was really the underboss of the Genovese family then.
And he knew Frank when he was very young and just starting to sing.
And there are times where Frank would go to the local bar and sing for his dinner and maybe a couple dollars and a few packs of cigarettes.
And that's basically where he came across him.
And as he started to grow in popularity, the mob, they're always interested in people who make money, especially entertainers.
And he went to Jimmy Dorsey when Sinatra was under contract, a lifetime contract to him, and gave him an ultimatum.
Either you release him or going to kill you.
So the stuff that's in the real life godfather motion picture, you know, I want your signature or your brain's on the paper.
That stuff happened for real.
Exactly.
And it happened.
And so from that time on, Sinatra was indebted to him and all of his people.
And then that went on to the Chicago mob, a lot of the people he met there, mainly Sam G and Khanna, and also the Fashetti brothers.
And a lot of people, they've never heard of those two guys, and they were very powerful within the Chicago mob.
They were cousins to Al Capone, and they were just doing everything you could imagine, making hits and strong army people.
And Frank was always around them.
When he would fly to Illinois, he would stay at their house.
And they're seen together all the time for years.
He did many favors for them, and obviously they did many favors for him.
And now, the Fashetti brothers, am I right in saying that I think quite late in the book, you make the point that he carried money for them?
He carried a bag of a couple of million dollars for the Fashetti brothers.
I mean, did he do that knowingly, in your opinion?
Oh, yes.
He knew what he was doing because from the information we got intelligence-wise, he was very nervous about doing it because he thought when he went to Cuba, it was taking the money to Cuba and that they may check him, Cuba intelligence, Cuba customs.
And that would be very difficult to explain.
What are you doing with a suitcase coming in with $2 million in cash?
So he did that for a favor, and they appreciated it as time went by.
But it was also a situation where they were giving him a kind ultimatum.
You know, we've done a lot for you.
Now it's time for you to do something for us.
His connection with Lucky Luciano, who operated out of Cuba in the days before Fidel Castro, we have to say, when, you know, a lot of people were making a lot of dollars in Cuba.
And there is an astonishing and very scary story about Sinatra.
Help me if I've got the detail wrong about this, but he was staying in a hotel, plush one, suite 214 with a woman, and a bunch of men came in to kill them, effectively.
That's what he thought, that they were coming in to kill him.
And they shot and killed one of the guys, but actually what they were was security coming because they heard some issues that there may have been something going on in the room.
And they were coming in to, for a better term, investigate.
And he thought they were coming to kill him.
And so there's shots fired and one of the guys was killed.
So around Sinatra and Sinatra himself were so ready for something like that.
Because let's make no bones about it.
There are some real brutal killing descriptions in this book.
The way that the mafia dispatched people was exactly as represented and even more so in The Godfather.
So he was so ready for something like that to happen that they were on a hair trigger and those guys came in to check the room for security and just got blasted.
Yes, yes.
It was a tragic error on his behalf, but it just showed the paranoia he had when he went to Cuba carrying the cash, and then also the paranoia that followed him for many, many years throughout his life.
Because I know when I was working, the organized crime unit for LAPD, we would surveil a lot of the mobsters.
We'd go down to Palm Springs and surveil them, see what they're doing.
And Sinatra at the time, he had us place down there, and he would have meetings with the various mobsters that came out and would spend the winter there.
And a lot of those guys lived in security compounds in a community where it was gated security guard.
And they would go there.
Sinatra would drive himself generally, and they would have meetings at these mobsters' house.
Occasionally, they'd go to one of the restaurants where they all hung out, and they would go to the back room or they'd leave out the back door, drive someplace else, and have a meeting.
So it was interesting because when Tony Arcado, who was at one time the head of Chicago mob, when he was living in Palm Springs during the winter, I went down and spoke with him.
I just drove down, knocked on his door and told him who I was.
I was an intelligence detective about organized crime, and I wanted to talk to him.
And he was shocked, first of all, because cops generally don't do that.
They would just surveil him.
And he said, sure, come in, sit down.
So I went in, sat down.
We started talking.
And it was about the old days, the mob when he worked for El Capone and so forth, and about friendships with entertainers, Sinatra, and many other ones.
And he was guarded when he was talking to me, which I understood, but yet he still disclosed a lot of information.
I asked him about corrupt elections in Chicago and Illinois.
And he said, oh, yeah, yeah, I've heard about those, but I really don't know the details.
And I said, okay, that's fine.
And I asked him about some of the people, the St. Valentine's Day massacre, because he was without a doubt one of the people that was in there shooting people.
So interesting fellow, but that's what we did.
We spent a lot of time in Palm Springs when they were there during the winter, following them and seeing who they met with and developing more intelligence.
Now, look, Mike, we have to say that there will be people in today's generation who will be wondering how this was, how such an entertainer, a movie star, a film star, a man who was of great significance and great wealth through his life, how he could be involved and connected with such people.
But I guess we have to try and understand the context of this because he was a Habokan boy, New York boy, Italian descent.
The mafia would have been, as he was growing up, would have been a part of life for so many people.
Just as in the east end of London, we had a family called the Crays, the Cray twins, you know, who ruled with a rod of iron, were involved in crime.
But a lot of people would pay respects and homage to them, saying they kept the streets safe and they were just part of the way things ran.
Is that how Sinatra became involved in all of this.
And of course, if you multiply it and amplify it, a lot of these people involved in the mafia were not only involved in drugs and cash deals and stuff like that, they were involved in entertainment.
They were involved in Las Vegas.
So if you're involved in that, they're going to be part of your world.
Oh, absolutely.
He grew up with it.
Like many people on the East Coast, he grew up knowing the mob in his neighborhood.
He knew who they were.
They knew, yeah, he was a little Frankie.
And he started doing things to them.
Like a lot of the guys who ended up getting into the mob, they started out as teenagers, running numbers or just hanging around with him.
And he did the same things, except they saw something in him when they liked him, but they also saw the potential as an entertainer.
And in the very beginning, Lucky Luciano put up 50K, $50,000 to help promote him.
And the other mob guys came in and they said, okay, we're going to help promote this young guy and see if he'll turn into something.
And he did.
And he was very, he was thankful for that.
And he always had respect for them, a great deal of respect.
And that was out of what they did for him and plus out of fear because he knew what they did.
And at any time, if they got terribly upset with him, because they thought for a while they may have to take him out because he was drawing too much attention.
And they didn't like that.
But that's the mob.
That is fascinating, isn't it?
That there was a time, and you say in the book, where Sinatra was throwing, as we would say here, throwing his weight around so much that it was actually embarrassing them.
And it was getting quite serious at one point.
Yeah, he did that.
He would get upset and he would hit people.
He would start fights and somebody else would come in and finish the fight.
But he was making a lot of demands on people, especially within the mob with people he didn't like.
And he would want them not in the entertainment industry, taken out.
He didn't want them in Vegas.
He didn't want them around them.
And they accommodated him at times, but they also didn't want to draw a lot of attention to themselves.
But when he was starting to make a lot of things public, either through his temper or through drinking or through some attorneys, they were getting upset because the last thing they want is media attention because that draws law enforcement.
Nobody's sacrosanct.
Nobody is fireproof.
A lot of people met a sticky end.
So Sinatra had to be careful just like everybody else.
Seagull himself, Benny Seagull, was assassinated himself in a brutal hit.
And Sinatra was so close to him, but he just moved on from that.
He shrugged that off quite quickly.
Yeah, he had to, because within maybe an hour of Seagull being murdered, some guys walked into the casino, the Flaminglo thing in Vegas and said, we're now the owners and we're running it.
Benny's gone.
And so it was obviously a major, if you want to say, conspiracy to do it.
And everything was in place to take over.
And Benny was there and then he was gone.
And that was the end of it.
There's a famous scene just before we have to take some more commercials here, but there's a famous scene in The Godfather that a lot of us are horrified and captivated by in equal measure.
That's the scene where an up-and-coming singer isn't offered a part in a movie, and the person responsible for the movie is adamant about it, and then, of course, finds his beloved racehorse's head in his bed, which is one of the greatest and most frightening scenes, I think, in all of movie history, but it's just so compelling.
There is a reflection of this, isn't there?
In the book, you say that Sinatra got a part in a movie because of intimidation.
Yes.
Harry Cohen was the head of the studio at the time, and they were looking at shooting the movie, and he was picking the stars that were going to play in it.
And Sinatra wanted to lead, and he had already been approached and Cohen said, no, he's not going to get it.
I don't want him.
Period.
At that stage, Frank had a chat with his godfather.
And they went and sent Johnny Roselli in, who was the Chicago mob's main guy in Hollywood.
And Johnny went in and had a chat with him and said, listen, either you give Frank that part, or another term, you're going to die.
What do you want to do?
And he knew who Roselli was.
So he received the part.
And that was a part in From Here to Eternity?
Correct.
Correct.
So this was part of life then.
Pardon me?
This was part of life then.
Oh, yes, it was part of life then.
And that was the way things are done in Hollywood back then.
The mob was very influential, just like they were in Vegas for many, many years.
They ran the state.
And so you just have to accept it for what it was.
Plus, there are a lot of other entertainers, major names that were assisting the mob.
Let's put it that way.
Look, we have to say that, you know, we're singling out Frank Sinatra here, and he is, you know, this is a book about the mob that involves Frank Sinatra.
But you also have a cavalcade of famous names who we'll all know from the Silver Screen and other branches of entertainment, you know, who were similarly friends with and on good terms with and assisted by these people.
Oh, absolutely.
Because they realized the power that they had in Hollywood.
And they also understood that if they crossed them in some way, they may end up in an alley somewhere with a bullet in their head.
So they went along with a lot of issues.
They looked the other way, and they were very friendly with many, many of the mob guys, especially Johnny Roselli, who was always around Hollywood, because they understood, excuse me, they could make their career or end their career Very rapidly.
We're talking with Mike Rothmiller, in the United States former LAPD cop and author, about Frank Sinatra and the mafia.
And by the 1950s into the 1960s, Frank Sinatra was not immune from investigation, was he?
There was a man called, I'm hoping I'm going to pronounce his name properly, Senator Estes Kefava.
Is it Kefava or Kefava?
It's pronounced Kehoffer, right?
Kehoffer, okay.
And he was involved in a major early 50s investigation.
They went to talk to Sinatra, and there were very pointed questions put to him.
You've got in the book a great transcript of some of this stuff.
Quotes, Do you want me to believe that you don't know the people we have been talking about are hoodlums and gangsters who've committed many crimes and are probably members of a secret criminal club?
Answer, no, of course not.
I heard about the mafia.
Question, well, what did you hear about it?
So, you know, he was put on the wreck, wasn't he?
Oh, he was.
That was the U.S. Senate committee, and they were investigating the mafia for a number of years.
And he was called, as other mafia bosses were called, to testify.
And naturally, they all took the fifth or they didn't know what they're talking about and so forth.
But Sinatra was called because of his close association with many of the mobsters that the Senate committee knew.
And the way they knew is from FBI surveillances and also from the LAPD gangster squad at the time, it was called.
And then it changed the name to Organized Crime Intelligence Division from their surveillances.
And so they knew that he was meeting with various mob guys throughout the country.
And he wasn't hiding it at the time.
And so that's when the mob was getting real concerned that he's testifying before the Senate.
And they weren't quite sure where the investigation was going to go.
And so Sinatra was a bit antagonistic.
And they were starting to view him at the time as a loose cannon.
And generally, a loose cannon that knows something about the mob gets taken out.
Right.
So he was lucky to come out of that unscathed.
I mean, how did that conclude in terms of the investigation?
Did the investigation just turn up nothing?
Well, no, they came up with some connections and with the mob and so forth.
But like most Senate investigations in this country, they spend a lot of time, they make a lot of noise, a lot of publicity, and then it all seems to go away.
And so that's pretty much what happened.
Didn't go away for long, though.
There was a commission in 1957, the McClellan Commission.
Yeah, there's another group.
Another senator started one up and some people were doing the same investigation, going over a lot of the same areas again.
JFK was a friend of Sinatra.
Sam Giancarner and Sinatra helped in the campaign to get JFK elected.
There's some fascinating stuff in the book about that.
Right.
At the time when JFK was running for the presidency, they knew he had to win some swing stakes.
And so his father invited Frank to the compound and Hyannisport.
And they had a chat and he said, hey, I want your help and with your friends' help, meaning the mob.
And Sinatra got a hold of Gianta and they said, sure, we'll help him, thinking they're going to be kept out of a lot of issues by doing that if he was elected president.
And they did.
They came through.
They bribed a lot of people.
They got the unions to vote for him in various states.
And that swung the election.
And also, there's a woman named Judith Exner who was the girlfriend of Sam Giancana, but she was also at the same time servicing John Kennedy.
And there was one time, as I saw the intelligence on it, where John Kennedy, he called to speak with Judith.
And he didn't realize the number he was calling was Sam Giancana's house.
And she was there, and the FBI was wiretapping Giancana.
And so at that stage, J. Edgar Hoover knew he would never be fired from the FBI because he had Kennedy wrapped up.
Dynamite.
He had dynamite in his files.
You also talk about how Sinatra was told to keep that a secret.
The fact that this woman was sleeping with Giancana and with the president.
And he knew he had to keep that secret because that was explosive.
It was.
He was told to keep the secret.
And plus, he's coming from Sam.
He would not cross Sam.
He knew what Sam's power was, and he had a lot to fear from Sam.
So that was the situation.
But quite frankly, at that time, law enforcement intelligence, the FBI, knew it all already.
And it was just a matter of time before it came out.
But he did keep it quiet the best he could.
Meantime, you say in the book that Frank, just as a sidelight, that Frank Sinatra swore on oath to the Internal Revenue Service, the tax people in the States, he swore that he had no business relationship with Sam G. and Conner, and you say that was a lie.
Sure.
He was partners with him at the Cal Neva Lodge up near Lake Tahoe.
Sam G. and Connor put up a lot of money to go in with Frank to be partners.
And they also put a couple of mob guys in there to help run the place and keep an eye on it.
And Marilyn Monroe went up there.
Sam Giancana was there.
John Kennedy's father went there and partook in some of the ladies of the night that were offered to him.
And so it was well known.
There were people surveilling it within the intelligence community, the lodge, when Sam was there and when Frank was there.
And Frank saying he had no partners.
It was a lie, and everybody knew it.
What do you think?
And I know that JFK is one of the cast of characters in this book.
What do you think that Sinatra knew about the killing of JFK, if anything?
He probably heard a lot of rumors, like most people.
I think, which obviously I never spoke to him, that he probably believed that the mob was involved in some fashion because Robert Kennedy started going after the mob a lot when he became Attorney General under JFK.
And they felt that they went back on their word.
They helped him, JFK get elected, and now his brother's coming after them.
So I think that Sinatra probably felt that there was a lot of mob involvement at the time.
And what was interesting is that there could have been a lot of CIA involvement at the time, too, because of documents that I've obtained clearly state that Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of JFK, was an asset that the CIA was using for years.
And thereby hangs a tale that we talk about on that anniversary every November, and we still can't get the clearest of pictures, and I don't think we ever will, but what a fascinating web that is.
Now, Sinatra didn't have long to think about and ruminate upon the killing of JFK because within weeks, his son was kidnapped.
And who did he go to in that situation?
He didn't go to the cops.
He went to his friends and the mob.
Exactly.
You would think that the first call you would make would be to the FBI or the police if your son was kidnapped.
Well, Frank, when he heard about it, his first call went to Sam Giancana because he believed that it was some sort of mob guy or from a different family that pulled off the kidnapping.
Giancana said, okay, you know, I'll look into it.
His second call went to Jimmy the Weasel Fradiano in Los Angeles.
Fradiano was a hitman for the Chicago mob, who was primarily on the West Coast.
And so they said, sure, we'll see what we can do.
We'll go out and start looking.
And they did.
And so as they thought it was a mob, probably some guys in the mob were going after them.
And they grabbed a few people that they, for a better term, they're interrogated very forcefully.
And those people disappeared.
But as it turned out, they had nothing to do with the kidnapping at all.
And Frank Jr. was freed, which was kind of strange because he was dropped off a few miles from his house in LA, and he was driven down by the kidnappers in the trunk of a car from Lake Tahoe.
And so that he wandered around the streets for a while.
And you think if that was the case, you would have immediately ran to a house, a business, called the police, called your house or your parents and said, hey, you know, I'm free.
Yeah, but that didn't happen.
So it's just that's very, very strange.
I think they made a movie out of that.
Look, we're coming to the end of this, Mike, and there is so much in this book that is worth reading.
In fact, the way that it's written, I think, is tremendous.
It almost needs to be read by that great square-jawed, straight-shouldered actor, Robert Stack.
You know, it's kind of like a screenplay.
Just in the last minute, how must we remember Frank Sinatra?
Because look, you know, nobody's totally squeaky clean in this life.
He is tainted by association.
How do you think we should remember him?
He was a great entertainer.
People look into that.
He did a lot for charities, without question.
And he had a close association with the mob.
Probably closer than he wanted, but once he got so close, you can't get out of it.
Yep, and I think that's the impression that we need to take away.
Great book.
Mike, thank you so much for your time.
You're welcome.
Mike Rothmiller, the book is called Frank Sinatra and the Mafia Murders.
Mike Rothmiller, former LAPD cop, I think you will have heard some of that background in the conversation.
And Douglas Thompson, who is essentially a Hollywood biographer, investigative journalist, too.
But we have to look at the story we've just heard in the context of the times.
And if you read this book, there is a whole panoply of famous names who also were in the same situation as Sinatra.
They got to know these people.
Those people helped to facilitate their lives and careers.
And it was just part of the way things were.
Fascinating.
Mike Rothmiller talking about Frank Sinatra and his life and amazing times.
And before that, Andrew Lound talking about space.
Two great people, both from my TV show.
Many thanks for your support, moral and otherwise, for the unexplained.
Gratefully received, and thank you for keeping me going for all of these years, nearly 17 of them now.
You know, as we approach 2023 and I'm sitting here, I still can't believe that it's 17 years, pretty much, since I first had the idea for doing this.
And I won't tell you the story of that again.
I'm sure it's recorded for posterity on many of my podcasts.
All right, I'm wishing you well from where I am.
More great guests in the pipeline here at the home of the unexplained.
So until we meet next here, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been the Unexplained Online.
And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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