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April 6, 2024 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
50:15
Edition 803 - Forgotten Detective/Scandinavia UFOs

Two items from a recent radio show... A catchup with UFO chronicler Clas Svahn in Sweden... And Jeffrey D Simon tells the story of the doggedly determined William J Flynn... America's forgotten "super detective"...

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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.
Hope that everything is good with you.
I hope that your life is, you know, ticking along nicely.
And I hope that you enjoyed the Easter holidays, which are now fading in the rearview mirror.
The good news from London is that the weather seems to be improving.
And as I'm recording this, I can actually almost feel the temperature rising with every hour, which is great news.
They're telling us we're going to get up to about 20 degrees Celsius, maybe 18.
20 is 68 Fahrenheit in the next couple of days, which is great for April.
And long overdue.
You know, the one thing about this last winter has been, as far as I'm concerned, I don't know if you live in the UK, but wherever you live, in the UK, the skies have been grey more often than they've been blue or even close to blue.
And that is really, really depressing.
So I think the chance of getting a little bit of sunshine is a tonic for everybody, don't you think?
Atonic.
My grandmother used to say that.
A couple of items from the radio show on this edition of The Unexplained.
We're going to talk about the bulldog detective William J. Flynn, America's first war against the mafia, spies and terrorists.
This man is a forgotten super detective, a totally incorruptible man.
And if I read a little bit of the blurb, the information that goes with the book that I'm going to be talking around by Jeffrey D. Simon in America, the book is called The Bulldog Detective, and the publicity material says, and I quote, America in the early 20th century was rife with threats.
Organized crime groups like the Mafia, German spies embedded behind enemy lines ahead of World War I, package bombs sent throughout the country, and the 1920 Wall Street bombing dominated headlines.
The story of the one man tasked with combating these threats has yet to be told.
This man, William J. Flynn, and we will tell his story thanks to Jeffrey D. Simon a little bit later.
It was something that I put on the show that aired at Easter on the radio because I thought it would be something different and it's nice to hear a story.
So sit back, relax and enjoy that.
Also, another item from the radio show last week, Klaas Svan.
We haven't heard from Klaus for quite a while, few years now, in Scandinavia, Swedish man, man who's investigated UFOs and ufology for a very long time.
So Klaas Svan, the first item that you will hear on this edition of The Unexplained.
Hope that everything is good with you.
Thank you to Adam.
Very busy guy these days, but he's continuing to get the shows out to you.
Now, a lot of you have asked me about the future of the radio show, and truthfully at the moment, I don't know, because, as you may have read, the direction of travel for what used to be talk TV is towards streaming video.
And it is possible that they may want me to be involved in that at some point.
Now, you know that I'm not the world's biggest video fan, but I think that done properly, it can work.
But I'm a radio guy, first and foremost.
We'll see how it all goes.
But I wanted to be honest and tell you, as far as I know, what is going on about that?
Watch this space, as they say.
What else is there to say?
Nothing really.
If you want to get in touch, please email me through the website, theunexplained.tv.
You can follow the email link and send me an email from there if you'd like to.
Loads of great emails recently.
And, you know, so many people telling me their stories and also making suggestions for guests.
Guests that I may be able to get hold of and some that I think it may be tricky to get hold of.
But, you know, I'll give it a go, as they say.
I'll try anything once.
So that's where I'm at.
So you can email me through the website.
Don't forget, of course, the Facebook page, the official Facebook page of The Unexplained with Howard Hughes, on which this week I announced that, yes, we are going ahead.
In October, it is likely to be back end of and into November with the latest Unexplained Live Cruise.
Now, I don't have any or very many of the details yet.
Stand by for those, but I'm very excited that we're going to do it again with Morella, the Unexplained Live Cruise 2024.
And this time, I can tell you that we will be in Europe.
Last time we were in North America, US and Canada.
This time we're going to be in the sunny climes of the south of Europe.
And that is probably all I can say for now because we're still working on the details.
But look out.
I'm very excited.
The Unexplained Live coming soon.
And I hope that you can be part of it because we'll have some good stuff for you.
All right.
First item on this edition of The Unexplained from the radio show in Scandinavia talking about a vast archive of UFO material.
This is Klaus Svan.
From Yahoo News, newspaper clippings, books, and first-hand accounts of people who said they visited other planets are catalogued in a giant Swedish archive on paranormal phenomena, attracting the curious and researchers from around the world.
The Archives for the Unexplained, AFU, claims to be the world's biggest library of paranormal phenomena.
4.2 kilometers of shelves underground.
Klaus Svahn and Anders Lilgren, who run the archive located in the southeastern town of Nordkeping, say they are neither superstitious nor believers, but rather curious investigators of the unknown.
That's a pretty amazing story that.
I've spoken with Klaus Vahn before, and I didn't realize that the archive they have runs as big as it is.
I think we're connected with him now, so let's get to Klaus Svahn in Sweden and talk with him about this.
Klaas, how are you?
Good evening.
I'm very good.
Howard?
It's a couple of years since we last spoke, Klaas.
This story, why were the newspapers and other wire services running this story about your amazing archive?
Well, we had a visit by the French news agency AFP a couple of weeks ago with a film team.
And I'm not really sure why they did it at that time, but there is an exhibition in the same city at the Art Museum.
And that exhibition, as crazy it sounds, it really is built from what we are doing at AFU.
So it's an exhibition about art and people beyond.
Now, that piece Of wire copy that I read said that you've got newspaper clippings, books, first-hand accounts of people who say that they visited other planets.
Just give me a couple or an outline of a couple of the most amazing stories that are chronicled in that extensive archive.
Well, one of the stories that I have spent quite a lot of time to discover the traces back in history is a radar observation in the very north of Sweden from 50 years ago, really, 1974.
And I traced at least seven eyewitnesses who saw firsthand outside this radar station an elongated object in the clear blue sky moving very, very strangely.
So they ran down into the complex and they could also see this huge object traveling over the radar screens and suddenly made a very, very strange turn, vanishing westward over Norway and out into space.
That is one of the stories that I have been putting quite much time into to try to find more and more evidence to.
How is the Scandinavian UFOC looking at the moment?
You know, things seem to be a little quieter at the moment across the United States and UK.
I think people are awaiting disclosure, but we seem to be getting maybe a few less reports than we had before.
Are things quieter there at the moment, or are you having a spike in these things?
Well, UFO Sweden had 274 reports last year, which is quite ordinary.
And I think this year has started as every other year with one report every second day.
Most of them are, of course, not very interesting, but there are reports that are coming into our system that are daylight reports that are worthwhile to investigate.
The newspapers here, and I'm sure you take a look at the British press from time to time, Class, they leap onto stories.
Some of the stories are not new, or they're based on documentaries that were out a few years ago, or they're a little misleading.
And some of them are real nuggets of gold.
There was this story that I mentioned a couple of weeks back.
Researchers in Norway are searching a frozen lake that a UFO allegedly crashed into 77 years ago.
The legendary sighting allegedly took place in the village of Roros in 1947.
The mayor of the village at the time claimed to have seen a craft crash into Lake, and forgive me for the pronunciation here, Lake Jubsjon?
Jubchon.
Jubchon, okay.
Do you know anything about this new search?
Yeah, absolutely.
I was there in May last year during the first search, and this is the second one, which is headed by Rünik Rig Rostad, who is a very skilled investigator into this.
And I also read a lot about the first observation in 1947, which was a huge object coming over a family with a tremendous sound, crashing into the lake, but floating on the lake for at least 15 minutes.
And when the family turned to their work again and half an hour, maybe an hour later, took another look, it was gone.
So it may be resting on the seafloor.
And they had a radar return, which indicates that something is there, but you don't really know what.
Now, isn't that interesting?
It could have been something, perhaps, I don't know, you know, meteor or something like that, a piece of rock from space, perhaps?
No, no, absolutely not.
Definitely not.
I will call myself a semi-expert in meteors, and they don't behave like that at all.
They are crashing and splashing.
They are not floating, and they are not sounding like this, and not looking like this at all.
It was like an egg-shaped thing and flew very, very low and scared the hell out of this family room.
And what happens next with this, as far as you know?
Well, Run and his team will continue their search.
They couldn't get hold of this object this time.
They could see it deep in the mud, but they couldn't get it up to the surface.
But they will return again and continue this search.
And the interesting thing is that this is only one or many examples of objects crashing into lakes in Norway and Sweden.
And it's very, very much a Scandinavian thing.
You don't find crashes like this in other countries.
Can you think why that might be?
I mean, I know you've got a lot of lakes.
Yeah, I mean, Finland has a lot of lakes.
They only have a few crashes.
Sweden has also a lot of lakes, but many, many more lakes, crashes, sorry.
And every one of those are occurring in July or in August.
And most of the time, in the middle of daytime, around 11 and 12.
We have to talk about this again, Klaus.
Very quickly, I'm sure you've been following what's happening in Washington.
The white heat of debate about disclosure seems to have gone a little less hot over the last couple of weeks.
People were expecting some kind of action on this.
Have you any thoughts on the way all of this is going?
Do you think that we're going to get this thing, this magic thing called disclosure, or do you think that we're going to be led down the garden path again, as we say here?
You know, I was in contact with Chris Mellon, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, just a couple of days ago.
And he said that nothing, nothing has happened, no attempt from the Congress to do anything about this David Grush testimony, which is very, very unsatisfying because whatever you think about David Grush, what he says can be checked.
Somebody must do that, and the Congress must do that.
But they have not done anything this far.
I spoke to Christopher Mellon just before Christmas.
He seems to be moving on to other things now while there's a delay in all of this, which is interesting in itself.
Do you think, does your gut tell you that we're going to get anything much this year?
Or with an election happening in the US and one in the UK, do you think it's all going to go back on the back burner?
Yeah, I don't think we will see any disclosure this year.
I don't think so.
And my thanks to Klaus Svahn there.
We will check in with him and do something longer at some point quite soon.
Now, the story of the Bulldog Detective, William J. Flynn, a man who predated J. Edgar Hoover, was a dogged, determined, and incorruptible detective.
And he was behind solving many cases.
And one notable case that he was never able to solve, but was something I hadn't even heard of.
That was a bombing of Wall Street by a bunch of anarchists.
I don't think they were ever able to get a handle on who did that.
He was involved in that, but his life story is amazing.
The man who's written it in a book called The Bulldog Detective is Jeffrey D. Simon.
I don't know whether my description there was any good.
It seemed to me that this is a very special man we're about to discuss.
That was a perfect introduction, and you're not alone in not knowing of him or hearing of him.
Most Americans and most people in either the terrorism field and even those in the Secret Service were not really aware of his legacy and who he was.
He basically became a forgotten man in history.
Which is a shame.
It seemed to me reading about him that this guy's hallmark, his calling card, was dogged determination.
He reminded me, in a completely different era, but that movie, Catch Me If You Can, you know, the Leo DiCaprio movie?
Oh, right.
That was a great movie.
And the detective who would not give up on pursuing the person he was in pursuit of.
Tom Hanks, yeah.
Tom Hanks.
It just struck me that they were very similar in many ways because William J. Flynn didn't give up.
Actually, and what he had, Flynn, was this doctrine.
He called it steady hammering.
And according to him, steady hammering, quote, that's my doctrine and advice.
It doesn't do to drop a case under pressure of a new matter.
Reserve a place for it in the back of the head.
Think of it.
Hammer away at it.
Here a little, there a little, until the men you are after are either apprehended or dead, end quote.
And he just would not give up on anything.
And as you said, he was a big man.
And you can see from the cover of the book, for your listeners who are familiar with what Orson Welles looked like at the end of his life, this is what Flynn looked like.
He was just this giant man, 300 pounds, and he was a bigger than life character.
And he was one of these people who, from a very early age, and I know this feeling, from a very early age, he was determined that this is what he wanted to do.
He wanted to be a detective.
Right.
And actually, he was born in New York.
His father had emigrated from Ireland.
His father was a butcher.
His mother was a native New Yorker.
But his father died when Flynn was 15 years old.
And Flynn had to quit school to help support both his mother and his five other siblings.
And he had these jobs, odd jobs as a teenager and into his early 20s.
He was a tinsmith, a plumber, stone carver, even a semi-professional baseball player.
And he actually built a successful plumbing business, but he did always want to be a secret service.
And he actually didn't get that job until he was quite older, 30 years old, which is not when most people start.
But he just rose rapidly through the ranks.
He did.
Once he got that start, it seems to me there was no stopping him.
And he became involved in so much high-profile material that we'll discuss here.
But I loved the story of him going for his interview with the Secret Service in New York and them saying to him, you need, like a lot of people say when you go for a job interview, you need to get some more experience, go and work in a prison.
Exactly.
And what was interesting about that is that the prison was called the Ludlow Street Jail.
It was in New York.
And that jail held some common criminals.
It held at that time, there was also debtors who went to prison, but there were also federal prisoners who were either awaiting trial or awaiting their sentencing.
And these were counterfeiters.
Now, the Secret Service, most people in America, and I guess around the world, think of them as main job protecting the president.
They were founded, though, in 1865 to battle counterfeiting.
In America, one-third of the currency was counterfeit then.
So the Secret Service's job, and when Flynn was starting out, was really to battle counterfeiters.
So Flynn got the job there, befriended a lot of counterfeiters.
He was like a warden, a keeper.
And he learned a lot of the tricks of the trade.
And so after a couple of years, went back to the Secret Service, said, hey, I got my experience.
Will you hire me?
And they put him in the New York office.
And then he kind of went to another office in Pennsylvania.
And by 1901, he was promoted to head of the New York office, also called the Eastern Division, which got him involved with dealing with the mafia.
And he was used to responsibility, used to being responsible for things, because his father died.
And that made him essentially a breadwinner, I think.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
He was confident, you know, not cocky, but very confident and always won respect by people.
And he was like kind of a natural born leader.
But yes, he had always this sense of responsibility, responsibility for his family, responsibility for the men working under him and so forth.
What makes, I should have asked you this right at the start, but let's ask it now.
You have a very distinguished background in research into fields, particularly terrorism and, you know, the international dimension of that, the way that countries handle that.
What would make a man like you want to investigate a man like this?
Great question.
When you write books, you're always trying to look for a topic either that hasn't been written about before, or if there is a book about it, you can do something different.
One of my previous books dealt with a terrorist group where Flynn was involved in battling them.
So I knew of his name and I knew something about him.
I had no idea of his incredible story and everything regarding that.
So as I looked and did a little more research, I figured, you know, this is going to be really an interesting story.
Second question would be, would I have enough information to fill up a whole book, you know, 100,000 words?
And I was able to track down through the magic of the internet his grandson who gave me some stories and some photos.
And then Flynn himself did a lot of writing and there were things in the archives.
So then I was off and running.
And there was the terrorism angle because one of his main feats was dealing with anarchists and terrorists.
that's a word that you don't read a great deal these days, anarchists, people who are against the system.
And there's a lot to rail at these days, but we don't read a lot about anarchists.
But to America at that time, the threat of anarchists was a very big and real one.
1919, 1920, it was waves of terrorist activity mainly perpetrated by anarchists.
I'm skipping ahead a bit here, but it fits here.
There was something, again, I'd never read or heard about.
There was an attack on Wall Street.
There was an attack on the financial heart of America, a bomb.
25 people died.
And, you know, he was the right man in the right place at the right time to be put in charge of that investigation.
That's another amazing aspect of this story.
Just like Flynn has sort of been forgotten in history, this Wall Street bombing has almost been forgotten in history.
It occurred in 1920, September 16th, when a horse and wagon exploded on Wall Street.
A bomb was hidden there.
And as you said, it killed numbers of people, injured over 200.
And at that time, it was the worst terrorist attack on American soil.
And what's amazing about that is the perpetrators were most likely a lone wolf, a last remaining member of this group called the Gallianists.
And he's believed to be Mario Buddha.
The leader of the group was Luigi Galleani.
Now, this bomb, which left a lot of traces on Wall Street evidence and everything, Wall Street didn't want terrorism in their area.
It's not good for business.
So they hired cleaning crews to come through that night and basically wipe everything out, clean the blood, wipe out the evidence, and they wanted business as usual for the next day.
So this was good for the banks and for the businesses there.
It was awful for the investigators like Flynn because a lot of the key evidence was gone.
So what did he do?
He started an investigation.
Basically, it was the first, what we call it, almost like the first war on terrorism.
He would cooperate with local law enforcement throughout the country, trying to follow up traces.
They would find different pieces of clothing or so, but they could never actually pin it on this Mario Buddha.
So this is really one of those cases where it's one of the most horrendous attacks of terrorism in U.S. history that never has been officially solved.
Was that a disappointment?
That must have been a disappointment to this man because this was a proud person.
Very proud.
And actually, it kind of cost him his job.
There was a lot of competition, bureaucratic rivalry going on.
And there was this other individual called William J. Burns.
You may have heard of the Burns Detective Agency.
Yes.
Yes, he was the founder of that.
And he was like a competitor of Flynn.
He almost actually looked like Flynn.
He was also a big guy.
But Burns was sort of jockeying for a position.
He wanted Flynn's job.
And Flynn at that time was head of what we call the Bureau of Investigation.
That was the forerunner of the FBI.
And so when the Wall Street bombing wasn't solved by 1921, there was a new president, there was a new attorney general, and Flynn got pushed out of the Bureau of Investigation and Birds took over.
But it was a big disappointment for Flynn, no question.
And, you know, that was a very, very important part of this story.
You know, we're not necessarily doing this chronologically now, but I don't think it matters.
We need to get a picture of the man, and that's what we're doing.
Absolutely.
In World War I, there was a role for him at that time.
You've got a whole chapter called On the Trail of German Spies and Saboteurs.
Right.
Now, again, the Secret Service at that time, so just backtracking a little, he was head of the Eastern Division, the New York Division of the Secret Service from 1901 to 1910.
Then he had a brief stint as a deputy commissioner of the New York Police Department, the NYPD.
But then in 1912, he's appointed head of the Secret Service.
And a little anecdote there.
Flynn was a New Yorker.
Now, I grew up in New York, so I kind of know, you know, the New York frame of mind.
He did not want to leave New York.
This isn't a dream job now.
But sort of only a New Yorker would suggest to the Secretary of the Treasury, who is in charge of the Secret Service, look, I really don't want to move to Washington.
Can you move the Secret Service to New York?
So they said, we can't do that.
You know, we protect presidents now.
So they made a compromise where Flynn would live in New York.
He would commute to Washington, get a reduced salary, pay his expenses and things like that.
But he was very happy in that job.
Now, he's going after counterfeiters, but then World War I breaks out in 1914.
The U.S. doesn't enter until 1917.
But the Germans set up an espionage and a sabotage ring in New York right after the war started.
They wanted to know what was going on with the British ships, supplies going to Britain.
So Flynn still had nothing to do with that until the Lusitania was torpedoed by the Germans.
And there was all this loss of life.
At that time, President Wilson said, all right, I want to know what the Germans are up to, not just internationally, but what they're doing here in the U.S. And he knew the Secret Service was the best unit to go to do this.
So Flynn formed a 11-man counter-terrorist, counter-espionage unit that would kind of survey what the Germans were doing, look at the diplomats who were undercover, basically using the cover of being a diplomat.
And it turned out that one day, one of his men, who was named Frank Burt, and another of the men on the team, followed two people.
One was a German-American who was in charge of a pro-German newspaper, and the other was the diplomat.
They weren't really sure who he was.
They didn't even know at that time he was a diplomat.
He was well-dressed, carrying a briefcase.
They follow him onto an elevated train, an L train in New York, and Burke is sitting near the man with the briefcase, figuring this must be an important guy.
Really, I want to see where he's going.
So then I can give information to my boss, you know, William Flynn.
So When the train hits the 50th Street station, which is like Midtown Manhattan, the German with the briefcase is reading a book and then realizes, Oh my god, this is my stop!
I'm going to miss it.
So he yells to the conductor, hold the door, hold the door, and he runs out forgetting his briefcase.
So Burke snatches it right away.
Now, the German diplomat goes back into the train where he says, somebody took your briefcase and he's panicking out.
So he's looking all over the platform.
He runs down to the street and there he sees a man with his briefcase.
He can recognize the shape and the way his briefcase looks.
So he gives chase to it.
This is the Secret Service agent, Burke.
So Burke runs away from the German, jumps onto a streetcar, so like a trolley car, and tells the conductor, look, you see that crazy man running down the street?
And the German was waving his hands, screaming and everything.
He said, that man created a scene on the elevated train.
Don't stop your car.
Keep going.
Keep going.
So they keep going and they lose the guy.
Now, the guy's name was Dr. Hendrik Frederick Albert, and he was the commercial attaché at the German embassy.
But he really was leading this whole sabotage, espionage, and propaganda campaign.
So Burke gets off the streetcar when he feels he's safely away from Albert, calls Flynn.
Flynn drives up, meets him.
They open the briefcase, and there they see all these documents, a budget for $27 million to fund German attacks on ships carrying supplies to the Allies, strikes at docks, strikes at munition plants.
So they knew they had a really big fine there.
And then the Secret Service leaked this to a newspaper because they wanted the American people to be aware of what the Germans were up to.
And they sort of wanted to expose the operation.
And Flynn became famous after that.
And was this all reported by the newspapers?
Yes.
Yeah.
Now, at first, they didn't say it was the Secret Service, and then it got revealed that it was the Secret Service.
And so Flynn, as head of the counter-espionage unit, it was another feather in his cap.
He had also gotten a lot of national attention for something that happened earlier, which was dealing with the mafia in New York.
That's exactly what I want to talk about in the next segment of this conversation.
So we'll hold the mafia thing because we can do a whole segment on that.
But, you know, that was part of this man's fame and notoriety.
If you, as we come to the end of this segment, if you could sum up his approach to what he did.
Look, my dad was a cop, right?
And he was very, very good at noticing things that other people had not noticed.
He would know if somebody was drunk.
He would notice if a car was being driven in a peculiar way, in a way that me driving, I wouldn't have noticed.
He noticed all the details.
It seems to me that William J. Flynn had a lot of that.
Absolutely.
And it was not only the keen eye, the key really is that patience.
You know, going back to a steady hammering, he wouldn't rush in terms of arrest or trying to, you know, get glory very quickly.
Basically, it was to get all the evidence that he could and, you know, this expression, you know, dot your I's and cross your T's.
You know, he was just very, very astute, very careful, and he didn't play politics.
You know, he wasn't a politician, although he was very, very media savvy.
You know, he knew how to deal with the media.
And we have to say that the Secret Service in America at the time, from other things that I've read and other interviews that I've done, was perhaps, they say, you may disagree with this, but it wasn't as advanced for a while as it was in the UK.
You know, there are those who write that the Americans didn't really get their act together on secret matters until the Second World War.
But talk to me a little about the way that Secret Service was made up in the U.S. at that time.
Yeah, well, again, they didn't have the resources that the British had.
I mean, basically, again, the Secret Service was formed for counterfeiting.
So this whole deal of going into the counter-espionage in World War I was brand new.
So definitely they were undermanned, underbudgeted, and nothing compared to what every agency is today, not just in America, but around the world in terms of the sophistication of all the high-tech devices and everything that you have.
And we have to say, as we round out this segment, that William J. Flynn was doing what he did without the benefit of all of the things that we take for granted today, like phones you can walk around with and hold in your hand, like, you know, the internet, which we're using for communication at the moment.
You know, he had the telegraph, the railways, and what people in the north of England, where I was brought up, called Naus.
You know, just inherent intelligence, inherent sense.
Exactly.
And he had great men working for him, and he, you know, instructed them in terms of the surveillance and to not give up and to just really keep after things.
But definitely he did not have the benefit of the high-tech devices we all have today.
So remarkable all the more, I would say, because of the difficulties that he had, but also the chance to use his brain and his inherent innate intelligence.
For me, the best part of it all was the fight against the mafia, because we all watched the Godfather films, I think, and we all are interested, maybe enchanted to an extent in a chilling kind of way by the mafia.
But William J. Flynn versus the Mafia is a story in itself.
We're talking about William J. Flynn, one of the most famous detectives, one of the most dogged and determined detectives of all time, it seems to me, working in an era without the technology and the backup that we have today.
And I wanted to save this bit for the second segment because there's a lot to say here.
The battle against the mafia.
And this is something, Jeffrey, that William J. Flynn, ACE detective, got well and truly stuck into, didn't he?
Absolutely.
He kind of fell into it because when he becomes head of the Eastern Division, the New York office of the Secret Service, again, his main function Is to go after counterfeiters.
Well, the mafia was involved in counterfeiting, so that's got him in terms of doing battle with organized crime.
Now, in those days in New York, it was really the first organized crime family in the city.
It was called the Morello-Lupo gang.
It was Giuseppe Morello.
You know, all these mafi always have these great nicknames.
He was called the clutch hand because he had a deformed hand.
And he was basically the godfather.
He was the boss of the bosses.
And then there was another one, his associate, Igdasio Lupo, who was called Lupo the Wolf.
He was the most trusted associate.
And they were responsible for murders, extortion, kidnappings, and counterfeiting.
Now, where the counterfeiting comes in is that they would have these operations going, and Flynn would, because of that, have responsibility for trying to catch them with enough evidence that they could be prosecuted.
The problem was that because they were so fearsome, nobody ever testified against them.
So Flynn made arrest of Morello and Lupo for counterfeiting.
It never held up in court because nobody would testify and it was always just thrown out.
But this was a real murderous group.
They preyed upon Italian businessmen in Little Italy.
And what they did was called the Black Hand letters.
Now, Black Hand would be they would send a letter or sometimes just put it under the door of a merchant in Little Italy.
And it basically says, pay or die.
Pay us this money or we're going to kill you.
We'll blow up your shop.
We'll kidnap your kids.
We'll kill them.
And they did all of that.
So they had a lot of fear.
Now, there wasn't an organization called the Black Hand Organization.
Other groups and individuals sort of copied that in trying to, you know, for their own benefit.
But these Black Hand letters created a lot of fear.
So one day, Trin arrested one of the members that was working with Morelo and Lupo.
But again, he wouldn't cooperate.
But somehow, Morelo Lupo believed that this guy cooperated.
So they wanted to kill him, but he already now was sort of incarcerated on something else.
So they lured his brother-in-law to New York and killed him.
And what they did was they left his body, which is head almost cut off, in a barrel in the middle of New York.
And it was called the barrel murder mystery.
And it basically is sort of like terrorism today.
People get desensitized to the same number of either kidnappings, hijackings, bombings, car bombings, and so forth, that a terrorist group, if they want to announce themselves or create more fear, do either something different than hasn't been done before, or they kill more people, something to rise above the normal flow of terrorism.
So Morello Lupo, to rise above the normal flow of murders that go around everywhere, decided we'll leave this body right in the middle of the city.
And it achieved its purpose.
It got publicity, it created more fear, and it frustrated Flynn and others in law enforcement.
And one of the other people who really wanted to also get the Morelo Lupo gang was this New York policeman called Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino.
Now, Petrosino was an Italian detective in the predominantly Irish NYPD, and he was able to form what was called the Italian squad.
And he was going after Morello Lupo, but like Flynn, there was never enough evidence to nail them.
By 1910, no, I'm sorry, 1909, Petrosino was sent on a secret mission to Sicily to get evidence on all Italian criminals who had emigrated to the U.S. Because if you had emigrated to the U.S. and you had a criminal record in another country, you could be deported if you hadn't been in the country for more than two or three years.
The second was to find out all the Italians who are currently incarcerated in Sicily, so the Ellis Island immigration officials could be on the lookout for them.
And the third was to see if he can form sort of an intelligence unit that would help the NYPD in Italy.
Well, the Morello Lupo gang, they got wind of this and they had their associates assassinate him in Sicily.
And he was Petrosino, the first U.S., I'm sorry, the first New York police official to die in the line of duty in another country.
And he had one of the biggest funerals ever in the city.
And Flynn, who was friends with him, was really heartbroken about this.
And he's, again, dedicated to, I got to get these guys.
So it turns out the Morello Lupo gang, a few months after that, maybe because they just felt more confident, start up another big counterfeit operation.
And Flynn raids the plant.
It was in upstate New York.
But again, Morello Lupo were gone by that time and he didn't get enough evidence.
So Flynn said, you know, I'm going to take a chance.
A few months later, he rounded them all up and he hopes maybe I could find somebody in this group who will testify, you know, against Morelo Lupo and the others.
Turned out, one of the people who he arrested was Antonio Comito.
Now, Comito really was not a mafioso.
He was sort of tricked into becoming a printer doing counterfeit bills for Morelo Lupo.
And they told him, if you try to leave us, we're going to kill you and your wife.
So he was really in fear of the group.
So he was almost relieved when he got arrested.
And he said to Flynn, yes, I'll cooperate.
Did they offer him protection?
Did they offer him a deal?
Oh, yes.
They offered him, you know, no prison time at ever.
You know, he'd be able to testify, you know, without incrimination.
He wouldn't be sent to prison.
But Flynn had to protect him now, right?
Because Morella Lupo found out that one of their guys is going to talk.
So he was hiding out in Flynn's office in New York.
They would secretly try to get him to a restaurant for food.
So it was a touch and go until this trial started.
Flynn had to worry that nobody's going to knock him off.
Now, so the good news is he has a guy who wants to testify, right?
Here's the bad news: the moniker for Camito was like, you know, not Camito the killer, Camito the lion.
He was known as Camito the Sheep.
It was because he was a timid guy and he had the nickname the sheep.
So Flynn's thinking, oh my God, is he going to hold up in court?
Because he's going to be giving all this information.
And Morelo and Lupo are going to be staring at him, which they did.
They'll be giving him death threats with hand motions, which they did.
But Amito came through like a lion.
He was just great.
He was articulate when he, you know, they had to translate from the Italian, but he gave all the evidence, which really helped to convict Morello, Lupo, and other members of the gang.
Now, the judge, when he gave a sentence for the counterfeiting, gave an unheard of sentence, 25 to 30 years in prison, which is extraordinary for counterfeiting.
But the judge knew that they had been involved in all these other murders and extortions.
Now, what happened when Morello and Lupo were sentenced was reported in the newspapers the next day, and people were astonished.
Morello started crying.
He fainted.
He collapsed.
He went into convulsions.
He had to be carried out of the courtroom.
Lupo cried like a baby.
And so when all this was reported, you know, the public said, oh, yeah, maybe this mafiaoso aren't as tough as we think.
We are.
But it was a great public relations coup, you know, for law enforcement.
Well, no, absolutely.
And perception is reality.
If you're seeing this person break down under the weight of what's happened to them, that sends a sizable message to people almost like killing the person and putting them in a barrel.
It's the same kind of thing because that kind of message gets out.
It's ironic, though, isn't it, in that era, and the same thing applied to Al Capone, that they couldn't get these people for the bloodthirsty deeds they did.
They had to get them on the financial crime.
And part of that was down to the fact that William J. Flynn was not allowed to investigate homicides.
That wasn't part of his brief, was it?
Exactly.
Exactly.
So if they hadn't gotten involved in the counterfeiting, Flynn wouldn't have any responsibility or wouldn't have, you know, be able to arrest them for murders.
That would have to be from the police and other, you know, agencies.
But it just so happened that they were big counterfeiters and that was Flynn's responsibility.
And like you said, just with Elliott Ness, the untouchables, and Al Capone, it wasn't getting him on bootlegging and murder.
Tax evasion.
Income tax evasion.
And it happens today.
Terrorists may get convicted on financial crimes, even though they did certain killings, but you have the evidence on illegal financial transfers and things like that.
And if we're to believe what we saw in The Godfather, and I love Godfather 1, and in fact, I like all of The Godfather series, let's be honest about it.
Godfather 3?
Do you like Godfather 3?
I like 1 and 2.
Yeah, no, I prefer 1 and 2 and 1 in particular.
You know, that's the original and the best.
But if we're to believe what we saw, and a lot of that was absolutely true, in fact, a lot of real Mafia figures were in that movie.
A lot of people who were connected, as they say, actually appeared in the movie as extras.
But if we're to believe this, the Mafia had all kinds of people, police chiefs and politicians in their pocket.
So pretty amazing that William J. Flynn, this incorruptible six-foot man with a mustache, you know, this giant of a man, amazing achievement that he was able to bring them down when perhaps they had friends in high places.
Exactly.
And I think one of the reasons is that Flynn was really interesting in terms of he wasn't interested in politics or running for office, and he didn't do any of these backslapping and lobbying.
So he was really shielded by his own decision from politicians, you know, and payoffs and things along those lines.
But he did know how to use the media.
He had movies made about him in terms of what he did with the Germans.
You know, silent film was made about him and everything.
But he really was an incorruptible public servant.
And I think what's interesting is he died in 1928.
And I just want to read a quick thing.
This is an obituary from the New York Herald Tribune.
Quote, there developed a mighty legend around William J. Flynn.
His activities against counterfeiters, smugglers, diplomatic enemies, bombers, and wartime food hoarders wrote a halo around his name and the word Secret Service.
But he died, unfortunately, an unhappy man because when he was kind of forced out of the Bureau of Investigation, he formed a private detective agency that didn't do that well.
His kids who sort of ran it, they drank too much and they upset the clients.
So that kind of failed.
But what's really interesting, and I didn't know this, he founded one of the most famous detective magazines of the time.
It was called Flynn's, and it published both nonfiction and fiction stories, so it's like called pulp fiction magazines.
One of the writers, he wrote in the first issues, he said, we don't care who you are.
If you have a good story to tell, we'll publish it.
So one of the writers who had published a few things, but was not that well known at the time, was Agatha Christie.
And she published a piece called Traitor's Heart, which years later she adapted and changed to that, I think you heard of the witness for the prosecution famous movie.
So Flynn just had his hand in everything.
But his career ended with less of a bang, more of a whimper, didn't it?
It was not a nice way, as you indicated, as you alluded for it to end.
Yeah, he thought, you know, after he leaves, actually forced out of the Bureau of Investigation, and eventually, you know, J. Eagle Hoover takes over a few years after that.
And Hoover then becomes, you know, head of that organization, the FBI, for decades.
But Flynn thought, somehow, I'm going to be called back to government service, but it just never happened.
And so it was like about eight-year period from the, I'm sorry, seven years from 1921 to 1928 that was really kind of unhappy for him.
But he did take pride in the Detective Magazine.
He really liked that.
And he wrote some good stories himself.
And just really a remarkable man.
And I just thought he really shouldn't be forgotten to history.
No, absolutely.
There's some motivation for writing it, yeah.
It seems to me that he's every bit as important as J. Edgar Hoover, but Hoover had the fact that the electronic media was developing.
That was very much on his side.
And we've all seen the newsreels and the movies that idolize J. Edgar Hoover and the honest, incorruptible men of the FBI.
That's part of America.
And William J. Flynn didn't have the benefit of that.
But I also get the feeling, and you tell me if I'm right here, reading between the lines, this guy was not a schmoozer.
He didn't know how to do it.
He didn't really care for it.
And if he had been more of a schmoozer, perhaps he might have been lauded even more.
What do you say?
Absolutely.
I think he would have kept his jobs.
He just would have known how to play the politics.
But maybe if he had done that, he wouldn't have been as effective and as respected in his regular work.
But yeah, he just didn't, for whatever reason, I couldn't find him any quotes about, I don't want like the backstab and things like that or back slab and all that.
But he basically just was dedicated to his job.
And it's almost kind of like tunnel vision, you know, where he's going to really work to try to solve cases.
And he wasn't able to solve the Wall Street bombing, but nobody really was able to.
But I think not playing the political game cost him in terms of other promotions and things along those lines, but it didn't get him involved in corruption like it did his successor, who was William J. Burns.
William J. Burns took over after Flynn and got involved in a whole bunch of scandals and was forced out himself.
Not only do you have to be incorruptible to be a William J. Flynn character, you also have to be pretty fearless.
And at one point, he was sent a bomb, wasn't he?
Yeah, and he sent several times bombs.
But at one time when actually he was head of the Eastern Division of the New York, of the Secret Service, bombs would come to his home and then the Secret Service would dip, like it would be presents sometimes.
And every present had to be dipped in water, which his kids hated because they never knew there was a bomb in it.
But yeah, he was sent bombs.
His life was threatened, but he was fearless.
He just said he laughed at it even when his life was threatened.
Jeffrey, this is a fabulously detailed book.
It's called The Bulldog Detective.
It's about William J. Flynn.
My audience now knows his name.
I think they should buy the book.
You've crammed so much detail.
I always look at books that I get sent.
And if the print is spaced out and there are many pages, you know that there's less of a story.
And if the print is tightly packed, you know that you're in for something.
And I was also very impressed with at the back of the book was this long, long litany of references, you know, reference sources that you've been to.
You know, you did a lot of work.
You wore out a lot of shoe leather for this one.
Oh, absolutely.
But that's, you know, that's the fun also of writing a book and doing the research.
You know, one thing leads to another and it's just a joy and then trying to, almost, I guess, composing music.
You try to see where everything fits together.
One of the downfalls of getting so excited and interested in the research is when I did research on contemporary newspapers, you know, of his time that would write about him, I would do it for what my purpose was.
But then there'd be a story about something else.
And it'd be fascinating.
So I started reading that.
And before I know it, I'm spending too much time reading these other stories.
But it was fascinating.
Well, I'm pleased that we've spoken about this.
I hope we can speak about other topics that you're involved in, too.
As I say, it's The Bulldog Detective.
And this book is available worldwide, is it?
Yes.
Great.
Okay, well, thank you so much, Jeffrey Simon.
More power to your elbow with that wonderful story about a wonderful man, William J. Flynn.
That name is going to be imprinted on my brain.
The remarkable story of the Bulldog Detective, otherwise known as William J. Flynn.
And I'm glad that we've been able to publicize him and get his name out to a wider group of people because he obviously made a real contribution and was somebody who was very, very special in his own way.
And thank you also to Klaus Svahn.
We will check back with him at some point on UFOs and ufology in Scandinavia.
More great guests in the pipeline here at the Home of the Unexplained.
Don't forget more news coming soon about the Unexplained Live 2024, our cruise with Morella.
Very, very excited about that.
That, I think, is all I have to say for now.
Apart from, please stay safe, please stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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