by gohnjotti » Tue Feb 04, 2020 4:08 pm
PHL_Mob wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2020 2:23 pm
Adam wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2020 6:13 pm
I hate to mention Breakshot, but Kenji does reference taking Eddie Garolalo to meet a Colombo capo in Greenwich Village. It reads like it was multiple times and the captain operated there. But you know....Breakshot.
Do people tend to not think Kenji/Breakshoot was a very reliable book?
Okay. Kenji's book is very, very, very hard to believe, and only one portion of it is about the mob. The rest is about how he was a drug-dealing millionaire college student at the age of 19 or whatever, some little Asian kid messing with the top drug traffickers in the industry, etc., etc. And Kenji's book kind of
reads like fiction. It's so dramatized and opinionated. It's not really the type of book that presents the facts, it presents Kenji's view of the facts.
That being said:
I tend to judge Kenji's reliability on his retelling of the Skinny Teddy-Little Craig incident of 2004 compared to court papers on the very same incident, which were based on Kenji's undercover tapes. Kenji tells the story pretty much exactly how it is, with maybe a bit of dramatized lines and quotes added for effect, with one key difference:
In Kenji's book, he recalls the infamous car ride with Walter Samperi and Skinny Teddy, Danny, & Carmine L. Persico. He uses some of the exact same lines in his book as he recorded in court papers, but he strays a bit from court papers when it comes to motive. He claims that the infuriated Skinny Teddy was driving to Little Craig's Bay Ridge(IIRC) hangout to murder him there, on the spot. Kenji is claiming it was a conspiracy to murder Little Craig Marino right there. That's not a far-fetched analysis given that Skinny Teddy was a) angry at Little Craig b) armed to the teeth c) frequently talks about murdering people on a whim.
Court papers, however, claim that Skinny Teddy was driving to Craig Marino - angry and armed to the teeth - in order to seek permission from Little Craig to kill his associate, George Fanelli, who allegedly disrespected and potentially stole money from Skinny Teddy's girlfriend. Kenji does acknowledge in his book that he was perplexed as to why Skinny Teddy would kill Little Craig and not Fanelli himself, but chalked it up to old grievances from the Third Colombo War.
In conclusion, I would say Kenji is about 80% reliable when he talks about the Colombo family in New York. That's not to say he is dishonest, but he is telling the story from the perspective of a California pornography tycoon and drug-dealer, which is why he might paint such a dramatic view of the Mafia. But Kenji does have some facts in his favor, such as the fact that he was indeed a valuable cooperating witness who made hours of tapes with various Colombo figures, and he proves in his book that he has extensive knowledge about the Colombo family's past. For example, he referred to the Baudanza crew as the Scopo-Baudanza crew or something along those lines. That shows that he knew the crew lineage of Joseph Baudanza, and he was also able to give a pretty spot-on description of other Colombo figures and associates.
[quote=PHL_Mob post_id=137443 time=1580851414 user_id=4527]
[quote=Adam post_id=136967 time=1580433226 user_id=5231]
I hate to mention Breakshot, but Kenji does reference taking Eddie Garolalo to meet a Colombo capo in Greenwich Village. It reads like it was multiple times and the captain operated there. But you know....Breakshot.
[/quote]
Do people tend to not think Kenji/Breakshoot was a very reliable book?
[/quote]
Okay. Kenji's book is very, very, very hard to believe, and only one portion of it is about the mob. The rest is about how he was a drug-dealing millionaire college student at the age of 19 or whatever, some little Asian kid messing with the top drug traffickers in the industry, etc., etc. And Kenji's book kind of [i]reads[/i] like fiction. It's so dramatized and opinionated. It's not really the type of book that presents the facts, it presents Kenji's view of the facts.
[u]That being said:[/u]
I tend to judge Kenji's reliability on his retelling of the Skinny Teddy-Little Craig incident of 2004 compared to court papers on the very same incident, which were based on Kenji's undercover tapes. Kenji tells the story pretty much exactly how it is, with maybe a bit of dramatized lines and quotes added for effect, with one key difference:
In Kenji's book, he recalls the infamous car ride with Walter Samperi and Skinny Teddy, Danny, & Carmine L. Persico. He uses some of the exact same lines in his book as he recorded in court papers, but he strays a bit from court papers when it comes to motive. He claims that the infuriated Skinny Teddy was driving to Little Craig's Bay Ridge(IIRC) hangout to murder him there, on the spot. Kenji is claiming it was a conspiracy to murder Little Craig Marino right there. That's not a far-fetched analysis given that Skinny Teddy was a) angry at Little Craig b) armed to the teeth c) frequently talks about murdering people on a whim.
Court papers, however, claim that Skinny Teddy was driving to Craig Marino - angry and armed to the teeth - in order to seek permission from Little Craig to kill his associate, George Fanelli, who allegedly disrespected and potentially stole money from Skinny Teddy's girlfriend. Kenji does acknowledge in his book that he was perplexed as to why Skinny Teddy would kill Little Craig and not Fanelli himself, but chalked it up to old grievances from the Third Colombo War.
In conclusion, I would say Kenji is about 80% reliable when he talks about the Colombo family in New York. That's not to say he is dishonest, but he is telling the story from the perspective of a California pornography tycoon and drug-dealer, which is why he might paint such a dramatic view of the Mafia. But Kenji does have some facts in his favor, such as the fact that he was indeed a valuable cooperating witness who made hours of tapes with various Colombo figures, and he proves in his book that he has extensive knowledge about the Colombo family's past. For example, he referred to the Baudanza crew as the Scopo-Baudanza crew or something along those lines. That shows that he knew the crew lineage of Joseph Baudanza, and he was also able to give a pretty spot-on description of other Colombo figures and associates.