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SCOUT PRODUCTIONS"TABLOID"FILE #: 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS CASCIONEAUGUST 04, 2013TRANSCRIBED BY:

[NON-INTERVIEW DIALOGUE.]

Q : Can you please just say and spell your name for the

camera please?

[7S0A1606] 11:18:11

TC : Thomas G. Cascione. T-H-O-M-A-S, G as in Gerard, C-A-

S-C-I-O-N-E.

Q : That's great. Is that what you want to be known,

Thomas?

[7S0A1606] 11:18:23

TC : Yeah, sure.

Q : All right, great. And what is your position?

[7S0A1606] 11:18:26

TC : I'm an attorney.

Q : Great. How long have you known Vinny?

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Int. w/ Thomas Cascione (File 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1) - 2

[7S0A1606] 11:18:33

TC : Since we were kids.

Q : They're not going to hear me at all so if you would

just repeat my question in your answer.

[7S0A1606] 11:18:44

TC : I understand perfectly.

Q : All right, great. So how long have you known Vinny

Davis?

[7S0A1606] 11:18:47

TC : I've known Vinny Davis since we were young kids.

Q : How did you meet him?

[7S0A1606] 11:18:52

TC : Just a guy in the neighborhood I lived round the block

from. He's younger than I am. He showed up one day to ask out

my little sister and I knocked him over the rail. But after

that we became friends and we all, we drifted off to our own

lives. I lost touch of him and finally found him again one day.

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I was a rookie DA in the Bronx District Attorney's Office in the

Complaint Room just writing up cases. And this cop comes in

with some miscreant in hand EMOTION and I looked up and it's

Vinny Davis.

[7S0A1606] 11:19:21

And he looks at me and he goes, "You're a DA?" a little shocking

to him I guess. And I said, "You're a cop?" surprised both of

us we were knocking around guys. But with that renewed our

acquaintanceship let's say.

Q : What do you mean by "knock around guys?"

[7S0A1606] 11:19:36

TC : You know, we, we will roll over the neighborhood. I

was a drag racer. We were both sort of tough guys, not bad, not

criminals but not necessarily the kind you just thought would go

right into law enforcement.

Q : Tell me a little about your neighborhood. Was it a

tough area?

[7S0A1606] 11:19:56

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TC : Well, our neighborhood was almost all transplanted

from the five boroughs. A lot of kids from the North Bronx,

Italian, Irish, Jewish, that kind of mix and pretty working

class, lot of blue-collar people and a lot of kids that had

moved up almost in their early teens so they still had a lot of

the Bronx in them. So I would say that we were probably a

little more rough-and-tumble than the rest of our Westchester

neighbors.

Q : Did you guys ever get into skirmishes with the

Westchester neighbors?

[7S0A1606] 11:20:34

TC : Sure. There was a, there's a bunch of kids that ran

around town at, on Central Avenue and Yonkers [11:20:43], at the

Nathan's. There's a shopping center across them [11:20:45]

called Tanglewood and they became known as the Tanglewood boys.

And they would, the big self-styled real tough guys in the

neighborhood. Most of them sort of graduated into crime

eventually. A lot of them became an organized crime actually.

But at that time they were young and sure, we got in fights with

them here and there.

[7S0A1606] 11:21:04

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And you've ran into a, a half a dozen of them and a half of

dozen of human [11:21:08] next thing you know, you have a brawl.

Q : That's funny. Were there a lot of mobsters in that

area? Is that something you were aware of?

[7S0A1606] 11:21:17

TC : Well, of course, you never really knew, not till we

got older of course. And it wasn't as well-reported in those

days. But you sort of knew there were a couple of big houses

with gates outside and the rumor was somebody's dad did

interesting things for a living. You knew they were mobsters

but you didn't really know.

Q : Do you think people aspire to be mobsters in that

neighborhood?

[7S0A1606] 11:21:47

TC : Oh, of course. I mean, there is a certain amount of,

once the movies started to dramatize wise guys as something

romantic, once The Godfather movie was out and then Goodfellas,

people started to look at it as an exciting thing to be not

necessarily because you're gonna get rich but just because it

would be cool to be considered mobbed up.

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Q : Is it like it is in the movies or is it much harsher,

not glamorous? Is it an accurate depiction in the movies of mob

life?

[7S0A1606] 11:22:27

TC : Well, I'm sure that once upon a long time ago, maybe

when the mafia was really a core group of close-knitted Italians

and very familial, maybe it was like in the movies. But by the

time, the 1970s and '80s and the '90s rolled around, these were

criminals. They were criminals that just happen to have an

Italian descent or a connection to people of Italian descent and

they had an opportunity to sort of build on their criminality.

[7S0A1606] 11:23:00

But most of the ones that eventually became mobsters were petty

criminals to start with, you know, just bad guys. And they had

an opportunity to get a little bigger by affiliating with

something bigger. I don't think the classic Corleone family

existed anymore. But they were certainly mob people.

Q : That's interesting. What's the craziest thing you can

remember that you and Vinny got into together as kids?

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[7S0A1606] 11:23:28

TC : LAUGHING I think we're gonna have to edit that

situation.

Q : A TV presentable story that just some crazy you guys

did.

[7S0A1606] 11:23:39

TC : I just, I have nothing to share. LAUGHING

Q : Fair enough. Describe Vinny as a kid. What was his

personality like?

[7S0A1606] 11:23:51

TC : He's very outgoing. He just knew everybody. He was

well-liked. He had a tendency to run his mouth a little bit but

that's Vinny, EMOTION , you know, he could, he liked to brag

or he'd like to joke. So that would sometimes get on people's

nerves. But he was just, he was around, you saw him in every

place.

Q : That's great. Could you do me a version of that again

but use Vinny's name a couple of times?

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[7S0A1606] 11:24:20

TC : Vinny Davis as a kid was very gregarious. He knew

everyone. Everyone knew him. He had a way of talking himself

up a lot so that he could get on people's nerves because he

would walk right up to you and just say anything to you like, he

couldn't care less. Vinny was one of those guys, you either

loved them or you found them so annoying you want to choke him.

And I think sometimes I vacillated between those two positions

but he was somebody you knew.

Q : Was Vinny a ladies' man?

[7S0A1606] 11:24:57

TC : Yes. I think a lot of us were late bloomers in that

when we were 15 or 16, we weren't, we were clumsy with the

girls. But by the time he got into his late teens, yes, he was

a ladies' man. He liked girls and the girls liked him. And he

had a lot of them.

Q : Did you meet a lot of them?

[7S0A1606] 11:25:21

TC : I met a fair number of his lady friends over the

years, absolutely.

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Q : Did you meet Diane?

[7S0A1606] 11:25:27

TC : I got to know Diane after Vinny was married. When he

was courting Diane and marrying her, I think I was in law school

and I was really out of touch with the neighborhood and what was

going on. So I didn't know Diane till after Vinny married her.

And I didn't remember her from the neighborhood or anything.

She wasn't, she didn't grow up right around us. So I was

presented to her and he is Vinny's wife [11:25:56].

Q : So you didn't talk to Vinny at all? Like he didn't

give you a call like, "Hey Tom, I'm getting married," or

something like that?

[7S0A1606] 11:26:01

TC : No, as I said, that, that period of time, I was

getting my education. I was pretty much out of the

neighborhood, wasn't really around, because I was concentrated

on doing better things in that state, getting out of the

mischief.

Q : Do a lot of kids not make it out of that neighborhood?

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[7S0A1606] 11:26:20

TC : Yeah, unfortunately so, lot of people with promise

used to getting, get in trouble, one thing or another. I left.

I used to, I did the math one time and said, you were better off

getting drafted and going to Vietnam than staying in the

neighborhood. Because your chances of coming out in one piece

were better in Vietnam than they were in our little piece of

Yonkers which wasn't true for everyone but it was true for

enough people that it was significant.

Q : That's interesting. Well, I mean, was it true to

people who were sort of like more like knock around guys like

you're saying?

[7S0A1606] 11:26:58

TC : Absolutely. The more opportunity for trouble you

found, the more trouble found you. And yeah, we had our, our

fair amount of teenage tragedies, you know, you're drag racing

debts and your overdoses and, and people got in fights and

sometimes they didn't make it out of them. But for a lot it

wasn't a bad place to grow up. You just had to keep your head

about you.

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Q : Yeah. I mean, Vinny talked about it. My neighborhood

is the same way. Can you talk about, if you got into a fight,

with somebody, you won't pull a knife or a gun until it was just

two guys getting into a fight or four guys into a fight and you

shake hands afterwards, was that your recollection?

[7S0A1606] 11:27:36

TC : That was the way. We, in our neighborhood, you got in

a lot of fights. God knows I got my share. And, but they were

fights and they, nobody was pulling a gun at anybody, nobody was

getting caught up. Sometimes things get out of hand and

somebody get in the head with a bat. But by and large, it

didn't take that kind of evil turn until those later generations

started to come up after we were grown men.


Q : What did you think of Diane when you met her?

[7S0A1606] 11:28:55

TC : I can't say I was really fond of her. I, I thought

she was a little intense and I, I saw the attraction he found

there obviously. She was good looking but I never trusted her.

Q : Why didn't you trust Diane?

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[7S0A1606] 11:29:14

TC : She seemed very sort of self-centered and out for

herself. And I always thought that she sort of latched on to

Vinny and saw him as a way to improve her station in life which

is not a really wrong reason I guess to find somebody and get

married but I never really believed that she would do right by

him in the end.

Q : You mean Diane was made for somebody like Richie?

[7S0A1607] 11:29:41

TC : Possibly so. Maybe that was really what she wanted

was a bad boy that was a real bad boy not somebody like Vinny

who was, had a little bit of a bad boy persona but at the heart,

he was a cop's cop. And I don't know if the wife of a cop's cop

is really what Diane was cut out for.

Q : [NON-INTERVIEW DIALOGUE.] Using her name, could you

just describe, you said she was pretty but could you just

describe Diane physically for me?

[7S0A1607] 11:30:38

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TC : Diane Pelatti was small. She was a, a tiny, kind of

intense package, slim built, deep tan always [11:30:51] sort of

striking kind of Italian good looks and wired pretty tight.


[7S0A1607] 11:31:29

TC : In the middle of this whole thing, we went [11:31:31]

Vinny and me elk hunting in Colorado. And when we got to the

counter, there was an agitated person just berating the counter

staff and then carrying on and going, "You hurry up and I have

to get my ticket and what's the problem here?" Finally, they

were begging the man, "Please, you know, back up, take it easy."

And we got up to the counter and Vinny just reached over, got

him by the scruff of the neck and banged his head off the

counter. LAUGHING And they upgraded us to first class.

LAUGHING

Q : Oh my god, that's hilarious. That's a great story.

SO we had the frame [11:32:15]. Could you just give me a little

bit more about Diane physically, just a little?

[7S0A1607] 11:32:20

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TC : Diane was a good-looking girl. Very slight built,

very slim, dark olive tan, very intense, kind of always a little

bit on the wired side so you always felt there was a lot of

energy coming off her. But she was no question about it, good-

looking.

Q : Do you think people were drawn to her? You think guys

in particular?

[7S0A1607] 11:32:47

TC : If that was your type, you would definitely draw into

her. If that was your type, that was as good as that type was

gonna get.

Q : How long into the marriage was Vinny when you

reconnected with him?

[7S0A1607] 11:33:04

TC : Well, I started to see, after we had seen each other

in the early days, the DA's days. When I got out on the defense

side, left the District Attorney's Office, I became the general

counsel for a new police fraternal organization called the

Shields. And at that time, we were pretty, I don't know, the

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word radical would say but there was a tough time for cops in

New York City.

[7S0A1607] 11:33:34

And we were very outspoken on the topics that affected cops.

Our motto was "Cops for cops." And no sooner that I agree to be

their general counsel, then we started to have these big, ruckus

meetings and sure enough there is Vinny, right up to the front,

very active cop. Everybody seemed to know him. Even though he

was Transit cop, all the guys in the NYPD knew him too. And

they knew him to be out there making arrests, always the kind of

guy that would back you up.

[7S0A1607] 11:34:03

So we, Vinny and I reconnected through the Shields. We would

see other at meetings, sort of catch up and I really didn't

socialize with him and his wife. That was a sort of, that was

a, that's the other of his life. I really, she got on the radar

with me when he asked me to help him out in getting divorced.

Q : Oh wow. So you weren't there for the good times?

[7S0A1607] 11:34:32

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TC : No. Unfortunately, I, I never saw the good times of

Vinny and Diane. I only saw the bad.

Q : All right. Talk about Vinny as a cop. You're saying

that he was a Transit cop. What's the difference between

Transit cops? We're they normally making arrest and that kind

of thing?

[7S0A1607] 11:34:50

TC : Okay. You got to, it's a hard concept to explain but

at that time, back in the early '90s, New York City had three

independent police departments. They're the regular NYPD that

everybody knows. They had the Transit Police which was charged

with keeping order in the city's subways and the bus systems,

things like that which was a big job. They were full size

police department all on their own.

[7S0A1607] 11:35:22

And there was the Housing Police charged with keeping order in

the projects. New York City had thousands and thousands of

housing units that were under the control of Housing Police.

But they all operated in the same territory. So you could have

a situation, so the picture stacked like a cake, where there is

Transit Cops working a detail in a subway tunnel over which

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there's NYPD cops looking for the same people and behind which

there's a project with the Housing Cops all trying to do the

same job at the same time with different radio channels and

different chains of command.

[7S0A1607] 11:36:02

And it made for a chaotic situation. However, because the

Transit Cops, a lot of times, crime would start in the subway

and spread to streets or vice versa, it was very common for them

to work with the NYPD side by side. District 11 where Vinny was

assigned was right in the heart of the South Bronx, very close

to the NYPD precincts that had the most homicides, the most

robberies, the most rapes of any place in the city.

[7S0A1607] 11:36:37

It was a really wild time to be a cop and because just like in

the modern army, 10% of the soldiers fight and 90% support, in

the NYPD and in Transit, 10% of the cops make 80% of the arrests

because they are the ones that will go out there in the street

and really go the distance. Vinny was one of those guys.

[7S0A1607] 11:37:02

He was one of the ones that would, you know, chase a guy up the

subway unto the street up a fire escape to make his arrest

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whereas somebody else might say, "All right, let him go." So he

knew the regular NYPD cops and they knew him.

Q : Can you tell me if there was a level of respect there

that maybe some of the other Transit Cops didn't have? Is that

true?

[7S0A1607] 11:37:23

TC : That's absolutely true. Transit, you got to realize,

they came through the same police academy. Sometimes they

would, they would just tell somebody when you got to the

Academy, "Okay, you're going to Transit because they need cops

and NYPD doesn't." It wasn't unusual. So everybody started out

equal but the NYPDs of course found themselves thinking, "Well,

they're just Transit guys, you know. They work in the subway."

[7S0A1607] 11:37:50

So they didn't have the same level of respect necessarily except

for the ones that really showed themselves to be willing to, to

do their best for the other cops. And of course once I was in

the DA's Office, our office was just down the block from

District 11, you know, Headquarters which is on the ground, like

sort of on the Yankees Stadium and so I see Vinny wandering

around, out in the street, anytime there's a situation where a

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cop would put over, "10-13, officer in trouble." whether it was,

you know, Transit, NYPD, Housing, he didn't care.

[7S0A1607] 11:38:26

He was the first one out the door. So yeah, there was a level

of respect, absolutely. And there were other cops that found

that go-getter attitude annoying because it just made work for

them, you know, made them get stuck to an overtime, because

Vinny has to take and arrest them. So there's always gonna be a

level of resentment too.

Q : That's interesting. What do you think Vinny do in all

this, because he went above and beyond, all these

accommodations. What do you think it says about his

personality?

[7S0A1607] 11:39:00

TC : He was a cop. He was a real cop and he wanted to be a

real cop and like I said, you know, there's different, there's

career officers would do their 20 and just get out and retire.

And they might find someone like him annoying because he's just

too revved up. There's also more conservative officers who

would say, "Well, he took chances. Yeah, he pushed the

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envelope. He took, he go in, he wouldn't wait for back up. He

wouldn't follow protocol."

[7S0A1607] 11:39:33

So that sort of thing, although it makes for a good drama, you

know, it's a, it's a source of a good TV show for, for, you

know, some cop assignment or something, the fact of the matter

is a lot of cops found that to be not the most desirable way to

be. They didn't necessarily, they might respect you for being

that active but they might say, "Well, you know, relax."


Q : What did you learn about Richie Sabol?

[7S0A1607] 11:40:18

TC : Oh boy. Richie Sabol. Well, you know, it's funny

because I searched myself in my memory and I'm almost sure I

heard of him before the whole story with Vincent and Sabol sort

of developed itself just because I was a Yonkers guy and people

like that were out there. He went to the high school a little

south of where people from our neighborhood went.

[7S0A1607] 11:40:49

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So he had a different clickyran [11:40:52] with but over the

years, I dug up stories where people I knew interacted with

Sabol in some way, shape or form. So can I swear I never heard

of him before of Vinny? No, I probably did. He just didn't

stick in my mind. One day, when all of this started to develop,

I was at a Shield meeting and it was around the holiday time.

[7S0A1608] 11:41:15

And Vinny came up to me and grabbed me on the side and he

started to tell me this crazy story about something he had

become aware of that he thought the Fed should know about. And

we had some FBI agents at the meeting. And he said, "Should I

tell these guys, should I ask them to get involved?" And I

said, "Well, tell me a little about it." And his story is so

convoluted of course. It's not something you can really explain

in the back of a meeting hall over a beer.

[7S0A1608] 11:41:46

But I heard that it was somebody named Richie Sabol who was

involved with the mob and had all these nefarious goings on that

Vinny had become aware of and that there was some relationship

with Sabol and Vinny's wife Diane and he felt it was gonna be

his duty to go to the Feds about it. And I had been a Defense

Attorney now for a couple of years.

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[7S0A1608] 11:42:15

I got a little more savvy and I said, "Vinny, before you get the

Feds involved in anything, you better have your story straight

and you better know that there's no way it can backfire on you."

Because I had seen people that sort of got involved with the

Federal Agency and had them turn on them and they became a

target as well as the people they originally trying to help out

with. So I said, "Let's take a backseat." So that's how I

first heard the name Richie Sabol, at least in the context of

Vinny Davis.

Q : So how do people, I'm just curious, how do people go

to help and then become, I know what happened to Vinny but

become a target of the FBI?

[7S0A1608] 11:42:57

TC : Well, here's the thing. If you are close enough to a

situation to have some sort of eyes or knowledge as to what's

going on, in the eyes of the Federal Investigators that might

mean that you're involved yourself. They are always happiest,

and this has been my observation universally, the Feds are

always happiest if the person that's giving them information is

a little dirty too because they like to have leverage.

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[7S0A1608] 11:43:27

So even if you walk in the door, just as a whistleblower and

say, "I've got information for you about something that's going

on you should know, the first thought in their minds is, how can

we tag this person so we have a hold on them so if they change

[END OF FILE # 108B_0804_CASCIONE_A1]

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