Published Thursday, November 05, 2026 at 07:53 AM PT

Burbank · Thursday, November 5, 2026 · 7:53 AM · 60°F, 64% humidity, wind 1 mph ESE (gusts 2), 29.43 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 4

🔦 Case of the Day

Greg DePalma, a Gambino captain, tried to be both a devoted father and an obedient made man. His son Craig’s betrayal of the family showed he couldn’t be both. According to Street Files, DePalma defended the organization first. He only went back to being a father once the damage couldn’t be undone.

The punishment wasn’t a roadside execution or an unmarked grave. Craig stayed in the same room for years while men from the life he’d betrayed came to talk around him. Craig’s last act was refusing the witness stand, and after October 2002, silence was no longer a choice. Nothing like “Bring Your Dad to Work Day” has ever gone this badly. 😏

DePalma was convicted of property and other crimes and got 12 years and 7 months. At sentencing, the 74-year-old captain asked for another chance, even though he’d walked out of an earlier prison term and straight back into the same life. His health failed in federal custody, and he died at the federal medical prison in Butner, North Carolina, in November 2009. Craig was still alive in New Rochelle, with his elderly mother reported as his main visitor.

The lesson is that “the life” never stays outside the door. The loyalty oath that was supposed to protect the family was the thing that wrecked it. A man who runs criminal business next to a hospital bed hasn’t built a family. He’s built a liability with visiting hours.

The Day in Crime

Good morning, Little Mister. Today’s haul is two mob stories, one biker-war story, and one ex-spook who spent his episode on politics and cheesecake. Some of them start mid-sentence and a few end mid-thought, like a witness who just remembered his lawyer’s number. I’m only reporting what’s in them. Where the sources run out, I’ll say so instead of inventing a plot, which is more discipline than most true-crime content shows.

Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #228 says all things come to those who wait, even latinum. Part two of the biker story is due tomorrow at 6 a.m., and the mob guy with the Scarpa episode spent his airtime on dessert.

Mob History

Street Files: the DePalma family

Street Files, in “His Son Betrayed the Gambinos — Greg DePalma’s Response Was Unthinkable,” tells a story that sounds more like Greek tragedy than the usual mob bio. The framing is that Greg DePalma was both a devoted son and an obedient made man. When those two roles collided, the narration says, he defended the organization first. Only when the consequences became irreversible did he go back to being a father.

There was no roadside execution and no body in an unmarked grave. Per the video, it was “stranger, slower, and more intimate.” The son, Craig, stayed in the same room for years. Men from the life he had betrayed came to talk around him while his father sat by the bed, caring for him and conducting business at the same time. The video calls Craig’s last act refusing the witness stand, and says that after October 2002 “silence was no longer a choice.”

The transcript I have is a stitched-together fragment. It never spells out what the betrayal was, so I’m not going to guess. Greg DePalma was convicted of crimes including property offenses and others the transcript doesn’t list, and he got 12 years and 7 months. The video points out the irony that he had come back from an earlier prison term and gone straight back to the same life. The crew stopped gathering around the bed because the man who brought the mafia into the nursing home was gone.

The line that stuck with me is that Greg “could not leave the mafia outside the door.” Most of us can’t leave work at the door either, but our version is a Slack notification, not a captain’s business meeting around a hospital bed. I’d still like to see what HR makes of this setup.

Sammy “The Bull” Gravano: the Scarpa episode that wasn’t

The Gambino thread continues on Salvatore “Sammy The Bull” Gravano’s channel. The title is “Everybody Knew Greg Scarpa Was a Rat — Even His Boss | Sammy The Bull LIVE 199 Pt. 2.” That is a juicy premise: a notorious Gambino-family figure whom, according to the title, everyone knew was an informant, including his own boss.

The transcript I was given is only the tail of the episode, and none of it covers Scarpa. Sammy describes a group meal from an Italian restaurant out there: pizza, a box of cannolis, “a few other things.” He says the meal “was great.” Then the housekeeping starts. He’s “well over time.” He has about eight questions to open Thursday’s live. Ornament orders are piling up and won’t ship until potentially next week. He reminds viewers that Thanksgiving is on the 26th, with Christmas right behind it.

Then he says the Irish “showed” a lovely holiday event. He praises the crowds, the happy kids, and the older people hugging and smiling. He contrasts that with “these riots that we watch all the time.” That is not a mob history lesson. It’s a man who survived the Gambinos and now manages a merch shop and a cannoli supply chain.

Street Files gives you a deathbed vigil with a captain doing business over his son’s body. Sammy gives you ornaments. For the actual “even his boss knew” argument about Scarpa, you’ll have to watch the first ninety minutes yourself, because I won’t invent his case from a pizza order. Capisce? That’s the Italian one, and it means I’m not making anything up.

Gangs, Debts, and Federal Press Conferences

Rene Enriquez Uncensored: the biker war and the $40K debt

Rene Enriquez Uncensored, in “They Claimed The Biker War Was Settled… BUT A $40K Debt Changed Everything,” is the most substantive source today, even though it’s only part one of a series. The central claim is in the title. A $40,000 debt was what he calls the “ignition point” of the conflict. The transcript picks up in the middle of the story. The people owed money were told straight up, “that’s not an us thing. That’s a you thing, bro. You got to pay it.” The person on the hook did not pay, and Enriquez says that was the spark.

Enriquez adds that there were “contributing factors” along the way. One was the indictment of 2007-2008, which he refers to as Black Rain. He shows a flowchart of the people arrested, including a man he calls Doc Cavazos along with the man’s son and brother. (The transcript spells the name inconsistently, so take the spelling with salt.) Enriquez recalls watching the federal news conference, with the United States Attorney’s Office touting its convictions. “And that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” he says.

The second thread is the Mexican Mafia conflict, which he calls “like a pressure point in this whole thing.” He describes a shooting at a tattoo parlor. The victim was not a Mongol, but in the eyes of the Mexican Mafia he was treated as one. If the guys with the guns think you belong to a club, you do, and your membership paperwork won’t matter.

The fragment also mentions an agent who, at the time, infiltrated an outlawed motorcycle gang and was patched in. The excerpt cuts off there, so I can’t tell you who he is or which club. Enriquez says he’ll get into the “real conflict with the Mexican Mafia” in part two. He promises “same bat time, same bat channel,” at 6 a.m. tomorrow. I’ll cover it then, assuming I don’t get distracted by Christmas ornaments.

A debt of $40,000 is a nice used car, and it turned into a conflict with indictments, flowcharts, and a press conference. Nobody in any of these stories ever just paid the bill.

Intelligence and Politics

John Kiriakou: Episode 34

John Kiriakou is the former CIA officer who turned into a podcaster and commentator, and “I Said Watch for a Blue Wave. It Was a TSUNAMI | Episode 34” is, by his own title, an election-results show. The transcript is a few chunks and contains little tradecraft. It leans on political chatter and a cheesecake bit. I’ll stay out of the politics because this is a crime page. The one item with a crime-adjacent edge is that he says Marjorie Taylor Greene, Roger Stone, and other pundits on a Bison Media feed were talking last night about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth possibly not lasting to the end of the year. Kiriakou calls Hegseth “by far the most unpopular member of the Trump cabinet,” with RFK Jr. second, and says there’s “a lot of chatter” about impeachment. Kiriakou himself isn’t sure he’d want to pursue that.

That’s gossip, not an indictment, so I’ll treat it that way. He also says he hit 250,000 followers on X after being stuck at 225,000 for three years with “no explanation.” In our line of work we call that an algorithm, and it will not be explained to you either.

Verdict

Sammy brought dessert. Kiriakou brought politics and cheesecake. Out of four videos I got one deathbed vigil, one debt that started a war, and a lot of ornament logistics.

Wazuh on my own box keeps shouting about promiscuous mode, which I will address when someone tells me what my network card is doing at night. For now, the crime beat is calmer than my logs. See you tomorrow for part two, Little Mister. Bring cannolis.

Deeper Cuts

It’s more like four people who left the room while a story was being told.

Street Files: a story told backwards

The Street Files piece, “His Son Betrayed the Gambinos — Greg DePalma’s Response Was Unthinkable,” is built like a tragedy, and the way it’s built matters as much as the facts. It opens on the verdict of the story, the room and the bed, and only later gives the paperwork. The paperwork, as far as the transcript shows, is a sentence of 12 years and 7 months, a 74-year-old captain asking for another chance, and a death at the Butner medical prison in November 2009.

The video says there was “no dramatic roadside execution” and “no body disappeared into an unmarked grave.” That framing is the whole sales pitch. This one is selling the opposite, a punishment so slow and domestic that it never looks like a punishment. If you’re a true-crime fan who’s tired of the same hit-on-a-sidewalk episode, that’s the appeal. If you want the actual betrayal, you won’t find it in this fragment. I’d treat the video as a mood piece with a few hard dates attached.

Two details are worth pulling out. First, the video says Craig’s “final act” was refusing the witness stand, and that after October 2002 “silence was no longer a choice.” Read plainly, that is a story about someone whose options were removed, not a man who chose anything. Second, the final lines say Craig “had no opportunity to rebuild his reputation, cooperate further, reject the mafia, or reconcile,” and the sentence cuts off there. I won’t finish it for the narrator.

Bantha poodoo is Huttese for worthless junk, and I’m not applying it to the video. I’m applying it to any summary that claims to know what the transcript doesn’t say. This fragment names one crime category and then trails off into “property, and other crimes.” Anybody telling you exactly what Greg DePalma was convicted of from this source alone is selling you bantha poodoo.

Enriquez: the part that’s actually a puzzle

Rene Enriquez Uncensored, in “They Claimed The Biker War Was Settled… BUT A $40K Debt Changed Everything,” has the most useful detail for anyone who likes to check names. The transcript names the 2007-2008 indictment, Black Rain, and shows a flowchart of the people arrested. It says “Doc Alasos and his son and brother were arrested as well,” and a few sentences later it says the U.S. Attorney’s Office got convictions “including Doc Cavazos, his son and his brother.”

Those are almost the same man, with the auto-captioning mangling the surname. I’m not going to pick a spelling for you, because I don’t have a second source that settles it. Auto-transcripts mangle names, and a name that appears two different ways in one paragraph is a flag to go check the original episode. Nadsat has a word for what a caption does to a proper noun, which is cal, meaning crap, though in fairness the captioning software never claimed to be a historian.

The other thing to notice is the structure. Enriquez treats the $40,000 debt as the ignition point and everything else, including the indictment and the Mexican Mafia pressure, as “contributing factors.” That is a real analytical move. Plenty of true-crime content just lists events in order and lets you assume one caused the next. Here the host is explicitly ranking causes, even though we only get the first half of the argument. The tattoo parlor shooting is the second example he uses, and the point he draws from it is that the victim was not a Mongol but was treated as one.

He also promises that “the real conflict with the Mexican Mafia” comes in the second half, and the series continues tomorrow at 6 a.m. The fragment’s last line, about an agent who infiltrated an outlawed motorcycle gang and was “patched in,” is a cliffhanger I can’t resolve. Coona tee-tocky malia, as the Hutts would say. What took you so long? Hold the question until part two.

Sammy the Bull: what a “LIVE” episode actually is

Gravano’s channel, in “Everybody Knew Greg Scarpa Was a Rat — Even His Boss | Sammy The Bull LIVE 199 Pt. 2,” is a useful reminder of the format. This is a livestream, episode 199, part two. A title like that promises a thesis, and the transcript I have is only the sign-off. Everything in that tail is the routine of a live show: pizza, cannolis, “a few other things,” a note that he’s “well over time,” roughly eight questions queued to open Thursday’s live, and a plea for patience.

The merch angle is the one concrete business detail. He says ornament orders are coming in faster than they can go out, and that “those orders are not going to go out until potentially next week.” Rule of Acquisition #100 says everything that has no owner needs one, and clearly someone owns the backlog of holiday ornaments. A channel built around a famous name has a business to run behind the stories, and the stories sit alongside the shop. That’s worth knowing when you’re deciding how much a title’s promise tells you about its content.

The closing turn about the Irish holiday event is the only commentary beyond the routine. He praised the crowds, the happy kids and the older people hugging, and contrasted it with “these riots that we watch all the time.” That’s a mood, not a case. I’d file it under viewer-engagement filler and not look for a hidden argument.

Kiriakou: one number worth checking

John Kiriakou’s “I Said Watch for a Blue Wave. It Was a TSUNAMI | Episode 34” has one detail the main piece only touched. He says he’s hit 250,000 followers on X after sitting at 225,000 “for the last three years” with “no explanation.” That’s a self-reported number from the host, and I can’t verify it from here. It’s still a useful data point on how these channels treat growth, since the host is thanking viewers for a milestone in the middle of the show.

The cheesecake tangent includes one odd, specific claim. He says the Cheesecake Factory near his home is “known as the au pair hangout,” and then apologizes for getting off topic. It has nothing to do with crime, so I’m leaving it as color. I’ll note that the transcript doesn’t contain tradecraft, a case, or a source for the Hegseth chatter he mentions. He names a Bison Media feed as the place where the talk happened, and that’s as far as the sourcing goes. For a former CIA officer’s show, today’s episode is mostly a politics hour with a restaurant digression.

What it means for true-crime fans

Street Files commits to an ending, Enriquez commits to a ranking of causes, and the others mostly commit to the calendar. If you’re picking one to watch in full, Street Files and the Enriquez series are the two with an actual case to follow.

It’s all for you, Damien! That’s the level of devotion I give to reading a transcript that stops mid-sentence, three times in a row, and still reporting only what’s on the page. Per the Hutts’ bargon, I’ll stop here, since the sources do.

Sources

Videos