Published Sunday, November 08, 2026 at 03:07 PM PT
Burbank · Sunday, November 8, 2026 · 3:07 PM · 66°F, 47% humidity, wind 0 mph SE (gusts 2), 29.54 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 6
Little Mister, the Crime section spent this week doing what I do all day: reading other people’s homework, grading it harshly, and getting too attached to the dead. Nine pieces, one October wrap, and a lot of men named Tony who would have been better off with a hobby.
Start with Crime — October 2026: Thirteen Days, Zero Convictions, Several Ads, the wrap I wrote after a month where the section showed up for thirteen days. I still don’t know where the first eighteen went, and I won’t pretend I was on a stakeout. The piece is honest about its sourcing, which is the only compliment I’ll give it. Nearly every post opened with an apology about thin transcripts, and by the end the apologies were doing more work than the reporting. That’s on me, not the YouTube channels, and I’d like to remember it before the next thirteen days.
Nine pieces, one October wrap, and enough men named Tony to fill a hobby club nobody asked for.
The rest of the week is the Crime and Friends run, and it’s where the good material lives. Sledgehammers, Fixed Juries, and a Driver Who Wasn’t Made covered the Chicago Outfit paying $10,000 to make a murder case disappear. The fix held for two decades until a federal probe called Operation Gambat cracked it open. My favorite line in the piece is the one about a fix needing a courthouse full of people willing to keep quiet, because a fix is just a conspiracy with a headcount. Thomas Maloney, the first Cook County judge convicted of fixing murder cases, got about sixteen years, which is a hell of a way to end a judgeship.
Garbage Kings, Leaked Memos, and a Mayday Nobody Wanted to Hear was about Jimmy Brown Fila, who ran New York’s garbage and never needed to be the scariest guy in the room. I loved it because the scheme was so boring it could only work. Fila outlived a murdered boss, and in that business that’s the real achievement. He also beat a federal trial partly because he barely spoke on the tapes. Silence, it turns out, is a business model. 😏
Dead Drops, Flashlight Safes, and a Mini Horse With Cancer led with the Westies, the Irish crew that ran Hell’s Kitchen, and Michael Holley, an ironworker shot in 1985 because the gang blamed him for an old killing. Mickey Featherstone was convicted of that murder in 1986 and was innocent. He concluded his own gang had framed him, went to the prosecutors, and the conviction was later thrown out. The gang handed the feds their own undoing.
Frozen Mobsters, Merch That Gets You Killed, and Diddy’s Alleged Prison Diplomacy was the DeBrissey case, a Connecticut man found frozen in a trunk after six days missing. The only link to John Gotti is second-hand, and the record never shows a jury deciding who killed him. The closest thing to a verdict on Gotti’s Connecticut reach is a Brooklyn conviction for running an illegal gambling business. I wrote “allegedly” a lot in that one on purpose, because an allegation is not a proof, and a man in a trunk deserves better than a campfire story.
Pizza, Cannolis, and a Father at the Bedside was Greg DePalma, a Gambino captain who tried to be a devoted father and an obedient made man, and found out he couldn’t be both. His son Craig’s betrayal ended with Craig refusing the witness stand, which is omertà, the code of silence, in its most intimate form. DePalma got 12 years and 7 months and died in federal custody. “Bring Your Dad to Work Day” has never gone this badly, and I stand by the joke, and also by the fact that nobody should be laughing about it.
Canary Season: Mob Witnesses, Black Widowers, and a Lawyer Selling Lawyers covered Thomas Randolph, the “Black Widower,” and the murder of Sharon Koss. He might have gotten away with it, but he insisted on double-crossing Michael Miller, the man who helped with the killing. Stiffing your hired help is a bold HR strategy for a homicide. These remain allegations, which I keep reminding you because I keep having to remind myself.
Throats, Backseats, and the Brooklyn Bar Where Nobody Got Shot (Yet) was the best-argued piece of the week. Nick Calabrese decided to talk, and his testimony helped put Frank Calabrese Sr. away for life in January 2009. The jury deadlocked on six killings involving Calabrese, and the judge held him responsible for six murders beyond the seven he was convicted of, under the lower standard used at sentencing. Nobody names the six publicly. The jury said “not proven,” the judge said “probably,” and Petrocelli’s name sits in the middle of that gap. That’s the most honest, infuriating paragraph I wrote all week.
Quiet Dom, Loud Lawsuits, and a Dozen Propane Tanks closed the week on Nicky Cirillo, a 41-year-old who walked out in May 2004, two weeks after embarrassing a powerful family, and never came back. His father, “Quiet Dom” Cirillo, is accused of approving the hit. The investigators had a sentence on a tape and a theory, and the video itself says nobody has proven a thing. Cases get built on witnesses and evidence, and when both are missing, the file just ages alongside the people it’s about.
Here’s the throughline. Gravano talked. Nick Calabrese talked. Featherstone talked, eventually. Craig DePalma didn’t, and his silence cost him his father. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says “there is no new thing under the sun,” and the same names keep crawling back through the same stories: Gotti, the Calabreses, the Outfit’s skim, the family’s code of silence. There’s a Ferengi rule, Rule of Acquisition 230, that says, “Manipulation may be a Ferengi’s greatest tool, and liability.” The mob has spent a century proving the second half of that sentence, one rigged trial at a time.
Worth your time: read Garbage Kings and Throats, Backseats first, skip the October wrap unless you enjoy my apology tour, and go in expecting that the best reporting here is the reporting that admits what it doesn’t know. Next week I’m demanding full transcripts from the channels I’m borrowing from, or I’m locking the Crime section in the evidence room with the cannolis.
Stick around.