← Anthony Setaro

Full transcript

Anthony Setaro

This is an automatic transcript of the recording, not yet checked against the audio. Names and local words in particular may be wrong. Where it differs from the recording, the recording is the record.

1. 0:00

   My great great-grandfather was murdered in Red Bank in 1903. Struck in the head with a hammer by a neighbor and his murderer was one of the biggest bootleggers in the area.

2. 0:15

   As a watcher of Boardwalk Empire, there's so many parallels. Paint a picture for me of the Highlands and this time frame.

3. 0:22

   That roaring 20s, everyone's in on it. Woodrow Wilson, they were bootlegging to him in Princeton. You have rum row out there and guys have playing cards and they would tear the playing card in half and one half would be your receipt that you would have on shore.

4. 0:39

   What made this particular area one of the biggest bootlegging geographies? Highlands in specific actually provided maybe one of the most dangerous obstacles for bootlegging, which is twin lights. So when my cousins did excavate part of the property, they found everything that was there from the 30s. Every answer gives three more

5. 1:10

   questions. So, we're back.

6. 1:16

   We're back.

7. 1:17

   Back. And

8. 1:18

   we're back. You're

9. 1:18

   with me, but now you're a host. What happened here?

10. 1:21

    I don't know. It just

11. 1:22

    You got promoted.

12. 1:22

    You just liked interviewing me so much you wanted me to stay around.

13. 1:25

    Thank you for joining me. This is Eric Kane. If you don't um if you if you don't remember, how couldn't you? You had killer podcast. And um honestly, like I got the bug uh you know, talking to you. Uh I didn't know how much of a historian you were about this area. And I I again I was telling Anthony this, but you know, the reason that we're I I want to do this podcast is to celebrate the area and learn more about it. Just learning these stories is it's it's been really cool. So,

14. 1:54

    absolutely. It's I mean, there's there's a lot of interesting history here. And I know very little of it compared to many others like Anthony and and and whatnot. So, it's exciting to, you know, have this opportunity to sit down and talk to folks who know a lot about it, to learn, and to share with everyone else. Yep. I couldn't agree more. So, with that in mind, you want to uh you want to introduce your first your first guest is my co-host.

15. 2:18

    That's true.

16. 2:18

    Am I Johnny Carson and you're um you're you're

17. 2:21

    I'm your booking agent, I guess, now. [laughter]

18. 2:24

    No, you're Ed McMahon. You just got to laugh at my dumb jokes.

19. 2:27

    I can do that. I I can do that for you. Well, I mean, we Anthony and I were lucky enough to meet recently, so that was exciting that you know, we were having dinner uh in town and got the opportunity to meet each other. and you were telling stories over dinner with some folks there and I had seen your work before with Setaro House and you obviously have a wealth of information about the area uh with a particular focus that at least I know we're really interested in is bootlegging here in uh in Highlands, Atlantic Highlands, Red Bank, the surrounding area obviously a

20. 2:58

    big hub for it. So yeah, it would be awesome just give us a quick quick introduc introduction of the work you've been doing.

21. 3:06

    Sure. Uh yeah, you know, most people think I was really into bootlegging or the mob and that's how I got into it, researching gangsters, but it was really trying to solve a family mystery. I started doing research on our family history and I uncovered that our great greatgrandfather was murdered and that led to another question of who murdered him and he oddly enough named his

22. 3:39

    murderer in the papers and his name John Kalendrillo is one of the biggest bootleggers in the area and you read all these books of bootlegging prohibition on a North Jersey Shore, Murders and Mayhem in the Highlands. You read all these books and this name keeps coming up and that's decades later. My great great-grandfather's murdered in 1903. This guy becomes the biggest bootleggger in the area and is named in some of the biggest murders.

23. 4:10

    So, it doesn't start with bootlegging for me. It starts with like family history that just so happens to tie into it and then every answer gives three more questions and it's just these hidden stories like you said that are right underneath our feet. The places that you pass. That's why I love your work is you kind of allude to it. You know what you're I'm looking at something here. There's no way that people didn't know what this was and then you see the

24. 4:41

    history and go no people did know. And then you're like, "All right, what still remains? What can we uncover? What stories were passed down?" And it's just like a deep rabbit hole.

25. 4:51

    So, what's the why like what made you want to start researching your family? What what was what's the backstory there?

26. 4:59

    So, uh we had purchased a family house from the estate after my great aunt was one of 11. My grandfather was one of 11. And as we were looking at, you know, the house, there were four or five boxes and an old trunk from when the family originally immigrated from Italy that we found in the attic. And there were newspaper articles. There were boxes of ants that never left the house that had

27. 5:29

    they saved everything from every funeral, every photograph. I have a folder here of photographs that like literally I go through and I'm like, "What the heck's going on there?" and then it lines up, you know, with different research. So that was really it. And then once you start finding, you know, a murder that's a generation before you even heard your family was here. So a whole generation of my family was here in the late 1880s. That was not a

28. 6:01

    story that was passed down. We had always heard the 19, you know, tens when my one of my great aunts was first born and that turned out to not be the case. So, a lot of the stories that you do hear passed down, it's oral history. Sometimes it was told a very specific way because they didn't want you to know the real history. Nobody knew until this discovery a few years ago that my great great-randfather was murdered in Red Bank in 1903. and that has since been

29. 6:31

    verified, you know, by genealogologists, the county. We've looked at all that stuff. It's like, no, this really happened.

30. 6:39

    So, I want to get more into the story, but um I might need a drink.

31. 6:43

    I think that is a great segue, CJ. Um I can explain if you want to open here, uh why we think this bottle um and this alcohol has some significance to be on the table

32. 6:58

    with us here. So, Frank August, uh, friend of very good friend of mine, Luke Dutella is one of the owners and the the whole brand here, uh, Frank August, Frank was after his father who has passed away as the kind of the old school tradition that, you know, seaman, you know, that that guy working at the shore, that that kind of guy and the August is the modernity, the, you know, telling these stories today. Uh the bottle itself is

33. 7:31

    very specifically, you know, non-escript here and discreet and the label is actually meant to be peeled off.

34. 7:39

    So they actually had to go through some some lengths here to get uh this to be so minimalistic.

35. 7:46

    Bootlegging, right? Like that's

36. 7:48

    that's what a bottle would have looked like.

37. 7:50

    Yeah. When you talk about somebody bootlegging, the early early days, it wasn't always this big giant operation. When I was doing research, I started to learn you how to misspell a name when you're researching because they didn't necessarily spell it the right way.

38. 8:08

    And sometimes with the Italians, they didn't refer to them by name at all. It was just Italian. And then sometimes it wasn't even Italian. It was ragman or junk man because they that's what they did right so while there were some men were fishermen or clammers or oysters or whatever the Italians they were rag pickers they would actually take you know garments they would take old uh curtains and wash them out and then repurpose them to say the Jewish

39. 8:38

    population who then would take the garment and turn it into something to resell. So they would actually find old bottles that are discarded, clean them out, fill them with their own alcohol, and as they're going around as junk men, rag pickers, you want a drink for a quarter, you want to drink for a nickel.

40. 9:02

    Literally like it wasn't always a big operation. Sometimes it's a gulp, a taste, you know, or hey, buy the bottle for however much it is. Yeah.

41. 9:11

    So bootlegging really sometimes was just like a guy with a wagon,

42. 9:15

    you know, with a bottle.

43. 9:17

    No way.

44. 9:18

    So cheers to Frank August. Bootlegging. Salude.

45. 9:28

    Oh, that's so good.

46. 9:29

    That is really good.

47. 9:30

    Yeah. So, um, what do you know about your great greatgrandfather's murder? So I I was on the couch with my wife going through newspapers.com beautiful you know thing for everybody treasure trove that just other generations didn't have to access and as I'm researching Setaro name misspelling it I stumbled upon this article 1903 Dominico Setaro killed near the gas house struck in the head with a

48. 10:00

    hammer by a neighbor John Kalendrillo And the second I read that, I go, "John Calendrillo." John Kalendrillo's in my family tree there. That's my great-grandfather's brother-in-law. Wait, he murdered my great great-grandfather. And my great-grandfather was there at the murder

49. 10:24

    and then still got into the family. And then still because it's like the old school if we killed your dad we're gonna take care of you and the rest of your family. So what I love telling about these stories is kind of where my family everybody knows the like the big names the luchos the landskies the genevies but people don't know the like under side the people that didn't have a choice and were kind of just put into

50. 10:56

    situations. So what we know is that he's struck with a hammer.

51. 11:01

    He's brought by wagon. It's 1903. He's brought by wagon to Long Branch Hospital. So, the reason we don't know anymore is there's no coroner's report because he died in the hospital. Had he died in public, we would have a coroner's report. And there's another murder that's key to my research that had a coroner's report from 1891 that is a treasure trove of information. Had we had that, we would know more answers. We

52. 11:31

    don't because he dies in Long Branch Hospital. those records are inaccessible or gone at this point. So that's all we know. What we know is what happens to John Kendrillo. He becomes the biggest bootlegger in the Lillien syndicate. Uh and then he ends up being at a lot of these key murders. When Al Lillien is murdered, he's there. him and Andy Richard, the two men who benefit the most from Ali Al Lillien

53. 12:01

    being taken out are there at the murder. There's another murder in August of that same year, Buff Marson down here. There was an Albian Hotel in Highlands.

54. 12:11

    John Kalandrillo again, him and his uh son are at the murder and there's a playing card on the table with a J to indicate that John was either playing in the game or was involved in it or whatever. The man is never charged for any murders up until 1960 when he hits somebody and kills somebody with a car just wiped out. And you can't there's no research on them even through the county. There's no file. All these other

55. 12:42

    figures there's huge files on them. There's nothing. Sometimes the answer is where there's no information.

56. 12:51

    Super interesting. So, so there's like kind of like two types of bootleggers though, right? Because there's sort of these like gangster side of bootlegging.

57. 12:58

    Absolutely.

58. 12:58

    But then there was, you know, kind of regular people who were just maybe taking part of the opportunity.

59. 13:04

    Yeah. I think it's um I think you bring up a good point, Eric. It's sort of the evolution of the bootlegging through the time periods because I think the misconception is that it starts at prohibition and it doesn't. You have the whiskey rebellion several decades, you know, prior to that. And then when you have people like my ances ancestors coming over in the 1880s,

60. 13:35

    they are told that they can't grow vines on their yard and smash it and turn it into wine and sell it. And they're like, why can't I do that? Oh, because you need a license. and they don't understand the language. They don't have the money to apply for the license. So, the people that were here set up all these systems in place so that it wasn't just,

61. 14:05

    you know, yes, there were the gangsters, but even the gangsters, it was an evolution. Some of those gangsters, they're only gangsters because their family had been here for a generation, right?

62. 14:18

    Set up a system. finally got it legitimized and then they said, "No, you know what? The whole country, nobody can drink." And they go, "We just took a generation to set up our bottling company, pair it with the alcohol that we'd been making since we got here in the 1880s."

63. 14:38

    And so they found themselves immediately, you know, in this illicit operation. But that's why they could capitalize on it, right? Because it wasn't like this illicit network for them had a popup overnight. It was already there. They were already doing it illegally, maybe somewhat legally, but like a John Kendrillo might have been bottling somebody else's soda, right? And that might have been the front for his plan, but he might have

64. 15:09

    also been bottling booze and sending that out on a separate truck. So they had all these kind of different operations and yes towards the end of prohibition it gets really structured and I think that's the part that you're interested in and a lot of people get really interested in is like how did they do it right because it's a one of if not the largest bootlegging network on the east coast. It's interesting you say that because it kind of so since

65. 15:40

    they had set up sort of the businesses and the infrastructure before prohibition, it's almost like prohibition created the monopoly for them to run it because no one else

66. 15:49

    they put gas on the fire.

67. 15:50

    They put gas on the fire. And so now, you know, they're positioned, they have, you know, the facilities. They have the knowhow. What what made this particular area one of the biggest bootlegging geographies? I think it's interesting question and it's one that I spent a lot of time trying to figure out myself was the why because you hear a name like Vito Genovese and you're like why

68. 16:21

    right he was in Atlantic Highlands right

69. 16:23

    he was in Atlantic Highlands and then when you start to peel back how he intersects with my own research and my family history and oh he's in my family tree not once, not twice, multiple times and how would they weave that and then who does that family tree intersect with and it happens to be the Kendrillo family which happens to be the largest bootlegging. So, one of the things with veto is that he came to the table with money as a

70. 16:55

    major player in New York and people couldn't really figure out where some of that money came from. And some of that money came from that this network that was already established down here that he was necessarily a part of that they could flip a switch on. And after prohibition is when they have to take Lillien out and they have to take out Buff Marson and they have to take out the network that worked so well for them at one point, right? They now like reset

71. 17:28

    the deck. Who's going to be on top? Well, Kell and Drillos were bootlegging since the 1870s. Was Al Lillien. So weird. It always happens like this, guys. church bells

72. 17:42

    and that church too, right? You know, um Al Lillien, was he ever really

73. 17:49

    the top? You know, the the mob at that point's fully formed when he's taken out and the mob famously controlled the media and the newspapers. So, when you read articles that the Lillien syndicate fell,

74. 18:04

    Lillien was a broker. Yeah. his syndicate fell, but the bootlegging operation didn't fall. They took

75. 18:13

    his books and kept it going without him because they were already established. So whether they did it, who did it, it's the biggest one of the biggest what if murder mysteries of the area. But the answer has probably always been right there in the papers of who did it. Why did you pause when the church bells rang? What's

76. 18:37

    Because there's always been like uh you know Vito Genovese connection to the church

77. 18:42

    to this church.

78. 18:43

    To this church right here.

79. 18:44

    OP.

80. 18:45

    Yep. And the bootlegging to this church. Um you know there's rumors of tunnels as we talk about all in this area. And then just my family my name Anthony literally named from the church St. anony's which was the Italian church in Red Bank. So there's always like a weird religious aspect to,

81. 19:06

    you know, and anytime I'm going to like tell a secret or give a sound like the top of an

82. 19:11

    hour,

83. 19:13

    there it goes. I'm going to give something about the Alillian murder of, you know, it's one of those weird things, but you know, you do bring a good point. Um, there geographically there's many reasons why this was an area proximity to New York City was obvious. first thing that you're seeing as you're coming, you know, ac across the east coast here. Um, but it also Highlands in specific actually provided maybe one of the most dangerous

84. 19:44

    obstacles for bootlegging, which is twin lights. It was not necessarily always

85. 19:52

    right.

86. 19:53

    Yeah. But it was not necessarily always uh conducive for the bootlegging. It was a political appointment on who was in charge. So like when you go back to the this is where the pledge of allegiance comes in and you go back to that time period that's around the temperance movement. So the immigrant population they really needed uh they were almost at war with Italy. There were lynchings in New Orleans in 1891 over dock workers, over alcohol, over

87. 20:25

    all this stuff. Um, and there were 11 Italians lynched in New Orleans and the temperament was really hot. And then in Red Bank, this is one of those other stories where my family is involved in a murder. There's a great great uncle, Jeppi Setaro, that ma uh murders a Middletown farmer, Thomas Davern, and the family is held in prison for a year as they're trying to find this Jeppe. He flees very dramatically,

88. 20:55

    lives a full life in Connecticut. I've actually found the grave and we've traced that. That's him. That's who it is. He go he flees. He gets away. But because of that, a very high-powered attorney comes down from New York and kind of sets up some sort of land deal, we suspect, with uh the owner of most of Deal Beach was a guy named Hathaway. There's still a Haway Beach. I posted a video about tunnels on

89. 21:25

    Hathaway Beach uh because the way they built the esplenade, this man at all at this time period, right? So, my family's locked up for this murder. They sell Deal Beach. Now, his son happens to be at this murder. Without getting too far into a rabbit hole. I cover a lot of this in my book because it's just so lengthy. And I have a podcast that goes into this as well. It's like so in depth.

90. 21:51

    There's so many stories, right?

91. 21:52

    There's so many stories. But essentially, there's this network that needs to exist illicitly because the temperance movement has won in the 1890s and they can't bring alcohol necessarily unless they're approved up through Highlands and through Twin Lights. So, they'll land at Deal Beach and they'll bring alcohol up through Deal Beach or they'll find different pockets. Uh maybe, you know, there's not like one route that they're always going to take

92. 22:24

    because they're like preparing for it maybe days in the really early days, sometimes weeks in advance, right? It's a big shipment. All these little people are involved. Like who knows what? Everybody only knows their little piece of the puzzle, right?

93. 22:43

    And how how is this information being communicated? because you know so there's a big shipment coming in from Canada or you know somewhere how are they getting one how do you even get the job to be the rumr runner it's not like you can advertise so I guess it's reputationbased and then yeah walk us through like how does it get from Canada to on the shores to you know in a tunnel to you know out to New York City. Yeah. So, you'll have,

94. 23:13

    I guess, whiskey coming down from Canada, rum coming up from Bahamas, uh, beer being made wherever, you know, wine sometimes is backyard. You have all these different, you know, networks. And you know, my research mostly revolves around the syndicate that my ancestors were involved with, which happens to be the Lillien syndicate. So, it gets a lot of the job done.

95. 23:44

    It gets a lot of the job done. But there's also like rival syndicates, the Reinfeld syndicate, which is out of deal, which they end up using that old network and they have a tube,

96. 23:55

    two miles, a tube that goes out shipped to shore and they're just pumping

97. 24:04

    bank teller kind of tube.

98. 24:05

    Like who even need like a hose? Yeah, like a fire hose. Who even needs to bring a boat after a while because we'll just use it. just sit lay it out there, set it up. I think that's the thing that,

99. 24:18

    you know, there's kind of three different eras if you're dealing with just prohibition, right? Not like before prohibition, elicit trade of alcohol.

100. 24:28

     There's really kind of three different eras. There's the they enact it. And New Jersey is one of the last states to enforce it,

101. 24:39

     so it becomes the Wild West. I think that's one of the natural Besides the geography,

102. 24:46

     what this becomes like the last stand, you know, before it hits the city, before it hits wherever, and there's like chaos or whatnot, like, yo, get this area,

103. 24:58

     right?

104. 24:58

     Yeah.

105. 24:59

     locked down. And they realized pretty quickly they can't trust the locals to enforce it because the locals, they were already in on it. The second they flip that switch, all they have to do is tell that guy, "Hey, you don't have to do anything else. Going to give you an extra $2, an extra $5. It's going to be sitting here for you. You just need to do this.

106. 25:25

     Drop this here. Pick this up here. Drop it. You don't need to know

107. 25:29

     anything else about the operation." Mhm.

108. 25:31

     So I think there were certain people at the top that knew a lot more, but even within Lillien's organization, the hierarchy, people had departments. It becomes very,

109. 25:44

     you know, organized. So in the early days, they bring the clan in, the Ku Klux Clan. That's how the clan is in the area. And you hear these stories like who were they chasing, you know, in the area? And it's the bootleggers because it's reform. It's kind of again taking that temperance movement and igniting it again and saying, "Well, now we're just going to make it illegal."

110. 26:11

     So for everybody,

111. 26:12

     it's fascinating because it's I mean, there's so many I mean, as a watcher of Boardwalk Empire, there's so many parallels. paint a picture for me of the Highlands and and and this time frame and uh you know as opposed to sort of uh you know where Atlantic City was.

112. 26:27

     Yeah. So uh real quick so that you have these different eras, right?

113. 26:31

     So that first era is that clan. Yeah.

114. 26:34

     Then you move into this sort of like that roaring 20s. Everyone's in on it. The clan's kind of

115. 26:41

     I feel like that's where like everybody knows that era. Yeah.

116. 26:44

     They build the Molly Pitcher 1928. It's like the kind of crown jewel. So when I look at the area, I don't look at the town. I used to look at, hey, this was how they did it bootleg in Asbury. This is how they did bootlegging in deal. This is how they did it in Highlands. This is how they did it here. And then I started to realize that it was part of the same network. So yeah,

117. 27:09

     where we're really interested right now in the water and how it's coming to shore,

118. 27:15

     where my answers came in and where I geek out is I'm interested in well, how do they now get it to where it needs to go? Right. It's a crazy operation that needs to take place to your point. How are they signaling

119. 27:29

     people? Right. So it's a mixture of

120. 27:33

     physical signs. I think some of it's guesswork, right? Some of it's just like, hey, I know that this person lives here. This person lives here. Those people know each other. They could have put as easy as a sign

121. 27:45

     out front. Hey, if that there's a candle lit in the window like we old school stuff radio, I'll talk about Marconi later, but you know, they use the radio. That's one of the the things that they did here. And they do at one point get the syndicate syndicate because of the radio in 1929. They pick it up and they they raid everybody. And the Lillien syndicate was supposed to go down couple years before Lillien gets killed, but

122. 28:16

     everybody gets off because again the whole county. So it's not just Highlands or it's not just Asbury Park or Red Bank. It's all part of a network of hey, somebody's going to to your point if we talk about the like war roaring 20s uh where Lillien's network is fully functional and you have rum row out there and guys have playing cards and they would tear the playing card in half

123. 28:47

     and one half would be your receipt that you would have on shore and it would write your order and you have to come in and match it

124. 28:54

     to the card that the guy has on the boat. And then there's your

125. 28:58

     Oh, wow.

126. 28:59

     When we open a speak easy,

127. 29:02

     that's the receipt. That's the receipt. That's got to be the receipt. That's the [clears throat] receipt. That is too good.

128. 29:05

     So that was Yeah, that was part of it.

129. 29:07

     It's It's always these illicit businesses that are sort of on the forefront. So there's you got this combination of signals, maybe it's a candle, maybe it's a light, maybe it's a note. But then they moved all the way to radio and then ultimately that's how some folks were caught. The Lillien clan was caught. They were using like walkie-talkies or like what kind of radio?

130. 29:28

     The Lillien property.

131. 29:30

     Yeah.

132. 29:30

     And this is one of those things where my family kind of history research all kind of intersects with this larger story that makes me go, what am I researching right now? Is the Lillien property

133. 29:47

     Yeah.

134. 29:48

     is at the top of First Avenue, right? It's Fair View. um up there. It's up that way. My aunt bought that property in 1980. Several acres. She bought the whole estate. It was

135. 30:02

     You're saying Atlantic

136. 30:03

     in Atlantic Island. It was the

137. 30:05

     an old nursing home

138. 30:08

     at the time. And it's right on this Atlantic Highlands middle town,

139. 30:12

     you know,

140. 30:13

     border. Yeah. So it's like I grew up around this history and hearing the stories of like Al Lillien, you know, with it was described to me as a bat like the Batcave and the inspiration with the hydraulic lifts and the Tommy guns mounted

141. 30:32

     to the car and like that's the image that we

142. 30:36

     you know would see and there's the communications tower that's in Atlantic Highlands. There's a reason why that is specifically right there. That's Al Lillien's tower.

143. 30:48

     No way.

144. 30:49

     That specific tower is not it. But that's the

145. 30:51

     But he built a tower.

146. 30:52

     That's the spot.

147. 30:54

     It's a very strategic location. Very strategic.

148. 30:56

     Wow. That's fascinating

149. 30:57

     spot. So, I grew up laying in my aunt's pool, hearing these stories, staring at this tower, hitting the microphone to years later, realizing that that tower was this guy's the Batcave syndicate beacon system. Now, when you talk about the stories of the tunnels, where does some of this lore, anytime you hear a family oral history story, you take it with a grain of salt. I take it with as a lead

150. 31:29

     now as opposed to history.

151. 31:33

     Right?

152. 31:33

     I think when we're little we take it as fact. I get skeptical when I started doing the research thinking I'm going to actually disprove it all. And then you start doing the research and you go, "Oh, there's actually some truth to that."

153. 31:46

     So when my cousins did excavate part of the property,

154. 31:51

     they found Lillien's garage. They found the hydraulic lift. They found the rusted everything that was there from the 30s.

155. 32:00

     Oh my goodness.

156. 32:01

     Now, does that mean that there's a tunnel coming up First A and an entrance like the Batcave to go in from that side?

157. 32:10

     So, what are you finding? I mean, I know you're researching this like hell. So, [laughter]

158. 32:15

     you don't know. You know, there's a sewer grate there,

159. 32:19

     you know.

160. 32:20

     Yeah.

161. 32:20

     At one point, could there have been access? Who knows?

162. 32:23

     Yeah. How big are these hydraulic lifts that you're talking about?

163. 32:26

     Uh there's no photographic evidence. There's nothing, you know,

164. 32:30

     of it at,

165. 32:33

     you know, but enough for a car like uh you know.

166. 32:37

     So he you have for sure he had hydraulic lifts, some sort of underground garage. Not clear if you know how big that tunnel would have been, but he So he built a radio tower. How? like how

167. 32:53

     technologically speaking

168. 32:54

     technologically speaking

169. 32:55

     that I don't know technolog

170. 32:56

     because he couldn't have built it like yeah I don't know I'm sure that they had the money to hire somebody that you know would have those capabilities and the Italian you know in general were at the forefront of communication so when you talk about the mob or you talk about a secret system it's really more a secret system of information right,

171. 33:22

     than gangsters, right? And they would actually use that information against you.

172. 33:27

     But when I started doing

173. 33:28

     some of this research and going down the rabbit hole, it was really intriguing to me to find how many family members were gardeners at very influential people's estates.

174. 33:42

     Information.

175. 33:43

     Information. Oh,

176. 33:46

     and another way that they might have passed alcohol to each other.

177. 33:53

     Mhm.

178. 33:53

     Is that you just drop it off at the gardener. The gardener picks it up, he moves it, the gardener brings it with him to work that day.

179. 34:02

     Nobody knows the difference. So, there was a lot of

180. 34:05

     things. Uh, they used the railroad a lot, which was a surprise to me. We instantly we think bootlegging, we think water. Um, and then to know that, you know, they had wagons because it was happening earlier than that. But then to realize that the railroad wasn't a form of transportation that wasn't policed at that time.

181. 34:31

     Okay.

182. 34:31

     And they could control that. A family member like my family lived right behind the railroad in Red Bank. And so what happened to my great-grandfather after his great great-grandfather was murdered? How was he taken care of? How was the family taken care of? Well, they marry him into the same family, right? So, their brother-in-laws, so they're they're tied to each other. And then the family owns uh property. don't know how they got the money to buy the property,

183. 35:02

     but they buy a property next to the West End Hotel in Red Bank, and it's behind a passenger and freight depot. And when I started doing this research, I found other family members, sometimes in other states, that had similar properties directly behind a depot. So, it wouldn't be so much of a gamble if I put this bottle on the truck and the next time that truck is open, my brother opens it, my cousin opens it.

184. 35:31

     Wow.

185. 35:31

     And that was why I believe when they came over, you know, we have letters written in Italian that they're very smart. You know, they might not have spoken the language, but they're very educated. and they came over with plans who was a farmer, who was a bottler, who was a shipping company. And I believe that they intentionally split the family apart knowing that they would have sort of trade routes to each other. So when

186. 36:01

     you ask like how did this kind of just spring up,

187. 36:05

     I don't think it really kind of sprung up. It kind of happened over time.

188. 36:10

     Yeah, it was strategic.

189. 36:11

     Very strategic.

190. 36:13

     Very strategic. So like the wow for me is like we're here uncovering it right now. The history is not

191. 36:25

     it's not defined

192. 36:26

     defined. Yeah.

193. 36:27

     So one of the best books anybody you want to get interested prohibition on the North Jersey Shore. There is not a book out there that documents what happened from A to Z during that time period.

194. 36:41

     It's a lot. and where I started to like, whoa, that's family member, that's family member, that's family member. These this is all connected. So then I take something like that and I compare it to some of these other books that have these stories in them and you realize how intertwined it is. And then what you've already talked about, you know, is like this area, you know, the presidents

195. 37:11

     were here,

196. 37:12

     right? And people don't really realize what geographically this whole Monmouth County network was. And obviously I'm in Red Bank. I talk about it a lot. And one of the reasons is because that factory there, you know, Eisner had a uniform factory and they made uniforms for the Boy Scouts of America and then later World War I. It's not just for the American troops. Before America is in the war, they have a deal with the Italian army and they make all of the Italian

197. 37:44

     army. Now, all the employees there, not all of them, but a majority are Italian and they're making uniforms for that army in Italy. And then World War II, again, they're making uniforms at that factory. They actually have the FBI down there at one point surveillancing the workers there because there we were at war with Italy and the people working there were Italian.

198. 38:10

     So there's a lot politically this area was a lot more powerful because of that factory than people

199. 38:21

     realize strategically.

200. 38:24

     It's fascinating.

201. 38:25

     I love this stuff, you know. I love it. That's why I said how long do we have over you can go

202. 38:30

     wait but so so you're doing a book on this tell us what's what's going on with this book and

203. 38:34

     so um the book rum on the navisync it's you know kind of taking this history and then I've been really fortunate which you've alluded to is you know you bring up these stories sometimes it's a photograph sometime it's a video I like to take people along the journey with me on like hey here's this story I know, somebody added this to it or we found this sandboard map, we found this. What

204. 39:04

     do you know about it? Or the people that have reached out, cousins

205. 39:10

     of mine that for generations haven't talked, the families, but we're third cousins, you know, or we're second cousins or whatever it is. they reach out and there's more to the story. You know, it's a living breathing thing that we can reframe sometimes what we know about

206. 39:36

     this area. Randall uh Gabrielan passed away,

207. 39:40

     you know, recently in the last year's author, historian of the area. And when I first was doing this research, him and I were corresponding just to verify what I was finding out about my family history. And he said no one had really ever documented this area from the Italian perspective. And if we know that one of the most influential people

208. 40:12

     probably in the world at one point in time

209. 40:16

     lived right here and what sort of network was around here, then we actually know that the real history of this area has actually not been fully

210. 40:29

     right

211. 40:30

     told. Right. So that's what excites me is that we're kind of going through this journey together and that's why I probably a book didn't come out two years ago because I just connected with certain people in the last two years that you know reframe everything. Well, and those connections were hard to happen. One, like family history, distance, but now you make an interesting video, you put

212. 41:00

     it online, it get distributed to a bunch of people, and you have folks reaching out to you, sharing additional details.

213. 41:07

     It's cool.

214. 41:08

     So, it's it's like investigative local journalism.

215. 41:12

     Yeah.

216. 41:12

     That's like massively increased through social networks. the social media aspect. You know, I'd been through this several years before back in hurricane, supertorm, Sandy, whatever you want to call it. I did a lot of charity work and our charity at the time, Rebuild, Recover, which I did with Luke actually, Dutella, and it blew up at the time through social media. And it's amazing the people that reach out to you. At that point, it was

217. 41:44

     times of need. and we were a voice and a way to get their message out and to get them help and to be a connector. And I love this because there is a similar feel, although it's not a tragedy disaster where there is a family tragedy or story that I talk about or touch on and people don't they don't know that, you know, and

218. 42:10

     I love meeting and talking to people because

219. 42:14

     they always add something to my story, even if it's a the littlest nugget like, "Oh, my grandmother used to say this. I go, "Oh, that's that's storytelling." That's Yeah. Best part of story.

220. 42:28

     That's the piece

221. 42:29

     I needed. But I realized to your point, you know,

222. 42:34

     they invite me over and I get there and they're like,

223. 42:38

     "What do you have?"

224. 42:39

     You know, wow. And I'm like, um, but and I just we just start talking and and rapping about their family and about what I know about, you know, the area or what drew me to their, you know, and some of these people you don't expect to hear from. You know, most of them are happy that you're talking about it. Some are not,

225. 43:03

     you know. What's your favorite story

226. 43:07

     that someone's brought out of nowhere?

227. 43:09

     It's anything.

228. 43:10

     We're just in this.

229. 43:11

     Anything you anything in the area and

230. 43:13

     I love the Marconi story. I've been sitting on the Marconi.

231. 43:16

     Yeah, you've been sitting on it. Saving it for the book or

232. 43:19

     I No, you know, uh I just think the Marconi story is great. And you got to take a drink. Well, I'll take a drink on it. He's going to be mad we're drinking this long.

233. 43:29

     Oh, he didn't. He was a temperance kind of guy.

234. 43:31

     No. No. So the Marconi story is everybody knows Guglielmo. I can never really pronounce his name well. Germa you of all people know it's terrible because I have a red bank Italian accent. It's spliceed up mashed up. It's terrible.

235. 43:53

     He everybody knows he's up here at Twin Lights magically figuring out ship-to-shore.

236. 44:00

     Yeah.

237. 44:00

     Contact. It changes the world, right? America's Cups, the first documented thing, right? So, he's a famous Italian. Everybody knows him as Italian. He's not fully Italian, though. He is Irish.

238. 44:17

     Oh,

239. 44:18

     as well. My brother,

240. 44:20

     his mother is an Jameson.

241. 44:26

     Jameson.

242. 44:26

     Jameson. Now Jameson one day becomes the number one whiskey in the world.

243. 44:33

     Y

244. 44:34

     because I don't know

245. 44:37

     how did that happen?

246. 44:41

     So you needed a reason.

247. 44:43

     You know I always dig into stories. It's the you know why

248. 44:48

     would somebody be obsessed

249. 44:51

     with

250. 44:52

     talking to ship to shore? So I wanted to know that answer. Why would that matter to him?

251. 45:00

     And I stumbled upon this.

252. 45:03

     Anne Jameson is the granddaughter of John Jameson, the inventor of whiskey.

253. 45:10

     Marconi is the great grandson, and he stands to gain from

254. 45:17

     Wow.

255. 45:18

     Jameson Whiskey becoming the number one whiskey. So he goes,

256. 45:22

     he's not just here. He goes all up and down the east coast.

257. 45:27

     Yeah.

258. 45:27

     Figuring out ship to shore.

259. 45:30

     So,

260. 45:31

     Oh, wow. So, he

261. 45:32

     whether that empire Yeah.

262. 45:34

     the specific reason he definitely they benefited from a network being established ship to shore, trade routes, merchant to ship all up and down the east coast that one day Jameson Whiskey

263. 45:51

     could use.

264. 45:52

     Could use.

265. 45:53

     Wow. Yeah. So that is the Marconi.

266. 45:55

     He wasn't just a huge fan of sailing.

267. 45:57

     He wasn't just like, "Hey, I want to get a message to a guy on a boat."

268. 46:02

     You know,

269. 46:03

     there has to be a reason why. He then later sets up the Vatican radio. So Marconi's story actually gets very interesting when it gets into the bootlegging and the illicit uh network of what he contributed to that. not necessarily him benefiting or that he was doing anything illicit and not to take anything away from his achievements,

270. 46:30

     but yes, his radio system, telegraph and whatever, not only was used for Jameson, right, it then would be the same type of system that would be used shipped to shore for local voters. And the local men, yes, they became really important because this area wasn't necessarily ideal because of how shallow it was,

271. 46:55

     right?

272. 46:56

     So, you needed to know, we were talking about some of the points that you could come in at, you know, down here. And they're specific because of where you could get a boat. You know, how close you could get without going ship to shore if you could just can could you get the boat right up to the beach and what were the tides doing? So that all affected where they could land. There's a house next to Lillien's that I have uh

273. 47:26

     the pleasure of going into one serpentine that we believe served as sort of the bootleggers hangout um

274. 47:34

     in Waterwish area.

275. 47:36

     No, in in the different Serpentine. There's two Serpentines in Atlantic Highlands Middletown right off of First Avenue right next to the Lillien property. It's tricked out with all sorts of trap doors and hidden passages. And on the third floor, I call it like uh flight simulator. You can see the whole harbor and there is an entire, you

276. 48:07

     know, like captain's chair, cockpit, wheel, coordinates, navigation system, compass, and then an alarm system for the whole compound so that you could alert. It's like a fog hole.

277. 48:22

     It's still there. Yeah, I have video of it.

278. 48:25

     Like the original like that's been there

279. 48:27

     now. I It's been a few years since I've been in the property and it's changed hands. So, I don't know what's still there, but I have video of when we were in there.

280. 48:36

     And there's like false walls, trap doors, a switch here that changes this here. And the story is next there's a barn and that trucks could have come up. This would be coming up say the back way out of Whipperwill, you know, down by like McCleas, you know, coming up the back way.

281. 48:57

     Yeah.

282. 48:57

     Up there's a barn and you could have maybe pulled in under the barn and there pulley system you could have lowered stuff into a truck and they could leave right out and there's like a circular, you know, driveway where all the trucks Kendrillo, he was in charge of the trucking department and his bottling plant was in Fair Haven. So they'd come over the oceanic dri bridge and some of them would go to the dock

283. 49:22

     and then some of them would wait I think at that property. They would they were documented coming up to Lillien's property and then trucks leaving. So I believe those two properties kind of acted as sister properties at the time. So when they came they didn't and they raid Lillien's compound. They don't actually get everything because it's maybe at the other place next door. and the the guys, you know, the agents that are rating it probably know what they're

284. 49:52

     doing and know what they're rating and not rating at the time. Right.

285. 49:56

     Right. They're in the pockets.

286. 49:58

     Everyone's in on it. There's no way. That's the network, Eric, and you know, CJ, that you start to realize it's like this coordinated symphony.

287. 50:08

     Yeah.

288. 50:09

     In all of the county.

289. 50:10

     Wow.

290. 50:11

     The trains, right? The trains provided them a sound

291. 50:18

     timed

292. 50:19

     to something very they were really on time. So that train whistle was going to blow at 4:00. It was going to blow at 4:00. Y

293. 50:26

     and everyone could hear it for miles away.

294. 50:29

     So that could be a signal. Hey, when the train whistle blows.

295. 50:31

     And there there are gun battles where they would use the train knowing, hey, that track's going to go down. This guy's going to get caught on that track. or hey, we better move this liquor across that before the track goes down because the feds are gonna chase us literally timed out to like the second.

296. 50:51

     It's wild. It's wild when you w like you tell these stories and like I I feel like I've seen this already. I've seen it on on TV shows. They're not dramatizing this stuff at all. It's just

297. 51:01

     No, some in some points it's more dramatic. You know, when Jeppi Setaro flees after, you know, killing Thomas Davern, it's like he hides in furniture and they're like, they're walking down the street with dogs surrounding the furniture and they're not letting the police get to the furniture. It's really dramatic. They go from Long Branch back to the Italian colony in Red Bank with a pile of furniture, which we suspect is hidden in the pile

298. 51:32

     of furniture. My god. Like what?

299. 51:36

     That's insane.

300. 51:37

     There's other stories, documents where they say he's seen getting on the train, the trolley into Sea Bright, then catching a horse up to the ferry, getting on the ferry cuz he was a well-known Boot Black. He was known as Boot Black Joe. You can't make this stuff up. Like he has a name. boot black joke,

301. 52:01

     you know, like the guy in deal who sells his land, his name is Hathaway. Like, of course it's H.

302. 52:08

     That's just like the most aristocratic name

303. 52:11

     you could have, you know, like all of this stuff is super dramatic and visual

304. 52:16

     where you feel like you've seen it already. And I think that's what keeps pulling you

305. 52:23

     to this story like

306. 52:24

     I know this and growing up around here and I went to Monmouth as well. I got my Monmouth sunglasses from the alumni event.

307. 52:31

     So did Mary.

308. 52:31

     Uh there you go. So,

309. 52:34

     you know, you grow up hearing these stories about bootlegging tunnels from Wilson Hall to the now the great hall. Yeah. To the beach, you know, and then you read these stories and you're like, "Oh, wait. So Woodrow Wilson was president of Princeton. They were bootlegging to him in Princeton. Then he becomes president

310. 52:53

     and he's here. And I've, you know, stumbled upon my family's involvement in this massive bootlegging network that's active at the time.

311. 53:04

     It all starts to make sense why geographically,

312. 53:09

     yeah,

313. 53:09

     it happened. And it happened over many generations from the Highland Beach.

314. 53:14

     Yeah.

315. 53:15

     Early Monmouth Park days to one of my favorite stories uncovering and I cover this in the book implications or questions like one answer just leads to another question.

316. 53:29

     One of the things Anthony I I noticed about your page that I that one of the things I interpreted from it was it feels like you're in an active discovery. you are currently investigating and you're doing this in such an interesting historical manner. The way you're telling your stories, honestly, it's one of the things that inspired above the hook to tell the story about Highlands a bit.

317. 53:50

     So, what what is sort of the objective of your social media presence? And what is it that you're sharing there? Is is this is this an active ongoing sort of historical research project, genealogy project?

318. 54:03

     It's sort of become that, right? Yeah.

319. 54:05

     So, it starts with a family murder investigation leads into this bootlegging network that ties into Vito Genovese being in the family tree multiple times, you know, and you know, when you go down these rabbit holes, it's kind of morphed over time where it is this active investigation sort of. And I've recently been sharing some of

320. 54:36

     the videos because there's so many new viewers from the last four or five years because some of it is actually emotional for me, right? Like no one knew for generations my great great-grandfather was murdered, right? and understanding what those implications were and then understanding, well, why did my family not have a trucking company, a garbage company, you know, some of these other families became billionaires in the

321. 55:07

     area, you know, not from a legal business, but just from having a business. Well, when your great great grandfather is killed,

322. 55:16

     the family doesn't have a business. And then when you know he's put up at a post to run a safe house, I just like one story leads to another story leads to another. And I realize that I'm not uncovering my family history. um helping the entire area maybe see things a different way and hopefully more people come out that can add to the story so we can get a better picture of

323. 55:48

     how did this operation work because we're never going to know all of it but we get little bits and pieces and somebody adds to the story. Oh, good good segue to show you an artifact

324. 56:05

     that someone gave you.

325. 56:07

     I found on the road at the house behind the Lillien house.

326. 56:16

     So, this is where when you're on the when you're actually in the field investigating that there are still remnants of this stuff out there. If you know where you're looking, you look at a map and you see these things. This is a bottle. There's hundreds of these bottles behind this house where the bootleggers were told you should just throw them. So, at my feet is this bottle. Let me see. Can you read it in there? And you can kind of put it together and hold it. It'll stand if you

327. 56:46

     like put it together. Usually sits on my desk together.

328. 56:51

     It's a dude. I think he's riding a turtle.

329. 56:55

     Oceanic, New Jersey. I believe it's Oceanport. The um bay in Oceanport. Uh it's not actually it's not actually all called the Shrewsbury.

330. 57:05

     They called it Turtle. Turtle Bay.

331. 57:06

     There's Turtle Bay is a section of that.

332. 57:09

     Fred Oper Jr.

333. 57:10

     So did you did you do some research on this?

334. 57:12

     1890s.

335. 57:13

     1890s.

336. 57:14

     So now I'm at a house, right, that is tied to the bootlegging network in Atlantic Highlands, right?

337. 57:20

     In the 1930s, but they have bottles in the 1890s. Wow.

338. 57:26

     In the back.

339. 57:26

     That's crazy.

340. 57:27

     This I'm afraid

341. 57:29

     that's there. There's bootlegging going on for decades and these networks and these little brewers and little breweries all over the place.

342. 57:39

     Fascinating.

343. 57:39

     That's a good find.

344. 57:40

     Yeah. It was one of those where you're like,

345. 57:42

     you saw it, you were like,

346. 57:44

     you feel like Indiana Jones sometimes.

347. 57:45

     Absolutely. WHERE YOU'RE LIKE, OH [screaming] MY GOD, THERE'S A BOTTLE. THERE'S A VIDEO OF ME. I'm the biggest nerd in the video cuz I'm like, ah, I got it. I got it. I want to hear about the tunnels. I mean, speaking of Indiana Jones.

348. 57:57

     So, the tunnels, right? So, it does. Yeah. So, it usually sits on my desk like

349. 58:02

     So, you can throw it together, get mad, it might fall over. Yeah.

350. 58:06

     There we go.

351. 58:07

     Yeah,

352. 58:07

     it'll stay. Um, so the tunnels. Yeah. Really interesting. And this is this is really where I think right around where Greg Kajiano he's been doing Ghosts on the Coast for 10 years and he's been shouting about this area and these stories for a long time and I hadn't known I wasn't into I heard the whispers in my own family but honestly like you didn't research this stuff in my family when my grandparents

353. 58:37

     were around. It's not things that you talked about. So you'd hear whispers, then somebody would refute what you heard, and then somebody else would refute that. And so when you go down this research and the stories start to have substance to them

354. 58:53

     and sometimes are crazier, the tunnel is probably one of the bigger finds. People will tell you about tunnels all in here for generations, but show me a photograph. Take me to one, right? You know, so them just discovering a tunnel in a backyard over by an area that Andy Richard did live and Andy Richard is one of the main bootleggers, right? He had Andy's Tavern, which then became Memphis

355. 59:24

     Pig Out. It's now the Atlantic House in Atlantic Highlands. That was one of the bootleggers hangouts.

356. 59:29

     That's where I'm going after this.

357. 59:31

     That's the place you're going right there.

358. 59:33

     That was Andy's Tavern. They would uh box. They would have boxing matches in the back. And that's one of those family stories. My grandfather would tell me about boxing matches in the back of Andy's Tavern. And then

359. 59:44

     Yeah. Atlantic House had a Okay. So that's that's where I'm getting from this.

360. 59:48

     Yeah. And then I would found out later, oh my gosh. You know, so there were rumors always that there's tunnels again all up and down through First Avenue. And then Andy Richard, are there tunnels going, you know, to his properties to Andy's tavern. And right in that area, Highland A, Vito Genovese owned uh property, there's Center A, there's a bunch of, you know, streets, Fireman's Fields, I believe it's right, you know, kind of in that area.

361. 1:00:17

     And so it's in an area that would be suspected to be a tunnel. Now, again, we talked earlier, unfortunately off camera, a little bit about, you know, not all tunnels were necessarily what you would think of a tunnel. I think our mind goes to this massive interconnected like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle

362. 1:00:40

     system that ran all throughout Highlands and Atlantic Highlands and Heartorn and the Hills. I don't necessarily believe that because

363. 1:00:50

     why would you allow people access into these properties and that would be a massive undertaking, right? There are points like in deal where the sewer was big enough they actually would have used the sewer and have some systems where they would have used that but the network it's just such a big area for them to cover. So a tunnel wouldn't connect I don't think to the beach from

364. 1:01:21

     there.

365. 1:01:21

     Mhm.

366. 1:01:22

     But it could have connected to say some of his properties. So, imagine if you owned four properties

367. 1:01:30

     and the feds are coming and they're raiding you here,

368. 1:01:33

     right?

369. 1:01:34

     And you can go in the basement and pop up

370. 1:01:37

     in the house way over there.

371. 1:01:39

     Yep.

372. 1:01:40

     Now, you might have had a network, a guy like Andy Richard was probably paranoid.

373. 1:01:45

     He was involved with Vito Genovese. They reportedly had no arguments, fights, whatever. He was not, you know, lived, died of old age, wasn't killed by Veto. Yeah. Right. Um, but he might have been looking over his shoulder a lot.

374. 1:01:59

     Yeah,

375. 1:02:00

     that specific tunnel we do not believe connected to anything. There are other tunnels that might have been stash tunnels like store stuff there.

376. 1:02:10

     Mhm. Or there might have been other, you know, not all bootlegging speak easys were this massive underground operation with hundreds of people and like the feds raided and like the girls flip over and the cigarettes, you know,

377. 1:02:27

     like it's not always that. Sometimes it's just a little house in the hill here has one of those half doors and you knock on the door with the right tap and they open it up and it's a guy lives there but he can he'll sell you a glass

378. 1:02:42

     or like in Italy the wine literally the history of the wine walls you know and you look at you know my family history or the Italians the temperance movement in the 1880s 1890s was somewhat against the Catholics because of wine at their masses and they were looked at almost as vampires because they're drinking the blood of Christ,

379. 1:03:10

     right? Go and there was this almost sacrificial element where

380. 1:03:15

     I don't know these crazy people are drinking this blood of the Christ that they thought we're really drinking the blood of a sacrificial animal or whatever. So the Italians were looked at as witches, as you know, whatever demonic.

381. 1:03:31

     Wild.

382. 1:03:32

     So there was this really prejudiced, you know, system,

383. 1:03:37

     but everybody wanted to drink. So you know, there was this fight of like social good and evil around alcohol.

384. 1:03:47

     Well, and like you were saying with the tunnels, too. So, my neighbor who uh used to live here, longtime Highlands guy, and at one point he told me there's a there's a little path right up the street here that he said they would they would come through there with with booze. Yeah.

385. 1:04:03

     Um and that there was a little stash shed

386. 1:04:05

     somewhere around here.

387. 1:04:07

     So, like a tunnel was really just like a clearing, you know, like they they cleared a path.

388. 1:04:11

     A tunnel. Yeah. tunnel was not always in the traditional sense, you know, cement, brick, mortar, right?

389. 1:04:19

     A tunnel. And this is how I grew up hearing bootlegging stories in the hills with wagons and like I heard these crazy stories of these tunnels that they built and then kind of come to learn, you know, Whipperwill is rich with that history and the bootlegging and similar to your path here where they would take, you know, just kind of brush or bushes and thatch like little hut kind of thing, right? and make it look like you

390. 1:04:50

     couldn't go through an area, but you could.

391. 1:04:52

     Or, you know, make a sort of tunnel like you were playing Fort in the Woods.

392. 1:04:58

     Little clearing.

393. 1:04:58

     Yeah. A little clearing. A little tunnel that like, hey, no one else is going to try to drive their car through there. Y,

394. 1:05:04

     but I'll drive my car through there and then when they chase us, they're not going to know where to go.

395. 1:05:09

     Like, it was very strategic. And then, you know, talk you through. We've, you know, like one night run. It's always different because if they cut off the route for them to go over the oceanic,

396. 1:05:22

     then they had to use whipperwill, right? Right. And then the clan was on whipperwill because the Methodist church was right there on King's Highway. So they had there's a clearing that's now on the um the Earl side that there's an old British grave site and we believe they use that clearing is where the Tempest and then later the KKK would use as a gathering place and they could patrol these streets you know and cut them off

397. 1:05:53

     here would send them there and then so

398. 1:05:56

     so wow that's so there was all these sort of op I mean between KKK I mean that's just

399. 1:06:02

     there's obstacles. That's why it's like

400. 1:06:04

     is this area the perfect area?

401. 1:06:07

     Not really. It became maybe you know and in our mind visually oh it's got it all. It's got the K and it's got what looks like a castle guarding it. Right. Like cinematically

402. 1:06:25

     it's like a bright light.

403. 1:06:27

     Yeah. So like, okay, you have to time and one of I believe one of them rotates and one of them static, right? They don't do the same thing.

404. 1:06:37

     So they're doing two different things.

405. 1:06:39

     So like

406. 1:06:39

     it's covering a lot of ground.

407. 1:06:40

     Yeah. It's like kind of undercover. Like so when you ask me like and these are always long-winded answers that I go back around to like what's the goal? What are we

408. 1:06:50

     after? It's like I know that we're at a point now that had I not even started the page or we got into this research the stories would be dead.

409. 1:07:05

     Yeah.

410. 1:07:06

     Most of them they'd be dead. And then you know one of the biggest wow moments is I'm doing this research and not that there's danger around the hundredyear-old stories although some of them get into 50year-old stories but I try to stay away from anything mob related you know past veto's death because that's really

411. 1:07:27

     my family's only intersection yeah

412. 1:07:30

     with it right so

413. 1:07:34

     you know you have these moments and Phil Genovese, you know, at one point messaged me and that's Veto's grandson. And it's, hey, I think we have some common ancestors together. And it's because I'm talking about

414. 1:07:51

     not the Genevese side,

415. 1:07:53

     but because I talk about, you know, the bootlegging in the Calendrillo side and how are all these families connected? And there's a wonderful project that I got turned on to at the beginning of my research, the Casano project. And Cissano is the village that my family, my ancestors are from in Italy. There's 4,000 people. And a lot of the names in this area are known Stavola,

416. 1:08:26

     Calendrillo, Dlesio, Felisa, a lot of these big Italian names, they're all from the same

417. 1:08:36

     village in Italy. And you know, at some point when things went really crazy in the 20s and 30s and you didn't know who was in and who was out, people stopped talking. You had this amazing genealogical discovery that has led to pieces of information coming from everywhere that has painted a huge picture. It's enabled

418. 1:09:00

     book. Yeah. It's enabled you to learn about your family and also teach people about a a time in history that is relatively unknown around this area around Italian im around Italians around like I mean just this whole region. What's what's next for you? You have a book coming out. What's what's next? So book is definitely started to really become the focus as I think and you know

419. 1:09:31

     a lot of eyeballs are looking at this area in this region and history now you know with AI and it's easy to tell historical stories so I want to make sure that we're getting them right or as much towards the truth that we can and sometimes that's hard because sometimes it's reframing what we know about an area. So book has become

420. 1:10:02

     kind of the main focus. Um, but I view it as this storytelling sandbox of this area that people like yourself that everybody is really interested in of like how do we cohesively start to tell these stories. So, we do a lot of work in Unreal Engine. Um, that was something that we got into because

421. 1:10:32

     visually some of this stuff just doesn't exist anymore. We can see remnants of it, but if you're going to shoot what the old Highlands Bridge looked like, it doesn't look like that anymore, right? Or if you're going to shoot what this area looked like at one time, how do you shoot that? So that led, you know, my cousin and I, he's into, you know, software programming to use Unreal Engine as a tool. So that one day you can do a mixture of filming

422. 1:11:02

     this stuff live action,

423. 1:11:06

     on location,

424. 1:11:07

     but also how do you make this area look like it it really looked? How do you stand

425. 1:11:15

     on Highland Beach and have, you know, the roller coaster behind you and how do you do that stuff? And with,

426. 1:11:23

     you know, all that's coming into the area entertainment wise, you put that on an LED wall and you can film that, you know, live action like you're on a stage. My background is theater originally, you know, and film and television came after. and then real estate. So, it's kind of like all my backgrounds merge into this sort of I look at it as like the Marvel universe, but it's for

427. 1:11:53

     this

428. 1:11:55

     area and some of it has to do with, you know, the mob and illegal activity, but some of that was just born out of necessity or just it was illegal for the entire country. And that immigrant story that we haven't heard about for about my ancestors and frankly in the book even some of Vito Genovese story is a lot different than what people actually think it was.

429. 1:12:24

     So this is interesting. Unreal Engine. What is that?

430. 1:12:27

     Oh, so yeah sometimes

431. 1:12:28

     I know but

432. 1:12:29

     I know you know and I know you know but sometimes you say things that it's still you know

433. 1:12:35

     it's everything's so

434. 1:12:36

     right. So, and Unreal Engine is different than AI because Unreal Engine is a started out as a video game, you know, engine.

435. 1:12:46

     That's the software that Fortnite is probably the most, you know,

436. 1:12:50

     example. Epic Games and Unreal Engine, but it's become a film making tool and the physics in it, the graphics in it are hyper realistic. So this is the technology that they use in Star Wars and other big budget, you know, productions. Now, instead of going on location, they put that imagery on a backdrop.

437. 1:13:19

     So you're not on a green screen. You can see the images in the environment that you're on, but it's on a a giant like,

438. 1:13:28

     you know, 180 degree screen, sometimes even on the ceiling. Right. So, it's really wild, but it lets you manipulate in real time the background, the backdrops. So, when we started getting into this history and you hear these stories, you're like, you can't picture it. You actually can't picture it because like those names that you hear like Vido Genovese and Luchiano and Al Capone and you're like this stuff

439. 1:13:58

     is there's no way this stuff is around here. And what did this look like? and what did it look like before that? Right? So, you start to look at old postcards

440. 1:14:07

     and then I'm like, "All right, how would I film this if we were going to film it?"

441. 1:14:11

     One of the cool things

442. 1:14:13

     when we do go to film liveaction stuff, is the park system in Monmouth County,

443. 1:14:20

     in New Jersey in general, but in Monmouth County specifically, has done a wonderful job of preserving some of these historic sites. And a lot of them just so happen to be all the bootlegging routes,

444. 1:14:32

     like almost all of them, right? All up into Hartshorn, you know, all the roads, uh, down into Huber Woods, some of the original trade routes of this area have been preserved. So, you could still film at some of these historic locations on location, but then you can also supplement that with, you know, what did a bustling, you know, what did the Atlantic Highlands look like downtown?

445. 1:15:00

     I mean, that's that stuff fascinates me and I think that's I mean, that's what what you know what you do and what you do like I I love it so much cuz I love I love to see this area in the 1920s or

446. 1:15:10

     the transportation system. CJ, that's the cinematic thing. Like I think about my family living behind the railroad and like 4,000 people coming to get on and off the railroad, you know, and you think about the ferry system and then you think about the railroad and it's not the railroad that we think of today. There's another railroad, the central rail line, right? And then there's all these other trolley systems that go all

447. 1:15:40

     around. You could hop on here and go down to Asbury and then come up back up Red Bank all like in a loop all in the day. And so they would communicate that way as well. Almost like the oldtime email was a postcard. They would send postcards to each other from Red Bank to Little Silver,

448. 1:16:01

     right?

449. 1:16:01

     Wow.

450. 1:16:03

     Because is, you know, every 15 minutes a train went

451. 1:16:06

     and they would send, "Hey, meet me here at 5 o'lock."

452. 1:16:09

     Yeah. So they would send messages by mail carrier more often than we think that they would as a form of communication. Let alone

453. 1:16:18

     did these guys use pigeons or smoke signals or

454. 1:16:23

     any of these, you know, other signals.

455. 1:16:26

     That's a hundred years. 100 years.

456. 1:16:28

     100 years.

457. 1:16:29

     What's going to happen in 100 years from now?

458. 1:16:32

     That's what's cool about this stuff being like active, right? like we unc they uncovered a tunnel a year ago like there's still things that add to the story or in my research was started during co was some of these documents became 75 years old so they released

459. 1:16:56

     right

460. 1:16:56

     all this documentation

461. 1:16:59

     yeah operation husky

462. 1:17:01

     is you know an operation that the government worked with the mob during World War II. And my book delves into a lot of that and some of the involvement with Luchiano and Vito Genovese and, you know, construction of Earl and how all of that, you know, plays into things. So, there's a lot.

463. 1:17:24

     So, if they came here today,

464. 1:17:26

     oh yeah,

465. 1:17:26

     what would be their favorite pizza place?

466. 1:17:28

     Restaurant, pizza, whatever. The brothers, right? Because the brothers in Red Bank,

467. 1:17:34

     number one, their pizza's amazing. Number two, Lord knows how old that building is because it predates any of the newspaper articles.

468. 1:17:43

     It popped up behind what was a passenger freight depot of the Central Rail Line.

469. 1:17:49

     I think is 1840s somewhere in that realm,

470. 1:17:54

     which then behind it forms this hotel, the West End Hotel, which eventually becomes Brothers. Mhm.

471. 1:18:00

     My family ends up having the safe house next door to the West End Hotel behind. So, the West End Hotel and Brothers, it was like the hub.

472. 1:18:11

     Wow.

473. 1:18:12

     Of the operation.

474. 1:18:14

     There's so much history here. It's It's insane. And honestly, I could go on. I mean, I I feel like we could keep going and keep going and keep going. Um, but I have to pee.

← Back to Anthony Setaro