NYPD Detective, Cadillac Thief, Goodfellas Actor John Manca Part 2

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, I'm here with retired MYPD Bomb Squad Detective Steve Burbich, who's a friend of the show. I've had him on before. Hey, Steve, thanks for coming on for doing this interview. Welcome. The other day I did a quick podcast about former corrupt NYPD detective turned Goodfellas and casino anchor actor John Manka. And I found his book Tin for Sale interesting, and I was like, you know what? I got nothing going on this week. Let me just do a quick episode. And and and Steve, to be honest with you, I didn't think it would be a highly watched episode, but goes to show you what I know about my guests and things, because already the episode's got about 1,300 views, and you were nice enough. You must have watched the episode and you reached out to me because you knew John Manka and had some interesting stories about him.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Yeah, I I did not watch the episode yet, but uh as soon as I heard the name, I'm like, okay, that sounds familiar. And, you know, the first time I had seen him since my childhood was in uh in Goodfellas. You know, I'm saying, oh, Jesus, that's a guy from the neighborhood, you know. So, and and I knew he was a former cop. So, you know, we get into what I can recall. You know, you're talking, geez, if I had a guess, early 70s, I'm 15, maybe 14, but he was a character from the neighborhood. So, where did you grow up and when did you first run into him? I grew up in the 5'2 precinct, uh, 197th in Decatur, lived two blocks away. You know, we had our our our core fa uh family friends. You know, I have an older brother that's one year older than me, hung out a little bit, you know, maybe when we were a little bit younger than our our teen years, and then uh two of my younger brothers. We hung out and uh got to know John from the neighborhood. What kind of guy was he? Like just hanging around? John, John lived on uh on 198th Street off of Webster Avenue. You're talking about his 70s. Still, you know, a couple couple bars, neighborhood bars. One one big bar that I could recall was uh the Bedford Shop House. Now I don't know if John hung out in there. I certainly didn't hang out. I was too young to be in bars, but we go in there and have meals once in a while, you know, have a have a bite to eat. So but John uh I recall him being married. I recalled him having a stepdaughter who uh was in the neighborhood. And uh so, you know, I I I what happened was one of the ki uh one of the families that we grew up with lived either in the same building next door to John and his family. And you know, got this you know, I got to know John by he was a former cop. I I can remember him or somebody mentioning that he was kicked out of the job. I think he got involved the nap commission, if I'm not mistaken. I could be wrong. You may know better by reading his book. My uh, you know, I I think somehow or another he got caught up in uh, like I said, the nap commission at the time. And he was one of those guys that he had some friends that were connected, so he was doing different things. One of the things I recall him doing, I'm I'm just telling you because I was told a story. One of my brothers went with him and two or three other kids from the neighborhood, and they went out to Aqueduct Racetract, you know, out in I guess it's in Queens, if I'm not mistaken. And and what he did was he had, I would say maybe my brother along like right by the finish line, and he'd watch the race. So he's watched the third race at Aqueduct, and he sees the winner's number five. I'm just, you know, throwing the number out there, and he would run as far as far as he could to the edge of the outside by the parking lot, because the parking lot was right next to what he called, and he'd run to him in number five, third race number fives. And he would run so far, you know, the other guy, one of the other kids from the neighborhood, he would run so far, and then he would run to the other thing, and then the last guy would want to run to John, who was outside the racetrack on a pay phone. Probably took a minute, minute and a half or so to these kids to run. I mean, all young, you know. And John would be on the phone with his bookie and place the bet on the number five in the third race at Aqueduct. Of course, he already knew the winner, so he was post-betting it, and he got away with that for a while. You know, he probably had a different bookie said he was smart enough to delay these uh races off with and, you know, until, you know, do that for a while and uh and make a score and buy the kids freaking ice cream and probably a hot dog or whatever, and yeah, only made a day of it. That was one of his sorries I can recall earlier on. So whatever he was doing, you know, as a cop carried on afterwards, I'm sure. Now, I don't know when he got kicked out of the job. Yeah, yeah, sure. Throw it out there.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

He got hired in 1952. He got fired in 1960, 52 to 63. So he was pre-napped. So he was a good ten years before the nap commission exploded. But what you're detailing that story, it's in the book. I mean, he doesn't name your brother, but that story's in the book. Another thing he did was he used to have guys all the time. Yeah, that's in the book. That's great.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

That's great that he would. All right. All right, I corroborated it for him. My brother and two or three other kids from the neighborhood. This is what he did. He used, like I said, they I don't even think they were teenagers. They weren't, because I don't think I was a teenager. I'm like, you know, maybe I was. Maybe I was 14, so my brother might have been 13. But that's he actually said that in there, okay. All right, there was another time. So I I stopped hanging out in the neighborhood when I turned 16. Yeah, you know, family members and friends are all doing heroin. You know, I I I I can remember watching them shoot up heroin and all the way. I'm like, I'm getting out of here. I barely smoked pot at the time, so and uh I I couldn't hang out. I just stopped hanging out altogether, you know. But uh it was another time where he got hold of, I don't know if they were twenties or hundreds. What do you call money? Counterfeit money. Did he talk about that in the book? This counterfeiting in the book, yeah. All right, counterfeiting in the book. Well, I'm corroborating. What he would do was he got one guy involved, and I won't say his name, but he was an older guy. He was brother of a girl from the neighborhood. So she was in and around my age, you know, but he was older and he was married. He got married, got married young, had babies young. So if he was twenty, twenty-ish at the time, it was a lot, maybe twenty-one. But he gives him a stack of bills. Now I can't remember if they were h I the story of whether it were hundreds or twenties. But I can remember him giving him a stack of bills and go go, you know, cash these in, you know. So one of the things he he did one day was he went to a bar and ordered a beer. You know, a glass of beer was fifty cents, puts a twenty or a hundred on the on the bar, gets the beer, drinks that, orders another one, puts another twenty or a one hundred on the bar. Yeah. Drinks that. Third twenty or a hundred. Bar ten is like, okay, now I'm gonna go look at these bills. And they were good apparently, but usually they're all the same s serial numbers, you know? Or at least I think they were. But then, but else he looks at the bills and he don't say nothing, but he he ended up calling the the local priest, and I think I think he got locked up in the priest and he had all these bills in his hand, took a collar for it. But that's how we would do it, you know. And uh, I can remember uh John telling you, you you know, got he might have even got the kids to pop. Go to the go to Yankee Stadium. Great place to get for the counterfeit money at the stadium. So quick, here, hot dog, you know, whatever. Either you eat the hot dog and throw it away, but you got all the change from it, you know. Couldn't do that now. You give them a 20, you're lucky you probably owe him another five dollars. So uh he uh but that's what he was he was doing. That was the other caper. There was another time, and I don't up and down Decainer Avenue and all along 198th Street were all brand new cars. Brand new cars. And I can remember the brand new cars, good paperwork apparently, but they were all stolen from somewhere, whether it were from dealers or whatever, and you know, the car would be there a day or two, and somebody would buy this car and that car, and that was the other thing with the cars. Other than that, I can remember him uh, you know, fast forward when good fellas came out and says, Oh, Jesus, that guy looks familiar. He didn't look any different then, you know. I didn't know John was that old if he was on the job in 53. He didn't look it when I was growing up, you know. But uh it's funny.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Well, that was his undoing, the stolen cars. So just to give you a background, I'll I'll catch up with the book. This guy he grew up he grew up on the upper west side of Manhattan. Parents were off the boat, his grandfather would would beat him and make him work in a produce place. He went to Spellman for uh not Spellman Hayes for a while and just grew up hating authority. Why he joined the NYPD is beyond me.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

I I know why. You know, there's good cops that become bad. He was a bad guy that became a cop and that followed him right into his career, without a doubt. You know, he went in there, I'm sure, you know, looking for other bad guys and they were doing things, you know, back then.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

And he was more of a lone wolf. Sometimes he had to take on a partner, but he was very he didn't he was one of these guys that didn't care about camaraderie. He didn't care about how he was viewed, he was in it for the money. And when I tell you, and you know what I'm gonna do? When I'm done with this book, I'm gonna mail it to you. From the moment he laid from the moment he woke up to the minute he went to sleep, he was scheming. And he wasn't anything. I mean, nothing was too big, nothing was too small. And reading his book is like watching the first half hour of Goodfellas, the cars, the women, style. Author Nick Pelletti who met him took just as much from John and Manka's life as Henry Hill's. Because if you're if if you read this book and you listen to to Ray Le narrate in the beginning of the movie, that's Manka. It's not Henry Hill about blowing money at the track and the women and the girlfriends, and she seems like a machine.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Yeah. Wow. He should have been a realtor, you know, and and and had that thing always be closing, because that's what he was doing, if he was always scheming. But you know, the neighborhood had a lot of different guys. Every bar in the neighborhood, I I don't know how it was in other boroughs, but every bar in the neighborhood had a bookie, yeah, had a bookie or and a loan shark. They wanted or a bookie and loan shark, they were the same guy. But yeah, every every bar, you know, I don't I don't know if he was into that end of things. I don't believe so. I think he just stayed and did his own thing and somehow or another guy well, he had to be involved with other people with the uh with some of these things, you know, with the with the money, because he wasn't counterfeiting money, so he was working with getting the money from somewhere, you know, and the cars, but well, the stolen cause was his undoing from the NYPD.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

So he had burned a couple of bridges. He was kind of getting looked at, but not too heavy, and he got involved with a guy, I think out in Queens. He lived in Whitestone for a while. I guess he made the trek over the Bronx after the NYPD. He was he had a house in Whitestone, and he got involved in a guy selling tag Cadillacs with good paperwork that looked good. Yeah. And the guy got caught, and the guy told the Queen's District Attorney's Office, Well, I got a partner. He's an NYPD detective in homicide, John Manker. And that was his undoing, and the job got rid of him. And I'm at the part of the book now where now he's out of the NYPD, but it it didn't slow him down for a second because he was almost relieved and like, okay, now I could do it.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

All these things I knew, he was already off the job, you know. So he was doing these kind of things when he was on the job and uh revisited some of that stuff after he got off, you know.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Did did did he ever did he know you wanted to become a cop or did you he ever try to dissuade?

SPEAKER_01 11:23

I didn't know I was gonna become a cop. Tell you the truth, I didn't know, you know, I was barely in school, you know, quit school when I was 16 and uh and all that stuff. So nah. You know, I I took that I took that job, I took the test. I was working as a uh tunnel miner as a sandhog, making uh making really a lot of money. You do feast of famine work in a job like that, and you could be working for a couple of years and then all of a sudden you're laid off for a year, you know, and I had nothing to fall back on. Um you know, I went back to school at some point and got my GD, went to college when I was laid off from the uh sandhogs for a year and a half. You know, once I quit school was when I wanted to learn. So I was reading, I used to read two novels a week, and then I try to read other things other than novels to learn a little something. So Yeah. You know, and then I took the I took the police department test while I was a sand hog, and I got notified, I think, the week before everything started rolling in, you know. Investigation happened. God, when I was in the academy, most of my investigation was going off.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

So Steve, what I couldn't believe in in reading this book is how the mafia had infiltrated NYPD precincts, especially in Spanish Harlem, like the 2-5, the 2-3 where Manga worked. Even if you weren't a corrupt cop, right? And you arrested the wrong guy, this is what I'm getting from the book. A detective would approach you after receiving a phone call from somebody and then try to either A, tell you to squash the arrest, or when you get down to court, change your story. Manca was all over that, either fixing cases for a guy or pretending to lock up a guy to shake him down. That there's a story in there about a girl that was molested by a guy and the guy's brother was connected. Manca took five grand off the guy to convince the family not to press charges. I mean, I just couldn't believe the amount of corruption, which kind of makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

I mean, uh, it almost sounds like he's admitting to this kind of sleasiness, you know. It's like Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

He doesn't shitty sort of thing. But Steve, reading the book, it makes sense the way the NYPD was paranoid when we came on the job about corruption. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Wow. That was uh we had a whole week in my academy class of uh not a whole week, but actually it was a couple days with Eternal Affairs, you know? It was the whole day, a couple whole days, and I missed one afternoon because I watched the homicide in front of the in front of the academy.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

So reading Manca's book what makes something like clicked with me. Listen, the movie Surpical was entertaining, but it's way over the top. But there's a scene in Surpico that kind of it melds with Manka's book. If you guys remember, Pacino's dressed like a butcher. He's got a meat coat on and a hat, he's in the meatpacking district on the lower west side. He arrests a bookmaker. He brings the bookmaker who's laughing it off, thinks it's a joke, brings him into the squad, and then Pacino comes, gets changed, and the guy now isn't handcuffed. The guy's sitting around with the guys, and then Pacino blows a shit fit. That actor is the guy that plays the bookie. His name was Richard Fijoni. And he all Fajoni also played the Keystone cop who gets his pants pulled down or Once Upon a Time in America. And he was also in Midnight Run. He plays Jimmy Darpo, who's like the mobster that chases Denier around. Wow. He grew up in Brooklyn, and his brother was good friends with Gambino crime family serial killer Roy DeMeo. And he's got a book out. I want to pick it up, but unfortunately, he died. So it's like I'm I'm behind these guys a little bit. They're writing these books, and then by the time I discover them, they died. Is John alive? No, Manca passed a couple of years ago.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Okay. Yeah, I was I was thinking that last night. He's got to be up there. I mean, I'm 70, and he'd have to be 90 something. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Do you remember any of the criminals, the wise guys that were around Manca?

SPEAKER_01 15:07

No, no, no, definitely not. I mean, I didn't see him. He probably have to be in the house. I don't think I was ever even in his apartment. Just hanging out in front of the abil the building. Like I said, I I I you know said it was his wife and stepdaughter. I don't remember if there are any other kids. Just who do remember his stepdaughter? I think my brother's still friends with her.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Steve, during during our last interview, we talked about the NYPD's bomb squad, and you're an expert with ex explosives and you know about demolition. What what's your take about building seven at the World Trade Center?

SPEAKER_01 15:40

I I was not at Building Seven, and I really never put my thought, but you know, I was definitely building the North Tower. I don't know what building that is, the North Tower, the one with the antenna on it. Let's call it the North Tower. I was under that when that came down. And I had been up on the plaza for a number of minutes, maybe 15 minutes before it came down. And you know, and definitely no explosion. I I've been involved with by then I can't tell you how many explosives I've used and handled. Different types, whether it was military or commercial, dynamite, Toveks, all that, you know. So, you know, somebody said, Oh, it could have been thermite, yeah, therm thermite. I I don't know. I never handled thermite. I don't even know if that's considered an explosive, but I did not hear an explosion. The building was there, people were falling, you could hear them impacting, and the building was there, and then you could hear it coming down. You know, I was right next to that building. I was probably 40 feet from the lobby of the North Tower alongside the uh customs building, which is I think if I remember right, a five or six-story building. Two of them that lead out into Bessie Street, not Vessi, but yeah, I guess it's Fesi. And uh no explosions. So I I'd imagine if building seven came down and there were explosions used, explosives used, people would have heard it. I wasn't there. But then I was already in the hospital, prepping to be operated on the next day. But uh you know, building building one definitely came down. I wasn't I got there after building two came down, you know. I could tell you the you know, different things, dairies uh and conspiracies, and it was up and then it wasn't. It was definitely hit by a big plane, you know, you know. Get different feelings on that Flight 800 that crashed into the St. Mauritius out there in Long Island, you know. Theory has it, you know, uh or conspiracy that the rocket went towards it. I seen enough pieces of that plane. I seen the uh video within two days of the uh when they put the cameras over over the side, whatever the whole they call those cameras. I watched the people still sitting in their seats getting crabs crawling all over. It was there looking at the pieces. I looked at some pieces, it looked like you know, they were involved with an explosion. The FBI, they had their people that would, you know, a bomb tech would say something, and they had their guy that always would say, Oh, it's not that, it's this, you know, and it was always something that so but you had a couple eyewitnesses that were out in Long Island, so had seen things. Reputable eyewitness, some Air Force officer was out there and you know, he talked, he talked, because we had mentioned that at out at Calvinton, because they brought all the parts back to Calvin. Well, they said they brought them all back, but I don't think they brought everything back. There were they there were guys from the bomb a couple different bomb squads, you know, because NASA County, Suffolk was there, state police that were in the landing zone in St. Mauritius or over that way, you know, where they bought the pieces in. And it was supposed to everything was supposed to go on a truck and be brought back to the hangar out in you know, Calvin Tent. They said there were some trucks that went uh in a different direction. So why was that? Yeah, yeah. So as far as the buildings, we know damn well. There had been talk about uh at the time at at the hazardous devices cooldown in uh Huntsville, Alabama, of the bad guys using planes, you know. And that was uh a couple of years before uh 9-11. You know, there was planes have been used for other things, usually hijacking, it's not for suicide bombs, but they knew they knew these people. So there was all sorts of chatter with that, you know. I mean, why go through the hassle of loading the building up with explosives and waiting till the planes got hijacked at a certain point? You know, just the fact that they did not use 9-11 to do that, that that was some symbolic. You know, they didn't pick that date just by chance.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

So Steve, before we go, you had a gr you had a very interesting story you told me the last time about you saw you witnessed a uh shooting in the while you were I did.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

My academy was really big. It was started out with I think twenty six hundred, twenty seven hundred cops, and they split us on into three platoons. I was young at the time, I had a wife and baby to feed. So I'm gonna recoup that's their first job. They're just out of high school, or just out of maybe a couple years of college, you know. So a lot of times I ended up eating a peanut butter sandwich outside the academy that day, had a couple bucks, went up to uh Third Avenue and got a pizza, really good pizza shop just south of the academy. So we had the pizza, we had uh, you know, 10, 15 minutes to kill, and we stood out on the on Third Avenue, right along the back door of the gym, you know, more towards the corner on Third Avenue. And what happened was I can recall seeing uh a street person, a homeless guy, chasing some teenager around a car holding a knife, you know? And it was several other cheese teenagers, but he was going after this one in particular. Whether they were doing something they shouldn't have been doing, I don't know. Taunting a guy. So what happened was, we're looking up, there was myself and two other guys I can remember from my academy class, and none of us made a motion to go towards. He's armed, we're not, we're not gonna, you know. What are we gonna do? Well, what happened was I could see a guy step step out into the street because they were on the 20th street. That's where the academy was, right? Yeah. On 20th Street, and he stopped, and the and the homeless guy was probably ten feet away from I could I could recall him stopping, and I look over and the and the guy had a shield in his left hand, and he had his gun on his side, close combat, you know? Just like they taught you in the academy. I already had taken uh, you know, gun training. And he had the guy looked at him, and I can recall look at looking at the guy's eyes, and he looked at the shield, looked back at the gun, and then looked at the cop and started walking towards him, right? Cop didn't step back or anything, he just emptied his gun at the guy. I remember the guy putting his hand up like that on the chest, looking back up the cop. He took about two more steps and he collapsed. And the cop went over to him and seen he was on the ground. We're all just standing there at the time. And the cop went around the third avenue, came back about 10, 15 seconds later, holding a paper bag. And he took took the paper bag, opened it, put the knife in the paper bag. Now patrol cars are showing up. The first cop the first cops that showed up, the first patrol team showed up, he handing the handed them the paper bag. Had some words with him. I don't know what he said to him. The second patrol car that showed up, he got in the back of the car and he he went off right off the scene. So between the shooting and him getting off the scene was like, I don't know, 90 seconds to two minutes. And I wow, that and I I can remember saying that's how it's done, you know? Like, you know, I was like, okay, you know, not like in the movies where, okay. You know, of course, guys got there and they're checking this guy, and you know, he filmed his posts and he had I don't know if I was still there when the ambulance showed up. What happened was I guess people from the academy showed up and they could see we were witnesses, and they told the three of us, go around the park to the to the precinct, the 13th precinct, which is attached to the back end of the academy. And we went in there, went to the desk office, and told them that we were witnesses to that, and you know, spent the uh afternoon giving them what we seen. And I found out later, I well maybe in the 13th precinct, that the guy, the shooter, was uh attached to the lab, which is up on the I guess the sixth floor of the academy, if I remember right, fifth floor, somewhere up there. Upstairs, yeah. Yeah. You know, he was attached to the lab. So it was, you know, an eye-opener for a rookie cop, or rookie cops I should say. That it's not as dramatic as it is on television, you know. And you know, I'm sure they I mean, you know, being involved, him being involved in the shooting, his adrenaline had to be going. And I I don't think he was a young guy. He wasn't some rookie cop, but the adrenaline flow, you know, I know what that was like after 9-11. That adrenaline flow was going for days, days and days. You know, people say that would deny it until it happens. Something happens like that. And it if you're not a healthy person, you have that much adrenaline going through you, that could hurt. That's true.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Steve, Steve, Steve, but you got a son who's an artist. Yeah. Can you tell us about him and and his business?

SPEAKER_01 23:50

My son Sean is uh he got involved with uh doing graffiti art as a teenager down in Manhattan, but he got to meet, you know, artists, some real artists that did stuff, did real murals and such. So he he got involved in his art, you know, after getting in trouble and doing a couple odds and ends, and he uh got back into his art and it took off. He sells art. His art is sold usually before it's even done. Uh his uh his uh he goes under Sean Sullivan, my my wife's maiden name. When he did that, I he had asked him, how come Sean Sullivan and not Berberitch? He said, Daddy, Sean Sullivan and some more art. I said, You're 100% right, you know. And uh Yeah, he know no dope with that. But the people he he got to know and you know, some interesting characters, you know, other artists, businessmen. My son opened the stock exchange several times. He was out there with ringing the bell and hitting the gravel. He won a he won a Emmy Award for a piece he got involved with this girl at the World Trade Center. Can't think of her name now. Hope she's uh she was a she's a prodigy. Her father was at the World Trade Center Center and got injured. I think that's how my my son ended finding out about him and then finding about his daughter. And she was really young at the time. And so my son helped her along at the beginning of her career. But uh yeah, he goes goes on the and and also he goes on the layer cake. It's like chocolate layer cake. He says, Yeah, we were in a diner or something, you know, talking to people with their rod on the wall. So yeah, he's been involved with a lot of big projects and he did a he did a piece out in Glencove. Not that I shouldn't mention my daughter, she was the other way. She was, you know, acad academically inclined and went to good public schools and then went to good Catholic high school, went to went to Sacred Heart in Connecticut. After working a few years, uh, but she got a you know undergraduate in business, went to Hostel University, and uh got her master's, and she's uh a vice president, Morgan Stanley. So they did well. I like to say they did well for you know, mommy and daddy, but all limited education.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

So, Steve, thank you so much for reaching out and being a guest on the show today. You're welcome anytime. And as always, I'd like to thank everyone for tuning in, especially my listeners in Dublin, Ireland, Pershaw, Worcestershire, Irvington, New Jersey, Somerville, Massachusetts, and Norwood, Massachusetts. If you worked in law enforcement and had an interesting criminal background, please drop me a note on Twitter or Instagram at VicFroy50. If you're watching on YouTube, please hit the like and subscribe buttons. And if you're really feeling strong, please hit the hype button on your mobile app. And if you enjoy the content, check out my Amazon author page where you'll find my series of behind the scenes NYPD books. Just type in the name Vic, Froy Like the Car, where you can preview all my NYPD books for free. Thanks again, everyone, and I'll see you next week.