- I just did what I had to for work
and it was a job for me.
Whether it was shooting 'em, some of them was stabbing 'em,
some of them was batting 'em.
At this point, I look back and I wish I never did it.
(soft music)
Hey, I'm John Alite, ex-Gambino enforcer hitman.
I'm an advocator now for children,
prison reform, Second Chance Program
and also a co-author of several books.
And this is my story.
I grew up in a normal household I guess.
Albanian typical household.
I was raised as a ball player and a fighter
since I'm a little kid.
My dad believed in the boxing world, fighting.
His concern was more with education in the streets
and being able to survive.
Coming from a communist regime in Albania,
and coming from Lower East Side
where he had taught us to be tough guys I guess.
In New York, there's five major families.
Gambino family is one of the stronger families
out of the five.
So I started getting involved with the Gambino family.
One of them was my baseball coach as a young kid,
was Anthony and Albert Ruggiano.
Their father was nicknamed Fat Andy Ruggiano,
who was a made member of the Gambino family and Murder Inc.
He was a guy that raised me.
And also through Lucky Luciano,
was a famous gangster's first cousin, Charlie Luciano,
which we called Blackie.
He was a partner with my uncle in a gambling den
out in the South Bronx.
I was raised by these guys as early as five years old.
I was in gambling dens,
and I was at different card games, craps games,
and I was exposed to other gangsters through them.
Later on in life as a teenager,
I started running tickets and numbers and bookmaking slips
from a local delicatessen I worked at
and the backroom was used as payphones
for illegal gambling and for horse betting.
So I would run slips across the street
to Luchese guys.
Louis and George Gatti, I dated the daughter of.
I guess as the years went on,
I started becoming an enforcer
without knowing I was becoming one.
I started going to the gym regularly
as a fighter, a boxer, with a lot of guys from the street.
In the middle of collecting debts for gambling and sports
and horse rooms, they would ask me eventually
if I had trouble collecting to hurt them.
And it became a regular business for me.
As far as hurting guys, I got used to it.
I got forceful when my bosses,
whoever they may be at that time
would tell me what to do.
At that time it was a lot of guys from the Luchese family
that I was actually running around doing those things for.
Later on it became the Gambino family as I got older.
As the years went on, working and selling drugs
in Rikers Island, which is one of the bigger county prisons
that everybody from our neighborhoods
in Brooklyn and Queens end up going to
if you get locked up.
There was 25000 inmates.
And I started working for Angelo Ruggiero,
known as a real tough guy.
He asked me to start moving heroine
within the prison system, which I started doing.
From that, I started doing some shootings,
baseball bat beatings.
I've been accused of shooting close to 60 people.
I believe they accused me of shooting.
I think that number's exaggerated,
and it's a lot to say how many of those people I killed
but I would say well over a dozen of those people have died.
By accident, I baseball batted one of my friends too.
I got accustomed to being violent unfortunately.
For some friends, some of it was business
and some of it just became a natural thing to me too
to hurt and kill.
Unfortunately that was part of the life
of being a gangster.
As I grew in the mob world, like any job,
you wanna be the best at what you're doing.
You know the mentality of us,
even though it's a bad life and a crazy life
is to be respected and to make a lot of money.
So as a kid, I was actually slow-walking
more than my friends.
My friends were a lot more dangerous than me.
Coming from Brooklyn, Queens, Jamaica Avenue,
and a lot of my friends were already shooting,
killing, stabbing, and as the years went on
I started to bypass them.
I started to get more vicious but also more intelligent.
I was raised by guys like Fat Andy Ruggiano,
who taught me to be quiet but also taught me to be vicious.
What you don't realize while you're in the street,
there's all kinds of tolls that you're gonna pay.
Emotional and physical.
At about 19, I get stabbed up for the first time.
I get stabbed up two different occasions.
I got about 120 stitches in my chest at one time.
I believe I got about 80-something in my head.
I was stabbed in the head.
You start accepting the violence
and you start accepting that you're playing roulette
with your life, with not much regard of it.
You think you're almost invincible.
So I think some of the tolls is that,
and then as you're doing the killing
and the beatings and the hurting of other individuals,
I think you just take it in stride,
but somewhere down the line,
you're gonna pay the price mentally with it.
It's gonna take effect.
These murders and these shootings I did,
and prosecutors during these cases
talked about how I just nonchalantly went
to go eat afterwards, or I went to the beach.
I didn't really understand
what did they mean by it.
That's how detached you become.
Not realizing they're trying to show
how callous you become in the life.
And I think that's my biggest reason
why I'm so candid about it
because I'm trying to teach kids
that there's so much suffering that goes on,
not just on victims, my victims,
other victims, the families, my family
and my personal fight with myself to control my rage.
There's a mental toll on ya that I work on every day
almost like an alcoholic would.
As you're gettin' more intelligent in the life
and you start growing up and maturing,
as you're gettin' older and you're going through
some of the violence you did,
you're starting to recognize there really isn't that loyalty
that you believed there is as a naive kid.
You start watching the treachery, the double dealing,
people that are killing their best friends,
killing family members with no regard,
and you start understanding that this is not about loyalty.
This is about money.
And what I believed in as a kid started changing
and the guys that I grew up with, that I really respected,
they're gone and move far away from this life.
Either lost their lives or murdered or in prison for life.
And I started to step back and really take a look
at what I'm involved in.
And I started seeing the treachery when I went on the run.
And I got caught, and I was in Brazil.
And while I was on the run and in Brazil penitentiaries,
I watched two major crime families, the Bonanno family,
about 14 made guys, captain and bosses,
the whole hierarchy, started cooperating.
And also my own family,
the Gambino family started cooperating.
And these guys aren't the only ones cooperating.
These guys are all around the country,
bosses from every family, every state,
that have been cooperating.
And it kinda opened up my eyes.
How did I leave my kids like this?
Why would I sit in these penitentiaries in Brazil
for years at a time, fighting for my life
in those concentration camps,
when I spent two and a half years in those penitentiaries.
And just keep getting news after news
of these captains, and all these family and bosses,
and all these families cooperating.
And then finally when I came back to the United States,
I decided to throw the towel in and change my life.
Ever since then I never turned back.
I try to be as honest as possible,
to help the kids not follow the path
that I actually grew up and believed in
and thought I would die following.
I left four children behind like a jackass,
believing in the loyalty of that life.
Now, I have the Johnny & Gene Show.
It's a podcast, and what I'm trying to do
is reach kids that had been in trouble
or parents that don't know what to do
when kids are in trouble.
I'm trying to reach those kids
before they get in trouble.
And for those kids that been first time offenders
will have Second Chance Program.
It's not a life that's conducive to having a good life
and I try to convey this to the kids
by saying to them, "Listen, I promise you,
I'm the real guy and I survived it,
and I think there's a reason and a purpose
why I survived it."
So I could save some kids' lives
and the nonsense belief that this life is built on loyalty.
It's the farthest thing from the truth.
It's about money only, and it's self-preservation
and that's really the truth about the American Mafia.
(soft ominous music)