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Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. Gary interviews well-known mob historian and author Scott Dietche about his most recent book, Hitmen: The Mafia, Drugs, and the East Harlem Purple Gang. Scott Dietche is a nationally recognized expert on organized crime in the United States. This Tampa-based author has written books like Garden State Gangland: The Rise of the Mob in New Jersey, The Silent Don: The Criminal Underworld of Santo Trafficante Jr., Cigar City Mafia: A Complete History of the Tampa Underworld, and The Everything Mafia Book. Click anywhere on the highlighted text to find these books. In Hitmen, Scott tells of this minor league New York City Mafia crew known as the Purple Gang. These gangsters aspired to make their Purple Gang into the 6th Family by selling narcotics, committing murder, and extortion.
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\nTranscript
\nSUMMARY KEYWORDS
\nmafia, gang, east harlem, purple, connection, drug, genovese, family, murders, tied, heroin, mob, early 70s, guns, killings, la cosa nostra, florida, gangs, new york, drug dealers
\nSPEAKERS
\nGARY JENKINS, Scott Dietche
\n 
\n00:00
\nThe early years of the purple gangs appearance on the drug scene were a tumultuous era for many of the mob like drug syndicates operating in New York City, including the ones operating in East Harlem. But within the gangs own ranks internal strife and petty beefs led to several killings that law enforcement scrambled to solve more often than not, they were added to the list of unsolved gangland homicides. This early violence was one catalyst that led to the myth us of the Purple Gang as something akin to an elite hit squad for hire in the underworld. There were a lot of blood spatter drug related homicides, everybody suspected them the Purple Gang of doing a bunch of them, but we couldn’t prove it. The drug game was a violent one and the gang was certainly amenable to dispatching business rivals with little to no provocation. A 1976 DEA report stated much like the original Purple Gang that terrorize Detroit during the Prohibition era,