WGBH Radio; The Callie Crossley Show

I'm Cally Crossley This is the Cali Crossley Show. Today we're talking about Boston's hitmen and hoodlums in their new book The Boston mob guide. Beverly Ford and Stephanie SHORO explore the city's criminal underworld the capture of Whitey Bulger may have closed an infamous chapter in Boston's history. But towns long and bloody rap sheet stretches way back to the turn of the 20th century. From Joseph The Animal Barboza to Steve The Rifleman Flemmi. We'll get the lowdown on the seedy hangout for hits and heights were hatched. From there we study the undead on the Harvard campus soon Weaver Shum leads a course that gets students blood pumping the vampire and literature and film. It's an examination of cultural taboos the seduction of the lonely outsider and our obsessive fear of getting old. Up next from Beantown hoodlums to a bloodsucking curriculum. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Nancy Lyons. President Obama is

marking the end of the Iraq war with a visit to Fort Bragg North Carolina. As your commander in chief and on behalf of a grateful nation I'm proud to finally say these two words and I know your families agree Welcome home. All U.S. troops are to be out of Iraq by December thirty first. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the sacrifices of our armed forces are making in Afghanistan are paying off. Visiting with forces less than 35 miles from the Pakistan border he told the U.S. servicemen and women they've reached a turning point in the war and they are winning. Investigators in Belgium still don't know what drove a 33 year old man to kill his neighbors cleaning lady then attack strangers in a downtown square. But as Teri Schultz explains there is speculation it may have been related to his fears of upcoming criminal charges as a city in mourning lay silent for one minute at

midday almost exactly 24 hours after Nordine Amrani rampage in a downtown square with guns and grenades killed at least three and wounded more than one hundred twenty people. Ronnie was on parole for earlier convictions on weapons and cannabis possession. Police had asked him to come in Tuesday for questioning about accusations of sexual abuse. Instead on Ronnie shot a neighbor's employee says the prosecutor then went to a busy market square hurled three grenades shot bystanders and killed himself. Local media quote on Ronnie's attorney is saying he feared being jailed again. Authorities say there's no reason to think terrorism was a motive but they don't yet know what was. For NPR News I'm Teri Schultz in Brussels. Time magazine's Person of the year is the protester. The magazine says the wave of dissent that has spread from the Middle East to Europe and the U.S. is showing individual action can bring collective colossal change. NPR's Craig Windham reports time manually chooses what it believes to be the individual or group that has had the greatest influence on the culture and the news over the past year.

TIME's editor Rick Stengel says this year's person of the year is a composite. The men and women around the world but particularly in the middle. Middle East who toppled governments who brought a sense of democracy and dignity to people who hadn't had it before. STENGEL on NBC s today's show says the protests have not only galvanized a major social and political changes but have also had ripple effects triggering dissent in other regions as well. What happened in the Arab world did influence Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Oakland and the protests in Greece and Madrid Stengel says while the protest movements have deferred the idea of democracy was present in every gathering. Craig Windham NPR News Washington. It's a down day on Wall Street the Dow Jones industrials down 106 The Nasdaq is down 40 points. The S&P is down 11. This is NPR News from Washington. US officials are in Beijing reportedly preparing for talks with North Korean officials tomorrow. The Associated Press says it is expected the U.S. envoy will be

discussing the possibility of providing food aid for the impoverished nation. The U.S. has been wary about extending aid to North Korea for fear the food would be diverted to the military. China will slap duties on some U.S. car exports as NPR's Frank Langfitt reports. The penalties are the latest in the increasingly contentious trade relationship between the world's two largest economies. A villager surnamed Ling said police have blocked access to the fishing village of Khan for days. But Rice and other crops shipped from outside are not allowed to come in he said. Villagers are battling local officials over the sale of farm land to developers. Local residents say the government has made millions of dollars but farmers haven't been compensated in recent days police arrested village Representatives and one died government officials blamed a heart attack Link said. Family members say the man appeared to have been tortured. Villages have been protesting for months Ling said police and other officials actually fled the community in September leaving locals to run

the place. Frank Langfitt NPR News Shanghai. Anti-slavery organizations are getting a big boost. Tech giant Google says it will donate eleven and a half million dollars to groups fighting to end the slavery of 27 million people around the world. It's believed to be the biggest corporate Grant devoted to the intervention and rescue of people being held or forced to work or provide sex against their will. Google says its total end of the year charitable donations will add up to 40 million. I'm Nancy Lyons NPR News in Washington. Support for NPR comes from and John Herman supporting the breakthrough collaborative involving middle school students in learning and older students in teaching at Breakthrough collaborative dot org. Good afternoon I'm Kelly Crossley. Why do you Bulger's capture added another chapter to the long and bloody narrative of mob history in Boston and as notorious as he was. Why does name baby the one that's most universally known.

But if you go by the number of mobster themed films based in Boston you might get the idea that Boston is a mobsters haven. Is it Wonder no more my guests have written the book on it. Joining us for a radio tour of Boston's Mean Streets are Beverly Ford and Stephanie SHORO. They're a Boston based journalist and the authors of a new book The Boston mob guide hitmen hoodlums and hideouts. Thank you both for joining us today. Thanks for inviting us. So why write this book. Well we could say that the history press made us an offer we couldn't refuse. They sickly. We have I've written about a Boston crime before for my book on the Brinks robbery and I've written about the Coke in a grove book. So I have a kind of interest in the sort of the darker side of Boston so I've been talking to the history press about another crime book when they came back to us with about a book on Boston's mafia. And the first thing we had to do was say well it was more than a Mafia. There were a number of other groups

involved. And then we started to put the put the book together and and Bev really is phenomenal because she knew a lot of these guys. So that was my guess Stephanie zero and now Beverly I want to add to that. Yeah it was really enlightening for me because I didn't realize I think how these guys were all connected. You know you know the names but you don't know the background and you know that they were bad men and you know their crimes but you don't know exactly how deep their crimes went. So it was really fascinating research to do. Not only Whitey Bulger but you know we trace the Boston mob back till the late 1800s and those are the real fascinating people because those are the people that you really don't hear about. You know you hear about Whitey Bulger but you don't hear about you know the custom gang or you know King Solomon. Yeah yeah. So so let's go back to and since you do trace from that from the earliest

times that I guess you could document what was different the same about those early gangs that we can't call them just mafia that this is a group of folks mobsters in general then might have continued the commonalities up until well not today but up until the sort of the height of mops tourism in Boston. Well I think they're all brutal brutal people and I think we always have to keep that in mind I think there's a tendency to sort of glamorize some of these guys. And the truth is if they were very violent people. They were smart you can't deny that they're smart and this is a thread that went through all of them but they all had I think a lack of self discipline. Except when it came to crime. And going back to the beginning you can start with Charles King Solomon who was operate in the 1900s he was a bootlegger was a sort of Bostons Al Capone if you will. And the difference between him and say mobsters that came later is he was pretty

flamboyant he pretty much lived in the limelight he actually owned the Coconut Grove nightclub for a while was very much in the public eye. And when he eventually was was murdered and he kind of came to a bad end thousands of people lined the streets for his funeral which we just found amazing. So he operated in the limelight the more modern people I think operated more in the shadows. Would you care Beverly. I would you know the Angelo brothers for instance. They were very flamboyant they didn't go out there and you know they weren't the John Gotti type with the suits and the diamond rings and stuff they were very low key. And interestingly enough people in the neighborhood protected them because they have this perception that the Angelus protected their neighborhood much like the perception of Whitey protecting South Boston and a lot of times that wasn't true as we found out in why this case I mean he was

taking part in you know bringing drugs into South Boston. He was out there telling people that he'll never allow drugs into South Boston yet he was the major in bringing conveyor turkeys to orphans and things like that but meanwhile he was operating on a different level. That's what I mean that these people could be perceived this is kind of Robin Hood. But they they really weren't. So to your point about the brutality you make it plain through many examples through the book that this was a brutal business I'm looking at one example here. This is. And you know talking about saying that he had a high regard for Flemmi but he thought that Flemmi did not use sufficient common sense when it came to killing people and gave me a lecture on killing people pointing out that he should not kill people because he had an argument. If an argument doesn't suit he should leave and get word to Raymond. Patrice can pronounce his last name. Who in turn would either ok or deny the hit on his individual depending on the circumstances. And of course then you describe the gruesome stuff with Whitey Bulger

overseeing pulling out of teeth and chopping off of fingertips so its victims would not be identified but through the book the brutality is made plain about what's happening here. We could call it to use PC speak of impulse control. I mean these people reacted very badly when they were crossed in any way and I think this that conversation kind of shows that these are people who kind of lived on the edge in their own behavior and we found a lot of a lot of murders in this case that you just scratch your head and say you know couldn't you have figured out a different way to handle this a little bit better. But that was the mark of these men into being an assassin to be a hit man. You had to have that edge. And the way the organization itself had trouble controlling these guys. What I thought was interesting and back to your point Beverly this interconnectedness. I was. I need a little chart because I'm reading a book and I'm thinking OK now wait a minute that's so and so is Cousin wait a minute there's so-and-so his brother. How do they. Will know each other how do they go.

Because they're going across ethnic divisions and communities. Explain to me how that how that happened why such interconnectedness. Well I think that was one of the striking things a bit of Bev talked about that when we started this book these interconnections among all these different gangsters and I think since I've written another book some Boston history I've noted that in other areas and including in the Brahmin the Brahmin's elite all those people tended to have connections with each other will likewise the underworld. They all had connections to each other and we did have a lot of trouble trying to keep track of it we're laughing because you know for we're relaunching the book tonight at the sort of a library and we're creating a slide where we're going to try to show a lot of these connections and it's getting very complicated right away. But I think what we did with this book was to try to untangle all these threads and cross references so that it's easier to find the path and find the threads among these different guys because it really gets very complicated. And I think both of us were very struck by that when we're doing the we're doing the research yeah.

You know the the nice thing about this book is that it kind of puts it all together in a very easy format. So it's I like to say it's a precursor to all the other Boston mob books that are out there because it really is it really tells a very simply you know and once you understand who these people are you could go on and read the you know more into good books like Black Mass or you know hip manner. I mean there's a lot of good books out there on that and I think we put this together we thought well what can we add to that and basically what we did was we looked at all the books and tried to gather all that information and put it in a sort of a reader friendly sort of format. I kind of think of it like that in the medical field I have met a study so we look at all the other studies and they draw some conclusions from that and that's kind of what we what we did here and it is kind of striking when you put it put it all together that you don't get when you get it individually. OK so what so what's striking about putting it all together. Well I think that these people were allies and then

enemies and then allies again. I mean these people are talking about the Winter Hill gang and some of the South Boston gangs would form these alliances and then would start killing each other and they were unable to exercise a lot of their impulse control. I think this came out most particularly in the Irish mob war of the nine hundred sixty nine thousand nine hundred six where you had people. Very very intimately connected either by neighborhoods or by blood and yet were killing each other I mean there was some connections with them and Whitey's women were connected with men who he had killed. It was just getting astonishing. And you see them crossing crossing lines of different mob organizations you know who was affiliated with the NGO affiliated with winter hill and there's a lot of those guys that kind of crossed paths and crossed organizations you know kind of doing their own thing

but allies to no one. What I found fascinating about this is I'm trying to think you know before I came here lived here you know what robberies mobster ism kind of stuff that I know sort of vaguely associated with Boston. You know for some reason a Brink's did not come to mind I don't know why but it felt more national in scope or something so it's always surprising to me to realize well you know that's something that happened here did that put the Boston mob scene on the map so to speak. Well it didn't it didn't I mean the Brinks robbery was kind of a freelance job if you would say. I mean people are always saying was that was a Mafia behind that was organized crime behind that and I have to we say yes and no that as it was organized it was basically the work of some some guys in Boston some of whom had some links to the New York New York mobs but. It was it was it and in that particular case you had Irish Italian Jewish fellow Polish fellow who all got together for that. But what we found was with the Brink's

robbery is that some of the players sort of the outside players of that particular robbery then had connections later on right down to Stephen The Rifleman Flemmi and then to Whitey Bulger so it seemed as if that was sort of like the grandfather of big crimes that in some ways everybody has tried to repeat. One of the motifs we talk about and this is to your point about the movies is that the masks were played a big part in the Brinks robbery they used mass that covered the whole head and you'll see that motif in Hollywood movies about robberies all robberies in Boston right down to the town with Ben Affleck. Well here is a clip from a film called Six bridges to cross. This was a 1955 and it's based on the famous 1950s Brinks robbery. There's a list a big man's garage and you'll find maybe 10 12 cars and going I don't know you one sorry big very big. Started moving in a sprinkler was coming into my

stomach. Oh Ed that can I can I give you a lift. No I'm going to stop makers and it would be OK if I stopped off and saw Mrs. Gallagher back. No it wouldn't be doing business with you is one thing wrecking the house where my daughters bring up something. I thought that was so. Well you know we all have our roles don't come into my house to have them. We're talking about the history of Boston Stephanie SHORO and Beverly for their new book is The Boston mob guide hit men hoodlums and hideouts. And you're listening to the Calla Crossley Show on eighty nine point seven. WGBH Boston Public Radio. This program is made possible thanks to. An white flower farm offering a broad

selection of potted Amaryllis and dozens of other live plant gifts shipped direct to your friends and loved ones located in Litchfield Connecticut since 1950. More information at white flower farm dot com. And Elsa Dorfman Cambridge portrait photographer still clicking with the jumbo format Polaroid 20 by 24 analog camera an original Polaroid film online at Elsa Dorfman dot com. That's Elsa Dorfman dot com. As protesters in the Middle East use social media to organize and communicate the regimes they're battling are using sophisticated technology to intercept their emails text messages and cell phone calls on the next FRESH AIR. Journalist Ben Elgin talks about Western companies that sell surveillance technology to repressive regimes. Join us. Nine point seven. I'm Brian O'Donovan. The holidays can be quite a hectic time which is why it's important to set aside some time to enjoy the sounds and sights of the festive season with friends and family.

That's what a Christmas can and after bringing the show to sold out audiences all across New England. We're coming back home December 16th for three days of shows at the Kotla Majestic Theater. Tickets are still available but. They won't be for long. How did today's innovators plan to tackle America's greatest challenges. I'm Karen Miller. That's it we talk about each week on innovation hub Saturday mornings at 7:00 and Sunday night at 10:00 here on eighty nine point seven. Welcome back to the Calla Crossley Show. If you're just joining us we're talking about the history of organized crime in Boston. My guests are Beverly Ford and Stephanie SHORO. They're a Boston based journalist and the authors of the new book The Boston mob guide hit men hoodlums and hideouts. So one of the things I'm very interested in is what makes the mob scene in Boston particularly

Boston or does it or is there a mob scene anywhere that you might go to New Jersey for example where the HBO film series The Sopranos was it would mirror what happened here. I think anywhere you go in the country you're going to find organized crime. It doesn't necessarily have to be in the same form because we've got a lot of competition these days you've got the Russian mob. We've got you know black gangsters we have all different kind of ethnic organizations that have their own little piece of the pie in Boston. What makes it different is that these guys kind of almost work together as one mob but they functioned as independents. And also interestingly enough one would think that Boston would be the headquarters of the New England mob and it really wasn't. It was surprisingly Providence Rhode Island where rimmed Petrarca was the mob boss. So we were kind of like an independent mob faction I guess you'd call it because we took our orders from

Providence. But you know these these groups were all working on their own. I wondered the reason I asked that question too is because with so many ethnicities involved here and Boston being so specifically racially polarized and ethnically polarized I wondered if the mob scene helped to underscore that or if it loosened it up in any way or what was the impact of the mob scene on those ethnic and racial divisions. You know it had a kind of a dual effect. I mean in the sense that it reinforced ethnic stereotypes you know the Irish gangs the Italian gangs. And yet those those particular groups would work together. And I do know that for example many of the mobsters or both Irish Italian would frequent black black owned establishment and patronize and would even try to create some partnerships with that. There was a case of

a chef who owned a. Chance the Chandler restaurant restaurant yes by the. Yeah. And that was interesting also that he was actually prevented in getting any more money because of his association with gangsters but they were the ones who were trying to help him and they had tried to push him so there was actually some interesting things along those lines. In the long run was it good for the city you know and I think that people helped the other groups when it was in their own self interest to do to do so. And so I don't think it's. It helped to ease any of the real racial tensions here but there was a lot of cross cutting in terms of criminal activity among the different groups. Now we know as I said White is name and that's it. But that's is because he was on the lam for so long in the spectrum of the hitmen and mobsters that you profile in your book where is he is he like at the

top or is he toward the end I mean where is he. I think he's pretty up there. He was not at the top you have really high up there on the food chain because he was brilliant. Yet he was also very vicious and violent and. But very smart too. Surprisingly you wouldn't think these guys who think these guys are hoodlums he was not very well educated but I think you believe he dropped out of school after school but he read a lot. He seemed to be. We've seen references to him and have his nose in the book so he actually was sort of self educated but he was not a he was not a person Yeah I mean look at his butt is I mean that I think about why do you look at his brother and you know that they came from the same situation and went off and kind of different directions so that when you get older who was eventually president right. Yes but that was striking about a lot of these guys I mean Joe Barboza Joe The Animal Barboza was a good cook and chef

chef and. And yet three languages and reliances So these were not they were not stupid people. They did stupid things but they weren't stupid people. Whitey just has the most amazing contradiction so I think of all the characters he is the most fascinating. And if he is he may not be the most violent but like I said like saying is he's way up there and he certainly is one of the more interesting characters. One of the things you also do in your book is to identify all the places where this nefarious business was going on some of this seems so shocking to me they're so innocent looking now and all this business was happening you could do a little mob 2 or a bus and there's enough places to go on if you were in Hollywood that would already have happened. But what's your favorite spot. That seems to speak to both a past gone era and now today. It's got to be Winter Hill. I mean I'm there. I mean I think what was interesting we started taking pictures of this book and started piecing out where these different events took place.

We are getting this and I was like oh I pass there every day. I'm always there because I do I mean I'm and I'm in Winter Hill area all the time for various things and just to find the stuff happening right in the the area that I cross that thousands of people cross every day so it has to be for me. Winter Hill has a kind of interesting. Role to play in that. This is the saying and I think that's one point that we should make about this is that this didn't happen out there in somebodies segregated neighborhood or in the poor It happened all over the city. Well what was going on at the Winter Hill at the time and what would we see if we rolled out now. Well we had we had the whitey the Winter Hill gang had their headquarters in the Marshall Motors which was right off of Broadway. And so they were always doing their car business really was really a front for a lot of their criminal activity and a lot of the guys would come in and out and hang out there. And at the time there were a number of restaurants in bars and theaters along there

and there were a couple of murders that were carried out right along Broadway because at the time this was this is back in the 50s I think the newspapers would have illustrations and all the businesses have changed now so it's really a whole different area. But it happened there. Have you have any of the North End. To me is it's walkable and it's there's a lot of stuff that happened in the north and you know mafia related. But what strikes me is if you walk down Prince Street where the family and settled and the boys grew up and everything is still the same as it was when they were children. And you know there's there's parts in the book about how the the FBI the State Police tried to bug the engine of the operation and they couldn't because it was such a close knit neighborhood and people would tell whenever someone thing was out of place in their neighborhood people would tell Jerry Angelo and I just think it's fascinating because you could go out there today and just walk down that same street nothing's

changed and you can talk to people I mean when I was doing the research for the Brinks robbery which was right and then there were two I just walked up and down the street and people would come up. They have stories and I would just stop people and they have long memories and they would. Tell you their stories either about the robbery or about the end jewels or about something else that happened on the streets the memories go very much very much present very much part of the city's landscape. You're listening to any 9.7 WGBH an on line at WGBH dot org. I'm Kelly Crossley we're talking about the history of Boston's mob scene with Stephanie SHORO and Beverly Ford. Their new book is The Boston mob guide hit men hoodlums and hideouts. One of the things that you make quite clear and I've wondered if this is was also mirrored anyplace else is that the FBI complicity in these crimes was just so overwhelming and also very different in a surprise to a lot of people that the FBI and instead of sort of ferreting out some of these folks

was as complicit as some of the the community folks. Exactly and I think that was one of the shocking things in doing this book we knew about it. We knew about these people and there's been a lot of publicity about it but actually to read it and read some of the the information on that. Paul Rico saying when he was asked to testify and was challenged he said what do you want me to do cry. I mean it was this this attitude of we run the city the way we want to and the connections among that. I am not. I think that is. I won't say that's unique to Boston. I'm sure that goes on in other cities but it really happened here on a very major scale. And I don't think we would have had as many murders unsolved murders or in the case in some cases the wrong people were convicted for murders if we didn't have the complicity of some of the FBI agents. And I think one of the big unsolved mysteries of Boston is really we still don't know how deep this this penetration by the mob into the

FBI went. And we still don't know how many people why he killed or any of his you know any other gang members. And and that's specifically because the FBI was a was a barrier to getting that information acting I mean they were they were they were actually pushing away investigations by state police. They were and also I'm not so sure that these guys that these mafiosos would I mean some of them and have admitted to 20 murders. But you know how many murders does it take before you lose count. You know is there is there more. And you know we know 20 but where where they buy it buried you know. No we haven't found a lot of the bodies still. Yeah that yet today. So you know a lot of what has been portrayed it seems most recently every time you turn around there's a movie about you know the Boston mob scene which is very interesting. Let me just play a little bit from one that's very popular this is called This is the trailer from the 2010 hit the town.

Excuse me I would like to start with your abduction for me you say. It took me as cast which we were able to see everything all through the cornfield you know. Three hundred robberies. Most of this profession should live in a one square mile of the political trust. You know that's and then we can name many more Everybody thinks Dennis Lehane wrote all of them he said he has not. But what what is the fascination do you have a whole chapter on Tinseltown in the movies and the mob scene here in Boston. As I've said there are other places where the mob scene seems to be bigger. Why Boston. I think it's because we just have such careful Kell for characters and we have good writers working here. Let me go back to the friends of Eddie Coyle which was one of the great movie a great book a great movie and now it's a play incidentally playing right now

which we should go see but. But it is the best of the lot I mean the others are pretty Hollywood This one is really great friends of Eddie Coyle really gives you down to the nitty gritty of what it was like to be a foot soldier in this world which is not pretty and not particularly glamorous. Why these other other movies. Can I say Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. OK yeah yeah. I think it's interesting that Scorsese has moved from doing work in the mean streets in New York to Boston. I it's kind of one of those quirky things but certainly Whitey Bulger has I think the fascination with him has brought attention to this his whole arena. But it goes back to the clip that you played from six bridges across and then the Brinks job that was filmed in the 70s here in Boston as well so it is one of those quirky things I'm not sure I know the exact answer to it but we

certainly have good fodder for these particular movies. Well Stephanie I want both you and Beverly to answer this. Speaking of Corky should we think of this history as kind of quirky horrible bloody Of course. Or is was a fundamental to shaping the character the cultural character of the city. I think probably this the second fundamental to shaping the character of the city. All these All these hit men and mobsters are part of the fabric of Boston. I mean we live and we're so fortunate to live in a city where there's so much history. And also unfortunately Boston's a small city so that's why we're seeing these these mobsters almost tripping over each other. But it's it's kind of formed our history you know. Well good or bad. That's part of our fabric of our of our community. And it makes for fascinating reading and it makes for fascinating movies and I

think I agree with Stephanie. You know it's a cast of characters that we have here. I mean the vultures and that whole conundrum is not unique there. I found in my research other families split down the middle with once one group person operating one side of the law and the other on the other side of the law and yet there are connections there. I mean this is this involves a real People's History of Boston this is not a story of the generals or the presidents of the leaders this is real grassroots history. And whether we like it or not in many cases or a lot of things we don't like. It really affects the people here. And people believe this to be part of the history of their neighborhood and their stories. It's not always pretty. But it is history of a sort. So today you trace this history from the 20s the high point through some of the notorious 60s and 70s and today what's the mob scene like.

You know I had never really it was a cheese man so yeah it's not it's not what we've had in the past. The feds have done a good job of decimating a lot of the mobsters. And as I told you earlier the Mafia is kind of broken up now in factions a lot. One of the things that helped decimate the mob was drugs because the old timers had this rule you don't deal in drugs that's bad news. And you know the new up and comers dealing drugs. And that's where you find people who. Have loose lips Who will you know they get caught with a small amount of marijuana and they're ready to talk so that doesn't help the mob at all. And we don't have the charismatic mob leaders either I think the jury in June and the Whitey Bulger's and how he winners. We don't have that in Boston right now so we have the cheese man you know in

the north and who's supposed to be the head of the Boston mob now but then he went to jail in 2009. I'm not so sure how OK you will notice that a lot of these groups or ethnic groups I mean it's hard to imagine but the Irish were once the despised minority in Boston and it took them a while to become part of the structure the same with the Italians I mean I've looked into the sack of insanity cases so the Italians were had their had their their transition into this into the structure and again this is what happens with organized crime. A lot of it comes through ethnic groups that then make their way up and they become more part of the official structure of the American society. Well there's a lot to be known in this book and you seem to have covered it all I had to read it in the daytime. This kind of stuff scares me. Yes I know that two women wrote the mobster's book that's interesting to me. We've been talking about Bob's Bostons mob culture from the days of prohibition to today. I've been speaking

with Beverly Ford and Stephanie SHORO. Their new book is The Boston mob guide hit men hoodlums and hideouts. You can catch them tonight at the Somerville Public Library at 7:00 p.m. from the history of Boston's Mean Streets were off to the hallowed halls of Harvard with a course on vampyres has become a huge hit on campus. This is WGBH Boston Public Radio. This program is on WGBH thanks to you. And it's your move. Nk oftentimes adult children are not available to help parents with later life moves. It's your move specializes in these challenging emotional life transitions. More info available at. It's your move dot com. And the school of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston is continuing education program offers art classes and workshops for adults of all experience levels and art professionals.

Spring classes begin January 19th s m f a dot edu. I'm Marco Werman. Next time on the World Tower running. Competitors race up office building stairwells and sport began at New York's Empire State Building. Now tower running has its own World Cup. We join runners as they scramble up a skyscraper in Colombia 8000 feet above sea level tower running in Bogota. Next time on the world. Coming up at 3:00 here on eighty nine point seven WGBH 2012 is right around the corner. That means a presidential election. Iowa's caucuses come on January 3rd the first presidential primary comes. In New Hampshire one week later to London a liberal. Discovery scientists have discovered a planet. The chair's key characteristics with Earth new challenges. She United States cannot afford to ignore this European debt problem be a part of what's next. Make a tax deductible contribution online at WGBH dot org.

Here a question has a great question and that's a great question. It's a great question. Rick great question on FRESH AIR feel here unexpected questions and unexpected answers this afternoon at 2:00 here on eighty nine point seven. WGBH. I'm Cally Crossley. We're talking all things vampires with my guest Sue Weaver show. She's the associate dean for the Master of Liberal Arts Program at the Harvard Extension School where she teaches the vampire and literature and film. Welcome. Thank you. Well I have to say I was pretty amazed to find that this course is being taught at Harvard. So are many of my colleagues. Well this is a useful Tony for the first time last year it's now one of the largest classes at the Harvard Extension School. More than 100 students. And

you decided to that this did have academic rigor because. Well because first of all it's the biggest cultural phenomenon of our time. I was very curious about why everybody is reading vampire novels. I was curious about the Twilight phenomenon. I was curious about why you can't go into a bookstore without seeing racks and racks of vampire themed books for all ages and why they are everywhere in the movies. So I really began by questioning what is going on in our culture that causes people to be so fascinated by the vampire figure. Now you're highly credentialed So you didn't put this is not a class where even though you are watching some films where you're sitting around chatting about True Blood you really have whole whole syllabus looking at literatura looking at film. Tell us about what the course involves. OK well it was a really gigantic research effort on my part and I have to say I've never had so much fun in my entire career putting a

course together. I love teaching Wordsworth and Keats and Tennyson but somehow they weren't as much fun as researching vampire literature or I am primarily a one thousandth century scholar so I already knew that there were points there was point by Samuel Taylor Coleridge written in 1797 called Christabel. That's a lesbian vampire full point. I knew that John pala Dory had written the first vampire link the story called The vampire in eighteen eighteen excuse me 18 19 I also knew that Sheridan Le Fanu had published the first full length novel called Carmilla in 1872. Also a lesbian vampire novel and then of course I knew all about Bram Stoker's Dracula published in 1997 which is what really sets vampire literate you're in motion. I knew about those things. What I did not know is that the canon of Empire literature was enormous. I

thought at the beginning. OK I'll read a few new novels put together this very interesting course maybe I'll go all the way to the Twilight novels. And I found a website called the vampire library dot com. Wow. And to my astonishment there are fifteen hundred vampire novels in the cabin. They are something like 300 collections of vampire short stories. So I began to figure out that the task was going to be slightly larger than I had anticipated at the beginning. So I began reading and when I began reading. Sort of in a spotty way across this canon I began looking for references by other authors to particular works of fiction so that I could begin to winnow the list down I was looking for quality fiction or fiction that had actually changed the way in which people talk about vampires along the way. My most interesting discovery was to find out that a number of anthropologists have written about the vampire

because of course it has a 3000 year history in folklore and mythology and I was fascinated that so many anthropologists had written about it trying to understand what this figure means to each culture that has produced a vampire myth or legend that led me then to psychoanalytical research where I discovered to my astonishment that Sigmund Freud Carl Young Ernest Jones craft ebing Melanie Klein and a number of other psychologists and psychoanalysts have likewise written about the vampire phenomenon trying to understand what kind of psycho social phenomena this figure really represents because it's somehow deeply embedded in the collective unconscious of individuals it's been there for a long time so many people of course have concluded that it therefore resonates. With human beings in a very particular number of ways. So that's what I set out to find out is what does this really mean and what is this was the significance of this figure and why has

it continued to compel our imagination as it has. I also found out that good old Karl Marx in dialogue beetle takes up the vampire metaphor as a way of talking about capitalism and the exploitation of the masses by the wealthy. By the end of the 19th century a number of other writers Charles Dickens for example was using the vampire as a metaphor to talk about the legal profession. So the metaphor the figure of the vampire has been with us for a very long time. It's metaphorical significance began to be employed as early as the 19th century. So my my research basically was trying to discover as many of the iterations of the vampire as I could find in literature. The final thing to say is that I was especially fascinated when I found out that there are over 500 and 85 vampire films in exactly who knew. I've watched vampire films since I was a little girl and always thought they were

interesting. But I have to say when I began my research and began to discover that great filmmakers from F.W. more now too Verner Hertzog to Kathryn Bigelow to Guillermo del Toro Francis Ford Coppola the great Irish director Neil Jordan all of them had made vampire films too. So that opened up the Vista even more for me. My guest is Sue Weaver Shaun for her. Her course is the vampire in literature and film at the Harvard Extension School. And we're going to start where you didn't where you you ended on a very high note let's start kitschy This is the 1931 classic Dracula starring Bela Lugosi. But Doc you know it's really good to see you. I don't know what happened to the driver and my Lucky Jim. And with all this time I thought I was in the wrong. Right. I DID YOU KNOW.

We didn't. She didn't know the night but you hate me. Everyone should know that Sue Weaver is quoting the film. That's how well she knows her literature and film or vampire literature as well. All right so we've talk psychology socio politics cultural nuance all of that in this course. What does how does it resonate with your students. I mean I know there's a the pop culture aspect but when they learn that your course is really much deeper than that. What are they finding there for them. Well I was very happy that the one hundred eighty two students who enrolled last fall the first time I taught the course didn't flee suddenly when they discovered that first of all we were going to read a novel a week and secondly there was going to be research into anthropology psychoanalysis et cetera et cetera.

But I. I think I think what what pleased me the most was all the emails I began to get from students a really even before the Course began but after the course began people writing to me saying I've been a fan of vampire literature for many many years but I've been closeted about it because people look at you as if you're crazy if you say I like reading vampire novels and I really wasn't able to explain what the attraction was. And you've given me a mechanism for explaining that this is a very old myth. This is very much a part of folklore going back thousands of years and that it's been an interesting way for people to talk about certain kinds of social anxieties depending on the era in which it was written so I was very pleased you know that students have that response to it. One of the most remarkable things that we saw the first night of class in this huge classroom that was standing room only and it is that about 75 percent of the class was female and this was not something that I had

really thought about before it hadn't occurred to me that. This might be a largely female audience. Or this might be a genre that attracts largely females. Certainly all the times that I've gone to vampire movies the audience has been male and female in equal portions so that actually opened up another question for me is why why are women attracted to this. Your answer. Well the answer of course is that the vampire is the only erotic monster out there. You know you don't fantasize about making love with a zombie or with Frankenstein's creature or anything like that but all of that neck nuzzling and biting and so forth is kind of prelude to having your blood sucked all that you know sucking and so forth. I think first of all there's something very appealing about that there's something very erotic about it and there's also something very appealing in this Botox age that we live in

that there is this supernatural creature that can promise you immortality and eternal youth and to do it somewhat pleasurably you know because he's ushering you across this threshold with all this nuzzling and biting and sucking and so on. So I think there's something there that really resonates with women the whole idea. Somehow being able to cross over into the immortal realm I mean this is a this too is a deep fantasy in Greek mythology you have all of these stories in which immortal comes down to earth and mates with a mortal. And so this fantasy of somehow being able to inhabit both worlds but also being immortal and being forever young and beautiful I think that's part of the resonance of all of this. What how what kind of impact does the Twilight series I mean that's a pop culture thing but it was quite a phenomenon and it was very much directed at teenage girls so some of your students would be young women you know maybe having been impacted by that.

Yes. The Twilight series actually was one of the major reasons I decided to do the course because students kept asking me Have you read the Twilight novels have you read them. And I'd say no I haven't read them. Actually I hadn't heard of them at a particular point when people were asking me. And again this has been an astonishing phenomenon to me because when I checked the Web sites a couple of weeks ago over one hundred eighteen million copies of The Twilight novels have been sold well and the films have earned now two point five billion dollars in box office receipts. Again the audience is 80 percent female. So I became very interested in the question of why this was such a popular phenomenon and particularly why women of all ages not just children teenagers young adults etc. but grandmothers twined moms as they have come to be called were also interested in this. Well let's listen to a little bit of what's exciting all of those groups you just named this is a

clip from the 2008 movie Twilight based on the books by Stephanie Meyer. You never eat or drink anything. You know call the sommelier. How old are you. If you. Only incident. Boy you. Know what you are. Seeing. Oh wow. Now we talked about the romance that's can be attracted by studying vampires and the whole mythology around vampires but one of the things that interested me about your course is that you emphasize how this metaphor has been a vehicle to talk about some of today's issues sexuality abstinence HIV outsiderness I thought that was very important to speak to that. Can you speak to that. Yeah I think of all the many metaphorical uses of the vampire

figure and of course the list is is incredibly long longer than we have time to recite here in this segment but certainly the story of the outsider the the the metaphor of outsiderness is the one that is most powerful now I think among other things. We have vampires such as the ones we find in twilight who are not wanting to kill people anymore. You know they want to. Live on the blood of animals in the case of the Cullen family but they're lonely. They miss community. They miss having relationships particularly the main character Edward the other members of his vampire family. They have found a partner and so they're more content with their state. But Edward is unhappy. He feels lonely alienated he has no peer he has no lover and so very frequently in vampire fiction particularly in the Twilight

novels but in many many other examples as well. You have characters who are outsiders. Maybe they want to mainstream. Certainly this is why Charlayne Harris's Southern Vampire novels on which the True Blood series is based. At their core is this idea that. Vampires are out. They are among us. There's no secret about their existence anymore. Why can't we co-exist with them. So they've become a kind of metaphor for immigration in a way for people from any sort of disenfranchised group who want to come in to a normal group and assimilate to be part of that group. And so many authors actually use that notion of the vampire as outsider the ultimate outsider the person who is different who you fear who don't want to come into the community because he may be a danger he may bring infection disease whatever that's become a very powerful way of talking about our current anxieties

about things like immigration or sexual difference or racial difference or racial hybridity and so on. That's what really got me interested in these books is seeing the ways in which the vampire came to be a vehicle for talking about a lot of other issues. Two of the novels on my reading list which turned out to be just real gems of discovery for me the first one is the wonderful novel by John Lindkvist called Let The Right One In which they have now been to film versions made. Here you have a child vampire. A child vampire who befriends a weakling little boy who is being bullied at school and other outsiders are doing exactly. She's an outsider and he's a little skinny boy who gets picked on all the time and several of the books that we read in the course actually take up the bullying scenario which were of course we're hearing about a great deal in our society these days. And the vampire instead of being the bully is actually the person that defends the

interests of the human who the vampire has befriended in some ways. So I wanted to before we run out of time I wanted to get your take on this because it seems that through this course that you've made clear and maybe this is an obvious answer that there's always been interest in this in vampires in many forms of our culture. So. This is not a passing fad the True Blood twilight. All of that intense interest right now it might go dormant and come back. Your take is that it will be around a while. I think it's going to be around a while and part of why it's going to be around awhile is that authors keep trying very interesting new ways to refresh the story. I mean the stories that we're seeing now are not like the early stories where what the vampires behavior behavior was was fairly predictable where you were really just dealing with sort of predatory monsters and so on. You couldn't keep telling that same story over and over and have it continue to be interesting you couldn't make the same

film over and over and have it continue to be interesting. So many of the authors have been mixing literary genres so that you have what is now called paranormal romance. You have urban fantasy you have the romance genre you have historical fiction. I mean one of the most if you're going to keep going and in many many forms Yeah. Yeah and one of the more interesting very recent novels we had on the reading list last year was Seth Graham Smith Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. Well there you go. And which you do. At Oracle think here and you bring in a vampire as part of the story. People want to know more they're going to have to take your course. I should say that we learned about you from an article by Douglas Anthony Cooper who wrote his girlfriend studies vampyres at Harvard. I'm Kelly Crossley we've been talking about vampires with my guest Sue weavers. She's the associate dean for the Master of Liberal Arts Program at the Harvard Extension School where she teaches the vampire and literature and film. Thanks so much. Thanks so much. You can keep on top of the callee cross the show at WGBH dot org slash Cally Crossley follow us on Twitter or

become a fan of the Calabasas show on Facebook. Today Show was engineer by Antonio only art produced by Chelsea Merz will Rose live and Abbey Ruzicka the callee Crossley Show is a production of WGBH Boston Public Radio.