Speaker 1: For confidence in your financial plan. Look for a CFP professional.
Speaker 1: When your financial advisor earns the CFP certification, it means
Speaker 1: he or she is trained to provide ethical financial planning
Speaker 1: across a holistic range of topics from retirement and investing
Speaker 1: to taxes and estate planning, all in your best interest.
Speaker 1: So with a CFP professional, you'll feel confident in your
Speaker 1: financial plan today and tomorrow. Three letters do make a difference.
Speaker 1: Visit Let's make a Plan dot org to find your
Speaker 1: CFP professional. You realize this is it. This is the
Speaker 1: last time we're going out in the field together with
Speaker 1: your fuzzy wandy way at me and my microphone too.
Speaker 1: Are you going to miss my badge? Yes? Yes, Austin
Speaker 1: and I have spent a lot of time together and
Speaker 1: one of our favorite things to do is to tell
Speaker 1: each other dad jokes. It sounds like your nose is running.
Speaker 1: Oh god, Tomato, Dad Tomato, Baby Tomater walked down street.
Speaker 1: Dad Tomato goes back, stumps on baby Tomato and says
Speaker 1: catch up. He's good. Yeah, I love these jokes. So
Speaker 1: where are we going right now? We are going to
Speaker 1: visit the Cubs. We are on twenty third Street, walking
Speaker 1: in to the law offices of the one and only
Speaker 1: the law Slinger Roun Koopy. Why why are we going
Speaker 1: to see Koopy? Because I fucking I'm obsessed with him
Speaker 1: and I want more. We're going into Ron Coopy's office
Speaker 1: to interview him about his life and the cases that
Speaker 1: he's worked on, to get a little bit more of
Speaker 1: the cubs, because the Coups is the man and he's
Speaker 1: a great storyteller. Please knock loudly, Hey where are you?
Speaker 1: I'd see you in a hammock from Crimetown. I'm io
Speaker 1: till it right. And this is a special bonus episode
Speaker 1: of the Ballad of Billy Balls. Hello, Hey, Io run Koobi, Hey,
Speaker 1: how are you good? So where is Billy Balls buried? Now?
Speaker 1: Just send me all that ship and I'll try to
Speaker 1: get something out in the next few days. All right,
Speaker 1: want Wait? What do you mean you get something back
Speaker 1: to vanyway? I didn't intend. What caused work for you
Speaker 1: is to submit a fresh oil. Um, my office will
Speaker 1: do that. I'm pleased to report that Zeno's paradox has
Speaker 1: been resolved and the arrow indeed has hit the target.
Speaker 1: The NYPD has sent us a comp if you will,
Speaker 1: of records do you think there's any possibility that Billy
Speaker 1: didn't have a gun? Yes, but there's nothing to support
Speaker 1: that theory and everything to support the notion that the
Speaker 1: comp is telling the truth. Epilogue three, The Law Slammer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for having us. From Ron's writing a floral Hawaiian
Speaker 1: shirt and shorts and no shoes, We follow a barefoot
Speaker 1: Ron into his conference room and start talking. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me about where you come from and how you
Speaker 1: came to Law a little bit? Can I ask you
Speaker 1: yes or no? Questions that I read on the internet? Yes?
Speaker 1: Is it true that you lived in a commune when
Speaker 1: you were a teenager? Yes? Is it true that you
Speaker 1: worked on a tugboat in Saint Croix? Yes. Ron didn't
Speaker 1: want to talk about growing up in Cleveland, Ohio. But
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy four, when he was seventeen, he found
Speaker 1: himself on Saint Croix in the US Virgin Islands. I
Speaker 1: was on my way to California from Ohio. I was calling. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was never really good in geograph. He went down
Speaker 1: to visit a friend and he had a beautiful to me,
Speaker 1: beautiful beach house and it was right next to what
Speaker 1: was then a Calypso bar. This is like to me, paradise,
Speaker 1: beach bar, beach bar, beach bar, and I don't even
Speaker 1: have to put shoes on. I mean, it all worked.
Speaker 1: I got a job on a tugboat and it was
Speaker 1: like filled with all these old West Indian semen who
Speaker 1: were always brewing these weird teas from plants and stuff.
Speaker 1: And I would, you know, trying to make conversation because
Speaker 1: we didn't have a lot in common, as you might imagine.
Speaker 1: So I got interested in herbal teas and herbal medicine
Speaker 1: and West Indian medical systems and stuff. At this point,
Speaker 1: Ron's eighteen, He's spending his days learning about medicinal plants
Speaker 1: on a tugboat and then coming home to the beach
Speaker 1: drinking and getting high and hanging out. Then he met
Speaker 1: a girl. I fell in love with her, she fell
Speaker 1: in love with me. She left to go to Maine
Speaker 1: and Ron followed. But he soon learned a bit more
Speaker 1: about his sweetheart, sort of discovered that she had slept
Speaker 1: with pretty much every guy and a substantial chunk of
Speaker 1: the women in South Portland, which didn't bother me except
Speaker 1: for the fact that I kept bumping into the wall
Speaker 1: everywhere and it's like, Hi, yeah, you too cool. Ron
Speaker 1: decided to get out of there and go to college
Speaker 1: in Kansas. Was at the University of Kansas, great midwestern institution,
Speaker 1: where he studied anthropology, focusing on those medicinal plants that
Speaker 1: he learned about on the tugboat in Saint Croix, African
Speaker 1: traditions and Spanish West Indian tradition. And he's not shy
Speaker 1: about how well he did. He had a four oh
Speaker 1: average and all this other shit. So I was the
Speaker 1: best anthropology student they had seen in a fucking generation.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just was. So when a faculty committee
Speaker 1: turned him down for a big fellowship, he was shocked.
Speaker 1: And so I'm walking to the bar and I bumped
Speaker 1: into the head of the committee and I said, Hey,
Speaker 1: what happened. Why didn't I can't recommend it? And he
Speaker 1: said the committee didn't like your attitude. So I asked
Speaker 1: what was wrong with my attitude? And he said, they
Speaker 1: found you condescending and arrogant. Okay, went to the bar.
Speaker 1: All the bartender and he said, yeah, you ought to
Speaker 1: go to law school. They like people like that. There.
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing anything else that I had nothing scheduled
Speaker 1: from my future, so I thought, yeah, I signed an
Speaker 1: idea we may share. While in law school at Cornell,
Speaker 1: Ron began interning with one of the most famous civil
Speaker 1: rights lawyers in the country, William Kunsler. William Kunsler defended
Speaker 1: the Chicago Seven and counted Martin Luther King Junior, and
Speaker 1: Malcolm X among his clients. There is no credibility in government.
Speaker 1: It was all lies to justify Wotton cold blooded murder.
Speaker 1: Public officials who sanction and condone mass murder must themselves
Speaker 1: be indicted by a civilized society. The first summer of
Speaker 1: Ron's internship, this is now nineteen eighty two, Kunstler was
Speaker 1: defending two men in a murder trial, James Yorke and
Speaker 1: Anthony la Board. York and Laboard were two former Black
Speaker 1: Panthers who had gotten pulled over for a bad tail
Speaker 1: light by two police officers, and you know, both officers
Speaker 1: approached the car in a simple traffic stop. York and
Speaker 1: Laboard allegedly came out shooting. One of the police officers died,
Speaker 1: the other was shot many times but survived. And so
Speaker 1: it was a very very very very high profile trial.
Speaker 1: And we're going to be opening statements, and there was
Speaker 1: going to be a lot of media coverage, and I'm
Speaker 1: just carrying Bill's briefcase. Bill and young intern Ron head
Speaker 1: off to a courthouse in Queens for opening statements. We're
Speaker 1: going to the subway and I bend over for something
Speaker 1: or Bill drops a paper and I bend over and
Speaker 1: my pants rip right along the middle scene crotch to
Speaker 1: ass and it's like, I'm I am now freaking out, Okay, Like,
Speaker 1: I know Bill's concerned about the fate of two black
Speaker 1: political prisoners and going to prison for the rest of
Speaker 1: their lives and stuff like that, and I recognize that
Speaker 1: so really important and shit, but I am like now,
Speaker 1: and there's gonna be a lot of media there and
Speaker 1: and Bill looks at me in his way, that's fine,
Speaker 1: and then says the immortal words, just a cock flop
Speaker 1: out during my opening might be one of the best
Speaker 1: stories I've ever heard. Don't let you cock flop out
Speaker 1: during my heart. Yeah, it's It's not listed in quotes
Speaker 1: by William Kunstler in NIAC or whatever that is, but
Speaker 1: their words to live by. Ron continued to work with
Speaker 1: Bill Kunstler, eventually becoming an unofficial partner in his law firm,
Speaker 1: and the two men were very close. He was my friend,
Speaker 1: my mentor, my teacher, my critic, a great guy to
Speaker 1: hang out with. Guy taught me everything that I know
Speaker 1: about lawyering, and he was the guy probably most most
Speaker 1: important in terms of my future career. I mean, all
Speaker 1: of those things were incredibly wonderful, but he was the
Speaker 1: guy who got me entree into a world and communities
Speaker 1: that otherwise would have been alien With Kunstler, Koby worked
Speaker 1: to defend people like the daughter of Malcolm X, associates
Speaker 1: of the so called Gambino crime family, and members of
Speaker 1: the Hell's Angels. So the Ohio Hell's Angels Charter Cleveland
Speaker 1: charter called Counselor's Office, I think this is in ninety
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three of their members were charged with a
Speaker 1: murder allegedly, I mean, according to the government, there were
Speaker 1: two people in Sandusky, Ohio who drove yellow VW microbuses.
Speaker 1: One of them was a large, heavy set, bearded member
Speaker 1: of the Outlaws motorcycle club, with whom the Hell's Angels
Speaker 1: had a longstanding disagreement. The other was a big, heavy set,
Speaker 1: bearded but utterly harmless record store clerk guests. Which one
Speaker 1: got killed? Yeah, record store clerk. So the FEDS took
Speaker 1: over the case, and we're making this a very big deal.
Speaker 1: And the Cleveland charter of the Hell's Angels called and
Speaker 1: asked if Kunstler would be interested in the case. Bill
Speaker 1: said great, you know, so we set a fee that
Speaker 1: was a lot of money by our standards then, and
Speaker 1: Kunstler sent me out to pick up the initial retainer
Speaker 1: or whatever it was. But you know, basically put a
Speaker 1: face to the firm. Koby flies into Cleveland, and awaiting
Speaker 1: him at the airport is an escort from the Hell's Angels. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I get in the car with the giant guy who
Speaker 1: picks me up huge, like human armoire style, and guy
Speaker 1: looks at me this is hey, are you Jewish? And
Speaker 1: like I'm processing this question really quickly. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, my mother's Jewish, so Jews considered be a
Speaker 1: jew man, I'd be a Jew under the Nuremberg laws,
Speaker 1: but I don't subscribe either the Halacha or the Nuremberg laws.
Speaker 1: And I certainly don't believe in any guns. So in
Speaker 1: my junior right rapid cycling. But I figured, you know,
Speaker 1: that was not the answer. So I said, yes, this
Speaker 1: is I am too. And we went first to get
Speaker 1: something to eat at Corky and Lennies, which is a
Speaker 1: historic delhi in Cleveland Heights, Ohio where the Hadassa ladies
Speaker 1: would go and eat corned beef. And we walk in
Speaker 1: this guy wearing his Hell's Angels patch and me and
Speaker 1: my suit, and we bump into his aunt who's sitting
Speaker 1: there with the Hadassa ladies, and she's like, Selins, Oh,
Speaker 1: how wire you? This is my nephew. It's like fuck man.
Speaker 1: After what can only be assumed is a delightful lunch,
Speaker 1: Ron is driven to a meeting point to pick up
Speaker 1: the first installment of the payment. We go to a
Speaker 1: nondescript office where I meet some of the other guys
Speaker 1: and they give me the initial installment, which was fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, which was a lot of money at that
Speaker 1: time and certainly more money than I had ever seen
Speaker 1: in my life. Is cash, yeah, yeah, Staxo hundreds wrapped up.
Speaker 1: So I have a briefcase and I start loading in
Speaker 1: the briefcase. The guy crossed the table from me says,
Speaker 1: aren't you going to count it? I said, no, it's
Speaker 1: fifty thousand, right, he said, yeah. I said, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not count it. Not because I trusted them, although I did,
Speaker 1: but because I'm not going to sit here with a
Speaker 1: bunch of people watching me one hundred two hundred, three hundred,
Speaker 1: four hundred, five hundred six. I'm sorry, did I say
Speaker 1: twelve thousand, three hundred? I was that twelve thousand, four hundred. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna fuck around like this. So I started
Speaker 1: laying my briefcase and somebody behind me says there's been
Speaker 1: a change of plans. So I turned around and there's
Speaker 1: this guy holding an AR fifteen at my head. Oh
Speaker 1: fuck right, So I look at him, and I look
Speaker 1: at the gun, and I look back across the table
Speaker 1: to the person dealing with just sort of waiting in.
Speaker 1: And what I'm thinking is, well, they certainly didn't invite
Speaker 1: me out here to steal their own money back and
Speaker 1: kill me, right, I mean, there's just no point to that.
Speaker 1: So I don't quite know what's going on, but I'll
Speaker 1: just sit here and wait for somebody to tell me
Speaker 1: the punchline. And they all start laughing and put the
Speaker 1: gun down. Hilarious. I didn't get the joke, it just
Speaker 1: it didn't make any sense to me. And what I
Speaker 1: didn't realize really until reflecting it many years later, was
Speaker 1: this was a gut check. The Swiss their way of seeing.
Speaker 1: If somebody pointed a gun at the guy who's going
Speaker 1: to be their lawyer, he would like shit in his piss.
Speaker 1: I'm oh, that's a gun. Don't kill me, don't I
Speaker 1: a daughter? And I passed not because I was brave,
Speaker 1: but because I was confused and bemused, which my guess
Speaker 1: was a perfectly acceptable substitute for courage. The scare tactic
Speaker 1: by the Hell's Angels may have been a joke, but
Speaker 1: later in his career Ron would face a different threat
Speaker 1: that was definitely real. Sammy the Bull Gravano wanted to
Speaker 1: murder you. Hopefully the way you said it is accurate
Speaker 1: past tense. That's after the break, all right. So to
Speaker 1: get to the point where the lost Slinger, Ron Kuby
Speaker 1: is receiving death threats from the mobster Sammy the Bull Gravano,
Speaker 1: we have to go back to nineteen ninety two, Good Evening.
Speaker 1: It's a guilty verdict that prosecutor's hope breaks the backup
Speaker 1: organized crime in New York City. Gambino crime boss John
Speaker 1: Gotti and his co defendant Franklin Casiol guilty on a
Speaker 1: host of felonies that John Gotti had avoided conviction in
Speaker 1: three previous trials. But then his one time underboss, Sammy
Speaker 1: the Bull Gravano, agreed to cooperate with the government and
Speaker 1: testify against it. Jury believe the government star witness mafia
Speaker 1: turncoat Salvatore Sammy the Bull Gravano, john Gotti's best friend
Speaker 1: in betrayer. As part of his deal, Gravano confessed to
Speaker 1: nineteen murderers and was placed in the witness Protection program.
Speaker 1: But then he might just be the most famous snitch
Speaker 1: of all time. But now Salvatore Sammy the Bull Gravano
Speaker 1: was planning to murder New York City Attorney Ron Kubi.
Speaker 1: What happened was so fairly short time after he was
Speaker 1: placed in the witness protection program, a woman came to me,
Speaker 1: young woman whose father was murdered by Gravano, and she
Speaker 1: had put together like a loose group of people, almost
Speaker 1: always the youngest daughters of mob guys who had been
Speaker 1: killed by Gravano. I mean he was responsible for He
Speaker 1: took responsibility for nineteen murders. Now after time passed, the
Speaker 1: youngest daughters were pissed, and we're especially pissed that Gravano
Speaker 1: was looking as though he was going to profit by
Speaker 1: writing a book called Underboss. And so they came to
Speaker 1: me wanting to know if there was something they could do.
Speaker 1: So there are all these mob princesses walking in and
Speaker 1: out of my office and it's like, okay, I'll take
Speaker 1: the case, and they talked me into doing it. I
Speaker 1: called the press conference to announce the following of the
Speaker 1: case at Guard Giulio's restaurant in Toney Island, Old Italian
Speaker 1: place in Brooklyn, and everybody showed up, more cameras than
Speaker 1: I had ever seen in my life. Families came together
Speaker 1: for the first time today fighting a book deal that
Speaker 1: could mean big money. Does Sammy the Bull Gravano? And
Speaker 1: I do remember thinking myself, holy shit. You know, innocent
Speaker 1: black man railroaded by crep cops. Two or three reporters
Speaker 1: on armed black man killed by racist cops, maybe one camera,
Speaker 1: a couple of local reporters, wall of blonds, everybody. The
Speaker 1: FBI has rapped Gravano up in the American flag and
Speaker 1: called a hero and we're here today to try to
Speaker 1: put an end to that, but that may be easier.
Speaker 1: So I filed the case, and at that time I
Speaker 1: had a radio show on WABC, I think it was
Speaker 1: Saturday mornings at that point, and I would talk about
Speaker 1: the case Curtis. This was around the year two thousand.
Speaker 1: The show was called Curtis and Koubi Ron and his
Speaker 1: co host would talk and argue over current events and
Speaker 1: take calls from listeners. What I did not know about
Speaker 1: at that time was something called streaming audio. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I just didn't know about it. But it was a thing,
Speaker 1: and it was the thing that mister Gravano had from
Speaker 1: his home in Arizona. He's still in the Witness Protection program. Well,
Speaker 1: at some point he had left, but that's not announced.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't so much the lawsuit that bothered him.
Speaker 1: It was like a lot of things I was saying
Speaker 1: about him personally. What did you say? What did I say?
Speaker 1: You know what? That's actually that's on my tombstone. That's
Speaker 1: absolutely the one thing I want on my tombstone. Was
Speaker 1: it something I said? I'm not going to repeat the
Speaker 1: things that I said, but frankly, had I developed more judgment,
Speaker 1: which I eventually did. I would not have said them
Speaker 1: there was no reason for me, as a lawyer to
Speaker 1: personalize this case against him, but I did. And so
Speaker 1: he was listening and was getting more and more and
Speaker 1: more pissed, until eventually he decided that he was going
Speaker 1: to have me killed. And it was unclear exactly how
Speaker 1: that is the specific method that was going to be used,
Speaker 1: but the actual plan had been developed, as I found
Speaker 1: out in some detail. He had dispatched one of his lieutenants,
Speaker 1: a guy named Pascucci, to have me killed in Texas.
Speaker 1: And the idea was that he would call the office
Speaker 1: and say, hey, you know, my name's you know, Joe whatever,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm a friend of somebody who's locked
Speaker 1: up in Texas. He's heard about you, wants to meet you.
Speaker 1: But the idea was I would fly down to Texas.
Speaker 1: I would be met at the airport, which you know
Speaker 1: people do. I mean, I did the Senate Health Angels,
Speaker 1: and so I was going to fly down there and
Speaker 1: you guy picked me up and and the only as
Speaker 1: the Daily News put it, the only case I would
Speaker 1: get would be a case of lead poisoning. And I
Speaker 1: think that he did call but I ad made it
Speaker 1: a policy not to take cases in Texas after they
Speaker 1: executed one of my clients, I really didn't want to
Speaker 1: go back there, so I just never responded. Then when
Speaker 1: that didn't work, the next place they were going to
Speaker 1: have me killed. My wife and daughter and I regularly
Speaker 1: when she was little. When to what's the happiest place
Speaker 1: on Earth, Disneyland, disney World, I've never been. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I used to go out when she was a little girl.
Speaker 1: They were going to have me killed at Disney World,
Speaker 1: the happiest place hung Earth. I mean again, nothing came
Speaker 1: of it, and there was no like plan whether you
Speaker 1: know he was going to dress up his goofy or something,
Speaker 1: because you know, half away in this case law of force,
Speaker 1: when it was like monitoring the whole thing, not that
Speaker 1: they bother to give me a heads up and arrested
Speaker 1: everybody involved, including Gravano. I found out about all of
Speaker 1: this after it happened. It was a little creepy. There's
Speaker 1: a daily news. I mean, to cover the daily news
Speaker 1: with a really bad picture and the headline one mo
Speaker 1: hit for Sammy. That's insane. But besides just being creepy,
Speaker 1: I mean, did you feel any stronger feelings. Did you
Speaker 1: feel scared? Were you scared for your family? You know,
Speaker 1: it was all after the fact. You know. Let's say
Speaker 1: you're walking down the street with your headphones on, not
Speaker 1: paying any attention, and a giant piano falls out the
Speaker 1: window right behind you. Yeah, I mean, holy shit, that
Speaker 1: could have killed me. But he didn't. You're safe, would you?
Speaker 1: I mean I would be more afraid of pianos falling
Speaker 1: out of windows then, like, were you? Did you think
Speaker 1: that maybe this wasn't over? Yeah? Yeah, sure. But I
Speaker 1: also felt that mister Gravano, at that point, facing twenty
Speaker 1: years had bigger fish to fry, so to speak, than me.
Speaker 1: Mister Gravano's lawyer, I sort of reached out to her
Speaker 1: to reach out to him. I heard back that everything's fine.
Speaker 1: I know mister Gravano was released about a year ago.
Speaker 1: I think mister Gravano is happy to be out of prison.
Speaker 1: I think his family's happy he's out of prison, so
Speaker 1: hopefully everything's fine. Why do you do what you do?
Speaker 1: Why do you fight for the people that you fight for.
Speaker 1: I don't know anyone who sincerely knows how to answer
Speaker 1: that question, because that requires a lot of I think
Speaker 1: deep understanding of personal motivation. Almost everybody dresses personal motivation
Speaker 1: in the clothes of doing good, and so I would
Speaker 1: need much more therapy than I'm interested in, or that
Speaker 1: have time for, or I care about to unpack that.
Speaker 1: So I just don't anymore. Ron says he's got more
Speaker 1: important things to think about. I'm going to work on
Speaker 1: the case today, and I've got tickets to the Stones
Speaker 1: concert tonight. Yes, thanks Ron, Yeah, thank you, Ron. You
Speaker 1: it's a good name. It wasn't bad. Came up with
Speaker 1: it on the top of my head. I hope you're
Speaker 1: not going to the bathroom barefoot? Are you doing barefoot? Bathroom? Roun?
Speaker 1: Oh my god? Be careful, oh god. And one of
Speaker 1: the one of the things that I try to do
Speaker 1: is to teach by example. And if enough guys see
Speaker 1: me standing there in the men's room by the uneral barefoot,
Speaker 1: they'll stop peeing on the floor, I believe. But I
Speaker 1: hope for you. Thanks Ron, and thanks to everyone listening.
Speaker 1: I'll see you next week. Crimetown is Zach Stewart Pontier
Speaker 1: and Mark Smirling. The Ballad of Billy Balls is hosted
Speaker 1: by me Io till it Right and Maiden partnership with
Speaker 1: Cadence thirteen. You can find me on the Internet and
Speaker 1: Io loves you on everything And if you want to
Speaker 1: know more about my story, pick up my memoir Darling Days.
Speaker 1: We have a voicemail setup for you to call us.
Speaker 1: Here's a message about the cubes we got this season.
Speaker 1: Ron Kobe's a cool motherfucker. If you'd like to leave
Speaker 1: us your own voicemail, please do I love it so
Speaker 1: much give us a haul at five to seven zero
Speaker 1: three nine two nine six six zero. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced by Me and Kevin Shephard. Our senior producers Austin Mitchell,
Speaker 1: editing by Zach Stewart Pontier and Mark Smerling. This episode
Speaker 1: was mixed by Sam Baer, music by Kenny qcac. Our
Speaker 1: title track is Dark Allies by Light Asylum. Thanks to Daniella,
Speaker 1: Ariah rachel Leie Wright, Emily Wiedemann, Green Card Pictures, Alessandro Centaurro,
Speaker 1: Bill Clegg, Ben Davis, Orn Rosenbaum, the team at Caden's thirteen,
Speaker 1: and Andrew in San Francisco, and of course, my mom,
Speaker 1: without whom none of this would be possible.