This week I’m posting a recent interview I had with John Seraph, hero of Family Ties, Family Plots, Family Education, & Killer Holidays. At first, I wasn’t sure to make of John, only knowing a bit about his family, but in talking with the man I learned a lot. For example, he’s carrying around a lot of baggage in the form of guilt and the man’s deeper than most give him credit for, due in part thanks to the media. John and I met up at the new West Seneca Community Center & Library, on Union Road and talked for almost three hours. We sat down at Spot Coffee, where John ordered a large green tea, I ordered a large hot chocolate, and we added an order of biscotti, then we sat down near the glass fireplace, in front of Union Road, where John opened up to me about his background, his family, the events that took place and how he earned the nickname “The Angel of Justice”.
*****
CGE: John, first I’d like to thank you for sitting down and speaking with me.
JS: No problem, it’s my pleasure.
CGE: First off how are you doing and how is your family doing after the most recent events?
JS: I’m all right, for the most part, but the Angelo family has seen better days. My father, Angelo, has been hospitalized, and last time I checked he’s listed as critical, so it’s now a game of watching & waiting.
CGE: I’m sorry to hear that and I hope he’ll recover soon.
JS: Thanks, but the doctors told my mother its best to prepare for the worst. Basically, its more of an inevitability at this stage.
CGE: Again, I’m sorry John. Must be tough knowing you’ll lose a parent.
JS: Partly, but then again Stefano Angelo, was never going to make ‘Father-of-the-Year’.
CGE: I’m glad you mentioned that, which brings me to my first question about your background. Please tell us about it.
JS: Well not much to tell, my family’s originally from the West Side, I grew up near the Hertel and Military neighborhood, on LaForce Place, in for the most part a tradition Sicilian household.
CGE: With one major exception.
JS: Yeah, my old man’s the head of the Arm.
CGE: Buffalo and Western New York’s link to the Five Families and The Commission, the governing body of the Mob.
JS: Yeah, that’s not something I really share on Facebook or Twitter
CGE: I see, well maybe you can start by telling us more about your family and your father.
JS: Ah well, it starts really with my Great-Grandfather Giuseppe Angelo, he was an architect and stone mason back in Sicily. When he and his family immigrated, he could only find work as a brick layer, then eventually worked his way back up to that of a respect designer and builder. As a matter of fact, he helped design and build the old courthouse and the clock tower there.
CGE: Wow, I didn’t know that. That’s really something.
JS: Yeah it is, but it wasn’t enough for Grandfather Marcus.
CGE: Ah yes, my research into the Angelo family really begins with him.
JS: Yeah, that’s not surprising. Marcus ‘the Hammer’ Angelo. Well Grandpa wanted the good life, now. He didn’t want to work hard and earn it, patience was never one of his qualities. Basically, he met some guys who were working on a job site Giuseppe was in charge of, and these guys were doing some work for bootleggers and needed some extra muscle, so they hired on my grandfather, and that’s how he started with Giuseppe "Don Pietro" DiCarlo Sr. and Stefano "The Undertaker" Magaddino, may they both burn in Hell.
CGE: I take it you’re not fans of theirs.
JS: No, not in the least.
CGE: I see, ah, please go on about your father.
JS: Well, grandpa rose to power throughout the 40s & 50s and that’s when he really earned his nickname.
CGE: What do you mean John?
JS: Between the late 40’s and mid 50’s he beat to death four mobsters, and two eye witnesses. The man had sledgehammer-like fists and took pride in that. He always said, “If I’m going to make a goddamned point, I want it to stick, so I beat it into their heads.”
CGE: Oh man.
JS: Yeah tell me about it. So, at some point in the 60’s he decided to retire and Pop who’d proven himself to the organization was named the new Boss.
CGE: What happened to your grandfather?
JS: He got permission from the Commission to retire, the same way Frank Costello did. He’s a snowbird, spending half the year up here and the winter months in Florida.
CGE: So, when did you come into the picture?
JS: Like I said I was born in 1970, and for the most part my life was a normal one. Mama was a housewife and mother and the old man went off to work and ran the Arm, which meant he was in charge of most of the rackets in the Buffalo area. For the most part I had a semi-normal childhood, until I was about 11, when two things happened, the first was I became an older brother and second someone put a bomb in the old man’s car. So, he decided to move the family out of the neighborhood and began work on the estate.
CGE: So tell me how many siblings do you have?
JS: I’m the oldest of eight. It seemed for awhile there Mama was in and out of the hospital every year there for a while there. After me Mama had Peter and Connie, then came Michael, next was Paul, then Mama had the second set of twins, Anthony and Maria, then finally Aldia.
CGE: My God, no wonder your parents needed a bigger place.
JS: Tell me about it.
CGE: Now if I’m right you’re the only son who didn’t get into the family business, right?
JS: Yeah that’s correct. Pop and our family lawyer, business manager, and surrogate father, all in one, Aldrich Kaufman, were trying to groom me to become the Underboss, the second-in-command.
CGE: And it was in high-school when things changed, correct?
JS: Ahhh,… yeah right.
CGE: According to my research, when you were in high-school there was a car accident, a friend of yours was driving, and died.
JS: That’s what the official records say, thanks to the old man and Aldrich, the real story is different.
CGE: Please tell us in your own words what happened John.
JS: Uh, well it’s hard to talk about.
CGE: I understand John, and if you don’t want to talk….
JS: No it isn’t that, it’s just, well I’m responsible for what happened. (After a brief pause to gather himself John continues) I was a senior in high-school, and I was only a couple months from graduation. The old man gave me a pre-graduation gift, my first brand new car, a jet-black Mustang. Before I go on I need to explain I’m not the same person I was then, for a time I began to believe all the crap my old man and his people were feeding me and I was buying into the whole ‘mob life’ idea, you know how it was played up in Goodfellas. So I’d been driving the car around for about a week, and on a Friday in May, when the weather was really nice, especially after a really bitter winter, I felt like playing hooky, and talked my best friend Fred Mathis into cutting school and we went cruising. We picked up some six-packs and were having a good time when we found ourselves out by the Ford Stamping Plant in Woodlawn, I think Fred and I planned on hitting that strip-club, 24 Karraet Gold. Well I was going too fast, had too many beers and a decent buzz going, and the turns, loops, and merging lanes didn’t help. Long story short, I crashed the Mustang in front of the Gateway building and Fred died. I walked away with some minor injuries and a jacked-up knee.
CGE: I’m sorry.
JS: You’ve nothing to be sorry for. I was drunk driving and believing all that shit my old man fed me. Fred’s death was my responsibility, but it’s what followed that changed everything. While I was recovering in the hospital two things happened; one my mother, Sophia came to me and told me flat out how disappointed she was in me and how I’d let her down. She had me take a blood oath, that I’d walk away from the Arm and find my own path. I made her that promise and have tried to live up to it. The second thing that happened was the old man arranged for evidence to be altered so that it looked like Fred was driving.
CGE: Oh man, how’d he do that?
JS: The old-fashioned way, the son-of-a-bitch greased a lot of palms and bought a couple officials. No matter what happened he couldn’t have his eldest child involved in such a matter.
CGE: I take it he wasn’t happy with your choice, meaning your promise to your mother.
JS: No he wasn’t. It was a long talk, and Mama was there, but she made him see her point. See I think wanted something more for me than being a leg-breaker and working my way in the Arm. She always said I was the special one. What I mean is Mama loves all her children, but she always something in me she never saw in the others, as she said. She once told me “You have a greater destiny than the others, you have a greater purpose.”
CGE: Wow, that’s a lot to take considering the circumstances.
JS: Yeah it is. Fred still haunts me and what the old man and Aldrich did always left a sour feeling in my stomach. I know it’s the guilt that I never paid for what I did and Fred was left with the blame. And I don’t care how much the old man paid the Mathis family, the money doesn’t make it right or it can’t bring Fred back.
CGE: That’s true. So what happened after?
JS: It took me a lot of time to get my head on straight, and I had a few different jobs, but one thing or another happened and things fell apart. Finally my mother suggested I go to school, so I began attending Buffalo State College, and things did begin to turn around, for a while.
CGE: How so?
JS: I met a woman.
CGE: Well that’s encouraging?
JS: Kinda, I guess.
CGE: What do you mean?
JS: Things didn’t go the way I’d hoped.
CGE: Sorry to hear it.
JS: The way of the world, I loved, I lost, then I did the smart thing.
CGE: What was that?
JS: I put of Sinatra and broke out the bourbon.
CGE: (begins laughing) Sounds sensible. What happened, if you don’t mind me asking.
JS: No, no, it’s just a lot of bad memories that’s all.
CGE: If you’d rather not answer….
JS: It’s fine, I’ve nothing to hold back. I met Katherine in an English Lit class and we hit it off, first as friends, then good friends, then more. She knew who I was, being my family made the news every so often. Well things were going fine for awhile and after two years I realized I’d fallen in love with her and I wanted to share my life with her. I admit I was afraid of ruining our friendship, so I settled for her to be my best friend. Eventually I told her how I felt and we talked things out, eventually we spent more time together, until finally we were officially involved. I was able to get an engagement ring, and the night I was going to officially propose, we got into one of the biggest fights I ever had. She thought I should go back to my old man and join the family business. I explained about the blood oath I gave my mother, of that I wouldn’t and make something she could be proud of lead to our problems and eventual break-up. I believed Kim was the Queen of Hearts, like a lot of other women I’ve known she’s a Queen of Diamonds.
CGE: Oh man, ah how’s about we change topics, and you tell me what took place in Family Ties.
JS: All right, it’d been about three years since I changed my name….
CGE: What?
JS: Oh yeah, didn’t know that huh? My given name was Giovanni Angelo, three years before Family Ties I legally changed it to John Seraph, the I moved out of my parents’ estate, began going to college, and things really changed for me.
CGE: Wow.
JS: Not something I discuss on Facebook or Twitter. So it wasn’t too long after I broke up with Kat, and I got a call from Sebastian Tillis, he’s a former classmate, and his sister, Dana had been missing for a couple weeks. There’d been a lot of press about her, and of course the police were in it by this point. There’d been volunteer search parties and almost everything that could be done, had been done. Out of desperation, Sebastian called me to see if the Angelo family, the Arm knew anything.
CGE: Oh man.
JS: Yeah, last time I saw any of the family was three years before at my Grandmother, Justina’s funeral.
CGE: Oh yeah, where you got arrested.
JS: Ah, yeah. My only real crime that I admit I’m guilty of, when I slugged a bent detective, who was filming everyone at the services. I asked him and his partners to stop out of respect, the detective mouthed off to me, and I broke his jaw in one shot, and got arrested for that. (John begins laughing) You should’ve seen his face, was worth a night in the can. Getting back to Dana, I met with the old man and Aldrich and they didn’t know anything, so I began looking into Dana’s life, and that’s when business picked up.
CGE: What do you mean?
JS: After I found her body, I began looking into things, and I found out things about Dana, her lifestyle, and some of those she’d been involved with, and that included former New York Senator Kingsly Addar, then even worse my brother Michael.
CGE: I see what you mean.
JS: Got a little tense there when I just a hair shy of accusing Michael of being involved with Dana’s death, right in front of the old man and Aldrich.
CGE: I can imagine. So what happened?
JS: Well I won’t get into the whole story here, cause it’s been publicized so much, but after someone, working for the real villain of the story, tried to kill me and a friend of Dana’s, I knew who gave him his marching orders, and I called them out.
CGE: Ah yes, and that led to what some have called ‘The Forrest Lawn Firefight’.
JS: Ah….yeah. The media really blew it out, milking everything they could. The name came from the same reporter who called me ‘The Angel of Justice’.
CGE: Right, I have her name here…..a Roberta Bedell.
JS: Yeah that’s our Bobbie Bedell.
CGE: It sounds like you a problem with Ms. Bedell.
JS: Not at all, as a matter of fact I gave her the exclusive after everything calmed down. I just never cared for being called ‘The Angel of Justice’. Bobbie made me sound like some combination of Charles Bronson in Death Wish, the Green Hornet, and Sherlock Holmes, maybe with a touch of John Wayne in there.
CGE: That’s a helluva mash-up. So what happened at Forest Lawn?
JS: I spoke with one of the thugs on the payroll, and told him I’d meet his boss at Forest Lawn. I figured I’d be safe in a public place, that was wide open, in the middle of the afternoon. (John begins shaking his head) I’d no idea they’d make a run at me like that.
CGE: And according to police records, you were able to shoot two men who were trying to kill you.
JS: Yes, I was cleared by the D.A.’s office in the shootings, it was listed as self-defense.
CGE: But that’s not all, correct?
JS: Yeah, I was cleared because some of Addar’s people made a run at me, but I also got a slap on the wrist, cause when the boss who planned out everything, and gave the orders to kill Dana, when they ran for it, I shot her in the leg. The D.A. wasn’t happy with my solution.
CGE: I can see why he’d be upset with that.
JS: Ogni Medaglia ha il sup rovescio. That’s Italian, it means “There are two sides to every coin.” Yeah on the one hand I didn’t have to shoot, on the other attempts on not only my life, but an innocent woman’s had been made too.
CGE: Would that be, ah Miss Crystal Bell?
JS: Yeah Crystal. They tried to kill Crystal and me, then they show up at Forest Lawn, and try to blow my head off. So when I fired that last round, I was pushed to a whole new level of being pissed off. As the old man is fond of saying, “Do what you want, but remember we do not go to the police. We settles matters personally, ourselves.”
CGE: Wow, I see what you mean John. Let’s change the topic for a minute, to lighten things up and give our readers a better chance to know the man behind the stories we’ve heard or read in the papers.
JS: Okay, sounds good.
CGE: So tell me where are you living now?
JS: After I left my parents’ estate, I moved into a two-bedroom apartment in South Buffalo. It’s nowhere close to where my folks or any of my siblings live, but its clean, its neat, and its all mine.
CGE: Do you have any special strengths?
JS: I’d think my mind is my greatest weapon. Anyone can be taught to shoot, and the old man taught me to shoot to kill when needed, but things like my deductive reasoning and my sixth sense cant be taught. I think you’re either born with it and have to develop those gifts or not.
CGE: Do you have any special weaknesses?
JS: Well if I did, it’d be pretty dumb for me to mention them in an interview, right?
CGE: (laughing) Yeah right. What if anything haunts you?
JS: I think I already answered that, Fred and Kat.
CGE: What do you want to be?
JS: I’d like to be a husband and father someday, but I don’t think it’s in the cards.
CGE: Why not?
JS: Well I’m 48 now and even though I’ve had girlfriends, thought I was ready to marry, and have had female friends, I’m nowhere near close to finding the right woman. See I’m a one and done guy. Once I find the right lady, that’s it, but between my background, my family, and the facts I seem to draw in random gunfire, all that doesn’t add up to good husband material.
CGE: What do you believe in?
JS: A few things; I believe in a Higher Power, God or whatever you wanna call him/her/it, and I’ve number of things I wanna say face to face. I believe in my closest friends, those very rare few, who I trust with my life. I believe in justice more than anything else and I believe in the Cowboy Code.
CGE: What’s the Cowboy Code?
JS: The Cowboy Code is a moral code, an ethical guide. A lot of popular T.V. and movie star cowboys had one like Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger, among others, but the one I follow is the Code of the West. It goes like this; Live each day with courage.
Take pride in your work.
Always finish what you start.
Do what has to be done.
Be tough, but fair.
When you make a promise, keep it.
Ride for the brand.
Talk less and say more.
Remember that some things aren’t for sale.
Know where to draw the line.
CGE: That’s very nice John. Are you lucky?
JS: Considering what’s happened to me during Family Ties, Family Plots, Family Education, and the events of Killer Holidays I’ve gotta say I’ve been very lucky.
CGE: Have you ever failed at anything?
JS: Plenty of things, I’ve failed lots of times.
CGE: Like what?
JS: Relationships, my family at times, people who used to be friends.
CGE: Do you keep your promises?
JS: Once I give my word I keep it.
CGE: Do you have any hobbies?
JS: I’m an avid reader, mainly murder mysteries, but I also read up on certain historical figures that interest me, like Wyatt Earp, F.D.R., and Mark Twain for example. I also read classic of lit like Shakespeare, Cooper, Doyle, Wilde, Dumas just to name a few. I enjoy Broadway and love going to Shea’s Performing Arts in downtown Buffalo when a show I want to see is coming. Been going since I was 11. I’m a decent cook and enjoy cooking for others. And I collect movies and have a large music collection. I listen to a wide variety of music, the only I don’t listen to is metal, punk, rap, and the blues, everything else is just about fair game.
CGE: On that note, what is your favorite music?
JS: Hard to say, I guess it depends on the mood I’m in. One day I might want to listen to Frank Sinatra or the Rat Pack, then switch to Garth Brooks or Ronnie Milsap. Then when driving around Journey or Chicago, and when cooking I may put in a Broadway soundtrack.
CGE: What are the last three books you read?
JS: Crimson Joy, Someone Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe, and The First Deadly Sin.
CGE: How do you see your future?
JS: Hard to say. I mean I want a wife and kids, and the whole package folks seem to take for granted. But like I mentioned before I don’t know if it’s in the cards for me, considering the violence I deal with and my family’s history. I may wind up that way, then again I may end up alone somewhere in a log cabin in the forests. Who can say?
CGE: John I want to thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions and letting the readers get to know you better.
JS: My pleasure.
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