All language subtitles for Drain.the.Oceans.S06E02.Rise.of.the.Mob.1080p.DSNP.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-FLUX_track3_[eng]

I remember watching clips

of the John Gotti trial
on television.

Gotti,
the alleged Godfather,

intimidating witnesses

and running the nation's
largest organized crime family.

And you realize,
wait, this Mob thing is real.

That's a real guy.

That is the moment
that I decided

I want to find out more.

This thing called
organized crime:

What is it,

how did it originate,

and how did these guys
actually make money?

The problem is the Mob
hates evidence.

But there's some things
they just can't do away with.

So now we're finding
what they tried to hide.

Why was there a truck

at the bottom of the river?

It was something that definitely
should not have been there.

This ship went down fully loaded

with cases of whiskey.

What happened to the men
who were on board?

It was not an accident.

It didn't sink by an act of God.

He turned
an American metropolis

into a bullet-scarred
battleground.

These underwater discoveries

have clear ties
to organized crime.

The ultimate question:
Where did it all start?

How did a bunch
of otherwise ragtag hoodlums

become a national organized
criminal syndicate?

How did they become the Mob?

I've been
scuba diving for over 40 years,

and it's the shipwrecks
and the stories they have

which have fascinated me
the most.

They're exciting,
they're historic.

They are time capsules
on the seafloor.

And of all the ones I dived,
one really stuck with me.

It led me on a journey
into the heart of the Mob.

Late 1990s,
a good friend of mine

who's a boat captain like me,

he told me about a strange site
he'd heard about far offshore.

So we decided to give
this wreck a shot.

It was a treat to dive something

that we suspected nobody
ever had been to before.

So we're excited.

As you get further
and further down,

the sunlight
just doesn't penetrate.

First thing we see is what
looks like the top of an engine.

We were excited,

and as we looked around,
we saw wooden walls,

which indicated
an old shipwreck.

And we started to see
numbers of bottles,

the necks just popping up
out of the sand.

It wasn't until we went
up to the surface

that we determined
they were full of whiskey.

We looked at each other
and said,

"Wow, this is really cool."

I drew a sketch
of what we saw on the bottom.

I think intrinsically
I knew it was valuable.

It had the structure of an old
single-piston steam engine.

It had a really thick
propeller shaft

and a big propeller blade.

This machinery was
more powerful than was needed

for a boat this size,

so we looked at each other and
said: Could this be a tugboat?

That would explain
the size of the engine.

Tugboats under normal trade

would have been towing ships,
towing barges.

They're the work boats
that bring ships

in and out of New York City
every day.

Why would a tugboat be carrying
cases and cases of whiskey,

25 miles offshore?

For many years
I puzzled over my find,

although I never really got
the opportunity

to investigate it further.

Nowadays I teach
marine archaeology

at Stockton University.

And it allowed me to have access
to the university boat,

which has the necessary
technology to scan a shipwreck,

to identify what that shipwreck
could have been.

I'm a diver myself,

and part of my work
involves mapping shipwrecks.

So any new shipwreck to me

is an exciting new adventure.

The first step
was to scan the seafloor

to find evidence of whether
the boat really was a tug.

We had one shot to do this
given the cost,

$1,500 in fuel to get there.

I always love
a good challenge.

Everybody was excited
when we got to the site

and we started to deploy
the equipment

to actually map the wreck.

First we have to find it.

Anything?

Where'd the wreck go?

There's nothing there.

There's nothing there right now.

We did not
find it right away,

so we expanded our search area

and we did about a kilometer
in both directions.

Let me know when you
want me to end this line.

And after an hour,
we still didn't have the wreck.

And now everybody was getting
nervous; where'd it go?

Are you sure these
are the right numbers?

I said, yeah,
I mean, I know I've been there.

There's nothing.

I don't even see a seashell.

It was like I was hit
in the face...

with a pie.

Where would a wreck go?
How would it disappear?

So, what
are we gonna do?

I understand the
ocean giveth and taketh away,

so it probably covered
the shipwreck over

with currents and sand.

My greatest fear was,

now I'm never gonna know
what this shipwreck was.

And then I remembered the story

of a sunken tugboat
named the Lizzie D.

The Lizzie D was found in 1977

by a couple
of dive boat captains.

It was fully intact,
upright on the bottom.

Cases and cases
of whiskey bottles

came off of it at the time.

Were these two connected?

It would be a long shot.

The wreck site was 19 miles
to the northwest,

but scanning this known tugboat
might provide me with the clues

to help identify
my missing wreck.

So we took a shot

and we decided we would head
up to the Lizzie D.

Wow, that's a nice picture.

After four or five passes,
we had collected enough data

to give a pretty full
sonar image of the Lizzie D.

And it revealed some
really exciting details.

The sides themselves are gone,

but the ribs of the boat,
those are sticking up.

There was a large section
of boiler that's intact.

The boiler was where the water

would be pumped through
and heated with coal

to make steam to run the engine.

The engine was behind it.

Behind the engine
was the propeller shaft,

then the propeller.

One of the key things
that we saw on the stern

was a large tow bed.

This is where you attach
a towline to haul a bigger ship.

It does confirm
that this is a tugboat.

Then I compared my sketch

to the evidence from this scan.

I saw all the machinery parts
in the same alignment

as the boat we dove
in the late 1990s.

It had all the parts and
the same general construction.

And the similarities
convinced me

my missing wreck was a tugboat.

And there was more.

Both of them sank
upright on the bottom.

That tells us that they sank
in a way consistent with a ship

that would take on
too much water

and was too heavy
to stay afloat.

Tugboats usually operated
around harbors.

But loaded down
with heavy cargo, in open seas,

they'd have been pretty
vulnerable to bad weather.

I needed information
about tugboats lost at sea

and headed for the maritime
archives in New York City.

I came across a book that shows
the transcript of a letter

from one Agnes McCardle

to the assistant
district attorney

for the United States
in New York...

complaining about
her missing brother

who was on a ship
owned by a captain

who had a poor record
of maintaining his ships.

His ship seems
to have disappeared.

This captain also had
another ship

that sank two years earlier.

It turned out to be
the Lizzie D.

I was really struck by
McCardle's words in the letter.

"On or about November 16th,

the rum-runner tug
William P. Maloney was lost

with a cargo of liquor
and her 12 men.

We have reason to believe
we had a brother on board."

I thought, wow,
did I finally have a name

for my missing shipwreck?

You had a captain
who owned tugboats.

You had tugboats,
similar construction,

both operating in the same area,
a couple of years apart.

So, given the circumstances

and especially having
this smoking gun

of a letter from Agnes McCardle,

we were almost certain the wreck
that we dove many years ago

was the William P. Maloney.

Rum-running meant smuggling
illegal alcohol,

and it was a pretty common term
in New Jersey.

This was very early
in the Prohibition era,

those years from 1920 to 1933

when alcohol was illegal
in America.

I'd found
a Prohibition era rum-runner,

and it made sense that smugglers
were using tugboats.

Who's gonna notice two tugboats
coming in and out of the city?

I should have been excited.

After so many years I'd finally
identified my mystery shipwreck.

But instead, I was really
haunted by Agnes' words.

"The families of the men
are in want.

Please give your attention
and save this sorrow."

These guys died trying
to protect illegal alcohol

knowing that there was nobody
coming to save them.

They just drowned,
and nobody knew where they were.

The big question is,
who paid these guys?

Who were the men
behind the scenes?

How did I first
get into Mob history?

Well, that's easy.

That started with growing up
in the household

of an undercover narcotics cop.

We'd play cops and robbers with
the other neighborhood kids,

except we literally had
fingerprint sheets

and search warrants to fill out

that Dad would give us
to play around with.

That just took it
to a whole other level.

Anything that is unusual
or steeped in mystery

seemed to draw me in.

What's exciting
about finding a shipwreck

that is probably a rum-runner?

Well, for an organized crime
researcher, this is great.

This is physical evidence

pointing to an otherwise
mythological period

in American history
called Prohibition.

My first question:
Where were they heading?

These boats
were leaving New York Harbor,

and the orientation
of the wrecks and their position

indicate that they were making
their way offshore to turn south

and, we think, to head
to the next biggest place

for Prohibition:

Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Research showed me
bootleggers were bringing liquor

into the most prime locations
they could find,

one of which was Atlantic City.

Why? It's an island.

What was Atlantic City
during the Prohibition period?

Sex, booze, debauchery.

Atlantic City was a place

where the general laws of vice
didn't really apply.

So, were these ships
part of a larger smuggling ring?

In researching through
Coast Guard records,

I found the link between
these missing tugboats

to something called
the Bill Dwyer Syndicate.

What was that?

And who was Bill Dwyer?

Steve! Christian.

Christian, nice to
meet you. Thanks for coming.

So, Steve, what I found,

this is one of the articles
from 1926

relating to a giant indictment
on a rum-running ring.

At the head of this ring,
allegedly, was "Big Bill" Dwyer.

Irish American, entrepreneur.

This ring was directly connected
to some up-and-coming mobsters.

I'm gonna show you
who "Big Bill" Dwyer

had some relation in funding to.

That's Lucky Luciano,

creator of the infamous
Five Families of New York.

Unbelievable.

The five
Mafia families of New York

control organized crime
in America even to this day.

Lucky Luciano named
the oldest after himself,

now known as
the Genovese family.

Prohibition and bootlegging was
probably the real kick starter

of what we now call the Mob.

With Christian's information,

we now link our tugboats
to Lucky Luciano.

And think about
the enormity of that.

We now have the people
behind the scenes

who pulled the strings,
who were responsible,

who got away with it.

It kind of makes you mad,
but at the same time,

their look at it is,

we're providing a need that
everybody tells us they wanted.

It's just the government made it
illegal through Prohibition.

Shipwrecked rum-running boats

are just another piece of proof
that the bootlegging industry

had a lot of risk
and a lot of reward.

But was the risk worth it?

During the mid 1920s

the risks of offshore
rum-running greatly increased.

The Coast Guard
was too involved.

There were too many hijackings
from other gangsters.

Rum-runners,
like any businessman,

want to look for not working
hard but working smart.

That raises the question:

Where else could they bring
booze in from?

So, they started to look
at inland options.

That led me to look
at other cities,

in particular Detroit,

and another underwater clue that
explains the rise of the Mob.

I've lived
in this area my entire life,

right on
the United States border,

just a half a mile across
the river from Detroit.

I've been a scuba diver
and a diving instructor

for over 25 years.

I was a broke
university student,

and it was the only place
I could dive.

Because of wind and waves,
the visibility is very limited,

so usually less than five feet

and sometimes as little
as one foot of visibility.

So when you can only see
this far in front of your face,

it's gonna limit the people

who are actually gonna
want to do that dive.

There is a very strong current
in the river,

and it can really drag you
down the river quickly.

Yeah, it's an extremely
dangerous environment,

to say the least.

I found that every single dive
was an adventure.

You could find bottles and cars

and boats and shipwrecks
and guns,

and it just hooked me,

and I've continued to do it
till this day.

I was speaking
with a local diver.

He said he had found a vehicle
that was upside down,

laying in the middle
of the Detroit River,

and it was something
that definitely

should not have been there.

Since this was not something
that was well known,

I wanted to follow up
and see it for myself.

Now, remember, with only a foot
of visibility in the river,

it's easier said than done.

I do a search pattern.

So, you just do a zigzag
on the bottom of the water,

just going back and forth and
just seeing what you could find.

I actually saw,
coming out of the gloom,

wooden spokes for a vehicle.

That told me this vehicle
was very early.

At that point I did not
know anything more

about the history of it.

I didn't know what kind
of vehicle it was,

but I really wanted
to try and find out.

I dove a couple of more times,

and I used my underwater
video camera

with a high-powered light

to really document and get
this evidence together,

just so I could try
to build a model

of what I was seeing underwater.

And what I saw was amazing.

The vehicle was upside down.

It was buried in the sediment,

so all I could really see was
the bottom part of the wheels.

I could see the engine
poking out,

but I really couldn't see
anything more

of the topside of the vehicle.

There was a wooden floorboard
and there was a truck bed,

so very quickly I determined
that this was not a car at all.

It was actually a truck.

Lying close to the back
was a heavy chain.

We also saw a crank handle
on the front of the vehicle.

You would actually have to crank
that motor to get it started.

So, the truck was old enough

not to have an electric
starter motor.

But what kind of truck was it?

I visited a local museum that
specializes in older vehicles

to compare our video
and photo evidence

against some of the vehicles
they had there.

There was a Model T truck

dating from the early part
of the century.

The way that the leaf spring
was underneath the axle,

it was very distinctive.

The leaf spring goes
from side to side.

I looked at the front axle
and wheel assembly

along with the leaf spring,

and it matched exactly
what I had seen

at the bottom of the river.

I was very excited when I found
out it was a Model T truck,

because knowing when
the Model T was manufactured,

around 1910 to late 1920s,

it lined up perfectly
with a vehicle

that would have been used
during Prohibition.

So what was
a Prohibition-era truck

doing upside down
at the bottom of the river?

The vehicle's in a very
distinctive location

because it is very close
to the Hiram Walker Distillery.

They've been producing
Canadian Club Whisky

and other brands for 150 years.

Many people were buying
whiskey in Canada

and bringing it
to the United States.

It's less than half a mile
to the US border from here.

And during Prohibition,

the Hiram Walker Distillery
really became a focal point.

So, now I wondered:
Was my sunken truck

linked to what was happening
there at the time?

I grew up in Windsor,

and, uh, and as a boy,

I heard stories
about Prohibition.

And the stories were
in my own family.

My saintly mother was also
involved in it in a small way.

My mother was what
was called a spotter,

sitting in a window, waiting
for the police to arrive.

If you were in Detroit
and looking across the river,

you actually saw
a huge, big neon sign,

"Canadian Club."

It's almost like they
were making fun of the Americans

that, hey, we're producing it,
it's right here,

and there's really not a whole
lot you're gonna do about it.

I mean,
this is annoying as hell.

I've been researching
Prohibition for years,

and I once spoke to an old
Canadian customs inspector

from that era.

He would stand there
at the export dock

and he would look
at this guy's paper,

and it would say that
these 25 cases of liquor

from Hiram Walker
would be going to Venezuela.

And this guy would be
sitting in an open boat.

There's no way that this boat

could go all the way down
to South America.

There's no way.

I mean, it was ridiculous,
it was stupid.

He would watch this guy
cross the Detroit River,

right over to Detroit,

and he would be back
an hour later

with another boatload,
this time going to Cuba.

These boats would have passed

right by the location
of my truck.

So, now I wondered what
the smugglers did in the winter.

When the seasons are colder,

we definitely get
the Detroit River freezing over

for a certain period of time.

What they would do is

they would have a car
pulling a boat,

and the whisky would go
into the boat,

these crates would go
into the boat,

and they would, and the boats
had skis underneath them.

You can see the boat
and the little skids below it.

The night was lit up
with these people

driving these cars
across the ice.

Now I had
an explanation

for the chain I'd found
in the river.

It would have been used
for towing a boat.

The Detroit River
was really a highway

during the Prohibition.

Four-fifths of all the liquor

that went from Canada
into the United States

went through this region
right here.

This was the place
in North America

where the liquor traffic
was largest.

Detroit is a logistically

and geographically
interesting place

for organized crime to operate.

It's so easy
to cross the border here.

And who was running Detroit?

Well, it's a group
called the Purple Gang.

The most vicious group of
predominantly Jewish gangsters

in the Midwest in the 1920s.

The smuggling that went on here

interested other
leading mobsters.

New York's Lucky Luciano

looked for easy ways to bring
booze into the country.

What Luciano
and his allies believed

is that the main goal
is to make money.

Less fighting,
more capital gain.

Does he want a war with
the baddest guys in the Midwest,

or does he want
to make an alliance?

They made an alliance.

So, where is this booze going?

Probably to every speakeasy
in the Midwest

down to Buffalo, New York,
to New Jersey and beyond.

And the trucks like Matt found

were just a small part
of this national supply chain.

So, this
might give you a clue

as to what happened
to your vehicle.

That is an amazing picture.

You can see all the barrels
sitting there

behind the vehicle as well.

That is just a great picture.

I believe that this vehicle

tried to cross the ice

and ended up falling through.

So many trucks and so many cars

were crossing the river,

and there were so many stories

of them literally crashing
through the ice

because the ice was thinning.

It must have
been terrifying.

You imagine being
out in the dark, in the cold,

on the ice, and suddenly
you are submerged in water.

It just would have been
a terrifying situation.

The repercussions
of that happening are nothing

to an empire that's growing
into a national organization.

One vehicle, one driver
sunk to the bottom

with one load of liquor?

It's almost inconsequential
at this point.

The Mob had figured out how
to use the Great Lakes region

between the US and Canada

to import booze
on an industrial scale.

The next piece of the puzzle

was understanding how they
sold it without getting caught.

I used to be a special agent

with the United States
Secret Service for 10 years.

I worked at the White House,

and before that I was stationed
right here in Chicago.

Being a federal law enforcement
officer in Chicago,

the first thing you think of
is the Mob.

I do know a lot
about the criminal world,

the underworld,
and the characters

that operate in that dark world.

One of my most fascinating
investigations

started with just a name.

I went out on a day off, and I
wanted to dive on a shipwreck.

A dive boat captain
mentioned Rotarian,

a shipwreck he knew

about 10 miles offshore
in Lake Michigan.

And there was some sort of

mysterious/shady/criminal
undertone to this vessel,

and that's all I was told,
and I don't like that.

Erik picks up
the phone and says,

"Hey, I got something.
Are you in or out?"

So of course you say yes.

The thing about the Rotarian
story that really grabbed me

was all the mystery.

A lot of this stuff
that we dive was, you know,

sunk in a storm or caught fire.

This was something
a little more nefarious,

it added a little more
intrigue for me.

The water was very,
very hazy from the surface.

And right around 54 feet
the visibility opened up.

We knew at that point
that we had a wooden vessel.

One of the most surprising
things that we found

were piles of bottles

hidden under, under the decking

and hidden under boards.

They were literally
in the bilge of the ship

and very obviously
slid under boards.

The bilge is simply
to collect excess water,

and it's at the lowest point
of the ship.

So, why would anybody
place anything in a bilge?

And the answer is, you wouldn't.

They had been hidden.

What was going on here?

What was this ship?

As a wreck diver,
you're only looking

at a small or segmented portion
of the wreck,

so you don't get
the whole perspective.

So once we got back
aboard the vessel,

the first thing that we did
was we prepped the ROV

and we put it in the water, and
Ross piloted it over Rotarian.

It's in!

So our ROV has got
a 1,000-foot depth range.

We can document the wreck
in its entirety.

What Ross wanted to do
with all the footage that he had

was to piece together
tens of thousands of photographs

into one image.

We can recreate
that 3D space

and we can look at
the entire wreck at one time.

We were pretty
shocked by what we saw.

Usually, if a shipwreck
goes down,

there's going to be some
semblance of a ship there.

But all that was on Rotarian

was basically the remnants
of the shell that broke apart.

From the keel, it was
basically filleted open.

The machinery is missing,
which is very strange.

We did see something
interesting, though.

We have a firebox.

We have the mount
for a walking beam engine.

This was an engine
typically used

to drive a sidewheel
paddle steamer.

So, together with
the wreck's size, shape,

I'm pretty confident
we have a paddle steamer.

I searched the archives

for paddle steamers
called Rotarian.

And there was really
an absence of documents.

But I did come across
some photographs

dating from the early 1920s.

And it was a passenger ship

that took people on
pleasure cruises in Lake Erie

and in the upper lakes.

Looking for clues
on the wreck, it's difficult.

There's just so little left.

More interesting
is what we don't have.

There's no wheelhouse, there's
no upper deck structure at all.

The Great Lakes are freshwater,
and there's nothing in the water

that eats wood,
compared to the ocean.

This wasn't stuff that
deteriorated in the lake.

So, something else happened
to this before it ended up here.

So, we find all this stuff,

and now it's time
for Erik to go to work.

I went
to Chicago Public Library

and started digging
into their archives

in old newspapers from
over 100 years ago.

Going through racks and racks
and rolls and rolls

of microfilm.

The first article
that I was able to discover

was written in August of 1929
in the Prohibition era.

And in that article there was
a picture inside Rotarian.

And the headline
was "Taxi Dancing."

Taxi dancing was a way
for gentlemen to go to this ship

and pay females to dance with.

Whatever happens after that
is left to the imagination.

And there was
another revelation.

Rotarian was owned by the
Cook County Democratic Party.

I mean, you can't
make this stuff up.

What is
the Democratic Party doing

owning a vessel
with taxi dancing going on

during Prohibition?

Here is a boat
that was basically

a floating brothel,
gambling hall, bar.

How does that even happen?

In one of the articles, I notice
that it had been moored

next to the private yacht
of the mayor of Chicago,

William "Big Bill" Thompson.

It was an open secret
that the mayor was in league

with the most powerful
mobster in Chicago.

It seems like Al Capone's
main political ally, or puppet,

was Mayor Thompson.

The only way
to make things happen

was to have
political strings pulled.

The underworld can't operate

without the upper world
cooperating.

And in the Rotarian's case,

the politicians kept the heat
off Capone's operations,

and in exchange got
their illegal party boat.

So, the next mystery
of it was how did the Rotarian

end up at the bottom
of Lake Michigan?

Again there's something
shady going on.

The full story of the Rotarian
hasn't been told yet.

The fact Rotarian
was a floating speakeasy

explains the bottles
hidden on the wreck.

But not why so much
of the ship was missing.

Dive deeper into the archives,

and we discovered
another picture

of Rotarian half sunk
in the Chicago River,

right where it had been moored.

In the article, they stated
that there was a fire

in the pilothouse,
or the wheelhouse.

And when asked why it started,

the police officer
who was watching Rotarian

stated it was a ghost.

Right, well, the first thing is,
right, ghosts don't start fires.

So, what happened?

There's a clue
in the newspaper article dates:

1929 to 1930.

It's not difficult to pick out

the perhaps most prominent,
brazen, violent act

of the Mob's history
in the 1920s.

And that was the
St. Valentine's Day Massacre,

which took place
in Chicago in 1929.

Seven people murdered
in a warehouse.

It was a battle over booze.

Allegedly, there was
a booze shipment

that got hijacked
or went missing.

Who was the prime culprit

suspected of arranging
this murder?

Al Capone.

The massacre triggered
a crackdown

from the federal government.

It got so bad that Lucky Luciano
called a Mob summit meeting

in Atlantic City.

What Al's friends and colleagues
told him,

"Al, we got to get
the heat off of us.

Why don't you take
a lesser rap somewhere else?

Spend maybe a year in prison,

let the press and the police
kind of die down

with their interest in the
St. Valentine's Day Massacre."

And that's basically
what he did.

Capone's not around.

There's no more
police protection,

they can't do the illegal
activities they wanted to

in broad daylight anymore.

Somebody purposely
set Rotarian on fire

because they didn't want
the evidence of the Mob

being discovered.

It was an eyesore for not only
the city of Chicago

but for the new mayor,

who vowed to clean up the city
and all of the Mob post-Capone.

So the hulk that remained
of Rotarian

was completely stripped
of all the machinery

and any of the charred remains
that were there were removed.

The bottles
under the floorboards,

I don't think they'd even know
to look for at the time.

The city decided
that they were going to tow out

the vessel into the middle
of Lake Michigan

and sink the vessel,

where Ross and I dived on it.

Just one month after
the Rotarian's final sinking,

Al Capone gets jailed
for tax evasion.

He was a coke addict,
and he was very violent,

and he was just,
he was a bad guy.

In 1933, Prohibition ends.

You might think that was
a problem for the Mob,

but it wasn't.

The Mob used Prohibition
as a giant stepping stone.

It was almost like an education.

It was school.

It taught them
how to make the money,

like the rum-runners
in New Jersey;

how to get things
into the country

that aren't supposed to be here,
like at Windsor, Detroit;

and it taught them how
to corrupt politicians

as with the Rotarian.

Most of all, Prohibition taught
them how to work with each other

because it was
all about the green.

So they took the money
they made, millions,

and they simply transitioned.

Like any corporation,
they transitioned

to what supply and demand
is dictating.

By then it was narcotics.

Prohibition's legacy is what we
know as the American Mob today.