From Thugs to Uggs. Poor Hudson Fur Storage. They may well be a squeaky-clean fur storage/Ugg cleaning operation these days, but the popular new podcast series “Crimetown” has shone the spotlight back on the site of the infamous Bonded Vault Robbery. Back in the 70’s, Hudson Fur was a concern of the Patriarca crime family who also kept valuables and cash worth millions stored in a vault in the back.
Happily “Crimetown” isn’t entirely devoted to our former disgraced mayor — of course, he will return — and this episode is a lot of fun. ProJo reporter Amanda Milkovits, who covers the police and crime beat, has been enthusiastically reviewing each new episode. The latest is Chapter 4: Ripping off the Mafia, and I had to check this one out.
Inside Hudson Fur Storage, at 101 Cranston St., where gangsters stored furs for their wives and girlfriends, there was the Bonded Vault: 140 safe-deposit boxes containing cash, jewels, gold bars and other valuables estimated at about $32 million or more. This was a private “bank” used by the Patriarca crime family.
Patriarca was locked up in federal prison in Atlanta at the time, and as White describes in the podcast, he didn’t feel like his soldiers were paying him his dues.
Perhaps, they needed to be taught a lesson. An expensive lesson. One that would be difficult to track.
“Who would ever rob from the Patriarca crime family?” White says. “That is a death sentence.”
There are several “colorful” interviews with the participants, and the featured expert on Bonded Vault is Channel 12’s investigative journalist Tim White, co-author of “The Last Good Heist:The Inside Story of the Single Biggest Payday in the Criminal History of the Northeast.” Phil Eil spoke with White in his review for Rhode Island Monthly.
The book is a collaboration between two former Providence Journal scribes, Wayne Worcester and Randall Richard, and current Channel 12/WPRI investigative reporter Tim White, whose father — the late Journal reporter Jack White — covered the case. White grew up hearing his dad talk about it, and says, “Without question the Bonded Vault heist is the reason I’m in journalism.”
And for that we can all be grateful — and Tim White’s book would make an excellent Christmas gift, by the way — but check out the podcast if for no other reason than to hear White get his mouth around the word “gumada.” This Italian/mob slang for “mistress” has more accepted pronunciations than “capicola” and, in fact, they can almost be made to rhyme. Many gestures and exaggerated facial expressions are required for both — unknown if White got that part right.
At the time of this writing, “Crimetown” is still the ‘Number One Podcast’ at iTunes, so you may have lots to talk about with your out-of-town relatives this holiday season. You could even take them past the old Hudson Fur building where the sign in the front window now says, “We Clean Uggs.”