PRETEND4 Jan 2021

S701: The Real Donnie Brasco

Johnny Depp played Donnie Brasco in the Academy Award-nominated film. But the real-life story of Donnie Brasco is even more fascinating. Joe Pistone, an FBI agent, went deep undercover as Brasco and spent six years inside the Bonanno and Columbo crime families. The movie, if you remember, starts with Joe Pistone immediately infiltrating with the mob. In today's episode, we will talk about everything that happened before the movie even begins. What was Donnie Brasco's backstory? Where did he come from, and how did he earn money? The FBI needed to figure out every single detail about this fictional character before Joe Pistone ever made the first contact with the mafia. They decided that Donnie Brasco was going to be a jewel thief. That required Pistone to learn how gemology, how to break into safes, and how to disable alarms. In this episode, you will hear from Joe Pistone himself. You'll even get to listen to a real wiretap recording between Donnie Brasco and his associate Lefty Ruggiero. If you want more, check out the new podcast "Deep Cover-The Real Donnie Brasco," Joe Pistone shares the true stories of his time with the mob to his friend and host actor Leo Rossi. PRETEND is on YouTube Make sure to subscribe to the PRETEND YouTube channel. I will pick 10 subscribers at random and mail them a screen printed PRETEND t-shirt. "Fuhggedaboutit" ------- Story idea? If you have a story to share, email Javier at info@pretendradio.org. For more episodes like this visit pretendradio.org. To get early releases and bonus episodes go to pretendradio.org/donate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Episoder(323)

BONUS: Gypsy Rose Blanchard's Partner Ken Urker Has Died

Ken Urker, Gypsy Rose Blanchard's partner and the father of their daughter, Aurora, died on October 1, 2026, his 34th birthday. The sheriff is still investigating, and no official cause of death has b...

3 Okt 15min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 8

Gypsy Rose Blanchard thought no one was listening. For years, everything she said from inside Chillicothe was being recorded. Now it's public. More than five hundred hours of it. Some of those recor...

29 Sep 40min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 7

"I didn't f---ing get my own f---ing mother murdered just so I could live for everybody else." That is Gypsy Rose Blanchard on a recorded prison line, saying the quiet part out loud. She had taken th...

22 Sep 42min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 6

There are people online right now who don't believe Dee Dee Blanchard had Munchausen by proxy. Some of them don't believe Munchausen by proxy is a real thing at all. So if the abuse wasn't real, how d...

15 Sep 41min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, part 5

According to the anti-Gypsy camp, they've found it. The smoking gun. Gypsy Rose Blanchard has a rare genetic disorder, a microdeletion on chromosome 1, and depending on who you ask online, that one wo...

8 Sep 42min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 4

According to the anti-Gypsy camp, they've got the receipts. Gypsy really had leukemia. She really needed that bone marrow treatment, and the feeding tube and the surgeries were all real and documented...

1 Sep 39min

The Stalker: Shelbey Fernandez Speaks, Part 23

It's like getting to the end of a movie and discovering the twist, then going back to the beginning because every scene means something else. That's what I've been doing all week with the Rick and Tan...

28 Aug 25min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 3

Long before Gypsy Rose Blanchard's mother was murdered, the tension inside that house was already at a breaking point. The private videos between Gypsy and Nick Godejohn that nobody was supposed to se...

25 Aug 37min