To overcome, you must educate.
Educate not only yourself, but educate anyone seeking to learn.
We are all Dead America, we can all learn something.
To learn, we must challenge what we already understand.
The way we do that is through conversation.
Sometimes we have conversations with others, however, some of the best
conversations happen with ourselves.
Reach out and challenge yourself; let's dive in and learn something new right now.
Today we are speaking with Aiden Gabor, he's the author of Conflicting Loyalties.
Aiden is an ex mob enforcer turned DOJ informant.
Aiden, could you please introduce yourself?
Let people know just a little more about you, please.
How you doing?
My name is Aiden Gabor.
Um, I grew up in a pretty screwed up, uh, my childhood and life.
Um, introduced myself as, you know, I started off with working with a
crew and eventually worked for the DOJ for taking on bad police officers
and politicians and then finding my love and finding my spiritual journey
throughout the process of it all.
Or somebody that was extremely anti religious become religious at the
end.
Yeah, I find your story very interesting.
Let's start off with your early life, Aiden.
It's remarkable how you were young and you were kind of forced into this
by the DOJ to become an informant.
But those early years, what were those like for you?
Um, I'm gonna be honest with you, it was awesome.
Uh, my dad was an associate and with a Capo in hand.
I would start out nine, ten years old, we would have gatherings, just barbecues
without, Our mothers and grandmothers from the old country would come in
and cook and we would have everything and we would, you know, we didn't,
we learned at early age, respect.
If you were asked to get something, get it for them.
Um, you know, I mean, I was, uh, big for my age and I would get in those scuffles
outside with boys that were five, six years older than me and I would beat up a
couple of them or, you know, get beat up.
And in early years of, you know, a couple of times we'd be wrestling or fighting
on this gravel, and, uh, got cut up.
A cop showed up because there had, you know, somebody
complained about kids fighting.
And I'm like, you know, like, you know, Aiden, come on
over, tell us what's going on.
I'm like, Get the hell out of here, we're wrestling.
And I was getting my ass handed to me, I was getting beat up.
And I just told them to get out.
And, uh, they're like, come on now, you know, we know who, I don't know,
and then they leave, and we go inside.
And one day, Eddie, the Capo, he asked me, Hey, can you stop by
uh, my, the shop?
He had a little shop, there was a car, like, you know, a mechanic shop.
There was also like a little social club and stuff they had in there and
eventually I learned later on in life that we had other things going on in there.
And I showed up, I rode my bike, and he's like, Hey, will you take this
package and take it to this place, drop it off, don't talk to anybody,
don't stop, um, and do not look in it.
I said, Yes, sir. And I took the packages and I would bring it to people.
And I, you know, as you, after time, after doing this several times, I come
back, you give me money, twenty, thirty bucks, I would run into the candy
store with my buddies and I'd be king.
You know, we would get thirty dollars worth of candy.
And back then, that was a lot of candy.
And I did this for a while, and eventually, you know,
you recognize these people.
And as I got older, I worked my way up.
Eddie saw something in me.
And I started cleaning in the store, did a little like, um, got to
where I wasn't dropping something.
I'd sweep the store, take garbage out.
You know, I got into a couple scuffles
with a couple guys in there, and, cause they treated me like shit.
And, um, and I wasn't, I was one not to take it.
And so I just worked my way up, and eventually Eddie saw something in me.
So we had a guy there, they put in the book, his name's Nicky.
And Nicky taught me how to use a gun, how to use an ice pick, on how you
put the, I mean, back there, you put this right in the back here, right?
And you can do this, and, and he told me, With an ice pick, you could stab
somebody five or six times really quick.
Run away, leave it in, it doesn't leave prints.
Never more worried about that, you can get away.
And at that time, I'm thinking there's something wrong with this guy.
And taught me how to drive, you know?
Here I am doing all this and they, I, Eddie just saw something in me and, and
eventually I worked my way up to, we go, I learned that we were collecting from like
little mom-pop places and little shops.
I started doing that with a guy named Dominic.
And Dominic and I really cared for each other.
First time I met Dominic, he pushed me really hard into the
wall to get out of the way.
And I grabbed, uh, a broom handle, I hit him with it, and then he
hit me and he turned with a gun.
And Eddie's like, No, no, stop,
this is, uh, you know, Gabor's kid.
And they're like, Oh.
And he walked away.
And the first time I went with Dominic, we're in the car, and I'm
in the passenger seat, he punches me as hard as he can in the face.
And it was like, you know, you feel the, like blackness, and all that.
He's like, That's for when you hit me, we're not even, but you know,
that's, that's what you get, you know?
Don't start your shit.
Anyway, I learned how to collect, and then I, I, I became an enforcer of people.
Because there's gambling, there's prostitution, I wasn't allowed
to go by the prostitution because I was an adolescent, you know?
With girls, I was learning about girls at the time, and they, yeah,
they didn't want me to go by that.
And so we ran numbers, we loaned money, and we collected.
And then they had a chop shop, that was a big thing.
The biggest thing with Eddie was a chop shop.
And I learned how to steal cars.
And I did that.
My first car I stole, I was fifteen.
And first of all, when the second, or the second time I stole a car, some clown
came up to me to ask me what I was doing.
He's gonna call the cops.
And I kind of tuned him up a little bit and left and never heard anything on that.
And then I, I was enforcing.
And there was a couple of times, I mean, my most remembered time
was we were sitting at a, um, deli outside and this guy is walking
by and Eddie goes, Hey, that, that motherfucker owes me twenty grand.
Or I forget what he said, ten or twenty.
And I just started running and I would go up to the guy and I'm like hitting him.
And I start kicking the crap out of him this time and
he's like, Whoa, whoa, chill.
And then I'm beating him, beating the crap out of him and I'm like, You better
get back or it's going to get worse.
And he looked at me, he goes, You're eating your sandwich.
And I'm looking and I'm going, Yeah, it was a good corned beef, that wasn't a
sandwich, I love, this thing's great.
But you just beat up a guy eating your sandwich, are you kidding me?
He's like, You get the fuck back, Joe, you know, go back there.
And he looked at him and he's telling Eddie this, and he goes,
Well good, we'll call him Sandwich.
And I thought, to this day I hate that name.
I became Aiden Sandwich.
Come on, I hate, I hated that name.
And that's what they gave me and that's what I ran with.
And I did all that.
I did all the way up till I was almost eighteen going on nineteen, actually
nineteen going on twenty I should say, because I was a little late.
And the next thing I know, you know, I was collecting, I, I, I enforced, did
everything I was supposed to do, beat up, I got stabbed a couple times doing this.
Um, I, uh, I, I, all of a sudden, Eddie comes to me and says, Hey,
the FBI just arrested Dominick, they took Nick, Nick, I think Nick
got away, I think Nick took off.
And anyway, he's like, I'm leaving.
You need to, Hey, you've got to change, they're going to arrest you.
And you've got a chance to go play college football, go make something of yourself.
And I'm, I wasn't planning on it and I'm like, uh, Okay.
Cause you gotta go because you have prior offs here.
So basically we're done.
So basically the whole, whole thing went down for that and I, I went to
school and that's, that, that was the end of my first part of my life or
the early part when I worked with, uh, I was running with the crew.
Yeah, that's a lifestyle that many people fear.
But as you live in that lifestyle of crime and that activity, it really, it makes
you a different person that's for sure.
Uh, growing up in the seventies myself, I remember when Rico came out and, you know,
the big cases during the eighties with Rico, uh, everyone was terrified at that
point because it was guilt by association.
And, you know, everybody was friendly at that time and everybody knew
everybody, it was a different time.
And I really think that during that timeframe of fear, things
really shifted in the, not only loyalties, but communities.
They, they buttoned up per se.
What do you think about that, Aiden?
Oh, absolutely.
You know, you know, we had, you know, we worked with the gang, so
there was no, the crime was nothing.
Um, you know, they, like, you know, we were told, Eddie's
like, We don't do drugs.
And I can't say the exact words, but he said, Let the gangs give to
their, their own community, you know?
And, but in different words.
And we worked like, we'd get a percentage and we did something,
we didn't poach, you know?
We, we, we, we worked kind of together.
And it was safe back then, there was no problems.
You know, everything was, you could walk the streets at any
time, um, there was respect.
You know, that was what I loved about it, the respect part of it, you know?
Through everything, you know, I'm going through, yeah, the minute Rico came in,
I was the same time frame, and as soon as that came in, yeah, it changed everything.
That's what happened to us.
You know, FBI just came and cleaned the house.
And they hurt more, I think more communities, yes, where we get money
from the people, but they were safe.
You know, once all that ended, it became a free for all, you know?
Um, and that's because, you know, the government wants it on the table or not.
It's, the government wants their money.
They're not getting money out of this.
And that was the whole thing I'm looking at.
I mean, the crime part, you're going to get that all the time.
But it's the greedy part of the government, and that's my thinking of it.
But, you know, I just, I just, I don't understand.
You know, I mean, you're right.
The RICO law was, you don't have to do anything, you just have to be
associated with somebody and that was it.
Yeah, that, that was a big, big point in, in my history that I remember vividly
because I remember the fear that ran through myself because of my activities.
And it's the same thing, my family believed in taking care of business.
If you wronged, well, you're going to find one of us at your door or in your bedroom.
And, you know, it's just how we handled things.
My brother, you know, that just passed away recently, uh, he, he spent many
years in prison for using a hatchet on somebody instead of the baseball bat.
You know, the severity of these crimes, you know, that fear that came in,
it really did take a lot of that and put it on the back burner, per se.
Because I remember it was pretty open back then, you know, you,
you knew who you were dealing with because they demanded that respect.
And
you talk quite a bit about respect in your interviews and I, I love this
portion because I really think that's what we're lacking today is respect.
My, my mother and my father instilled in us, you, you don't
hit a woman, you respect the woman, you respect your elders.
And, you know, I really miss those times and I think a lot of what
occurred in our legal streams really screwed the family up.
And then, then you got into everyone calling the cops on everyone and it
really divided the families in a way.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
You know, you know, respect growing up, that was it.
You know, um, family respect, that was the way it went.
And nowadays there is no, these kids nowadays have zero respect.
You know, I get in trouble in my old age dealing with these kids nowadays.
They talk their shit and I'm not one, I really didn't take too much crap.
And you're right, we took care of business.
If you, if you wronged family and or close friends, you're
expecting my happy face to show up.
And, and, what I used to say is, I go, Did, Jerry, you beat
up these people, you did this.
You know, yeah, I used a baseball bat, but we weren't kinky.
We weren't rocket scientists, we, we, we used what we had at hand.
And the best thing I learned is have a baseball bat, put a mitt and a
ball in your trunk and you cannot be arrested because you have a
baseball, I am ready to play baseball.
Let me talk.
And I used to, yes, I used a baseball bat, I like hitting the ankles.
Because when you hit those feet, you hit the tires, they go down.
When you hit the knees,
they only kind of, they might be able to get up, it's going to hurt.
Hit them in the ankles, they're on the ground and you got total control.
And that, and it made a different sound.
I liked it.
And that, that was me growing up, I'm going to admit to it.
And, um, you know, I did other things, but you were one of the family.
And most of the time, if you see my happy mug showing up at your place, it wasn't
because I picked you out just randomly.
It's because you did something for me to be here.
You borrowed money and didn't pay it back, you did something, you know?
And everybody talks about different crews, don't, you know, we did violence
mostly against other crews because they're poaching in our territory.
You know, if you're going to go poach in somebody else's territory, do some
business, you better have a good reason or you're going to pay the consequences.
And that's like nowadays, there is no consequences for what you do.
There is no respect.
There is, and that's the way these kids are nowadays, they're little shits.
And I, I, yeah, big respect.
You know, like I say every time, I have never said a word
against anybody I ran with.
Anybody in the crew.
I never did anything against them.
If they were to ask me, I would have told them to get fucked.
But I did things against bad police officers and bad politicians.
That was what, yes, did I inform against them?
Absolutely.
But I grew up seeing these people and they were supposed to be protecting people.
And then in the second part of life, when the DOJ came up and gave me that lovely, I
wouldn't say ultimatum, they had basically a deal I couldn't refuse at the time.
That, yeah, you know, eventually I figured I'm doing good.
You know, but I did miss my younger life.
I enjoyed doing it because we had respect in the neighborhood,
the neighborhoods were safe.
People said, Hey, how you doing?
You know, we, you know, you got a lot of shit free, but you also had,
like I said, the respect thing.
Yeah, I like that a lot.
And it really appealed to me when I seen this come across
the desk for the first time.
Uh, the title of your book, you know, it suggests conflicting loyalties.
Is your loyalty still conflicting or do you have a better grasp on your
ideas and who you are and what you are?
You know, I do now.
I think spiritually helped me.
But when the conflicting loyalties part mostly came in is, you know, when the
DOJ came up and used that Rico thing against me, they're like, This is a new,
you know, when they show me pictures of my mother, my father, you know, when
they show pictures of me and my father with Eddie and a bunch of other guys,
I didn't care.
But when they show me my mother and say my mother's going to go to jail,
if I, unless I did it, that, that hit me because I'm a mama's boy.
I was, my mom is past.
And they said, Hey, have you ever heard this law called RICO?
Well, no, I was young, it's a new law out there.
Because you're a college boy, go look it up in the, in the,
in the library, you know?
Back then, 70s, you didn't have that shit.
So I went and found out what it was.
I'm like, Holy shit.
And that, I'm sorry, that's, that was my, it killed me the first time I said,
Yes, I'll do what you need me to do.
And, you know, these two clowns had me, you know, infiltrate a police
department to find a police officer.
The first one was a hit man.
And what happened with the conflicting loyalties part is, when you become law
enforcement, after I started, you get on the academy, and you go through,
there's a thing called the blue line, as you start going in law enforcement.
And it's this blue line, almost like we had, where you don't talk
about your brothers and sisters.
If you see something, kind of keep it to yourself.
You know, that type of deal.
Unless it's extremely bad.
But my conflicting loyalties part was, as I'm doing all of this, I'm
thinking to myself, Am I betraying my brothers and sisters in blue?
And my first, when I first started doing it, the first one I went after, it took
me over a year and I became a drinker.
And I drank, but I became a gulper, I guess you could say.
That's the way this this, idiot was . And after I put away, when they
got me to work in the department I grew up in, and since I remembered the
politicians, the commissioners, and
the officers that I saw as a kid taking the, taking the money, telling them what's
going on, doing some very bad crimes.
And for, for Eddie that, I thought, you know, like I said, the DOJ came to me.
It wasn't to be undercover, it was just as an informant.
I didn't have backup so I had to do all this and no tell anybody.
Don't you say a word to your parents, don't say a word to your wife or anybody.
Or if you do, you go.
That's it.
The deal's off, you're going to jail.
And, you know, as you become a drinker, it started getting to me.
I started seeing hallucinations of St. Michael with the
flaming sword coming at me.
He said, I betrayed and slicing at me.
And in that time frame, in that time frame, I started becoming an alcoholic.
But then I started getting those benders.
And I remember waking up, and I remember, was I hallucinating about putting a
round in the chamber of 357, spinning it, and putting it to my head, and
pulling the trigger, or putting it underneath my chin, pulling the trigger?
And I know of at least 200 or so times I did it remembering.
And times I wake up with two or three in the, in, in the gun laying on the floor
next to me, thinking I do this over a thousand times, trying to kill myself.
And, you know, later, life I'm learning to God, didn't want me to die.
You know, and my conflicting loyalties part was, I'm conflicting against
my brothers and sisters in blue.
I'm taking note of bad police officers, that was a part.
The politicians, I didn't give a shit.
But going against police officers, am I going against the guys?
Because as you walk in their shoes as a law enforcement, and
you know, I still did the job.
And you get to see, dealing with, what they would deal with every day in life,
you know?
Um, and people don't understand this, let's defund them.
They don't do, are you kidding me?
What these men and women do.
It's like the military, why these people treat the military personnel
the way they do, law enforcement, first responders, you know?
What these men and women do for you.
You know, I always talked, I've talked to many military people and,
you know, this is what they get.
They train, kill, kill, kill, train, kill, kill, kill.
It's all done with go back and be a normal person in society after
you've seen and did what you did.
Seriously?
That's how I look at it.
Why do these people have mental, I mean, I didn't see the carnage they may have seen.
Have I seen carnage?
Yes.
But have I, you know, been involved?
Yes.
But not the same way these guys were, and I was very young
when I did a lot of this stuff.
And in law enforcement, you see it.
You see the abuse, you see the murders, you see everything.
And some people can't take that mentally, and I understand it, but they
want you to be a normal, functioning human being after your shift is
over, or after your tour is over.
And my conflicting, like I said, my conflicting loyalty was that, you know?
And I became a bad alcoholic and my buddy Don and Sam saved
my ass with the alcoholism.
Well, thank God for Don and Sam.
You know, it is, it's interesting you bring this up about law enforcement.
You know, my whole family was criminal to the T. But I,I,
I really don't get into that.
I really looked at what was happening and I kinda got sick because of it.
And then interestingly enough, I met my wife.
I was seventeen years old and she was a Christian and she kind of
stepped in and changed who I was.
And my life hasn't been the same ever since.
And I heard that you found that same type of experience with your
second wife, is that correct?
Yes, yeah.
I was, you know, I was extremely, I mean, I was an asshole.
I was not a great person.
My first wife, I was not a great husband.
I was not a great father.
I didn't believe in religion.
I was, I used to joke, I work for the other guy.
I collect souls.
And I met her and she, she, you know, she looked at me and accepted me.
And then, you know, we would go out.
And the first several days, I, you know, I had a friend of mine
say, Hey, you need to go out.
She wants to go out with you.
I go, Seriously?
Why would she want to go out with me?
He goes, I don't know.
She thinks you're funny.
You know, I joke around with everybody.
And I said, All right, I'll go out with her.
And it was just one of those clicks.
Ed, I'm going to be telling you that this is kind of a funny story
is, we went out, I didn't pay for anything on the first eight dates.
She thought, she probably thought I was some kind of scam.
Like, we joke about this now.
But she said, she liked me, we went out.
I always had an excuse, I was going through a divorce, I was, and you
know, she, cause I felt bad for you, and then eventually you're like a
fungus, I couldn't get rid of you.
And, and, she, she understands, she accepted me for who I
am, and who, what I was.
And, you know,
she may have not gotten me when I was younger in my prime and fit and all this.
You know, I got ALS, I'm, uh, falling apart.
I was shot a couple of times.
I mean, she's getting the, the, the, uh, used car part, and she accepted it.
And, you know, the funniest thing about her is, when I started in law
enforcement, I was a young officer, I arrested a sixteen year old at a bar.
I bring this person to jail.
She's in the backseat, kind of crying, but kind of being a bitch.
And I'm trying to talk to her, she's really not talking to me.
So, at that time, I took her picture, took her prints.
And back then, I was making my extra sentence set for my own files to say,
you know, we get, you know, keep your own files in case something happens and,
you know, kind of like getting trouble.
You know, I arrested her when she was sixteen years old.
And then we met again like fifteen years later.
It's one of those synchro, I didn't realize it till her uncle said
something to me about, Hey, um, hey, I was, she got arrested at that town.
I'm like, Seriously?
She's like, Yeah!
We used to live there years ago!
I remember that!
And, and, and she's explaining it to me, so I looked it up,
and sure enough, it was me!
I was like, so what's that, synchranikra?
Whatever the hell they call it.
Yeah, so, that's where I met her, but she, she just understood me.
And to this day, she accepts me for what I am.
And, you know, we click.
We talk every day, we talk every day, of course, but we talk as much as we can,
and we still say I love you every morning.
And my first wife was like, you know, Satan's daughter.
And that's how I used to joke, I married Satan's daughter.
Because she was, she was just a mean bitch.
But yeah, you're right.
I'm glad yours is like this too.
You know, except for a few quirks, even though you may be, you know, a
little bit out there, they accept you.
It's a beautiful thing when you find the right woman.
And, and it's, it's interesting how they don't really change you,
I think you really change together.
You know, that, that's the big thing.
Writing a book Aiden, you, you talk about it being therapy.
And I find podcasting therapy because I, I really don't have the
talent yet to finish and complete a book, but I'm, I'm seeking that.
So, so do you, talk to us about the therapy end of releasing
this through a book or even these podcasts that you are doing.
You know, I, I, what happened once, I was having night
terrors and I still have them.
And I was swinging, I was throwing my wife around, I was punching the
wall, I was punching at some, and she called Don and Sam and said, Hey,
you guys, this is what he's doing.
And they came out and they flew down and saw me.
And Don was like, You know, dude, come on, you know?
You need to look at this.
And you need to maybe look at some religion.
I'm like, Go to hell.
And Sam looks at me.
And he goes, You need to listen to Sam, like, read these books.
And Don's like, I gotta go.
We're talking about it, you know, what's going on.
He was here for a couple days.
Sam stayed for a couple weeks and he's like, Read this.
And there was a Ba'b Bahá'í, the Bahá'í faith.
And I'm like, I don't like reading, but okay, I'll read this.
And then we started talking and then, he never knew, you know, I grew up with Sam,
I mean, we grew up in the neighborhood, we grew up, he never knew this shit.
He goes, I always wrote it off, but, but I knew your dad did work
for, I didn't know you were going.
And he's like, Well, no.
And him and I talked about, you know, life, because I knew a lot, he goes, Yeah,
I remember some things happening when we were there, and we were like, Wow.
And he goes, Your life screwed up.
I go, Gee, thanks, I love hearing that.
And he's just like, You need to write a book.
I go, Go to hell.
I ain't writing this book.
I don't want to because if you could therapeutically get it all
out, I go, I'm going nuts now.
He goes, Yeah, but you get it all out.
And yes, I wrote the book.
It took a couple years because it's a memoir.
Oh, I forgot about that, oh, yeah, you know, did I have this?
Oh, you know, we also did that, you know?
You remember little parts here and there.
And yeah, I wrote the book and, and he's like, isn't it
helping you therapeutically?
I'm like, No!
It's not.
But yeah, it is.
You know, it's one of those yes and no's.
And he said, You know, do a podcast.
Yes, it's helping me.
Am I having as many night terrors?
And no, I'm not, which is surprising me because I'm remembering more
and more of the stuff I did.
I didn't want to remember both then being a criminal and
both being in law enforcement.
You know, I always joked that I was in the dark.
I was in the shadows, my young life.
And I was in the medium shadows growing up.
And eventually when I found the Baha'i faith, I came out
of the dark into the light.
And realized, Whoa, you know, the Baha'i faith, men and women are exactly equal.
Where in some Catholic faiths, the men, the woman is subservient
to the man, you know, in the Baptist race, you know, faiths.
And every, I believe everyone's equal, I've always believed that.
And there's a lot of things that Baha'is believe, but I'm like, Well, yeah,
everybody bleeds red, you know, whether they're white, pink, black, purple, green.
We all bleed red.
We bleed a different color, we got some problems.
And that's how I, that's, that's what I believe in.
And Sam looked at me and goes, So you were always a Baha'i your whole life.
You just didn't know it.
And so I started reading and one day I'm sitting outside, you know, and I get this
one, I'm reading Baha'u'llah's writing, and I look up, I get this feeling in me
and I'm like, I'm looking at the sun, it's hot out, and I'm thinking, it's got, it's
gotta be getting sunstroke or something.
I'm going in.
My wife's like, Serena's like, What's going on?
I go, I don't know.
There's something inside me, I'm reading Baha'u'llah's writings.
I got this feeling and all that fucking bullshit, I hate it.
And she's like, You're getting spiritual.
I go, Go to hell.
I'm not getting spiritual here.
This is, I hate this feeling.
Oh, no, that's what you're getting.
And I kept reading, you know?
She's, and then she started, I, I'm not a great reader so she started reading to me.
And she's like, See?
And then the Baha'i faith, there's a thing called Ruhi, a Ruhi
class, which is a Bible class.
So for three years, my wife did these Ruhi classes with me twice a week, one
hour twice a week, two hours a week.
And she did it,
she went through it, read it, did everything with it.
But she never converted from her Catholic or, you know, Christian
beliefs to, you know, a Bahai.
Even though I did.
But she stayed with me to help me read, to help me understand for three years.
She never, and after we talked about our wives understanding us and helping
us, um, that right there showed a lot.
And then me learning spiritually, you know, and I always joke that, you
know, God never let me kill myself.
I tried, as many times.
I got stabbed.
I got shot.
God said, Yeah, you ain't dying.
But God's got a sense of humor.
Because I went through all this shit, and now I got, and now I got ALS.
So He's like, Yeah, guess what, sunshine?
The best is yet to come for you.
So, I get it.
You know, He's got a sense of humor, and, and, and I accept it.
And I used to be, I didn't care if I died.
I didn't care if I died, at all.
Now I want to live because I've learned to help people.
I've actually, which I never thought in a million years, I
do a lot with Special Olympics.
With these special needs men and women.
I mean, they're not kids, they're men and women.
But my God, if the world can see through their eyes, because
they just want to hug you.
Oh, there's Aiden.
Oh, there's my friend.
And they come up, Aiden, oh, they don't care about what I did as a living.
They just care.
I'm their, their friend.
You know, they understand if you hurt that man, that person hurt me,
I don't like them.
They understand when they get hurt.
But they understand, Hey, this is a nice person.
I like them.
And I love that.
It's like, you know, it's just a warmth I get.
And I love helping and I love doing the Special Olympics and seeing,
these kids are never going to be Olympians, but yes, they are.
In my, in my, in their heart they are because they're so, they're so
awesome when they get that excitement.
They don't care if they came in last, they came in first.
I like that a lot.
You know, it was one of my most fulfilling experiences in life to be able to
work with the mentally handicapped.
And I worked with an agency, through a work program in high school,
and it was called The Star of Hope.
And, and I learned so much because of working with those individuals,
it really taught me a lot.
I like it.
So now that you've written a book and you're still currently
in law enforcement, I believe.
Do you have plans to write another book with, you know, a theme for
the boys in blue in some form?
You know, I'm, I'm really, I'm not in law enforcement.
I, I retired after seventeen years.
Um, you know, I, I, I wonder, I always thought of writing something that would
be like, but you know, right now I would love to write something to show
the positive side of law enforcement.
But the problem is the positive side that they do, people don't care.
I mean,
it's the blood and guts that they care about.
And I've already done something kind of like that.
So I'm not sure how I would approach that.
Do I want to write?
Yes, I do.
I mean, my book, I can write more stories on what I did.
I'd only put a fraction of what I did my early years, I only put a fraction
of what I did in law enforcement, and I've only done a fraction of
my finding my true love, and the same thing with the Baha'i faith.
Um, I don't know.
I was, I would love to write another book, but I haven't decided what I would do.
Um, you know, I learned a long time ago, you know, my mom and dad
were partisans during World War II.
And for, they were in Budapest, Hungary, so they went through the
Russians, the, the, the Nazis, and then they went through, you
know, the '56, the Revolution.
And my dad, a couple years ago, my dad and I didn't talk when he
found out I became a flatfoot.
He didn't talk to me for ten years.
He's like, You're being a fucking flatfoot, get out of my house.
That was the last words for ten years.
We finally talked again, we met someplace.
And him and I had a chat and he goes, You know, You know, did your
mother ever scare you growing up?
I go, What do you mean?
She scared the hell out of me my whole life, there was
usually something about her.
And I'm like, Yeah, there's always something about my mom.
You know, I've only two people that scared me my whole life.
I'm not scared of no man.
I'm scared of my mother, I'm scared of my current wife.
And those two are the only two people scared the shit out of me.
And I'm like, Why?
And my dad's like, Yeah, you know, we went against Nazis, you know,
when the Germans were in there.
We went against the Russians when they invaded in, you know, the '45.
He said, your father, when the Russians, or your mother, when the Russians
came in to her and her sisters, what they did to them, um, never left her.
She was always with her, she was always haunting her.
Because she always, when storms came, the Russians would come and
they're going to do this again to us.
Your mother was so much, that at ten, eleven years old, she would go out
there and walk out there at night.
There were a couple Russian soldiers who were like, Come here little
girl, what are you doing out here?
And they were doing, and she would carry this long spear.
As they talked, she stabbed them through the neck real fast, both
of them, and take off running.
And if there's one crawling, she stabbed him again until he
stopped crawling and run away.
So he said, Your mother used to do that.
I, I can't remember, a couple hundred times she just stabbed
these Russian soldiers.
Or she'd take a, and go right up to a tank and throw a molotov cocktail
into the roof of a tank and jump off.
Where everybody else would run and throw it from twenty feet away.
She didn't care, she wanted to see them suffer.
And your mother had that.
And I remember a long time ago that you could have that where what your parents
did at a young age can be hereditary for you at a young age growing up, you know?
And I'm going to be honest, where, I went through psychological, you know,
evaluation and it came back to, I have no empathy for people, I really don't.
And I'm a borderline sociopath.
And, you know, that's growing up in the environment I grew up in and, but
no empathy, they can't figure it out.
To this day, I, I fight bad with it.
When somebody gets hurt, I, I, I don't, my, my wife and I can't watch horror
movies or bad movies because I laugh.
To me, when somebody's head is getting snapped off, their arm breaking,
they're torturing them, I laugh.
I think it's funny and I don't know why.
My wife said, I can't watch this movie with you.
What do you think, it's a comedy?
You're a fucking ass.
And walk away.
And, um, if I see something, Now that's not how you break a leg.
Let me tell you what it sounds like.
I'm not listening to your shit.
And walk away.
And I had that.
You know, you were talking about maybe a book.
I might do something on partisans growing up.
What my dad, who's still alive, could find out more.
Because I asked a friend, I didn't believe my dad, I thought he was full of shit.
So I called a friend of theirs that lives in New York, and I
asked him, he's like, Who told you?
He goes, your father did.
I go, Yeah.
He goes, Oh, she did, that's what, she was crazy.
He said, that was one of the craziest women's I ever met, you know?
And he kind of laughed.
Before he passed, he told me all about, Yeah, yeah, it's true,
and your dad's not shitting you.
But besides that, your dad's still alive?
I'm like, Yeah, he's still kicking.
Alright.
And that, that was, that was it.
You know, I'm like, Oh my God, you know, this explains a little bit.
But you know, my mom, growing up, I think knew what I was
doing, but didn't give a shit.
So I mean, I'm, I'm thinking about it, but I'm not sure what.
Yeah, yeah.
I think you have a few more in you with all that you've
been through, that's for sure.
And they say, once you write one, you have to write another.
So I'm, I would be very interested in seeing more come from you.
Could you tell people how to get the book?
Absolutely.
You can get it on conflictingloyalties.com,
we have everything on there.
Conflictingloyalties.com tells you every market you get it from, we'll send you
to it, and that's your best place to get it, rather than scrolling through
everything in Amazon and all that.
But in conflictingloyalties.com, it'll get you, get on Amazon, it'll tell you right
there, and it tells you how to get to it.
Aiden, I think you're doing marvelous things.
I call people like you bridge builders, because you're bridging that
chasm that people need to get over.
And those younger people, you can help a lot.
And I appreciate a lot what you're doing, taking the time to come on
these podcasts and write a book.
It's all about helping people grow.
And I really find that very unique about you.
Thank you for being part of the Dead America Podcast with us here today.
Ed, Thank you so much for having me.
And you know, if you ever need anything else, let me know, sir. And I'll let
you know if I write another book.
I would be very excited to talk to you about it.
And thank you once again, Aiden.
Thank you again, Ed.
You have a great day and be safe, sir.
You also, sir.
Thank you for joining us today.
If you found this podcast enlightening, entertaining, educational in any way,
please share, like, subscribe, and join us right back here next week for another
great episode of the Dead America Podcast.
I'm Ed Watters, your host, enjoy your afternoon wherever you might be.